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Richard Grenell, the special envoy to President Donald Trump, said there will be strings attached to California wildfire aid, Politico reported on Friday.
During a conversation with Politico’s Dasha Burns at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Grenell shared that the “conditions” of the aid are not yet known but are being discussed by the administration.
The conversation came a month after Trump visited California and promised help in rebuilding efforts.
In his conversation with Burns, Grenell called the California Coastal Commission a “disaster” and suggested targeting the agency as part of the conditions. Politico said that the move would align with Trump and Elon Musk, both of whom have had tense relations with the commission. Last year, Musk sued the agency over its rejection of SpaceX’s rocket launch plan.
“Squeezing their federal funds, making sure they don’t get funds, putting strings on them to get rid of the California Coastal Commission is going to make California better,” Grenell told Politico.
“I don’t have faith that if we went back and just gave California hundreds of millions of dollars, they were gonna go back to their same old ways of not giving us enough water, having dangerous situations on the ground in terms of forestry — it’s going to happen again,” he added.
The Los Angeles wildfires in January destroyed more than 57,000 acres and 16,000 structures while killing 29 people, according to CAL FIRE. The insured losses from the Palisades and Eaton fires alone are estimated at $45 billion, according to CoreLogic. A long road to recovery, anchored by soaring insurance premiums and rebuilding expenses, is expected to lie ahead.
