During a recent press conference at his golf resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, former President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state if Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t divert more water to farmers in Southern California.
It was the former president’s latest swipe at Newsom, an attempt at punishment delivered via a tactless and embarrassing display of machismo that has become symbolic of Trump’s peculiar brand of public ramblings.
But, much like his golf game, Trump’s aim was far from hitting its intended target.
Newsom, or “Newscum” as the former president likes to call him — an implication there exists an “Oldscum” — is likely inured to the posturing politician’s name-calling. But the people who would be hurt by such a policy are not.
“Former President Trump should be ashamed for threatening to withhold federal firefighting aid from California should he be elected,” California Professional Firefighters president Brian K. Rice made in a statement posted to Facebook.
“As of today, thousands of firefighters are on the front lines responding to wildfires throughout the state, and countless Californians are in harm’s way as they heed evacuation orders,” Rice wrote. “Nevertheless, former President Trump expressed that he would play with their lives and their homes if he doesn’t get what he wants.”
Division over the Delta
California’s water policy is a deeply complicated and long history that has perplexed and occupied far greater minds than Trump’s. Most of the state’s water is located in Northern California, and much is pumped to Southern and Central California via canals.
It’s sure helpful if California’s governor and the nation’s president happen to be on the same page when it comes to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, one of the most important estuaries in the hemisphere. The Delta is the home of two of the nation’s largest water projects, the federal Central Valley Project (that serves valley farmers) and the State Water Project (that serves farmers, Southern California and parts of the Bay Area). California has its own Endangered Species Act and can operate with its own rules separate from the federal act.
It’s a strained state-federal marriage at best. There is forever disagreement on when to pump water supplies based on the best available science. When managing the water needs of the environment and economy becomes a political circus, everybody loses.
“(Trump’s) rhetoric is dangerous, his ideas on public safety are dangerous, and his ignorant rhetoric has grown exponentially. It is a disgrace to our great nation and to every Californian that this man has a platform to threaten our livelihoods, safety, families and our state,” Rice wrote.
This latest incident is yet another example of Trump’s small-minded, black-and-white thinking that denotes a simple mind unable to comprehend or consider policies that exist in the gray areas of governing. Remember, this is the same ex-president who ignored scientific consensus to suggest that the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County might have been avoided if residents there had simply raked their forest more often.
California’s Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot asked the president at that moment to “recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests,” to which Trump replied: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”
(There’s someone and something here that doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but it certainly ain’t science.)
Fanning the flames
More than 6,200 wildfires have been recorded and nearly a million acres have burned so far in California this year, yet the fire season is far from over. Cal Fire reports that “climate predictions are indicating above normal temperatures for all of California, resulting in an abnormally high fire risk for the remainder of the year” and that this year’s “conditions are widely considered to be indicative of a longer and more intense fire year, especially when compared to the last three fire years.”
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A threat to withhold federal funding due to Delta water operations is an uneducated and spiteful one. California’s wildfires are due to climate change and a century of fire suppression leading to unchecked growth — not because Northern California isn’t sending enough water elsewhere. Trump’s threat was uninformed and ill-intended; clearly meant only to punish California and its governor for being a liberal state. That choice deliberately ignores the very Californians who are most likely to lose their home and health from wildfires are those living in rural areas, on the edge of the wildland-urban interface — and who typically vote heavily Republican.
Trump’s alienation of firefighters, farmers and Republicans will not be relegated simply to one state should he win reelection to the presidency this November.
“(Trump) just admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas. Today it’s California’s wildfires,” Newsom wrote afterward in a post on X. “Tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania.”
Robin Epley is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. ©2024 The Sacramento Bee. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
