Donald Trump is feeling particularly vindictive today.
Early this morning, he tweeted out that he was ordering FEMA to not send any more money California's way for wildfire relief. The following tweet is his second attempt. In the first, he lambasted 'forrest' management.
Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2019
FEMA is an apolitical organization, because, you know, disasters and emergencies are uh, apolitical. In the Paradise, CA fire, it is estimated that 79 people died and thousands lost their homes. That was just one of the fires that ravaged California this fall. Trump lets partisan pettiness cloud his judgment even in a situation where 79 people were killed in one town and thousands lost their homes.
Also, interestingly enough, most of those fires happened on federal land so this is actually the president's problem.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Newsom also called on President Trump to boost federal funding for forest management, which is vital, given that about 60% of California’s forests are on federal land. Newsom co-signed a letter to Trump, along with fellow Democratic governors Jay Inslee of Washington and Kate Brown of Oregon, calling for the Trump Administration to “double the investment” in managing federal forests in the west to help supplement state efforts.
After all, the letter noted, California has spent $111.3 million since 2017 on forest health, and almost half the work was done on federal land. Yet at the same time, the U.S. Forest Service budget has been cut by more than $2 billion since 2016.
All of that aside, Trump doesn't understand what the fuck he's talking about. California has a wildfire season every year. It used to be just in August and September and yeah, it would suck and sometimes—rarely—ash would rain down on your elementary school's playground (other states get snow days, California gets fire days—I harbor resentment). But it wasn't the death and destruction that's happening now. The past two California wildfire seasons have been longer, fiercer, and more deadly than ever before. The devastation has become the new normal because this is a very real result of climate change.
This is not something that "raking the forest floor" better, a solution Trump famously suggested, will solve.
