Republicans Toasting Marshmallows Over LA Fires

A template for disaster assistance over the next four years

The solution to California’s fires is politicians being nasty. That’s what I’m reading (not very) between the lines of Trumpanista trolling of Gov. Newsom and the state/local government when it comes to the Federal response to a disaster in our state.

The vast majority of right wing criticism either includes lies or fails to provide context for claims, with the gist of it all being that liberal/progressive/Marxist policy is to blame.

Via CNN:

• Trump himself has used his Truth Social platform to spread misinformation about the fires and stoke a feud with Newsom, falsely declaring last week that the governor had “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him,” allowing the fires to spread.

• Trump’s media allies similarly picked up on his talking points, with Ingraham saying on her show, “we know where California liberals choose to spend billions, and we do know that their environmental fanaticism has shoved common sense thinking out the door.”

• “Now, while the winds are horrific, experts insist that bad forest management can make a bad situation worse,” Ingraham added. “And Trump called this out six years ago … He’s right. Incompetence kills.”

FYI– the water declaration papers referred to by Trump don’t exist, and the LA fires were not forest fires.

Have we heard thoughts and prayers? Nope. It’s somehow collectively our fault, and their savior says California must be punished. And it’s not his problem.

Here’s Jon Stinton with an appropriately angry response:

• Our once and future leader did not take this tragic opportunity to console or provide any sort of moral leadership. Instead, he chose to castigate Democratic leaders with unfounded lies, and unrestrained zeal. It’s no wonder he’s never had a dog, or that in the Trump White House, there was never any artistic entertainment in the form of music or dance, a staple in every other administration.

• The buck stops anywhere else; just not the Oval Office.

• Take that, Harry Truman.

***

While the total destruction from the recent LA fires is still being tallied, authorities know of the destruction of more than twelve thousand buildings, the deaths of more than two dozen people, and –according to J.P. Morgan economist Abiel Reinhart– economic damage in the quarter-trillion-dollar range. This was a bigger disaster than Hurricane Katrina.

Climate change? Never heard of it.

So, according to the rhetoric coming out of the incoming administration, federal disaster assistance should either come with political demands or be withheld entirely.

Via Rolling Stone:

• Republican lawmakers like Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) have also raised the idea in light of the California wildfires, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Monday that he believes federal aid should be conditional. “It appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects. So that’s something that has to be factored in,” Johnson said, echoing the larger right-wing response to the fires, which has been to blame Democrats.

New York Rep. Claudia Tenney says there should be conditions on federal disaster relief to the "Marxist regime" in California, and adds the utter fabrication “Those same people weren't concerned about the people in North Carolina or the people in Florida who we've tried to help."

According to Politico, “Some House Republicans who met with President-elect Donald Trump this past weekend floated using the funding as a bargaining chip in debt-limit negotiations with Democrats.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed back against the onslaught of falsehoods, setting up a website to refute specific claims. Via Politico:

• A Newsom administration official said nearly half of the press inquiries to the governor’s office of late were based on an obviously false narrative or seeking information to fact-check a misleading or outright spurious statement on social media.

• “We recognized right away that the flood of disinformation here was damaging our efforts to communicate with the public. It just added this layer of extreme anxiety for people and took resources away from managing this disaster,” said Bob Salladay, a Newsom adviser. “This is California being totally inundated with moronic speculation and political garbage — and we are hitting back hard because when people in power believe this trash, it damages the state.”

• Salladay estimated his team has quieted dozens of false or misleading narratives since Tuesday evening. Newsom’s gambit also has put him in something closer to an offensive position, or one where he’s fighting, which is where he’s most comfortable.

This GOP/MAGA disaster response wouldn’t be a real deal unless grifters and political undesirables jumped in.

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio says he sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune urging them to impose "strict conditions" on federal disaster aid to his home state of California.

A Santa Monica physician who is helping organize another (waste of time) recall attempt of Newsom, Houman David Hemmati, was called out by the governor this week for contending Democrats were tying state fire aid to money to fight Trump in court.

Silicon Valley billionaire (and former RFK Jr. running mate) Nicole Shanahan, is “actively involved” in an attempt to recall Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and is prepared to help fund it, a person familiar with the discussions tells Politico California Playbook.

• She is working behind the scenes to oust Bass as well as Newsom, but views the first-term mayor as an easier target amid criticism of her response to the fires. Shanahan is soliciting help from “people in power” throughout the state who are sympathetic to the cause, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner (and Trump Toady) Patrick Soon-Shiong has promoted a Change.org petition demanding Bass’ resignation. This performative nonsense is a waste of time, since signatures on the online forms aren’t verified and wouldn’t count toward an official petition to place a recall on the ballot.

***

Jeff Masters, writing at Yale Climate Connection, says the post fire death toll will be large.

• In a 2020 policy brief, Marshall Burke, an associate professor of Earth system science at Stanford University, wrote: “Our research suggests that many more people likely perish from smoke exposure during large fire events than perish directly in the fire, and many more people are made sick.”

• Wildfire smoke contains high levels of PM2.5, particles no larger than 2.5 microns in diameter. These have long been linked to increased risk of illness and death, as they’re small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream, where they can harm the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

• A 2024 study, “Mortality attributable to PM2.5 from wildland fires in California from 2008 to 2018,” found that in 2018, the year the town of Paradise and several other communities burned, wildfire smoke may have killed as many as 12,000 Californians prematurely.

***

On the (maybe) bright side…In Washington DC, Arkansas Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman and San Diego Democrat Rep. Scott Peters are hoping to get some bipartisan mojo. Yesterday they reintroduced their Fix Our Forests Act focused on forest management and wildfire prevention.

Dingus of the week: Carrie Underwood by Lyz at Men Yell At Me

• Performing at Trump’s inauguration is an attempt at relevance for a career devoid of any recent highlights. And from here on out, she can claim any decline in sales or criticism is the result of “woke liberal cancel culture” rather than her failure to produce much in the way of interesting music.¹

• Listen, are you mediocre or is it all that woke ideology that demands you actually be good at your job? Is your music uninspired, or is it all those immigrants trying to take over your country singing career? Are you being overlooked because you haven’t done anything new or original in years or is it all those DEI hires?

• Did the wokes crash your car and make your wife divorce you and make your cat bisexual? Well, if you become a country singer you might be entitled to financial compensation.

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The Enduring Power of Copaganda by Alex Karakatsanis at Alex’s Copaganda Newsletter

• …the Laken Riley [law is a] culmination of Democratic Party and mainstream media’s capitulation to the most nativist, xenophobic, inhuman rhetoric of the far right about immigration. The core of it all is a massive propaganda apparatus to generate fear and to obscure the core driving principle of borders and immigration laws in a world of extreme, intentional inequality and colonial extraction: the notion that human beings are worth more or less depending on where they are born.

• Finally, all of this is unconstitutional under many decades of precedent. Because bodily liberty is a “fundamental” constitutional right, government cannot deprive it without an individualized determination that it is necessary to serve a compelling government interest.

• Numerous state and federal courts have overturned attempts at blanket forms of pre-adjudication detention, and even in the immigration context courts have rejected indefinite detention with no process and no ability for individualized findings.

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The Washington Post Would Like to Sell You Some "Riveting Storytelling" by Parker Molloy at The Present Age

• This week, The Washington Post unveiled its new internal mission statement: "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." If that sounds like something generated by an AI trained exclusively on LinkedIn posts and marketing textbooks... well, just wait until you hear about the PowerPoint deck behind it.

• According to The New York Times, Post chief strategy officer Suzi Watford presented executives with a slide deck that would make even the most seasoned corporate consultant cringe. The centerpiece? A "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" of reaching 200 million paying users.

• Pause for a moment to appreciate just how disconnected from reality that number is. The Post currently has fewer than 3 million digital subscribers. The Times, which leads the industry, has about 11 million total. In fact, the Times reports that the Post, Times, Axios, and Politico combined don't even reach 100 million monthly viewers—and that includes non-paying readers.

• The deck goes on to describe the Post as "an AI-fueled platform for news" that delivers "vital news, ideas and insights for all Americans where, how and when they want it." This is the kind of corporate word salad that means absolutely nothing while sounding vaguely important. What makes a platform "A.I.-fueled"? How is that different from just... using computers? Don't worry about those details—look at all these buzzwords!