Gov. Gavin Newsom slams Trump’s disinformation about California wildfires
Alexandra Marquez – January 12, 2025
California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s response to the California wildfires in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” recorded Saturday, saying, “Mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.”
Newsom appeared to be referring to Trump’s posts on Truth Social blasting Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass since the fires broke out Tuesday.
In one post, the president-elect baselessly claimed Newsom had blocked a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, right, tours the downtown business district of Pacific Palisades as the Palisades Fire continues to burn in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote, using an insulting nickname for Newsom.Advertisement
In that post, Trump added that Newsom “wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!)” and “he is the blame for this.”
“Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month,” Newsom told NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff. “I’m very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”
He added that Trump was “somehow connecting the delta smelt to this fire, which is inexcusable because it’s inaccurate. Also, incomprehensible to anyone that understands water policy in the state.”
In another post, Trump wrote, “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!” and appeared to falsely claim, as he did last year in the aftermath of several hurricanes, that money had been drained from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
At least 16 people have died in devastating wildfires across the greater Los Angeles area.
On Friday, Newsom wrote a letter to Trump inviting him to come to his state and tour the destruction.
“I invite you to come to California again — to meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” the governor wrote.
Newsom told Soboroff on Saturday that he had not received a response to the letter.
He added that he’s worried the president-elect may make good on his threats to withhold disaster aid from the state after his inauguration.
“He’s done it in Utah. He’s done it in Michigan, did it in Puerto Rico. He did it to California back before I was even governor, in 2018,” Newsom said.
“So he’s been at this for years and years and years. It transcends the states, including, by the way, Georgia he threatened similarly. So that’s his style. And we take it seriously to the extent that in the past it’s taken a little bit more time [to get federal aid],” the governor added.
Trump’s pick to lead EPA was paid tens of thousands to write op-eds criticizing climate policies and ESG
Bryan Metzger – January 12, 2025
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Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, made $186,000 from paid op-eds and speeches.
Some of those op-eds criticized climate policies and ESG.
The former NY congressman also made $45,475 from gambling at casinos.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump’snominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, has made millions of dollars in recent years from consulting, speaking fees, and paid op-eds, according to a financial disclosure made public on Saturday.
That includes tens of thousands of dollars to write about environmental and climate change-related topics. In one instance, Zeldin was paid $25,000 for an op-ed in which he likened environmental, social, and governance investing, or ESG, to the practices of disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried.
A staunchly pro-Trump Republican first elected to Congress in 2014, Zeldin left office after mounting an unsuccessful bid for governor of New York in 2022. As retiring lawmakers in both parties often do, Zeldin cashed in, establishing a consulting firm to advise corporate clients while enmeshing himself in the well-funded world of conservative political advocacy.
It’s paid off. According to the disclosure document, which covers Zeldin’s major financial activities since the beginning of 2023, the ex-congressman has made a total of $775,000 in salary income and between $1 million and $5 million in dividends from his main firm, Zeldin Consulting.
He’s also received $144,999 from America First Works, a pro-Trump nonprofit where he has a board seat, along with $65,500 from paid speeches and $15,000 from an entity called “Plymouth Union Public Research.”
He also got lucky — literally — winning a combined $45,475 in the last two years from gambling at the Golden Nugget, Venetian, and Atlantis casinos.
“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” Trump-Vance Transition Spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Zeldin did not respond to a request for comment.
$120,500 for writing op-eds
The ex-congressman’s disclosure reveals a variety of income streams, including substantial speaking fees from GOP organizations in Florida and California, a Long Island synagogue, and a Turning Point USA event in Michigan in June. In multiple instances, Zeldin was paid over $10,000 for a single appearance.
He also disclosed a combined $26,775 in payments from Fox News and Nexstar Media Group for “use of media studio.”
The document lists payments from several public relations firms for paid op-eds, listing the news outlet and the date of publication. The titles of those opinion pieces are not listed, but Business Insider identified several that matched the publication and date included in the disclosure.
Among the most notable were a series of paid op-eds on climate issues — Zeldin could soon lead the agency responsible for the federal government’s environmental policies.
In an op-ed for Real Clear Policy published in March 2023 entitled “How Congress Can Stop the Next FTX,” Zeldin called on Congress to investigate ESG practices and the nonprofit watchdog Better Markets, arguing that companies may use ESG to avoid regulatory scrutiny in the same manner that Bankman-Fried used political contributions to curry favor with Washington.
The disclosure indicates that Zeldin was paid $25,000 to write that op-ed. He also appears to have made an additional $10,000 for another Newsday op-ed in August about ESG and $3,000 for a Fox News op-ed in July that criticized New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s climate policies and called on her to lift the state’s fracking ban.
Zeldin was also paid to write about other topics, including $10,000 for a New York Post op-ed criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ housing policy proposals, $10,000 for a Washington Times op-ed calling on regulators to crack down on China-linked financial platforms, and $15,000 for a Washington Examiner op-ed accusing the Biden administration of targeting Republican-run states via Medicaid regulations.
In some cases, Zeldin was paid even when the articles never saw the light of day. His disclosures list two op-eds that were never published, for which he received $10,000 and $30,000.
In total, Zeldin reported $120,500 in op-ed payments. The original clients who made those payments are unclear, and Zeldin and the Trump-Vance transition did not respond to a question about the original sources.
As with other nominees, Zeldin has agreed to divest himself from his consulting business if he’s confirmed as the next EPA administrator, according to his ethics agreement. His confirmation hearing is set for Thursday, January 16.
‘Apocalyptic’: ghastly remains of Malibu come into focus
Andrew Marszal – January 10, 2025
Multi-million dollar mansions in Malibu have vanished entirely, seemingly swept into the Pacific ocean by the force of the Palisades Fire (JOSH EDELSON)JOSH EDELSON/AFP/AFPMore
Flying south through smoky skies down the famous Malibu coast, at first the burnt-out mansions are the exception — solitary wrecks, smoldering away between rows of intact, gleaming beachfront villas.
But draw closer to Pacific Palisades, the ground zero of Los Angeles’s devastating fires, and those small scorched ruins become sporadic clusters, and then endless rows of charred, crumpled homes.
From the air, the extent of the devastation wrought by the Palisades Fire on these two neighborhoods is starting to come into focus: whole streets in ruins, the remains of once-fabulous houses now nothing but ash and memories.
Access to this area of utter devastation has been largely closed to the public and even to evacuated residents since the fire began Tuesday.
The biggest among multiple blazes covering Los Angeles, the inferno has now ripped through over 19,000 acres (7,700 hectares) of Pacific Palisades and Malibu.
A preliminary estimate of destroyed structures was “in the thousands,” city fire chief Kristin Crowley told Thursday’s conference.
There have been at least two separate reports of human remains found in this fire alone, though officials have yet to confirm the fatal toll.
“It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles,” said Crowley.
For AFP reporters surveying the scenes from a helicopter Thursday, it was hard to argue with that view.
On some of these highly coveted Malibu oceanfront plots, beloved by celebrities, skeletal frames of buildings indicated the lavish scale of what has been destroyed.
Other multi-million dollar mansions have vanished entirely, seemingly swept into the Pacific Ocean by the force of the Palisades Fire.
And looming above Malibu, a thin sliver of luxurious waterfront property, is Pacific Palisades itself — an affluent plateau of expensive real estate, now deserted.
Not the entire hilltop is blackened. Several grand homes stand unscathed. Some streets have been spared entirely.
But toward the southern end of the Palisades, grids of roads that were until Tuesday lined with stunning homes now resemble makeshift cemeteries.
Where row upon row of family homes once stood, all that remain are occasional chimneys, blackened tree stumps and charred timber.
At a press conference on Thursday, Los Angeles district attorney Nathan Hochman described walking through Pacific Palisades to the remains of his sister’s home as “apocalyptic.”
“Not since the 1990s when Los Angeles was hit with the fires, the flood, the earthquake and the riots, have I seen such disaster occur here in our city,” he said.
“This is crazy,” agreed Albert Azouz, a helicopter pilot who has flown these skies for almost a decade, observing the destruction from above on Thursday.
At least 10 dead, 180,000 forced to flee their homes as L.A. wildfires rage
Clarissa-Jan Lim – January 10, 2025
Aaron Lubeley hugs a family member and cries while viewing the remains of his home burned in the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county on Jan. 9, 2025.
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A series of wildfires have sparked since Tuesday because of extreme dry conditions and powerful Santa Ana winds. Three of the biggest blazes — the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire and the Hurst Fire — have destroyed a total of 33,700 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
Officials have said the true death toll remains unknown, as the L.A. County medical examiner’s office said Thursday night that at least 10 people have died in the fires.
Here are the latest numbers from Cal Fire:
The Palisades Fire has consumed more than 20,000 acres and damaged almost 5,300 structures, L.A. officials said in updates Thursday evening. It is 8% contained. City Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley has called it “one of the most destructive fires in the history of Los Angeles.”
The Eaton Fire has burned through 13,690 acres and is 3% contained. L.A. County Fire Chief Deputy Jon O’Brien said more than 5,000 structures are estimated to have been destroyed.
The Hurst Fire has destroyed 771 acres and is 37% contained.
Further north, the Lidia Fire, near Acton, has swept through 394 acres and is 75% contained.
The Kenneth Fire, which began Thursday afternoon in the Woodland Hills area near Calabasas, has burned through 960 acres so far. It is 35% contained.
The National Weather Service has said that critical fire weather conditions will continue through Friday morning. The Santa Ana winds is expected to recede later Friday and into Saturday and to pick back up on Sunday through mid-week.
Los Angeles wildfires in photos: Multiple blazes rage across the city, leaving a path of destruction
Images from the ground show strong Santa Ana winds driving the blazes as firefighters try to battle the flames.
Yahoo News Photo Staff, Kate Murphy – January 9, 2025
Megan Mantia and her boyfriend Thomas return to Mantia’s fire-damaged home after the Eaton Fire swept through the area, Wednesday in Altadena, Calif. (Ethan Swope/AP)
Five wildfires fueled by ferocious winds were scorching thousands of acres in Southern California on Thursday. At least five people were reported dead in Los Angeles County and around 130,000 people are under evacuation orders.
According to the latest figures from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Palisades Fire has reached over 17,200; the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena area has covered 10,600 acres; the Hurst Fire, over 855 acres; the Lidia Fire, 348 acres; and the Sunset Fire, burning through the Hollywood Hills, is around 43 acres.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Tuesday after the Palisades Fire started that morning in the hills north of Malibu. Photos below show flames from the wildfires engulfing homes, residents evacuating and firefighters working to battle the blazes as strong Santa Ana winds complicate their efforts.
The sun is seen behind smoke above charred structures and vehicles after the passage of the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Wednesday. (Agustin Paullier/AFP via Getty Images)A man walks past a fire-ravaged business after the Eaton Fire swept through Wednesday, in Altadena, Calif. (Ethan Swope/AP)A home burns during the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Wednesday. (Agustin Paullier/AFP via Getty Images)Melted lawn chairs are seen near the remains of a burnt home after the passage of the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, on Wednesday. (Agustin Paullier/AFP via Getty Images)A man walks in front of the burning Altadena Community Church, Wednesday, in the downtown Altadena section of Pasadena, Calif. (Chris Pizzello/AP)A person lowers a flag from the flagpole outside his burning cousin’s house as powerful winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area force people to evacuate, at the Eaton Fire in Altadena, Calif., Wednesday. (David Swanson/Reuters)MoreThe Palisades Fire burns in Los Angeles. (Eugene Garcia/AP)Fire-ravaged businesses are seen in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 8. (Eugene Garcia/AP)The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)A vehicle and other structures are burned as the Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)A statue and other structures are burned as the Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
Scenes from Tuesday night
Fire personnel on Tuesday try to keep the Palisades Fire from destroying other nearby homes while a helicopter drops water on the area. (David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images)The Palisades Fire ravages an L.A. neighborhood amid high winds on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)Firefighters battling a blaze ripping through the Theatre Palisades amid a powerful windstorm on Tuesday. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)A fire engulfs a structure on the west side of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Ringo Chiu/Reuters)A fire truck races through a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Residents of a senior center in Altadena, Calif., are evacuated on Tuesday as the Eaton Fire approaches. (Ethan Swope/AP)Firefighters battle the Palisades Fire during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Ringo Chiu/Reuters)A firefighter battles a fire as it burns a structure in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)A Christmas tree can be seen burning inside a residence in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles engulfed by flames on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)Firefighters battle a wildfire as it burns multiple structures in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)The Eaton Fire burns a residence on Wednesday in Altadena, Calif. (Ethan Swope/AP)Firefighters work to extinguish flames as the Eaton Fire burns a McDonald’s location in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)A firefighter walks by a home engulfed by the Palisades Fire amid a powerful windstorm on Tuesday. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)Flames from the Eaton Fire destroy a structure in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)Fire crews battle the Palisades Fire as it spreads through multiple structures in a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)A structure in Pasadena, Calif., is swallowed up by flames from the Eaton Fire. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)A wildfire destroys a residence in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Ethan Swope/AP)
A tale of two presidents: How L.A. fires show the difference between Biden and Trump
Taryn Luna, Liam Dillon, Alex Wigglesworth – January 8, 2025
President Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom, middle, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla attend a briefing in Santa Monica on the L.A. County fires on Jan. 8, 2025. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
As communities across Los Angeles County burned Wednesday in a spate of wildfires, the crisis highlighted the stark difference between the incoming and outgoing presidents and their relationships with California.
President Biden stood next to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, at a fire station in Santa Monica and pledged to provide full federal support to the state.
“We’re prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires,” Biden said.
Hours earlier, Republican President-elect Donald Trump, just days away from being sworn in on Jan. 20, blamed “Newscum and his Los Angeles crew” for the unfolding calamity.
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump said the Democratic governor “refused to sign a water restoration declaration,” which he alleged would have allowed millions of gallons of rain and snowmelt to flow south to the areas on fire.
“Now the ultimate price is being paid,” Trump wrote. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!”
The morning missive from the president-elect, as communities burned and thousands of people fled their homes, echoed his prior threats to withhold wildfire funding if Newsom declined to go along with Trump’s water policy for California. Water experts have said, however, that Trump’s water proposals probably will encounter substantial obstacles, and that his claims attempting to link water deliveries to the firefighting response were inaccurate.
Though Newsom praised Trump during his first term for approving federal disaster funding for wildfires, the governor has since said he had to “kiss the ring” to convince Trump to help.
Newsom has commended Biden for not playing political games during disasters.
“It’s impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we’ve received from the White House and this administration,” Newsom said in Santa Monica on Wednesday.
California is grateful to @POTUS & his Administration's support fighting the LA wildfires.
Presidents have wide discretion when it comes to disaster aid, which could be in jeopardy in the future if Trump follows through with his threats after his inauguration.
California and other states receive most federal wildfire aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including direct payments and services to homeowners and renters whose properties were damaged, and public assistance for things such as search-and-rescue teams, debris removal and infrastructure repair.
States need to show that an incident is of such a severity and magnitude that a response is beyond the state’s capability in order to qualify. The governor must request, and the president must declare, a major disaster and then approve any aid the governor requests.
FEMA decides whether a federal disaster declaration is warranted and issues a recommendation to the president. In the past, presidents have followed that recommendation, but there’s nothing in the law that requires them to do so.
Trump initially refused to approve federal aid to California for wildfires in 2018 until a National Security Council staffer showed him that Orange County had a dense concentration of voters who supported him, according to Politico.
State Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who lives and grew up in Santa Monica, attended Wednesday’s briefing with the president and governor. Allen said it was obvious from Newsom’s remarks since the fires began that the governor was worried about federal support for disasters under the Trump administration. Allen said Biden’s response was remarkably quick and thorough. But he said he couldn’t imagine that Trump would ignore Californians in any time of need.
“I have every expectation that the new administration will assist fellow Americans in moments of vulnerability,” Allen said. “That’s what every White House has done, whether Democrat or Republican, throughout history. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t continue to provide the same level of assistance and service that previous presidents have.”
Despite Trump’s feisty rhetoric, he did travel to California as president to survey fire damage and meet with Newsom. Trump toured Paradise in 2018 in the aftermath of the state’s deadliest wildfire. And he met with Newsom in Sacramento after a spate of wildfires in 2020.
Newsom and Trump traded blows on social media, in the news media and in the courts during the president-elect’s first term, but remained cordial in texts, calls and even in person. But that relationship appears to have soured during Biden’s presidency.
Newsom has said Trump did not return a call he made in November to congratulate the incoming president on winning the election. An aide to Newsom said the two men have still not spoken.
The president-elect continued to blame Newsom on Truth Social for the blazes on Wednesday: “As of this moment, Gavin Newscum and his Los Angeles crew have contained exactly ZERO percent of the fire. It is burning at levels that even surpass last night. This is not government.”
Trump also took shots at Biden.
“NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA,” he posted. “THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!”
Peter Gleick, a hydroclimatologist and senior fellow of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said Trump’s comments attempting to link California water policy with the water-supply problems facing firefighters in Southern California were “blatantly false, irresponsible and politically self-serving.”
“There is no water shortage in Southern California — the state’s reservoirs are all at, or above, levels normally expected for this time of year. The problem with water supply for the fires is entirely the result of the massive immediate demands for firefighting water, broken or damaged pipes and pumps, and homeowners leaving hoses and sprinklers running in hopes of saving property.”
Staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.
So you can imagine my delight when my hero, President-elect Trump, gave a news conference Tuesday and strongly addressed those crucial subjects, along with other things that matter deeply to REAL AMERICANS like me, including shower water pressure and making Canada part of the United States.
I voted for Trump for 1 reason: American invasion of Greenland
President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 7, 2025.
Refusing to rule out using the military to take control of Greenland, Trump, who I voted for because I knew he would keep us out of wars, said: “Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. … People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up.”
YES! I was predominantly a one-issue voter, and that issue was the exorbitant cost of seal meat. By threatening our ally Denmark and using military force if necessary, the Trump administration can proudly claim Greenland as a U.S. territory, dramatically lowering the cost of seal meat for American consumers like myself. That will allow me and my fellow MAGA supporters to affordably make Suaasat, a Greenlandic soup, AS IS OUR RIGHT AS AMERICANS!
Some voters were concerned about egg prices. TRUE PATRIOTS were concerned about seal-meat prices.
And Trump is on the case.
I am very worried about the name ‘Gulf of Mexico’
The soon-to-be president also announced a change that has been talked about for years in the rural diners I frequent with my fellow forgotten American men and women.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “Gulf of America – what a beautiful name.”
President-elect Donald Trump announces the Gulf of Mexico will get a new name: the Gulf of America.
SO BEAUTIFUL! And also, so directly impactful on the quality of my day-to-day life.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to miss work because I was feeling down about having to give Mexico credit for that 218,0000-square-mile, semienclosed oceanic basin that I know was BUILT BY AMERICANS.
America for sure owns the Gulf of AMERICA, people!
As Trump said Tuesday: “We’re going to change, because we do most of the work there, and it’s ours.”
Finally, a president who hates windmills as much as I do
The greatest president in history, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort, went on to bless us with this: “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built.”
Praise the Lord! I know some in the MAGA community are more concerned about the economy, immigration and making life terrible for transgender people, but many of us picked Trump again because we abso-freakin’-lutely despise windmills.
See Don Quixote’s La Mancha
They are distracting and can easily be mistaken for giants, leading innocent Americans to tilt at them like the late, great Don Quixote used to do. (Hopefully, Trump will also soon announce that Don Quixote will be renamed “Don America.”)
MAGA voters wanted a president unafraid of Big Shower
Trump also addressed America’s shower-water-pressure crisis, saying: “When you buy a faucet, no water comes out because they want to preserve, even in areas that have so much water you don’t know what to do, it’s called rain, it comes down from heaven. … No water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip.”
Finally, we will have a president with the meteorological knowledge to identify that rain correctly comes from heaven. This is clearly the man best suited to handle America’s nuclear codes.
Sure, Canadians will welcome us taking control of their country
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Trump says he’s going to imprison and then deport millions of brown-skinned immigrants. He’s going after the wrong people.
It seems that ever time a Republican goes on one of the national political TV shows, they make sure to get in the lie that “Joe Biden opened the southern border wide open,” or toss in a reference to “Biden’s open borders.”
It is, of course, a viscious lie — but one that’s almost never called out by the hosts because it’s peripheral or tangential to the topic being discussed. And, as is so often the case, this all started with Reagan (more on that in a moment).
While it’s true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) the latest main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees is the Republican Party itself.
Lacking any actual, substantive economic issues to run on, the GOP decided after Biden’s election in 2021 to fall back on a familiar ploy: scare white people that brown people are coming for them and/or their jobs. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember well how the GOP pitch to white people was that Black people wanted “our” jobs; now it’s brown people from south of the border.
Trump did this in the most crude, vulgar and racist way possible from his first entrance into the Republican primary through the end of his presidency. It frightened enough white voters that it got him into office once, and the GOP repeated that trick last November.
In doing so, they’re playing with fire. Their daily lies about American policies for the past four years are causing people to put their lives in danger.
The truth is that Joe Biden never “opened” our southern border.
“Open borders” have never been his policy or the Democratic Party’s policy or, indeed, the policy of any elected Democrat or Democratic strategist in modern American history.
Everybody understands and agrees that for a country to function it must regulate immigration, and it’s borders must have a reasonable level of integrity.
Republicans are playing a very dangerous game here. By loudly proclaiming their lie that Biden had “opened” the southern border and was “welcoming” immigrants and refugees “with open arms,” they created the very problem they’re pointing to.
Republican lies like this don’t stay in the United States.
As they get repeated through our media, even when most Americans realize they’re simply wild exaggerations (at the most charitable), the media of other countries are happy to pick up the story and spread it across Mexico and Central America.
This, in turn, encourages the desperate, the poor, and the ambitious to head north or send their teenage children northward in hopes for a better life. Meanwhile, criminal cartels have jumped into the human trafficking business in a big way, exploiting and aggressively repeating the GOP rhetoric to recruit new “customers.”
I lived and worked in Germany for a year, and it took me months to get a work-permit from that government to do so. I worked in Australia, and the process of getting that work-permit took a couple of months.
In both cases, it was my employers who were most worried about my successfully getting the work permits and did most of the work to make it happen. There’s an important reason for that.
The way that most countries prevent undocumented immigrants from disrupting their economies and causing cheap labor competition with their citizens is by putting employers in jail when they hire people who don’t have the right to work in that country.
We used to do this in the United States.
In the 1920s, the US began regulating immigration and similarly put into place laws regulating who could legally work in this country and who couldn’t.
Because there was so much demand for low-wage immigrant labor in the food belt of California during harvest season, President Dwight Eisenhower experimented with a program in the 1950s that granted season-long passes to workers from Mexico. Millions took him up on it, but his Bracero program failed because employers controlled the permits, and far too many used that control to threaten people who objected to having their wages stolen or refused to tolerate physical or sexual abuse.
A similar dynamic is at work today. Employers and even neighbors extract free labor or other favors of all sorts from undocumented immigrants in the United States, using the threat of deportation and the violence of ICE as a cudgel. Undocumented immigrants working here end up afraid to call the police when they’re the victims of, or witnesses to crimes.
Everybody loses except the employers, who have a cheap, pliable, easily-threatened source of labor that is afraid to talk back or report abuses.
It got this way in 1986, when Ronald Reagan decided to stop enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring undocumented people, and directed the government’s enforcement activities instead toward the least powerful and able to defend themselves: brown-skinned immigrants.
The result has been a labor market in the US that’s been distorted by undocumented workers creating a black-market for low-wage labor that many of America’s largest corporations enthusiastically support.
For example, prior to the Reagan administration two of the most heavily unionized industries in America were construction and meatpacking. These were tough jobs, but in both cases provided people who just had a high school education with a solid entry card into the American Dream. They were well-paid jobs that allowed construction and meatpacking workers to buy a home, take vacations, raise their kids and live a good, middle-class life with a pension for retirement.
Reagan and his Republican allies, with healthy campaign donations from both industries, wrote the 1986 Immigration Reform Act to make it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces.
“[T]he bill’s sponsors ended up watering down the sanctions on employers to attract support from the business community, explains Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at U.C. San Diego. ‘The end result was that they essentially gutted the employer sanctions,’ he says.”
So Reagan stopped enforcing our labor and immigration laws with respect to wealthy white employers, and the next 20 years saw a collapse of American citizens working in both the meatpacking and construction industries, among others.
Forty-dollar-an-hour American-citizen unionized workers were replaced with seven-dollar-an-hour undocumented workers desperate for a chance at a life in America for themselves and their children.
From the Republican point of view, an added bonus was that levels of unionization in both industries utterly collapsed. Reagan succeeded in transforming the American workplace, and set up decades of potential anti-Latino hysteria that Republicans could use as a political wedge.
Without acknowledging that it was Reagan himself who set up the “crisis,” Republicans today hold serious-sounding conferences and press availabilities about how “illegals” are “trying to steal Americans jobs!” They’re all over rightwing hate radio and in the conservative media on a near-daily basis.
But it’s not poor people coming here in search of safety or a better life who are impacting our labor markets (and, frankly, it’s a small impact): it’s the companies that hire them.
And those same companies then funded Republican politicians who pushed under-the-radar social media ads at African Americans in 2016 and the last election saying that Democrats wanted Hispanic “illegals” to come in to take their jobs.
America, it turns out, doesn’t have an “illegal immigrant” problem: we have an “illegal employer” problem.
“Black lawmakers accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to ‘manufacture tension’ between African-Americans and immigrants as GOP House members argued in a hearing that more minorities would be working were it not for illegal immigration.”
Tossing even more gasoline on the flame they, themselves, lit, Republicans are now amplifying the warnings and “danger” of undocumented immigrants by pulling out the Bush/Cheney “terrorist” card along with Trump’s “diseased rapist criminals” and “they want to take your job” tropes.
Because the GOP has been playing these kinds of racist, xenophobic games with immigration since the Reagan era, our immigration and refugee systems are a total mess. Trump additionally did everything he could to take an axe to anything that wasn’t a jail or a cage…and turned those jail cells into sweet little profit centers for his private-prison donor corporations.
America needs comprehensive immigration reform and a rational immigration policy that’s grounded in both compassion and enlightened economic self-interest. We need an honest debate around it, stripped of the GOP’s racial dog-whistles. And our media needs to stop taking GOP lies about immigration and the southern border at face value.
Americans — and people who want to become Americans out of hope or desperation — deserve better. And throwing some of these rich white employers in jail instead of terrified immigrants would be a good start.
Do you value a free press?
We’ve just observed a historic first: the election of a president who called the media the “enemy of the people.” We don’t agree — and we hope you don’t either.
With Trump’s return, Raw Story is doubling down on investigative journalism, exposing authoritarianism, extremism, and threats to our democracy. We’re committed to the truth. No billionaires call the shots here.
The next four years promise dramatic implications for justice, reproductive rights, immigration and the climate— and it’s time for us to step up and hold those in power to account. It’ s going to be an enormous challenge. And we need your help.
Avoiding This Type Of Drink Could Help Prevent Dementia—Plus, 13 Other Ways To Lower Your Risk, According To Doctors
Korin Miller – January 3, 2025
14 Things You Can Do To Lower Your Dementia Risk Maria Korneeva – Getty Images
Dementia is a devastating condition that can affect everything from your thinking to your personality. And while you can’t always control your risk of developing the disease, new research finds there are at least 14 things you can do now to lower your chances down the road.
These “modifiable factors” were spelled out in an August 2024 report published in The Lancet, and doctors say they’re worth paying attention to.
“Simple switches in lifestyle can make a big difference in dementia risk,” says Amit Sachdev, MD, MS, medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University.
Here’s what you should know, according to doctors.
Meet the experts: Amit Sachdev, MD, medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University; Heshan J. Fernando, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist for Corewell Health in Michigan; Verna Porter, MD, a neurologist and director of the Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and Neurocognitive Disorders at Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
What can you do now to lower your dementia risk?
These are the biggest lifestyle tweaks you can make now to lower your dementia risk, according to the report.
Take it easy with alcohol
Research finds that so-called “heavy” drinkers are more likely to develop dementia than “moderate” ones. But there’s good news: Even dropping your drinking levels from “heavy” to “moderate” will decrease your risk, a 2023 study found.
Avoid smoking
Smoking has been linked to dementia because it can increase the risk of problems with the heart and blood vessels, the Alzheimer’s Society says. Toxins in cigarettes also cause inflammation, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Manage diabetes
“A growing body of research has implicated a strong link between metabolic disorders like diabetes and impaired nerve signaling in the brain,” says Verna Porter, MD, a neurologist and director of the Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and Neurocognitive Disorders at Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
By managing your diabetes, you could by reduce “inflammation in the brain, which in turn helps to protect” it, she says.
Try to maintain a healthy weight
Several studies have linked obesity with a higher risk of dementia—in fact, a scientific analysis published in JAMAin 2022 named obesity as one of the top modifiable causes of it.
Stay on top of your blood pressure
Research has found that lowering blood pressure in people with hypertension can lower the risk of dementia by about 15 percent.
Try to minimize air pollution exposure
Studies have suggested that people consistently exposed to a type of air pollution called fine particulate matter are more likely to develop dementia than those who aren’t exposed to it. These can come from construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks or fires, or can be the result of complex reactions of pollutants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Protect yourself from head injury
Research finds that a history of a single prior head injury was associated with a 1.25 times increased risk of dementia compared to people with no history of head injury. A history of two or more prior head injuries was associated with over two times increased risk of dementia.
Be physically active
Studies show that being physically active can help lower your risk of dementia. “Daily physical exercise—such as 20-30 minutes of light aerobic activity—can include activities such as walking, biking or aquatic pool exercises,” says Heshan J. Fernando, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist for Corewell Health in Michigan.
Try to manage your mental health
A 2023 study found that people diagnosed with depression were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia later in life. Medication, therapy, and healthy habits like eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep can all play a role in treating mental health issues.
Be socially active
“Staying socially engaged may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in later life,” Dr. Porter says, adding that it’s crucial to maintain a strong network of family and friends. “Social connections may also be enhanced through volunteer organizations, joining various clubs or social group, taking a group classes, or getting out into the community.”
Treat hearing loss
A 2024 study found that hearing loss is linked to a higher risk of developing dementia. However, hearing aid users were less likely to develop dementia than non-users.
Keep learning
Research has linked higher dementia risk to lower education levels. However, one study found that the odds of developing dementia fall in people who continue to learn.
“Education at any age may protect against cognitive decline,” Dr. Porter says.
Manage your cholesterol
Studies show that high cholesterol is linked with a higher risk of developing dementia and that the risk increases with age. Fernando recommends following a heart healthy diet like the Mediterranean diet that emphasizes fruits and vegetables, lean meats like chicken and fish, whole grains and healthy fats.
This “can help optimize blood flow to the brain,” he says.
Stay on top of your vision
Research has found that untreated vision loss increases the risk of dementia by about 50 percent, so go to the eye doctor when you can.
Biden to visit Coachella Valley Tuesday, expected to create Chuckwalla National Monument
Janet Wilson and Tom Coulter – January 3, 2025
(This story was updated to add new information.)
President Joe Biden will designate vast, ecologically rich swaths of southern California desert and of northern California woodlands as a pair of new national monuments in a visit to the state early next week, sources tell The Desert Sun.
One will be the Chuckwalla National Monument, encompassing more than 620,000 acres of desert woodlands and washes that provide critical habitat for millions of migrating birds, endangered desert tortoise, iconic chuckwalla lizards and other wildlife. It will stretch from south of Joshua Tree National Park and north of Interstate 10 across a confluence of two ecosystems, where the Mojave Desert meets the Colorado and the Sonoran Desert, a veteran conservationist with direct knowledge of the decision said.
A view of the sunset from the Painted Canyon/Ladder Canyon Trail in Mecca, a popular outdoor recreational area that’s part of more than 620,000 acres of desert land President Joe Biden is expected to protect by designating it all as the new Chuckwalla National Monument.
The designation, which will also protect sacred tribal sites used for thousands of years and broaden recreation opportunities for Latino farmworkers and other area residents, was achieved after a deal was struck with major solar industry groups last spring. Biden will visit the eastern Coachella Valley at the doorstep of the monument on Tuesday, a person familiar with planning for the visit who was not authorized to speak on the record confirmed to The Desert Sun.
The White House said Friday that Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Los Angeles on Monday and the eastern Coachella Valley on Tuesday, but would not confirm the reason.
“We are guardedly optimistic that it will happen,” said Donald Madart, Jr., a councilmember with the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian tribe in eastern Riverside County, which would see portions of its ancestral homelands near the Colorado River protected, including active worship sites and thousands of sacred relics.
He said several new monuments either created or being considered by Biden “all provide us an opportunity to continue religious freedoms of the native people of this land … It’s a lot bigger than just the protection of a landscape for beauty purposes, it is for being able to continue … to practice that religious freedom by going out into the desert and still partaking in ceremonies that have been with us since time immemorial.”
The second new monument will be the 200,000-acre Sáttítla National Monument in northern California near the Oregon border, the person familiar with Biden’s visit confirmed. The designations were first reported by The Washington Post. A spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc Tribes, the Sattlitla monument footprint also encompasses mountain woodlands, rare meadows and serpentine seeps that are home to rare flowers and wildlife.
Biden has been pushing to cement his environmental legacy before he leaves office, including by protecting public lands and designating hefty federal funds for conservation and maintenance of open space.
By preserving sites of extreme importance to California tribes, Biden will be fulfilling the original intent of the 1906 Antiquities Act. New mining, drilling, renewables and other industrial activity all would be banned.
Passed by Congress and signed into law by then President Teddy Roosevelt in June 1906, the Antiquities Act was the first U.S. law to provide broad legal protection of archeological, cultural and natural resources in an era when looting of tribal lands had become common.
Since then, it has also been used nearly 300 times by U.S. presidents to set aside public lands and protect their archeological resources. Many iconic national parks first were designated as monuments, including Grand Canyon National Park in 1908 and Joshua Tree National Park in 1936. In recent decades many presidents have created new monuments in the closing days of their presidencies, often over loud objections from state leaders and industry officials.
Trump’s first administration sharply reduced the footprint of Bears Ears National Monument, among others, and sought unsuccessfully to sharply modify or eliminate the Antiquities Act. Biden in turn restored Bears Ears and other monuments that shrunk under Trump. With Republican majorities in both houses, he could have more luck in his second term, though scores of national monuments enjoy wide popularity.
“We know for sure that the designation is just the very tip of the iceberg,” said Madart, when asked about what Trump might try to do. “We know that the real work begins after the designation happens, and we’re very, very well prepared to engage with all the other tribes, as well as the coalition involved with getting this Chuckwalla initiative over the finish line.”
Biden’s latest actions will cap a lengthy and broad-based battle to protect the lands. In April, a petition with more than 800,000 signatures supporting the proposed two monuments and others was presented to the White House and unveiled in front of the U.S. Capitol. Members of Congress, led by Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California, also a Democrat, and former U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler of California pushed hard but unsuccessfully to pass bipartisan legislation to create the Chuckwalla monument.
Ruiz had no comment on the designations, simply saying in an email, “I’m thrilled to welcome President Biden to (the) Coachella Valley next week. His visit is a testament to the great people of California’s 25th district.”
But in an interview last year with The Desert Sun, Ruiz spoke about his ties to the Chuckwalla area, particularly Painted Canyon in the east Coachella Valley, where he proposed to his wife. He also led Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and others on tours through areas proposed for the designation.
He, like many residents at the edges of the monument, grew up hiking in area slot canyons on the Mecca Hills northeast of the Salton Sea.
Having those lands and far more designated as uninterrupted wilderness in a monument will protect and widen recreational opportunities for working-class and-low-income farmworkers and others in the Coachella Valley and eastern Riverside County, according to environmental justice groups and others.
Some of this land south of Eagle Mountain, near Desert Center, could be incorporated into the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument.
Scores of area tribal leaders, agencies, environmental justice and conservation groups and area elected officials strongly supported the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla efforts.
Responding to the news reports of Biden’s expected action, Joseph Mirelez, brand-new tribal chairman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, said in an email, “For thousands of years, the Torres Martinez Desert Indians have called the lands in the Chuckwalla National Monument home. We are happy to see the designation to protect this area that contains thousands of cultural places and objects of vital importance to (our) history and identity.”
Mirelez, who took office on New Year’s Day, said he had not received official confirmation from federal officials. The tribe is one of the nine nations of Cahuilla Indians, which include the first known inhabitants of the Coachella Valley as well as Riverside and San Diego counties and the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountain areas.
Two exceptions to the broad support were the city of Blythe, whose officials said it could interfere with economic development, and the Coachella Valley Water District, which said in a Nov. 15, 2023, letter to Padilla and Butler that the boundaries as drawn could interfere with the agency’s ability to maintain the large Coachella Canal and to construct new facilities to serve future developments. After buffers were included, the agency chose to remain neutral.
Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Bird Singers sing as women dance following a 2023 press conference in Coachella to announce the collaborative efforts of tribal community leaders and local elected officials to push for the designation of Chuckwalla National Monument.
In an email in April, Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, gave his blessing to the revised plan, saying “Achieving California’s decarbonization goals by 2045 requires rapidly expanding the energy grid to connect solar, wind and other renewables. The Chuckwalla National Monument will protect environmental resources and tribal lands while creating an energy corridor for the electric power lines essential for the state’s clean energy future.”
It is unclear if Biden will approve a related request to expand Joshua Tree National Park, which continues to surge in popularity.
Trip will be Biden’s first reported visit to desert as president
While Biden has visited many regions of the Golden State during his time in office, the visit on Tuesday will mark his first reported trip to the California desert since he was sworn into office in January 2021.
The president’s trip to the valley comes just a few months after Trump held an October campaign rally near Coachella, where he bashed California’s policies and its leading elected officials.
Biden’s visit to the desert also comes nearly a year after his wife, first lady Jill Biden, was the headlining speaker for a private Democratic fundraiser in Rancho Mirage. At the time, in March 2024, Biden was still several months away from announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election in the presidential election.
Biden’s upcoming visit will be yet another moment in a long history of visits to the valley from commanders-in-chief. Several presidents — both Democrats and Republicans — have vacationed in the valley, dating back to the late former President Dwight Eisenhower, while former President Gerald Ford lived in Rancho Mirage for decades after his presidency until his death in 2006.
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama stayed at a private Thunderbird home in Rancho Mirage several times, both during and after Obama’s presidency.
Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun, and co-authors USA Today Climate Point, a weekly newsletter on climate, energy and the environment.
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