LOS ANGELES – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he would work with California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to the Los Angeles fires after earlier floating doing away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We’re looking to get something completed. And the way you get it completed is to work together to govern the state, and we’re going to get it completed. They’re going to need a lot of federal help,” Trump told reporters after Newsom met him on the tarmac when Air Force One landed in Los Angeles.
Trump has sharply criticized California’s response to the wildfires, which have caused widespread destruction this month. Three massive blazes still threaten the region.
Newsom, a Democrat who has had a tense relationship with the Republican leader, told Trump that California would need his support.
Trump was on his first trip since reclaiming the presidency on Monday. Earlier, in North Carolina to tour areas devastated by September’s Hurricane Helene, the president vowed to sign an executive order to overhaul or eliminate FEMA, the main federal agency that responds to natural disasters. He said he preferred that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves.
Trump accused FEMA of bungling emergency relief efforts in North Carolina.
“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” he said during a tour of a neighborhood destroyed by Helene, where trees were downed and homes had boarded-up windows. “I think we recommend that FEMA go away.”
Trump’s antipathy toward FEMA is in line with his dissatisfaction with California’s response to the fires. Trump has accused Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of “gross incompetence” and Republican colleagues in Congress have threatened to withhold disaster aid.
Trump has also threatened to withhold aid to California and repeated in North Carolina a false claim that Newsom and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.
Water shortages caused some hydrants to run dry in affluent Pacific Palisades, hindering the early response. When the fires broke out, one of the reservoirs that could have supplied more water to the area was empty for a year. Officials have promised an investigation into why it was dry.
Bass and fire officials have said the hydrants were not designed to deal with such a massive disaster, and stressed the unprecedented nature of the fires.
FEMA SHUTDOWN?
Experts doubt that Trump alone can shut down FEMA.
Rob Verchick, a former Obama administration official at the Environmental Protection Agency and now a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, said eliminating FEMA most likely requires Congressional action.
He said FEMA was created by former President Jimmy Carter by executive order but has been assigned roles and funding by Congress for the country’s emergency response programs.
FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters. Funding for the agency has soared in recent years as extreme weather events have increased the demand for its services.
The agency has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country.
FEMA was a target of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term prepared by his allies that the president distanced himself from during the election. The plan called for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and relocating FEMA to the Department of Interior or the Department of Transportation.
In addition, it suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states.
Trump complained that his predecessor Joe Biden did not do enough to help western North Carolina recover from Helene, an accusation the Biden administration rejected as misinformation.
In an X post on Friday, Democratic U.S. Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina said FEMA had been a crucial partner in the state’s recovery from the hurricane.
“I appreciate President Trump’s concern about Western NC, but eliminating FEMA would be a disaster for our state,” she said.
The trip to North Carolina and California culminates a week during which Trump moved with stunning speed to meet campaign promises on illegal immigration, the size of the federal workforce, energy and the environment, gender and diversity policies, and pardons for supporters jailed for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
