The Brief

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a plan to provide $2.5 billion in relief to communities damaged by the Los Angeles fires ahead of President Donald Trump’s Friday tour of the Pacific Palisades.

“This money will be made available immediately,” Newsom said Thursday. “We want to get these dollars out in real time so there’s no anxiety and stress associated with that.”

Newsom and fellow Democrats in California continue to search for the right balance between collaboration and confrontation with the new president, who has repeatedly threatened to condition federal reimbursement on major changes to the state’s water system.

After approving bipartisan fire relief funding, the state Senate passed a more controversial proposal to finance legal battles against the federal government, potentially including disputes over federal disaster aid.

“I’m here for the long haul, to support the president where we can, to defend our values where we must, to have the backs of diverse communities,” Newsom said. “At the same time, we work together on critical issues.”

Former President Joe Biden, in one of his final acts in office, pledged federal support for the next three months. But since the fires broke out earlier this month, Trump has repeatedly insulted Newsom and falsely blamed the fires on unrelated state water policy, including in a Wednesday interview with Fox News.

Though Newsom said he has not had any contact with Trump in advance of his visit, the governor expressed confidence that federal aid would not be delayed. As of Friday morning, it remained unclear whether he would invite Newsom. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other elected officials will join Trump for a fire briefing after his Pacific Palisades tour this afternoon.

Trump’s threats to condition aid have already split Republicans, with some GOP House members from swing districts in California saying they oppose attaching strings when families are displaced and suffering.

The bills passed in Sacramento this week were part of a special session that Newsom initially called in the wake of the election to fund potential legal challenges against the Trump administration. In a special session, debate is limited to topics picked by the governor — and any bills signed can take effect more quickly. Newsom expanded the session last week to include proposals related to fire response.

The relief bills Newsom signed passed both the Assembly and Senate without opposition. The money can be spent in a variety of ways, including on hazardous waste removal, shelter for evacuees and preparation for compounding disasters such as mudslides.

“While we’ve made progress, there’s still a significant journey ahead as we transition from containment to recovery,” said state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, who represents Altadena, which was heavily damaged by the Eaton Fire. “As we begin that process, I’m also appreciative that this bill is supporting the cleanup efforts regarding air quality, water and other environmental testing.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joins Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and State Sen. Alex Padilla while surveying damage during the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in Pacific Palisades, California.

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Jeff Gritchen

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MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images

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But Trump — as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans in Congress — have repeatedly said that they want to condition federal help on changes to California policies. Politico reported there have been internal GOP discussions about linking fire aid to an increase in the national debt limit in order to garner Democratic support for a bill that will not pass with just Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that Democrats would not support that plan.

Beyond the debt limit, it’s not exactly clear what sort of conditions Republicans are considering. Trump has repeatedly made false claims that firefighters were unable to battle the Los Angeles blazes because Newsom declined to send more water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Los Angeles is not currently facing a water shortage.

But that’s not what California Republican lawmakers have been pushing: Policy reforms introduced by state GOP legislators are more focused on increasing controlled burns and other wildfire prevention by suspending environmental laws. And some Republican Congressmembers who represent swing districts have flatly rejected any conditions on aid, including Orange County Republican Rep. Young Kim.

“When natural disaster hits your communities, it is not partisan, it is not a blue or red issue — we are talking about life and death,” Kim said in an interview on Fox 11 Los Angeles. “We are talking about communities that are hurting, so there shouldn’t be any conditions other than making sure we bring the resources and aid as soon as possible to our communities.”

California Democrats agree.

Rep. George Whitesides, who just flipped a Los Angeles swing district, called the idea of conditioning aid “absolutely unacceptable and really quite offensive.”

“To say to these people, because of politics, we need to slow down or reduce the aid of the type that we have given to North Carolina and Louisiana and Florida?” he said. “We need to get these people help in a huge amount as fast as we can.”

While Democrats are standing united on that issue, debate Thursday over the Trump-related legal aid was more contentious in the state Capitol. The plan consisted of two bills: one to set aside $25 million for the state Department of Justice, which filed its first suit this week against Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, and another to earmark $25 million for nonprofits to represent Californians facing detention or deportation.

“These are the people that take care of our kids, that work in the fields, that do the landscaping, that work in a number of different industries, whether it’s construction or hospitality,” said state Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced. “How are we going to get things done?”

Republicans were joined in their opposition to the first proposal by Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat whose Central Valley district voted for Trump by nine points in November.

“I feel, personally, that ‘Trump-proofing’ is a missed opportunity to urge the president for meaningful change,” Hurtado said. “We should be working with the president to ensure that public safety deportations are targeted, protecting communities from genuine threats, while safeguarding the dignity and rights of hardworking immigrants.”

Echoing arguments made by Trump’s top immigration officials, Hurtado and Republicans in the state Senate criticized California’s sanctuary policy, arguing it endangers immigrant communities.

The state’s sanctuary law restricts local and state law enforcement from using their resources to enforce immigration law, though it doesn’t entirely bar state cooperation with immigration officials, particularly if an immigrant has a criminal conviction. For example, state prison officials have turned thousands of immigrants over to federal immigration authorities in recent years after they completed a state prison sentence.

Still, sanctuary opponents argue that if state and local police aren’t allowed to work more closely with immigration agents, raids will be pushed into the broader community and result in more people who do not have criminal records being deported.

Trump has made clear he opposes sanctuary policies and wants to punish cities and states that have them.

“We’re trying to get rid of them, and we’re trying to end them,” he said on Fox News this week.

Asked if he’d cut off federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions entirely, the president responded, “I might have to do that.”

The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president announced an investigation into unspecified fraud in California.

The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a freeze on all federal payments for child care in Minnesota, citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, leading to one of the largest such criminal cases in recent years against a California elected official, which surrounded meal funds.

When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

Potential impact on California families

The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.

In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

 ”It's very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives "at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

 ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month - would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”