The wildfires, which began on Jan. 7 amid low humidity and high winds, have affected over 40,000 acres of land in Los Angeles County—particularly, the Pacific Palisades in the City of Los Angeles, Altadena, and the City of Malibu—and killed at least 24 people as of publication time.
President Joe Biden declared a disaster on Jan. 8, which allowed victims to access funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and his outgoing administration has pledged to support relief efforts. However, larger funds to support the recovery will need to be approved by Congress, for which Johnson said conditions are necessary.
“I think there should probably be conditions on that aid. That’s my personal view. We'll see what the consensus is,” Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju as he walked through the precincts of the House of Representatives on Jan. 13. “It'll be part of the discussion, for sure,” he said, referring to the House GOP’s plans to respond to the disaster.
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Apart from Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also faced criticism from Republicans and some Democrats. When the fires began, she was traveling abroad in Ghana. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is from California, canceled the final foreign trips of their terms to focus on the disaster response.
On Dec. 2, Newsom convened a special session of the California Legislature to enact new laws to resist the policy agenda of the incoming Trump Administration. The session resulted in $50 million of taxpayer money being earmarked for two new legal defense funds—one to sue the new administration over policies affecting California, and another to defend illegal immigrants in the state against deportation and removal from the United States, among other purposes.
