California Governor Gavin Newsom is trying his best to be the leader of the resistance against Donald Trump.
But he just found the tables have turned on him in a big way.
And a Trump official said two words that left Gavin Newsom with an overwhelming feeling of dread.
Gavin Newsom begs Congress for massive disaster relief package after the disastrous response to Los Angeles wildfires
Los Angeles County, California, was devastated by a series of wildfires that broke out in January.
More than 16,000 homes and businesses were destroyed during the fires, and at least 29 people were killed.
According to some estimates, the total damages from the wildfires could top more than $250 billion.
We now know that incompetence from Democrat state and local officials greatly contributed to the destruction caused by the wildfires.
California and Los Angeles slashed their firefighting budgets and left reservoirs empty that could have been used to fight the blaze.
They even donated vital firefighting equipment to Ukraine.
Firefighters in Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest hit communities, ran out of water from the hydrants because the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Canyon reservoir was completely empty.
But that didn’t stop Gavin Newsom from sending a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) demanding $40 billion in disaster relief from Congress to rebuild from the wildfires.
“Make no mistake, Los Angeles will use this money wisely,” Newsom claimed with a straight face.
He claims the federal disaster relief would go toward cleaning up and rebuilding from the wildfires.
Newsom made the request for $40 billion right after he signed off $50 million in taxpayer dollars to “Trump proof” California by providing legal services for illegal aliens and money to fund lawsuits against the administration.
Disaster relief for California will come with reform stipulations
Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, told Politico at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that any federal disaster relief for the Los Angeles wildfire would come with strings attached.
“As a Californian, I’m all for it,” Grenell stated. “Because I don’t have faith that if we just went back and gave California hundreds of millions of dollars that they’re [not] going to go back to their same old ways of not giving us enough water, having dangerous situations on the ground when it comes to forestry. It’s going to happen again.”
What the strings would be is still being discussed by the Trump administration.
“I think the reality is that the federal response is mostly money, and so we are going to have strings on the money that we give to California,” Grenell said. “We’re talking about those conditions now.”
Grenell suggested that the California Coastal Commission, the state’s regulatory board that cracks down on land use, could be targeted.
“Everyone who’s involved knows that the California Coastal Commission is a disaster, and it needs to absolutely be defunded,” Grenell explained. “And from just a way to think about government, we already have local government making these decisions.”
The commission routinely shuts down development across the state.
“It’s an unelected group of people who are crazy woke Left,” Grennel continued. “One person can stop progress. And they’ve made California less safe. I think squeezing their federal funds, making sure they don’t get funds, putting strings on them to get rid of the California Coastal Commission is going to make California better.”
Gavin Newsom wanted to be Donald Trump’s biggest antagonist now to set himself up for a Presidential bid in 2028.
But now, he’s going to have to go hat in hand to the Trump administration to get the federal money he wants for Los Angeles.
And President Trump has already said that California implementing voter ID could be a condition of that federal aid.
