The Brief

When the Big One or another major disaster hits California, the emergency response will need to be massive. Fixing roads and other infrastructure; restoring power and cellphone service; providing food, shelter and and other essentials.

For decades, state officials have operated knowing the federal government would step in almost immediately when they request help with response and recovery, including by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance. However, California and federal disaster recovery officials say they’re concerned that President Donald Trump may retaliate against the state by delaying or withholding major disaster aid.

And they’re sounding the alarm.

“ We never really thought about what the president would do if a disaster were to happen,” said one longtime Federal Emergency Management Agency insider.

But today: “You don't really have any idea which way it would go,” said the California-based FEMA employee who spoke anonymously for fear of professional retribution. “ Everyone just has to plan to be self reliant. And I'm not talking just individuals, but the states.  Because honestly it's really unpredictable to know what you can rely on.”

Emergency management professionals and observers told LAist they now expect that offers of federal help from the Trump administration will come with strings attached.

“Disaster declarations, especially in California, will be conditional on political policies being made in the state,” the FEMA employee said.

It’s a reality state leaders are preparing for.

“The governor basically told us that we need to think through when the next disaster happens and there's no federal assistance,” said Brian Ferguson, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s deputy cabinet secretary for emergency management.  ”The modern era of emergency management, which started under Jimmy Carter, is forever changing.”

Some experts told LAist it’s unlikely Trump would flat-out deny aid to California — the optics would be too bad, they said. But they did say delays wouldn’t be a surprise.

Their concern is rising as the broader system of disaster response is compromised by cuts and attrition in FEMA and other agencies, leaving the state and its nearly 40 million residents even more vulnerable to disasters.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said FEMA is “focused on warranted, non-political disaster response.”

“In California and throughout the country, FEMA remains fully prepared and capable of responding to natural disasters,” the spokesperson said via email.

Before publication, the agency did not respond to a request seeking the name of the spokesperson and did not agree to a phone interview.

Why insiders are worried

Myriad signs point toward the likelihood Trump could curtail or deny disaster assistance.

During the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise, Trump waffled on giving aid until he was told that it was his supporters who were affected.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” a former Trump aide told Politico then.

Trump also denied aid to California after a string of wildfires — including the Creek, Bobcat and El Dorado blazes — in 2020, according to CNN, before changing his mind.

During his campaign in 2024, he talked about denying disaster aid.

“We’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,” he said in the Central Valley, according to KQED.

And he threatened to withhold wildfire money in response to California’s water management policies.

“The level at which this has become politicized is unlike anything we've seen,” said Mark Ghilarducci, who ran the California governor’s Office of Emergency Services from 2012 to 2022.

Even now, California is waiting on $34 billion of wildfire aid requested by Newsom after the L.A. fires. It includes requests to Congress for more than $20 billion to help rebuild communities.

It’s not just the threats to disaster response and recovery funds that have observers worried. It’s also a pullback from funding disaster preparation.

In April, FEMA said it was ending its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, calling it “another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program … more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

The program was supposed to provide almost $33 million in funding to help reduce Land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes has slowed down, but the city is bracing for winter rains, according to a lawsuit filed by California and other states in response. Other projects on the chopping block were $21 million for flood mitigation in Sacramento and $32 million to retrofit a hospital in rural Kern County.

What’s happening inside FEMA 

Several officials told LAist that even if aid is granted, so much damage has been done to the emergency management system that immediate response and long-term recovery will likely be compromised.

The California-based FEMA official said Region 9 — which responds to disasters in California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii — has been hemorrhaging employees with extensive experience in disasters.

 ”Most people at FEMA just don't know what the future really holds, so they’re looking for other jobs,” the official said.

Between January and June of this year, the number of FEMA employees fell by about 2,500, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. The losses include 20 senior executives. Exact numbers for Region 9 weren’t immediately available.

There’s an air of unease among federal emergency response workers, said a former White House employee who worked on emergency management and requested anonymity because of the fear of harassment. Those workers worry they could rush to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster but then be second-guessed by a presidential administration that might see them as assisting a political enemy, the former official said.

“ The smallest little things that run counter to the narrative that this administration prefers  run the risk of retribution,” the person said.

Emergency officials may worry they could be fired or “reassigned to ICE or something like that.”

“Whether it's happening or not,” the person said, “I think the environment has been created where people feel fearful of that.”

Meanwhile, Southern Californians affected by the January fires already have struggled with what they say is a lack of federal support.

“The federal government was always a backstop in times of need. And it's very possible that there's no additional help coming beyond the state and local responders.  So we're going to adjust to that reality,” said Ferguson, the senior Newsom adviser.

But, Ferguson added, the smaller, rural, Trump-voting parts of California would be hit most heavily by a federal pullback.

“With FEMA  stepping back, we're actually going to be less ready at a local level for whatever the next disaster is,” he said.

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A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms.

Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government's standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other future statistics used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections and guiding policymaking.

Those standards were last revised in 2024 during the Biden administration, after Census Bureau research and public discussion.

A White House agency at the time approved, among other changes, new checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" under a reformatted question that asks survey participants: "What is your race and/or ethnicity?" The revisions also require the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups as white.

But at a Friday meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., the chief statistician within the White House's Office of Management and Budget revealed that the Trump administration has started a new review of those standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved.

"We're still at the very beginning of a review. And this, again, is not prejudging any particular outcome. I think we just wanted to be able to take a look at the process and decide where we wanted to end up on a number of these questions," said Mark Calabria. "I've certainly heard a wide range of views within the administration. So it's just premature to say where we'll end up."

OMB's press office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Calabria's comments mark the first public confirmation that Trump officials are considering the possibility of not using the latest racial and ethnic category changes and other revisions. They come amid the administration's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a push to stop producing data that could protect the rights of transgender people and threats to the reliability of federal statistics.

In September, OMB said those Biden-era revisions "continue to be in effect" when it announced a six-month extension to the 2029 deadline for federal agencies to follow the new standards when collecting data on race and ethnicity.

Calabria said the delay gave agencies more time to implement the changes "while we review."

The first Trump administration stalled the process for revising the racial and ethnic data standards in time for the 2020 census.

The "Project 2025" policy agenda released by The Heritage Foundation, the conservative, D.C.-based think tank, called for a Republican administration to "thoroughly review any changes" to census race and ethnicity questions because of "concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas."

Advocates of the changes, however, see the new categories and other revisions as long-needed updates to better reflect people's identities.

"At stake is a more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country," says Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "I am not concerned if it's reviewed in an honest attempt to understand what the process was. I am concerned if it's for a predetermined outcome that would be to ignore the entire process that was done in a very transparent manner."

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR

A large black bear that was relocated earlier this year after being found under a house in Altadena is up to his old tricks again.

The bear, nicknamed Barry by the neighbors, was found last week under a different Altadena home, and wildlife officials are using a caramel- and cherry-scented lure to entice the roughly 550-pound male bear out of his hiding spot.

So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.

Cort Klopping, information specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told LAist the bear seems to be spooked by increased activity around the home, including media crews outside and helicopters overhead.

“It seems as though in this case, this bear has found this poor guy's crawlspace as a comfortable, safe-seeming, warm enclosure for denning purposes,” he said.

He said the space is “somewhere for this bear to kind of hang its hat when it's relaxing.”

How the bear returned

Wildlife officials can tell it’s the same bear who was lured out from under an Altadena house after the Eaton Fire because of the tag number on his ear.

The bear was trapped and relocated about 10 miles away to the Angeles National Forest in January, but Klopping said he’s been back in the Altadena area for around five months.

The male bear after it was removed from under an Altadena home earlier this year.

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The bear spooked a SoCal Gas crew who stopped by for repairs after the Eaton Fire in January.

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The Department of Fish and Wildlife fitted the bear with a temporary GPS collar so officials could keep track of it. The collar came off a couple months later while the animal still was living in the forest.

The bear is believed to have been spotted around the home last Tuesday, Klopping said, and the owner reached out to wildlife officials a few days later for help.

“I’ve seen pictures of this bear, and I’m shocked to be under that house,” homeowner Ken Johnson told LAist media partner CBS LA.

Officials said they were hopeful the bear would move along on its own. They encouraged the homeowner to set up a camera on the crawlspace and line the area with ammonia soaked-rags or a motion-activated wildlife sprinkler system to deter the bear from returning, Klopping said.

“These are all actions that would not harm the bear, not harm people, but they would make it less comfortable for the bear to be there,” he said.

But the bear stayed put.

“Right now, it seems like it's stressed,” Klopping said. “It seems like it's scared, and therefore, it's not really wanting to leave the security of where it is at the moment.”

The hope ahead

A pair of wildlife officials stopped by the home Thursday to set up the sweet-smelling lure and camera so the department can keep an eye on the bear’s activity remotely.

Barry didn’t take the bait immediately, Klopping said, but officials are hopeful the animal will feel more comfortable leaving the crawlspace once activity around the home dies down a bit.

Klopping also is warning people in the area to secure access points on their property so the bear just doesn’t move in there next.

“If I were in that neighborhood, I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that my crawlspaces would not be accessible,” he said, including covering it with something stronger than the wire mesh the bear got through before.

Bears also are extremely food motivated, and Klopping said they can smell your leftover chicken in trash cans on the curb from 5 miles away.

He encouraged residents to be mindful of trash that could be an easy meal for wildlife, as well as pet food and hummingbird feeders, which Klopping said biologists have seen bears drink “like a soda.”

You can find tips on how to handle a bear in your backyard here and resources from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife here.

There’s a new way you can track pollution in your neighborhood.

The SoCal Clean Manufacturing Coalition, a climate advocacy group, has released a map with the locations of more than 1,800 fossil fuel-burning industrial boilers across Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Many are at universities and hospitals, as well as some apartment complexes like the Park La Brea apartments in the Miracle Mile.

The map is part of an effort to push the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates our air quality, to pass rules to require these large boilers to be phased out.

Why do these boilers matter?

Industrial boilers aren’t exactly the poster child of pollution, but they do play a role in Southern California. Boilers come in different sizes, and although there are electric types, many still burn fossil fuels to generate hot water, steam and, as a byproduct, nitrogen oxide.

South Coast AQMD says that makes it a source of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide contributors are not only a problem for smog and respiratory issues but also for the agency’s effort to meet federal air quality standards.

That’s why last year the agency approved new requirements for certain buildings to use zero-emission water heaters and boilers when they need replacement.

Teresa Cheng,  California director for Industrious Labs, a coalition member focused on creating cleaner industries, says these rules were for smaller “baby boilers” and that the coalition wants to see that applied to larger ones, which are covered under the agency’s 1146 and 1146.1 rule.

The push has caused concern in the gas industry. The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, which represents small fuel retailers and industry suppliers, says boilers are essential in a wide range of manufacturing facilities that need high heat, like food processing, fuel production and more.

“CFCA is deeply concerned that requiring industrial facilities to abandon gas-fired boilers at the end of their useful life before the market is technologically or economically ready will still have severe consequences for manufacturers, workers and consumers,” the alliance said in a statement.

The organization says many facilities already have invested in “ultra-low” nitrogen oxide technology and that requiring a switch to zero-emissions equipment could destabilize the industry because of costs.

See the map

The map includes the number of boilers in each place, including how many aging units, and their permitted heating capacity. (That metric essentially correlates with how much pollution it can release.)

Cheng says the map is being shared to make the “invisible visible” so residents can know what’s around them. Most boilers are in communities that already deal with environmental pollution problems.

Boilers are even close to K-12 schools, like Glendale’s Herbert Hoover High School, which has its own.

“ These boilers have a very long lifeline,” she said. “If the air district doesn't pass zero-emissions rules for these boilers, we actually risk locking in decades more of pollution.”