As swaths of Southern California burn, the state’s Republican members of Congress find themselves facing a dilemma.

Blaming the fires on California’s liberal policies, President Donald Trump and GOP congressional leaders have proposed attaching assorted conditions to federal disaster aid — a move that, if taken seriously, threatens to delay recovery efforts.

The choice before members of the state’s GOP House delegation is a tricky one: Would they fight for unconditional aid to constituents in their home state but risk incurring the wrath of Trump, who has a reputation for rewarding loyalists and punishing those who cross him? Or would they side with their party’s president but risk criticism from future opponents that they didn’t rush to help a California in need?

GOP Has Three-Seat Edge in the House

How they resolve this could not only affect their own careers, but also influence Congress’ ability to carry out Trump’s agenda. The GOP holds a three-seat majority in the House — an advantage so slim that it takes only a few Republicans aligning with the other party to block any measure, including a conditional disaster relief package.

The delegation already is splintering. Rep. Young Kim — a swing district Republican representing fire-prone parts of Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties — decried talks of conditional aid as “playing politics with people’s livelihoods” and a “slap in the face” to wildfire victims and firefighters. As Trump toured Los Angeles on Friday, Kim said that while she believed the state had “a lot of problems,” those were “unrelated” to the distribution of federal aid.

But Rep. Tom McClintock, whose district in the Sierra mountains and foothills south of Lake Tahoe saw the state’s largest wildfire in 2022, adamantly agreed with the president on making the aid conditional, adding that federal agencies should distribute relief dollars directly to victims. And Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district bordering Mexico is battling wildfires now, told Trump at a Friday roundtable in Los Angeles that there must be conditions in the relief package to “prevent it or at least mitigate it from happening again.”

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Are Trump’s Threats Serious?

It’s hard to know how to interpret the unprecedented demands the president has issued to California in the past two weeks: He’s variously said that to get federal aid, the state must overhaul its water policies, change its forest management, end sanctuary protections for immigrants, and require people to show ID to vote. Yet when the cameras were rolling during his Friday visit to Los Angeles, he also promised a lot of help.

“We’re going to get it fixed — though we’ll get it permanently fixed so it can’t happen again,” Trump said of the wildfires while speaking to reporters after landing in Los Angeles Friday. That might be a daunting challenge, given that fire experts blame the infernos on climate and weather conditions.

Fire experts have repeatedly debunked the notion that the state’s water policies played a role in worsening the fires, and the vast majority of California’s forests actually are owned and managed by the federal government.

It also isn’t clear what conditions the House’s leader would consider attaching. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has discussed using disaster aid as leverage to get Democratic support for raising the debt ceiling, especially since the debt limit increase could enrage some fiscal hawks within the Republican Party. But House Democrats called Johnson’s approach a “nonstarter.”

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Tying Disaster Relief to Debt Ceiling Tried Before

Tying disaster relief funds to the debt ceiling is not new. In 2017, as part of the relief package to Hurricane Harvey victims, Trump agreed to Democrats’ request to put off the debt ceiling discussions for three months.

But separate from linking the aid to the debt ceiling, Johnson also seems open to forcing California to change its policies as a condition of receiving aid, similar to Trump’s threat.

At a Jan. 14 Politico event, Johnson initially said that “we don’t play politics with disaster aid.” But then he quickly blamed California policies for worsening the wildfires, arguing those policies must be “factored in with regard to the level of aid and whether there are conditions upon that, or safeguards, you might say.”

Johnson has given conflicting statements about conditional disaster aid before. First, at the Politico event, he said conditional aid would be a “brand-new idea.” But in a podcast interview with host Bari Weiss almost a week later, Johnson pointed to post-disaster rebuilding conditions placed on Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, in that case, Congress approved the aid first and then passed a separate law to change state and local mitigation efforts, PolitiFact reported.

Regardless, what Trump has threatened may never materialize. Even if the U.S. House does attach strings to disaster relief, Democrats in the GOP-controlled Senate presumably could filibuster, essentially talking the bill to death. It takes 60 votes to cut off debate and there are only 53 Republicans senators, some of whom have their own qualms about making disaster assistance contingent on a state complying with federal terms.

“This is just noise,” said Doug Ose, a Republican who represented Sacramento in Congress from 1999 to 2005. “I don’t think the conditions are going to survive. …The Democrats in the Senate will do what they can do to make President Trump’s job difficult.”

About the Author

Yue Stella Yu covers politics for CalMatters, with a particular focus on campaigns, elections and voters.

About CalMatters

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom committed to explaining California policy and politics.