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What does Trump have against California? Without prompting or explanation, the president tweeted Wednesday that he ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to halt funding for its wildfire relief unless "they get their act together."
"Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen," he wrote. "Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!" An earlier tweet that misspelled the word "forest" was replaced with the one that's up now.
This isn't the first time the president pointed the finger at California's forest management. Last year, Trump threatened to withhold relief funds and incorrectly blamed its infernos on the state's "gross mismanagement of the forests" even though most of the fires burned on federal land.
Trump has also brushed aside the role of climate change making the fires worse, saying "a lot of factors" contributed to the fires. He even suggested that California's problem was it didn't rake its forests enough, a comment that was widely ridiculed.
Firefighters associations blasted the president's latest missive, calling them particularly insensitive after the deadly and overwhelming destruction caused by the 2018 blazes.
For one, Northern California's record-breaking Camp Fire that ignited in early November killed 86 people, incinerated thousands of buildings and destroyed the town of Paradise. (Trump ultimately approved a disaster declaration for the state on Nov. 12 to unlock federal funds.)
California Professional Firefighters president Brian Rice called Trump's comments "deplorable" and "flat wrong" as nearly 60 percent of the state's forests are controlled by the federal government.
Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, had similar sentiments.
"This is yet another unimaginable attack on the dedicated professionals who put everything on the line, including their own homes, to protect their neighborhoods," he said in a news release. "While our president is tweeting on the sidelines in DC, our fellow Americans 3,000 miles to the west are mourning loved ones, entire communities have been wiped off the map and thousands of people are still trying to figure out where they are going to call home."
Democratic lawmakers in California also sharply rebuked the president.
"Californians endured the deadliest wildfire in our state's history last year. We should work together to mitigate these fires by combating climate change, not play politics by threatening to withhold money from survivors of a deadly natural disaster," Senator Kamala Harris tweeted.
California's new Gov. Gavin Newsom—who on Tuesday pledged $105 million in new spending to prevent, fight and escape wildfires—also responded to the president.
Newsom tweeted that he and the governors of Oregon and Washington sent a letter asking the federal government "to work with us in taking on these unprecedented wildfires."
"Disasters and recovery are no time for politics," Newsom said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of San Francisco, tweeted that Trump's comments "insults the memory of scores of Americans who perished in wildfires last year & thousands more who lost their homes."
She also urged House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, California to "condemn & and call on POTUS."
FEMA news desk manager Michael Hart told POLITICO he was unclear about what Trump's orders would entail, but added that a follow-up on Trump's tweet would be released soon.
The agency does not have funding due to the ongoing government shutdown, now in its third week. However, according to a Department of Homeland Security shutdown plan, of FEMA's 19,631 employees, 15,208 are considered essential and are working through the shutdown.
Its website currently says it is "actively contacting California Wildfire survivors to determine their housing needs and working diligently to identify additional short-term and long-term housing options."
Just yesterday, the reinsurance firm Munich Re listed the Camp Fire as the world's costliest natural disaster of 2018, racking up $16.5 billion in damages.
We'll leave you with this amazing clapback from the Sierra Club:
- Trump Blames Forest Management For Wildfires Again During ... ›
- What Trump gets wrong about wildfires, by a fire scientist ... ›
- Ryan Zinke: Climate Change Has 'Nothing to Do' With California ... ›
- 'Unfit Leader': Neil Young Loses Home to Fire, Rips Trump for ... ›
- Trump Says California Lawmakers to Blame for Wildfires ›
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Electric vehicle sales took off in 2018, with a record two million units sold around the world, according to a new Deloitte analysis.
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By Matthew Savoca
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Most people have heard of the Amazon, South America's famed rainforest and hub of biological diversity. Less well known, though no less critical, is the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland.
Like the Amazon, the Pantanal is ecologically important and imperiled. Located primarily in Brazil, it also stretches into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. Covering an area larger than England at more than 70,000 square miles, the massive wetland provides irreplaceable ecosystem services that include the regulation of floodwaters, nutrient renewal, river flow for navigability, groundwater recharge and carbon sequestration. The wetland also supports the economies of the four South American states it covers.
By Andrea Germanos
Organizers said 35,000 people marched through the streets of the German capital on Saturday to say they're "fed up" with industrial agriculture and call for a transformation to a system that instead supports the welfare of the environment, animals and rural farmers.
EVs 101: Your Guide to Electric Vehicles
By Patrick Rogers
If you have ever considered making the switch to an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, don't drag your feet. Though EV prices are falling, and states are unveiling more and more public charging stations and plug-in-ready parking spots, the federal government is doing everything it can to slam the brakes on our progress away from gas-burning internal combustion engines. President Trump, likely pressured by his allies in the fossil fuel industry, has threatened to end the federal tax credits that have already helped put hundreds of thousands of EVs on the road—a move bound to harm not only our environment but our economy, too. After all, the manufacturing and sale of EVs, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids supported 197,000 jobs in 2017, according to the most recent U.S. Energy and Employment Report.