“As president of the United States, I want to make it very clear that we are going to meet our federal obligation because we’re one country, and when one part of the country gets affected, whether it’s a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, or a hurricane that affects the eastern seaboard, then we come together as one country and we make sure that everybody gets the help that they need.” President Barack Obama
Those remarks, delivered while standing on a bridge over the swollen Passaic River in 2012, reflected not only a president’s empathy for a hurting state, but a commitment by the federal government to provide aid, a practice that began with President Truman in 1950 and reinforced over decades by presidents of both parties.
With the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in 1977, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, federal disaster aid became what has been a durable, unquestioned commitment to provide aid by the federal government to the states when disasters hit and a state’s governor requests it.
The powerful storm that struck New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, signaled something of an interruption. Sandy toppled houses from their foundations, flooded streets, tore up boardwalk after boardwalk, and left municipalities, including Morristown, without power for weeks.
Gov. Chris Christie asked for federal aid. New Jersey waited. And waited. Christie fumed. He turned to pleading for it. How to account for this? The resistance was summed up as “the “Obama hug.”
When President Obama came to New Jersey to have a look at the damage and offer his support, it looked as though Christie hugged him as he mentioned that they had established a good working relationship.
To Republicans, in Congress, that was a bad move. There was no interest in the GOP to give any support to Obama, even indirectly. So the GOP sidelined aid for New Jersey, denying and then delaying until it finally it came our way.
But it did come. And there were no conditions placed on it.
President Trump, though, departs from the practice of his predecessors to consider “the color” of the state in deciding terms for federal disaster aid. During his first term, he told aides he wanted to stop money from reaching Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm with 155 m.p.h. winds that hit the island in 2017.
A year later, when wildfires erupted in California, Trump wanted to deny any federal aid unless, he said, the state changed its approach to forest management. Seriously!
The denial of aid to Orange County was rescinded, however, as soon as Trump learned that voters there had supported him.
He doesn’t want aid going to places that didn’t vote for him. What a guy! All about him, of course, not about the suffering of the people. Unless they are Red, not Blue.
Witness Trump’s stance on the disastrous fires in California that have finally, after a month, been contained.
What we have is a significant expansion of the “aid with conditions” policy. It is appalling. Trump, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans in Congress, have repeatedly said they want to condition federal help on changes to California policies.
Johnson, upping the ante, wants to tie relief to a debt ceiling increase—to meet a Trump objective, of course–and put pressure on the Democrats.
An Iowa congressman, Zach Nunn, is suggesting disaster aid be withheld from Los Angeles until California atones for “bad behavior.” He says “blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy,” like New York and New Jersey, should be treated the same way until their governors “change their tune.”
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming says it was unspecified “policies of the liberal administration” that caused the L.A. wildfires, and as a result there should be “strings attached” to any federal aid for California.
Consider the contrast with other recent wildfires, those in Red states. I guess it was not government incompetence or tax policy that caused wildfires to blaze through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah.
It was not bad policies or slim investments when Hurricane Helene caused 219 deaths and almost $80 billion dollars of damage in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
It was not lack of preparedness or incompetence when devastating tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Of course, no conditions placed on disaster aid for these states because the GOP had the backs of those decidedly Red states.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACT
When it comes to disasters in America, the shortcomings of government in managing the hits as well as the relief that comes in their wake is not an unfamiliar topic. But it is becoming increasingly evident politics are paralyzing what we can do to face the impact of climate change.
And yet we have a president who, in the first week of his second term, withdrew the nation from the Paris Agreement, the pact among most nations to fight climate change. Trump has aligned the U.S. with three other outliers, Yemen, Libya, and Iran. We make quite the foursome!
Pulling out of the agreement, by the way, discourages the multinational cooperation to address the climate emergency, which has been flagging after an initial burst of enthusiasm 10 years ago. Trump is hostile not only to climate change, but also to foreign aid. By curtailing assistance for climate mitigation, America would abandon the still unfulfilled responsibility of affluent nations—the significant producers of emissions–to assist less developed countries in de-carbonizing.
This means disasters–floods, droughts, fires, and hurricanes without precedent–and their impacts will be exponentially worse. A significant contributing cause is not being mitigated. And then there is the denial that allows deficient policy and planning, a lack of investment in preparedness and, the usual suspect, incompetence at local, state and federal levels to add to the destructive impacts.
It’s not just Trump. It is the shifting against bipartisanship, largely driven by the GOP.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, almost all of Southern California is in either moderate or severe drought. It is the second-driest period in almost 150 years. Combine that with hurricane force winds — winds that blow embers and carry fire, winds so strong it hinders fighting those fires from the air — and you have a recipe for disaster.
After eight months without rain, 27 individuals are dead, at least 12,000 structures are damaged or destroyed, and 150,000 people have been evacuated. Some 62 square miles—an area larger than Paris–have burned, causing an estimated $150 billion in damages. This time.
It is extremely dangerous that Republicans in Washington are politicizing this issue and attacking Democratic officeholders with made-up facts to invent fault. The governor of the state, after all, is a Democrat.
This is politics at its worst. It’s an effort to distract attention from the major underlying cause of this crisis.
Climate change is not a “hoax.” It is all too real. And without a doubt, it’s playing out in Los Angeles. Yet Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, heads a fossil-fuel company. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that he stood by his LinkedIn post in 2023, in which he termed the link between climate change and more severe wildfires as “just hype.”
Even now, in 2025, after what just hit California!
Climate change is what we mean when we are talking about more floods, more extreme weather, more ocean acidification, more drought, more famine, more disease, more mass migration, and more human suffering.
And climate change is what we are talking about when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says climate disasters have cost the United States almost $3 trillion since 1980.
Climate change does not care if you live in a “Red state,” a “Blue state” or a “Purple state.” It does not care if you live in a rural area or urban area. It does not care if you are a working class person struggling to get by, or you live in a multi-million dollar home in the Pacific Palisades. No passes are given.
POLITICAL POKER
Fossil fuel may not be our enemy. But it certainly is the source of emissions that are harming the planet. Contrary to what President Trump is hawking at the moment, we’re producing so much oil and natural gas that if we up the amount by drilling as Trump proposes—and eliminate investments in solar panels and windmills—we’ll drive down the cost of oil and depress the market. And that won’t affect only the U.S.
Companies are investing in green options because they see value—and profit–in clean energy. They are not eager to “drill, baby, drill,” as it’s not profitable to do so now.
In this context, the bottom line remains Trump’s call. His soldiers are all in on the president’s strategy to withhold disaster relief from L.A. unless Republicans “get everything we want” in the next federal budget.
This is Trump’s America, where tragedy is leverage and Republicans must line up to pass his test. Conditional relief is gaining momentum through the ranks because it is GOP doctrine to accept Trump’s cruelty as the art of a deal.
A changing climate, though, impacts us all, and, no state is spared because of its party preference. Placing conditions on disaster aid to advance political ends is not just shortsighted, it’s stupid and it’s wrong.