How Gavin Newsom is balancing the fight against Trump with Los Angeles fire relief

Three months into President Donald Trump’s second term and the recovery from the firestorm that devastated Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom finds himself at a precarious juncture.

The olive branch that Newsom extended to Trump in January, as Los Angeles reeled from multiple fires and the president threatened to withhold disaster aid, has yet to deliver on its early promise.

Once a leading voice in the anti-Trump resistance, Newsom traveled to Los Angeles and then Washington, D.C. to meet with the president and lobby for federal assistance. Trump rewarded his outreach with a détente — ceasing reference to the governor as “Newscum” and publicly promising that an “L.A. fire fix” was coming.

But amid ongoing battles over government funding, Congress has to date ignored Newsom’s request for $40 billion to rebuild Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, new political pressures are mounting. Increasingly furious with Trump’s dismantling of the federal government, Democratic voters are agitating their leaders to speak out — and even Newsom can no longer hold his tongue.

He made his most pointed criticism of the president’s agenda since before the fires when he sued last week to stop Trump’s sweeping tariffs scheme, calling it the “poster child” of stupidity. It appears to have unleashed Newsom’s confrontational side again, in a semi-profane announcement of another lawsuit to stop cuts to AmeriCorps and a commentary blasting the Trump administration for defying court orders that followed in the days after.

The stakes are incredibly high, not only for the future of Los Angeles but also for his gubernatorial legacy.

Maintaining his connection to Trump

Visiting an airport hangar in Sacramento County on Thursday to show off the state’s newest firefighting planes, Newsom acknowledged that he’s grappling with how far he can push without damaging his relationship with the president, whose backing will be critical to get any aid package through the Republican-controlled Congress.

Newsom said he would defend the state’s fundamental principles but try to avoid fights that are merely virtue signaling, which would invite a negative response from Trump.

“If you want to make a point, you may want to reconsider. If you want to make a difference, stand tall and firm. And that’s kind of the approach,” Newsom said.

The governor said he’s continuing to work behind the scenes to maintain his connection with Trump. His team gave the White House a heads up about the tariffs lawsuit, which Newsom said was intended as a gesture of respect, and he is planning another trip to Washington.

As he leans anew into the opposition, Newsom is also training his ire on the Trump administration while largely avoiding mentioning Trump himself.

But Newsom said the tariffs, which his office has referred to as DEFCON 2 because of their potential to upend California’s entire economy, represent the type of threat that reaches a level that compels the governor to respond.

“It’s not personal. But it’s very important that we assert ourselves. And people are looking to us to lead,” he said. “It’s important we have people’s backs.”

It’s not the first time Newsom has had to find a way to set aside differences with his political nemesis for a state in turmoil.

Two days after Newsom won the governorship in 2018 with a campaign that made Trump his primary foil, the deadliest wildfire in California history tore through the town of Paradise. In between filing dozens of lawsuits against the federal government, Newsom also worked closely with Trump to guide California through the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

But working with the president has become more complex than ever, said Mark Ghilarducci, who served as director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services from 2012 to 2022. While Trump always struggled to understand the complexities of disasters and provide an empathetic response, he’s become “very extreme in his second term,” Ghilarducci said.

In his first term, Ghilarducci said, Trump’s impulses were tempered by other high-ranking officials who were reasonable and experienced — experts with authority whom California could engage to ultimately to get what it needed.

When Trump rejected a major disaster declaration request in October 2020 for six wildfires burning across California, Ghilarducci said the Newsom administration made the case that the decision mostly hurt counties that supported the president and he promptly reversed himself.

“Now it’s really just slash and burn and destroy,” Ghilarducci said. “He’s surrounded by people who are much more enablers and sycophants.”

Ghilarducci said the political environment is the most challenging he’s seen in his four-decade career in disaster response. As Trump gleefully punishes his political enemies, his administration is eliminating departments and programs that would facilitate Los Angeles’ recovery, and Congress can barely pull together enough votes to keep the government funded.

“It’s something where you need a lot of savvy, strategic, thoughtful tradecraft to be able to navigate all the twists and turns,” he said.

Wildfire funds in the hands of Congress

The Newsom administration remains hopeful that Congress will approve a supplemental disaster relief package by this summer. Its $40 billion wish list includes money for debris removal, public infrastructure repair, housing reconstruction, economic development grants and small business loans.

The governor’s office could not provide a comprehensive list of disasters for which California has previously received supplemental disaster relief and how long it took to get the money. But a funding bill that furnished money to recover from the Camp Fire passed in June 2019, about seven months after the blaze ignited.

The bipartisan team of Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla and GOP Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona, with California’s entire congressional delegation behind them, is leading the push on Capitol Hill. Early demands to condition aid to Los Angeles on unrelated policies such as water management and voter identification appear to be waning, especially as discussions around a funding bill have broadened to incorporate subsequent disasters in red and purple states, including floods in Kentucky and wildfires in North Carolina.   

“From wildfires in California, to hurricanes in the Southeast, natural disasters do not distinguish between red states and blue states, and neither should our support for fellow Americans in their time of need,” Padilla said in a statement. “I will continue to push for additional disaster funding at every possible opportunity. I will also do everything I can to maintain bipartisan support for delivering additional relief for our state.”

Until then, California has a few more months of fiscal runway, because of a generous major disaster declaration that then-President Joe Biden signed immediately after the Los Angeles fires in January. That order authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse 100% of the costs for cleanup, hazard mitigation and financial assistance for survivors for 180 days. After that, 75% of eligible emergency response costs are reimbursed.

But that account will eventually run out of money, requiring Congress to act to fund a longer-term recovery for Los Angeles.

Newsom said Thursday that he was encouraged because he has not heard anything from the Trump administration recently, either publicly or privately, reinforcing the president’s earlier comments about conditioning aid. The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s position.

“I feel optimistic because, in the spirit that defines the best of this country, there’s a recognition we’re all in this together,” Newsom said. “This idea that we’re conditioning things or leveraging, I just don’t think it’s American.