10 hours Ago
The nation’s second largest city is trying to survive a dystopian nightmare, and some Republicans are recommending unique remedies. An Iowa congressman, Zach Nunn, suggests that disaster aid should be withheld from Los Angeles until California atones for “bad behavior,” and that “blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy” like New York and New Jersey should be treated the same way until their governors “change their tune.” Sen.
John Barrasso of Wyoming -- the guy who once warned that a Green New Deal would ban cheeseburgers and milkshakes -- said it was unspecified “policies of the liberal administration” that caused the LA wildfires, and as a result there should be “strings attached” to any federal aid for California. Others lounging in the green rooms of Fox and Newsmax believed that the catastrophe was mishandled because – this not a joke – the LA Fire Department is led by a lesbian who attained the rank of Chief because of DEI. It goes on like that, but the bottom line is Donald Trump’s soldiers are all-in on the president-elect’s strategy to withhold disaster relief for LA, unless Republicans “get everything we want” in the next federal budget.
If that sounds like a vile reaction to an American catastrophe – one in which dozens died, an area the size of 2.5 Manhattans has been incinerated, and 150,000 people have lost their homes – this is your official reminder that the modus operandi at MAGA Central is to use everything as a political poker chip, and handle blue-state disasters with a firehose of lies and demagoguery. This is disgusting, partisan behavior.
Trump said he'll hold LA disaster funds hostage until Republicans “get everything we want” in the federal budget. He's using fire victims as leverage to rush through tax cuts for billionaires. CA fire victims are not DC's political pawns.
https://t.co/yrJVeKw68O It was only last month that Congress sent $110 billion in disaster relief to six states – all but one had a Republican governor – to help rebuild the American South from the destruction of hurricanes Helene and Milton. Unless the media missed something, Joe Biden did not tell Ron DeSantis to buzz off because Florida hadn’t adopted enough green policies.
New Jerseyans know that the GOP has played this hand before: The Republicans held up aid after Superstorm Sandy slammed the Democratic Northeast, a maneuver that Chris Christie blamed largely on Speaker John Boehner, whose “one-upmanship” he called “disgusting.” Now Speaker Mike Johnson – Trump’s House puppet and proud son of Louisiana, a disaster-prone moocher state -- wants to condition wildfire relief on policy concessions. That’s not to say California should not take a very long look at its wildlife mitigation policies – of course it should.
It would be even better if disaster relief took climate change policies into consideration around the country. But on his boss’s orders, Johnson wants to tie relief to a debt ceiling increase – a must for Trump – and daring the Democrats to blink . This is Trump’s America, where tragedy is leverage and Republicans must pass a party purity test.
C'mon. We aren't idiots. Republicans never ask for "strings" attached to disaster funding for Republican states.
This isn't about helping California. This is about punishing California because it votes for Democrats. https://t.
co/0IYXKQs0Bl As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is blunt: “ Republicans never ask for strings attached to disaster funding for Republican states,” he said.
“This isn’t about helping California. This is about punishing California because it votes for Democrats.” And it is dangerous territory.
“It portends the breaking apart of the country,” former Rep. Tom Malinowski told us, “though Democrats would never respond in kind by conditioning relief to red states. “So we’re left with one party still loyal to the patriotic tradition of putting country first – bearing all the responsibility to hold things together in America – and the other doing whatever the hell its leader wants, with no accountability except to him.
” Some elected officials need to be reminded that wildfires don’t care how people vote. The 120-mph winds and brick-sized embers crashing through the windows of California homes don’t care what party they support. Natural disasters don’t consider that California paid $83 billion more to the federal government than it received, or that Louisiana took $34 billion more than it paid to the feds.
But conditional relief is gaining momentum through the GOP ranks, because it is now party doctrine to accept Trump’s cruelty as the art of a deal. It’s deplorable and clearly un-American, because the moral calculus should be clear. It used to be, when there was a concept of morality at the helm of the Republican Party.
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