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CA Leadership: Newsom Spends $250 Million on Gerrymandering, then Blames Trump for Lack of Fire Aid Money
Joel B. Pollak
9 Oct 2025
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) whined Wednesday that President Donald Trump has ignored his request for $40 billion in fire aid — after launching a $250 million special election to strip Republican House seats.
The special election for “Proposition 50” will have an estimated cost of $250 million to the state — and will pull in at least that much in private donations on both sides of the issue, while fire victims wait for help.
Newsom has also spent every month of the Trump administration opposing every Trump policy, spending millions to pick fights with Trump in court, and trolling the president viciously, using incendiary rhetoric.
The Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire, both of which began on January 7, destroyed tens of thousands of structures and left many residents displaced. The Palisades Fire in particular began on state land, burning where an alleged arsonist had started a fire six days before, but where state authorities failed to pre-deploy firefighting resources ahead of the extreme high winds that were expected on the day of the massive blaze.
Critics of the governor have pointed out that his attitude toward Trump made it unlikely that California would receive any help beyond what it had already received from the Biden administration in its last days.
One Palisades resident told Breitbart News: “Gavin Newsom should stop running for President of the country and make an attempt to take care of his state. His transparent posturing is infuriating as thousands of us struggle to navigate through our respective rubble and upended lives.”
Newsom was eager in 2020to demonstrate how cooperative he could be with the Trump administration, during the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic, when the state needed medical supplies. But the governor, now eyeing a presidential run in 2028, decided that he could spend 2025 attacking Trump.
A source confirmed to Breitbart News that Newsom’s approach had turned the administration against him.
Breitbart News questioned the governor about his attitude early in the year, asking him whether signing $50 million in spending to fight Trump’s policies in court was consistent with asking Trump for $40 billion.
Newsom claimed that the lawsuits were necessary to defend state programs. But many of the lawsuits he has filed against the Trump administration target federal policies that have nothing to do with the state itself.
Newsom later appeared to believe that he would receive the $40 billion from the Republican Congress, in spite of his behavior and his rhetoric.
With that in mind, perhaps, he embarked on a $250 million special election to gerrymander California’s congressional districts to remove Republican seats — while residents affected by the fires remain displaced, with many struggling to find the money to rebuild their homes.
Newsom has tried to blame Trump for wildfires in California — all while expecting that Congress would still pass, and Trump would sign, a massive $40 billion grant for the state to spend — and with no oversight.
In the past few months, the governor also used violent rhetoric against Trump and his party, saying he would “punch” Republicans “in the mouth.” He also turned his official press office account on X into a parody of Trump, and called the president and his staff “fascists,” even after the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk last month by a crazed gunman who carved “anti-fascist” messages into his bullet casings.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @Joelpollak.
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From Breitbart
Link:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...ire-aid-money/
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