As fires raged around Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California, arrived at a Santa Monica fire station on Wednesday to meet with President Biden carrying a printout of his state’s request for a major disaster declaration.
The governor did not want to leave anything to chance, or to Mr. Biden’s successor, according to two people briefed on the episode: President-elect Donald J. Trump was already hurling blame at Mr. Newsom for the devastating blazes.
Mr. Biden quickly approved the declaration; the next day, he promised that the federal government would cover all of California’s costs in responding to the fires for roughly six months. “We are with you,” Mr. Biden pledged from the White House. “We are not going anywhere.”
Of course, the reality is that Mr. Biden is going away in just days, leaving Mr. Newsom to navigate the tricky politics of federal disaster relief and an enormous rebuilding project with a hostile incoming president who has heckled him with personal insults, is calling on him to resign and has never been shy about using natural disasters as political cudgels.
Mr. Newsom, who has feuded with Mr. Trump on and off for years, has emerged as an irresistible early target for the president-elect in his return to power. He is one of the best known Democrats in the country, the outspoken head of the nation’s most populous blue state, and has fashioned himself as a leader of a new wave of opposition to Mr. Trump.
On Friday, Mr. Newsom sent Mr. Trump a pointed letter inviting him to “see the devastation firsthand” and visit Los Angeles. “We must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” he wrote.
The letter came after Mr. Newsom had visibly fumed about Mr. Trump’s personal attacks earlier in the week in a live CNN interview as buildings burned behind him.
“People are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids have lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down. This guy wanted to politicize it,” Mr. Newsom said in disbelief. “I have a lot of thoughts, and I know what I want to say — and I won’t.”
At another moment, standing in front of a fire truck, Mr. Newsom expressed gratitude that an initial grant of federal assistance from Mr. Biden “didn’t take more than a text message.” He then drew an unsubtle contrast with the incoming administration.
“No politics, no hand-wringing, no kissing of the feet,” Mr. Newsom said.
He and Mr. Trump have not spoken since the election.
Days after Mr. Trump won the White House, Mr. Newsom called a special session of the California Legislature to take up bills establishing his state as a bulwark against the Trump agenda in 2025. The attention-getting move generated headlines about “Trump-proofing” the state and enraged Mr. Trump, who quickly lashed out at the governor, repeatedly mocking him on social media as “Gavin Newscum.”
Mr. Newsom has claimed his legislative efforts to prepare for Mr. Trump’s return were precautionary in nature, rather than offensive, saying he would approach Mr. Trump with an “open hand, not a closed fist.”
Now, that outstretched hand will most likely hold a metaphorical hat, as Mr. Newsom asks for federal assistance to recover from a disaster that has destroyed more than 10,000 structures at an estimated economic loss of more than $50 billion.
Few expect his relationship with Mr. Trump to be easy.
During his first term, Mr. Trump repeatedly questioned, and even withheld, disaster relief from places controlled by Democrats. His administration initially withheld, and then Mr. Trump released, a relief package for six major wildfires in 2020 that scorched more than 1.8 million acres in California.
When wildfires ripped through eastern Washington State in 2020, Mr. Trump ignored requests from Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, for federal disaster aid after the two men feuded over the coronavirus and climate change.
“In a fit of juvenile pique, Donald Trump said he wouldn’t help us at all,” Mr. Inslee, who leaves office next week, said in an interview on Thursday. “I was blown away.” He added, “We have to express hope that there will be some epiphany, where this guy finally wants to help people instead of score political points.”
During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump demanded that if Mr. Newsom wanted to unlock future disaster funds, he would have to change his water policy to send more water to farmers in the state.
“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Mr. Trump said then. He went on: “And, if we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems.”
So far, there has been little indication that Mr. Trump is changing his approach.
As fires in Los Angeles burned uncontrollably this week, leaving thousands of people homeless, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Newsom of “gross incompetence” and called for him to resign. “This is all his fault!!!” he wrote on social media.
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said he was “disappointed but sadly not shocked” to see Mr. Trump politicize the fires. He warned that Mr. Trump could pay a political price for blocking aid to the nation’s largest state.
“I’d be shocked if Trump doesn’t have a lot of supporters who live in the Palisades,” he said. “He should think twice about just blanket trying to punish California.”
Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to say if the new administration would place conditions on further aid. “President Trump campaigned on putting American citizens first and helping our fellow Americans in need, and that’s exactly what he will do,” she said.
Dan Newman, a political adviser to the governor, said Mr. Newsom knew how to navigate Mr. Trump’s moods and did not feel singled out by him.
Mr. Newsom, he said, “knows how to tune out the noise and stay focused on what matters.”
The rebuilding of some of Los Angeles’s ashen neighborhoods, including the wealthy and celebrity-studded Pacific Palisades, represents a tremendous challenge — and a potential opportunity — in the second half of Mr. Newsom’s second term, one that could test not just Mr. Newsom’s leadership but also Democratic and progressive governance writ large. Some right-wing activists have already called for the 2028 Olympics to be moved from Los Angeles, accusing the Democratic-led city and state of mishandling the fires.
Political reputations can often be made, or marred, in the handling of disasters, both in the immediate response and in the recovery and rebuilding, as former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former President George W. Bush experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and Mr. Bush experienced, in the opposite way, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The fact that the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, was in Africa when the fires broke out despite warnings of the tinderbox situation, and took days to return, has wounded her standing.
Mr. Newsom’s own political future remains up in the air. Term limits will force him out of office in 2026, two years before the next presidential election. He has long demurred when asked about pursuing the presidency, even as he traveled the country and built up a sizable digital operation.
For now, Mr. Newsom faces an expanding set of challenges — logistical, financial and political — that could stretch well into the future.
The fires are expected to overwhelm California’s already strained fire-insurance marketplace for residents, for example. Some insurers had already stopped writing new policies in the state.
“We need the help of the federal government, and that’s a big open question now,” said Dave Jones, who served two terms as California’s insurance commissioner through 2018 and is now the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. “Trump is already out there making up stuff about this event and who is at fault.”
Depending on the scale of the insurance losses for the state’s last-resort insurance, the California FAIR Plan, Mr. Jones explained, homeowners across the state could be on the hook for an assessment to help rebuild in the fire zone.
“That’s going to be a rude awakening if that occurs,” Mr. Jones said.
Katie Glueck, Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
