Trump Gives 2 Conditions to California Before Offering Federal Aid for Wildfires

They involve voter identification rules and water, the president signaled.

President Donald Trump speaks at a Hurricane Helene recovery briefing in a hangar at the Asheville Regional Airport in Fletcher, N.C., on Jan. 24, 2025. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump said on Jan. 24 that he wants Los Angeles and California to fulfill two requirements before he offers federal support to wildfire-devastated areas in the state.

“I want to see two things in Los Angeles: voter ID, so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina.

Trump is slated to visit the Los Angeles area on Friday after visiting western North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene in late September 2024. Parts of Los Angeles were destroyed this month in several wildfires that spread rapidly, leaving dozens of people dead and thousands of structures burned to the ground.

“Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen,” he said of the aid.

Earlier this week, the president told Fox News that he would consider withholding aid to California over the state’s water issues. He suggested that California’s water and fire issues were due to state mismanagement.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he said, adding that Gov. Gavin Newsom has “got one thing he can do,” which is to “release the water that comes from the north.”

“There is massive amounts of water, rainwater, and mountain water that comes due with the snow, comes down … as it melts. There’s so much water,” the president said.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “route more water” from Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the Golden State due to the wildfires in what he said was an attempt to end “radical environmentalism” that was essentially putting fish over people.

“The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply and sound vegetation management practices in order to provide water desperately needed there, and why this plan must immediately be reimplemented,” the White House said.

Also on Friday, Trump said he would sign an executive order to reform or even dissolve the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“I'll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina on Friday. “I think, frankly, FEMA is not good.”

Another fire, the Hughes Fire, broke out earlier this week and scorched 15 square miles of brush near Lake Castaic, located some 40 miles away from the Palisades and Eaton fires that damaged Los Angeles, officials said. There were no reported homes or other structures burned in that fire.

Earlier in January, Newsom wrote a letter to Trump asking him to survey the devastation caused by the Los Angeles fires firsthand and meet with first responders. In an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” the governor also disputed Trump’s assertion about the fish and water shortages in Los Angeles.

Newsom confirmed that when Trump arrives in California, he will meet with him on the tarmac.

“I look forward to being there on the tarmac to thank the president, welcome him, and we’re making sure that all the resources he needs for a successful briefing are provided to him,” the governor told reporters in a recent press event, adding he is grateful Trump “took our invitation to heart.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.