Fires Interfere With Newsom Plan to ‘Trump-Proof California’

If you pause from the horror of the California fire disaster consuming so many acres, buildings, and lives right now and think of the political fallout, the first likely victim is Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, who was out of the country at a Ghanian presidential inauguration when the fires broke out, and whose management of fire-fighting resources and preparations for helping the afflicted have come into question. If you are a faithful consumer of MAGA rhetoric, you might also cast blame on Governor Gavin Newsom, and coastal liberals generally, for the water- and forest-management practices that Donald Trump is blaming (albeit not very credibly) for Southern California’s hellish plight.

But while Bass, Newsom, and his Democratic allies are understandably annoyed at being attacked by distant Republicans while they are heavily engaged in battling the fires and addressing all the suffering, there is one jarring coincidence that isn’t a good look for California’s governing party, even though it mostly amounts to unlucky timing. The Democratic-run California legislature is involved in a special session focused on issues that looked pretty urgent until they were eclipsed by the fires, as Politico explains:

California Democrats have reached a $50 million agreement to shore up state and local legal defenses against the incoming Trump administration just a week ahead of the president-elect’s inauguration. Half the money would go to fending off any mass deportation plan the new president might enact early in his administration.

The move — the first of its kind in the nation that positions California to lead a second term resistance against Donald Trump — comes as Republicans bash state Democratic leaders for focusing on a the highly partisan issue even as the southern part of the state suffers from historically devastating fires.

The special session was called by Newsom the day after Trump’s November electoral victory and began in earnest early in January just as the emergency in Los Angeles started to spread. The idea was to “Trump-proof” California by preparing and funding legal strategies for fighting expected executive orders and regulatory actions that might negatively affect Californians (most obviously undocumented immigrants and fully documented immigrants that might get caught up in a mass-deportation push). More generally, the idea was to show some initiative among Democrats in a state that Trump and his MAGA allies have regularly demonized as exhibiting the worst features of the woke progressivism, “open borders,” and environmentalist fossil-fuel-bashing they identify with the near-destruction of America during the Biden years.

But the special-session planners obviously had no idea that their plans to anticipate the beginning of a war with the second Trump administration would overlap with a fiery disaster that is commanding massive attention nationally and (of course) in their own state. California Republicans are naturally having a field day criticizing an alleged indifference to real as opposed to ideological problems, as reflected in this social-media post from State Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher:

At a time when California should be laser focused on responding to the devastating wildfires in LA, Democrat lawmakers’ priority is creating a $50 million slush fund to hire government lawyers for hypothetical fights against the federal government and to defend criminal illegal…

— James Gallagher (@J_GallagherAD3) January 13, 2025

The charge of misplaced priorities among Democrats will likely lose it sting if and when the fire disaster abates with Democratic elected officials heavily involved. The threat to California values and interests posed by Trump’s policies may also cease to be hypothetical when he takes office next week and quite possibly imposes some of the feared policies immediately as part of his day-one agenda. Newsom and company will surely do everything possible to assert they can simultaneously fight fires in L.A. and fight fire with fire in Washington. But for the moment, the special session looks to have been a bad idea.