California Democrats Pilloried for Prioritizing Spending on ‘Trump-Proofing’ State as Los Angeles Burns

As deadly wildfires continue to rage across Los Angeles, quickly becoming the costliest natural disaster in California history, Governor Newsom and state Democrats at Sacramento finalized plans to spend nearly $50 million to pay for “Trump Proofing” the Golden State and providing legal aid to undocumented immigrants.Democratic legislators worked last week to get an agreement for the funding, which was included in four special session bills introduced on the state house floor on Friday, according to Politico. A final vote on the agreement is expected Tuesday.The deal is a half-and-half mix of $25 million proposed by the governor for the California Department of Justice to fight the federal government in court and another $25 Million proposed by Democratic state legislators to provide legal defense for migrants facing deportation and detention through grants to legal nonprofit organizations and immigration support centers.“This funding agreement cements California’s readiness to serve as a bulwark against Trump’s extremist agenda,” the Budget Committee chairman in the state senate, Scott Wiener, said.“Senate Democrats are particularly proud to provide funding for providers of legal aid services, which know our communities’ needs best and are best positioned to defend at scale the millions of individuals and families that will be impacted by the incoming administration’s extreme agenda,” he said.The move left Republicans in the state agitated that the new legislation is being pushed forward even as Southern California is under a fiery veil and the final cost of recovery efforts remain unknown.Mr. Newsom and legislators from Los Angeles have remained in the region dealing with the emergency, but it has done little to placate critics from the GOP.“At a time when California should be laser-focused on responding to the devastating wildfires in LA, Democrat lawmakers’ priority is creating a $50 million slush fund to hire government lawyers for hypothetical fights against the federal government and to defend criminal illegal immigrants from being returned to their home countries,” the state assembly’s Republican leader, James Gallagher, said in a statement.While an accurate tally on the cost of recovery has not surfaced, various estimates say it will likely cost the state hundreds of billions of dollars. A preliminary estimate from AccuWeather places the damage and economic loss to be at least $150 Billion.“This will be the costliest wildfire in California modern history and also very likely the costliest wildfire in U.S. modern history, because of the fires occurring in the densely populated areas around Los Angeles with some of the highest-valued real estate in the country,” the AccuWeather chief meteorologist, Jonathan Porter, told Politico.

California Democrats Pilloried for Prioritizing Spending on ‘Trump-Proofing’ State as Los Angeles Burns

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