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Even people unhappy with the results of the 2024 presidential election could find some solace in the fact that, at long last, the interminable campaign season was over. Or at least it seemed that way until the Palisades wildfire broke out Jan. 7.
Since then, it feels like the campaign has gotten its second wind, or the next one has started, and the candidates are Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump. The long-simmering animosity between the California governor and the president-elect has come to a full boil in recent days. Trump, like many others, has blamed Newsom’s leadership — or lack thereof — for the scope of the ongoing disaster. Newsom has responded by chastising the president-elect for politicizing a tragedy, even though he’s a master of politicking himself.
Before the fires started, the governor was busy “Trump-proofing” his state with a $50 million package the California Legislature approved Monday. “Trump-proofing” was a catchy slogan, but Republicans have one-upped it, saying Newsom should have been focused on fire-proofing California instead. A week into the fires, it’s hard to argue with that.
“California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I’m not going to give that up,” Newsom said Sunday on “Meet the Press,” even as his critics argue that the state’s environmental policies contributed to the catastrophe. Writing for Reason, J.D. Tuccille said that preventive measures such as forest thinning and controlled burns are difficult because of a ”bureaucratic process that slows matters to a crawl.”
The region’s efforts to prevent fires often butt up against environmentalists trying to save little-known plants and animals, such as Braunton’s milk vetch and red-legged frogs. Newsom had to suspend some of the state’s prized regulations in an executive order he issued Sunday in order to make it easier for people who lost homes in the fires to rebuild. (In response, the Wall Street Journal smartly asked “Why not for everyone?”)
Interestingly, Newsom talks about “California values” as if those values are at odds not just with Trump, but with the rest of the nation. That seems a dangerous play for someone expected to be a contender in 2028. But he’s owning the phrase, along with other California Democrats, and in a November news release described California values as “fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, immigrant families, and more.”
California values are different from heartland America’s in some obvious ways: Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is called “first partner,” not “first lady,” for example, and a law that takes effect this year prohibits California poll workers from asking voters for identification, despite the fact that 84% of Americans want voters to have to show photo ID, according to Gallup. When a false story started circulating on social media that fire trucks from other states had been turned away because they didn’t meet California emissions standards, many people believed it because California standards are so strict compared to other parts of the country that it was conceivable that this could have happened.
But no one in Ohio or Texas or West Virginia wants to see Los Angeles in flames. California values aside, America values California. And if you want to help families affected by the fires, here’s The Associated Press’s roundup of where to start.
Seeing red
Los Angeles residents affected by the wildfires have expressed both grief and rage, with actor James Woods predicting that the fires are an “extinction level event” for Newsom’s political career.
Woods is a Hollywood veteran who has been both a supporter of Donald Trump and George W. Bush, and he once told Salon (in an unfortunately titled piece called “Woods on Fire”), “Do you think I want to be the one lone voice against the Hollywood liberal establishment? It’s not going to do me any good.” He’s apparently changed in that regard, as he’s tearing up the Hollywood liberal establishment these days on social media.
So is fitness guru Jillian Michaels, who predicted on NewsNation that California will be less politically blue after the disaster.
Those predictions are coming from people who were already conservatives. Even more interesting is what Sam Harris wrote this week on his Substack.
Harris is the neuroscientist, podcaster and professional atheist of sorts who stood up for Vice President Kamala Harris in a Free Press debate with Ben Shapiro, who argued for Trump. (Ever willing to take on the right, Harris also faced off against Jordan Peterson in a debate about the Bible.)
But Harris, who lives in Los Angeles, started an essay on Substack about the fires this way:
“Sometimes you can feel your politics change in an instant. This happened to me the other day while fleeing a fire, only to learn that looters had begun breaking into homes a few blocks away. When I later heard that some of these looters may also be arsonists — setting fires throughout the city so that they can plunder the lives of everyone forced to evacuate — I noticed that the phrase ‘police death squads’ had a nice ring to it. The computers in our pockets give us access to nearly every earthly utterance. What was really happening in my city? Given the squalid state of our information landscape, it was impossible to know. It has been an astonishing, heartbreaking week to live in Los Angeles.”
Harris has not likely rushed to change his voter registration, nor is he likely to change his opinion of Trump. After describing his family’s evacuation, he went on to call for billionaires with ties to LA to pledge their assets to help rebuild the city. But he also wrote, “we must also create a culture of competence and social cohesion — and transform our politics in the process.”
That’s a prescription that even Harris’s ideological opposites can embrace.
The desire for a “culture of competence,” after all, is straight out of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” — with a protagonist, Dagny Taggart, who famously “felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence.”
Some clean, hard, radiant competence would come in handy on so many fronts right now.
Donald Trump, poet?
We all know about Trump watches and Trump sneakers, but in honor of Trump’s inauguration next week, there’s also Trump poetry — well, sort of.
The publishing arm of The Daily Wire is releasing an elegant little book called “The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump” next month.
“Meticulously compiled from the President’s most prolific period, 2009-2019, this collection transforms Trump’s memorable tweets and declarations into poetic form. From policy announcements to cultural commentary, each verse pulsates with the energy and directness that became Trump’s trademark,” the website says.
Regardless of how you feel about Trump, can we all agree that this is objectively funny? (We can argue later over whether Trump having a garbage truck in his inaugural parade is also a fabulous joke or the contemptible destruction of democratic norms and ideals.)
But the book also sounded ... familiar. And sure enough, a book by the same title was sold at the Republican National Convention last summer.
A Daily Wire spokeswoman confirmed that the book, compiled by Gregory Woodman and Ian Pratt, is the same, and Daily Wire is now the sole distributor. In keeping with its tongue-in-cheek tone, the book costs $47.
Trump, of course, will become the 47th president of the United States when he takes the oath of office on Monday afternoon at the U.S. Capitol.
Recommended reading
Jay Evensen on sympathy for Hollywood celebrities: “How much fame or celebrity does someone need before they are considered unworthy of sympathy? Somewhere between a humble hatmaker and an actor with speaking parts?”
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/01/13/do-celebrity-fire-victims-deserve-sympathy/
Valerie Hudson on the atheists quitting the Freedom from Religion Foundation board over gender ideology: “(Jerry) Coyne’s science-based argument, however, leads him into explosive and politically incorrect territory. He rightly asserts that what is now termed ‘gender’ is not and never has been the same as what biologists mean by ‘sex.’”
Jason Carroll, Brad Wilcox, Brian Willoughby and Michael Toscano on the porn industry’s assault on America’s children: “It is time for our culture to come to terms with the inconsistency of valuing the dignity of women and the importance of developing a compassionate generation of young men, but then turning a blind eye to the types of messages conveyed in pornography to our young people.”
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/01/13/pornography-industry-supreme-court/
My latest
I spoke with food scholar Marion Nestle about the impact of industry funded studies on the supposed “health benefits” of alcohol. “The alcohol industry would love for everyone to believe that moderate amounts of alcohol reduce the risk of heart disease and never mind that they increase the risk for breast and colorectal cancer,” she said.
Thank you for reading Right to the Point. I welcome your ideas and suggestions — email me at Jgraham@deseretnews.com.