NO LIMITS — During President Donald Trump’s meeting today with local officials in western North Carolina today, he wasted little time blaming former President Joe Biden for what he said was a poor federal response to Hurricane Helene.
“Biden did a bad job,” Trump insisted during a roundtable in the town of Fletcher, while also suggesting that federal aid was denied to homes with Trump signs in their yard. “This is totally unacceptable, and I’ll be taking strong action.”
After his brief visit in North Carolina, he traveled to Los Angeles to survey damage from the wildfires in the area. He told reporters he’ll consider conditioning aid based on the state’s willingness to implement voter ID and alter its water policies.
The attack on his predecessor, the trafficking in internet rumors to score partisan points, the suggestion that federal disaster assistance is contingent on political concessions — all of it exemplifies how the president is reengineering the politics of disaster aid on the fly. He’s changing how Americans understand the government’s role in responding to extreme weather events and rewriting the rules on how politicians must manage them.
Natural disasters have always had a political element to them, even if it wasn’t publicly acknowledged. In 2004, as a series of hurricanes hammered Florida, then-President George W. Bush’s quick response helped him to win the state by 381,000 votes, a dramatic improvement from four years earlier. A year later, his administration’s sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans helped sink his political fortunes. Disaster management could burnish or ruin political reputations, but it rarely was the subject of political warfare itself.
Trump has changed that. No event, no matter how catastrophic, is off limits. In his transactional approach, every hurricane, wildfire or tornado is a chance to shore up the base or punish enemies.
In the nascent stages of his first campaign for president, he made traditional bipartisan cooperation on disaster relief look weak and feckless. He hammered former New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie for his embrace of then-President Barack Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. “It was unbelievable. He was like a little boy. ‘Oh, I’m with the president,’” Trump said derisively during a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire in 2015.
Once he entered the White House and was responsible for managing disasters himself, he used them as an opportunity to attack his political rivals, especially when it looked like they put him on the back foot.
When hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, Trump traveled to the island and threw paper towels to a waiting crowd, a gesture that was roundly attacked by local politicians and the media. Rather than back down or apologize, Trump lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz — a Trump critic — arguing that she “really did not do a very good job — in fact did a very poor job.” The episode was a distillation of his broad political ethos: No event, no matter how tragic, and no individual, is sacrosanct. Everything is an opportunity. Everyone is fair game.
It’s no happenstance that Trump’s first trip since taking the oath of office is a disaster-related swing around the country. After his brief visit in North Carolina, he’ll survey damage from wildfires in Los Angeles, where his ongoing duel with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s most outspoken critics and a potential 2028 Democratic hopeful, will be center stage.
In part, that’s because Trump has applied his theory of disaster politics to California in the past.
Former White House advisers to Trump have said he hesitated to provide disaster aid to California during his first term because of the state’s Democratic leanings, though he ultimately reversed his decision.
This time around, Trump has already lashed out at Newsom, repeatedly blaming him for poor forest management and referring to him as “Newscum” in various social media posts.
Newsom said he would be ready to greet Trump when he lands in LA, even without an invite from the White House. “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,” Newsom said to reporters on Thursday.
It’s the kind of boilerplate statement that any elected official might have made in the past when a president arrived for a damage assessment tour. But in this case, it might also be a sign of adaptation to the new politics of natural disasters. There’s nothing in that statement to fuel a counterattack from Trump, no acknowledgement of the enmity between the two. It’s a tacit recognition that the only way to win against Trump, at the moment, is not to play the game. Or at least pick your spots.
When Trump touched down at LAX this evening, Newsom was there to greet him. Recognizing the optics of the fraught moment, both decided to play nice.
“We’re going to need your help. You were there for us during COVID. I don’t forget that, and I have all the expectations that we’ll be able to work together to get this speedy recovery,” said Newsom.
“We will,” responded Trump. “We’re going to get it done.”
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— State Department issues immediate, widespread pause on foreign aid: Secretary of State Marco Rubio today issued new guidance halting spending on most existing foreign aid grants for 90 days. The order, which shocked State Department officials, appears to apply to funding for military assistance to Ukraine. Rubio’s guidance, issued to all diplomatic and consular posts, requires department staffers to issue “stop-work orders” on nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards,” according to the document, which was obtained by POLITICO. It is effective immediately. It appears to go further than President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which instructed the department to pause foreign aid grants for 90 days pending review by the secretary. It had not been clear from the president’s order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid.
— Trump revokes Fauci’s security detail: President Donald Trump pulled Anthony Fauci’s government-funded security — the latest in a line of revocations of protective details from his former allies and longtime rivals. Fauci became something of a celebrity during the pandemic as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during Trump’s first term, later ascending to be chief medical adviser under President Joe Biden’s administration. But Fauci and Trump’s relationship turned sour as the pandemic spread, with the two frequently butting heads on the response to Covid-19, mask mandates and quarantine orders. On the 2020 campaign trail, Trump called Fauci a “disaster” and repeatedly said he would fire him if reelected.
— DOJ asks judge to drop order barring Oath Keepers from visiting Capitol: The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to drop his recent order barring Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — who was freed from prison by President Donald Trump earlier this week — and several top allies from entering the Capitol without permission. Acting U.S. attorney for D.C. Ed Martin, a longtime advocate for Jan. 6 defendants, signed the motion asking U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to reverse his position, issued just hours earlier. Mehta’s order appeared to be a response to Rhodes’ decision to hold court in the Capitol Wednesday, just days after Trump commuted his 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy, related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
— Treasury terminates sanctions on Israeli settlers in West Bank: The Treasury Department today officially removed U.S. sanctions against dozens of Israeli groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as part of President Donald Trump’s major reversal of Biden-era policy in the region. The action carries out Trump’s Day One move to rescind former President Joe Biden’s February 2024 executive order that authorized the financial sanctions as punishment for Israeli individuals and settler groups accused of violence against Palestinian people or destroying their property.
‘VERY SURPRISED’ — President Donald Trump took notice today of two old sparring partners — Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who voted against advancing Pete Hegseth’s Defense secretary nomination Thursday.
“I was very surprised that Collins and Murkowski would do that,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House today.
DEEP POCKETS — Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Commerce, revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and income in a new financial disclosure form and ethics agreement released today — including more than $200 million in income and distributions from his Wall Street firm over the past two years alone.
Lutnick also formally reiterated his promise to resign from his position at his financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and divest from a variety of business interests if he’s confirmed, according to the ethics agreement.
The publication of the much-anticipated documents comes as the Trump 2024 transition co-chair has come under intense scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest given his slew of business ties. His Senate confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, now scheduled for next Wednesday, had been delayed over the slow arrival of the necessary financial and ethics paperwork.
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HITTING BACK — More than 100 Ukrainian drones were aimed at targets in 11 Russian regions, hitting the Ryazan oil refinery and a heating power plant, in one of Ukraine’s largest attacks in an overnight strike.
“This refinery is one of the largest in Russia, it can process 17 million tons of oil a year. At least three tanks are burning there. In addition, a fire broke out and engulfed the workshop where the diesel fuel and aviation kerosene hydrotreating unit is located,” an official with Ukraine’s SBU security service told POLITICO, speaking on condition of being granted anonymity. The refinery is about 500 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
BUDGET FREEZE — The World Health Organization is freezing recruitment and slashing travel in response to the withdrawal of the U.S., its biggest funder, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO.
“As you know, the United States of America has announced that it intends to withdraw from WHO. We regret this decision and hope the new administration will reconsider it,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told staff in an email sent Thursday night. “This announcement has made our financial situation more acute, and we know it has created significant concern and uncertainty for the WHO workforce.”
In response, the WHO is “freezing recruitment, except in the most critical areas” and “significantly reducing travel expenditure.” All meetings must now be fully virtual unless in exceptional circumstances, and missions to provide technical support to countries should be “limited to the most essential.”
Other measures include limits to the replacement of IT equipment, a renegotiation of major contracts, and a suspension of office refurbishments and capital investments, unless needed for security or cost-cutting.
IN THE NET — The superhero Spiderman’s favorite method of transport — slinging webs from building to building or wall to wall — might not be such a huge fantasy for much longer. A researcher named Marco Lo Presti, who was working on the challenge of finding underwater adhesives, realized back in 2020 that mixing certain liquid substances could create a solid, web-looking material. Now, he and fellow researchers have gotten to work on applications for that discovery, including creating remote adhesives — substances that stick to an object from a distance. It all sounds like it’s out of the movies, but the web slinging is starting to work. Sophie Charara reports for WIRED.
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