The Agenda

Sasha Issenberg on the aftermath of LA’s wildfires and why Donald Trump might tempt California to go it alone.

In 2017, as Donald Trump prepared to enter the White House, California’s leaders went on the offensive. They would, they said, use the power of the world’s fifth-largest economy to stand up to the president, serving as what then-California governor Jerry Brown described as a “beacon of hope to the rest of the world”. If Trump blocked the climate research that was key to the state’s environmental agenda, Brown threatened, “California will launch its own damn satellite.” There has been little of that swagger from Sacramento this time around. The wildfires that tore through Los Angeles less than two weeks before Trump’s second inauguration have blindsided California’s leaders. The Democrats who preside over the state now find themselves begging Republicans in Washington to deliver the type of basic aid that the federal government ordinarily doles out to those affected by natural disasters.

Such catastrophes usually elicit a sense of unity but the fires have revealed deep divisions. Many in Trump’s party responded to the suffering in Los Angeles with glee, making dubious claims about the city’s firefighting budget and the management of its reservoirs to feed a longstanding caricature of left-wing mismanagement. Even as the fires raged, prominent Republicans looked for ways to pin the destruction on the Democratic politicians who occupy all of California’s state offices and the mayoralties of most of its large cities. (It is one of 15 states where Democrats control both the governor’s office and legislative supermajorities.) LA was burning, Republicans said, because Democratic politicians spend more time protecting illegal immigrants, criminals and endangered species than their own citizens. “Everyone is unable to do anything about it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “That’s going to change.”

Trump has spoken of Chicago, Detroit and even New York in similar terms but none has found itself as reliant on his goodwill as LA. The short-term fight will be over emergency aid and whether Congress attaches conditions that compel changes to the Californian environmental policies that Republicans blame for the fires. Trump will have difficulty fully abandoning LA, which is due to host the Olympics in the final year of his presidential term. He was in office when the Games were granted to the US and is certain to shuffle around the host city in 2028 with a smile on his face. A man who prides himself on a knack for construction will be eager to boast about his role in saving the Olympic city rather than blame local politicians for its ills.

But the next four years are likely to be painful for California as it struggles to rebuild while seeing its national government as an obstacle not a partner. Indeed, those who run the US now treat the state – which is home to one-eighth of its population and responsible for one-seventh of its gdp – as something of a distant, wayward colonial territory. A January announcement from Trump about how his White House would deal with the entertainment industry was telling: “It is my honour to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone to be special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place: Hollywood.” Californians might soon have an opportunity to express whether they share that sense of detachment. The so-called CalExit movement tried but failed to place a secession plebiscite before voters during Trump’s first term; now it is trying again. If it succeeds in qualifying, Californians would vote on the state’s secession from the US in November 2026 – almost exactly halfway between the wildfires and the Olympic moment, when Trump will want to brag about LA’s rise from the ashes. — L

LA-based Issenberg is Monocle’s US politics correspondent.