Former President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to withhold federal disaster response funding from California over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s position on water deliveries to farmers.
Speaking to reporters from a golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes on Friday, Trump said he would strong-arm California’s governor into agreeing to send more water from California’s lush north to farm fields in its drier south.
The Supreme Court appears ready to narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, eliminating protections for many inland streams and wetlands that feed rivers, lakes and bays. But California is also ready, thanks to former President Donald Trump.
When Trump tried to roll back federal regulation of inland waterways toward the end of his term, California stepped in with new pollution controls designed to protect those waters within the state’s borders — regulations that would largely fill the gap the Supreme Court seems poised to create by mid-2023.
BAKERSFIELD — President Trump swooped into California farm country Wednesday and, with a flourish, signed off on a plan that would take water away from fish and ship more to farmers in the Central Valley.
As a cheering crowd of supporters watched, Trump signed a memo directing federal agencies to move ahead with relaxed endangered species protections that have curbed water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and the urban Southland.
Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s administration said Wednesday that it would challenge the federal action in court.
President Donald Trump signed the renegotiated trade agreement with Mexico and Canada Monday that will replace NAFTA.
The bipartisan deal includes $300 million to help address the frequent sewage spills in Tijuana that contaminate beaches in San Diego’s South Bay.
“It’s a huge win for San Diego and it’s a huge win for our cross-border region,” said San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who attended the signing ceremony outside the White House.
On a warm November morning, John Durand squints over the stern of a small research boat, and gestures toward gray-blue water, and the chaotic tangles of tube-like tule reeds.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein waded into California’s water wars as a peacemaker Thursday morning.
In a letter, the six-term Democrat urged Gov. Gavin Newsom and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to work together to develop consistent standards for water projects in California.
In a move that would boost water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southern California cities, federal fishery agencies are weakening decade-old endangered species protections for some of the state’s most imperiled native fish populations.
The rollback — coming a year after President Trump targeted the regulations in a memo — rewards Central Valley agribusiness interests that are some of the president’s strongest California supporters. To critics, it highlights the extent to which the Trump administration has injected politics into federal oversight of the nation’s leading environmental laws.
Engaged in environmental battles with the Trump administration on multiple fronts, California Gov. Gavin Newsom angered some allies on Friday by vetoing a bill aimed at blunting federal rollbacks of clean air and endangered species regulations in the state.
The bill would have made it easier for state regulators to counter the Trump administration’s efforts to change enforcement of the federal Endangered Species Act and other environmental pillars — at least in California.
California is fighting a plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to push more water through the Delta – a move state officials say would harm endangered fish species and deprive millions of Southern Californians of water.
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife, in a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said the federal plan would harm the nearly-extinct Delta smelt and other species. The state said the plan would also hurt the mostly urban water agencies that belong to the State Water Project, which might have to surrender some of its supplies to compensate for the federal plan.
