California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced a new website to counter alleged “misinformation” surrounding the state’s fires.
“A lot of misinformation out there,” Newsom wrote on X. ”Just launched a new site to ensure the public has access to fact-based data around the Southern CA wildfires.”
“The TRUTH,” Newsom claimed, was “CA did NOT cut our firefighting budget. We have nearly doubled the size of our firefighting army and built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet.”
He noted, “CA has INCREASED forest management ten-fold since we took office” and said, “California will NOT allow for looting.”
“There is an astonishing amount of mis- and dis-information being spread online — much of it by so-called leaders and partisan media outlets who seek to divide this country for their own political gain. It breaks my heart that families in Los Angeles don’t just have to worry about the fires but also this malicious disinformation as well,” Newsom said in a statement, as per NBC 4 Los Angeles. “We are here to do the work and ensure the public knows the truth about what’s happening with these devastating fires, how their communities are being impacted, and how their government is working to protect and support them.”
One of the “lies” on the “California Fire Facts” is that the wildfires were “caused by California’s mismanagement of forest lands.”
“FACT: The budget for managing the forest (AKA ‘raking the forest’) is now TEN TIMES larger than it was when Governor Newsom took office,” the site asserts. “It was a $200 million annual budget in 2018. The state has now invested $2 billion, in addition to the $200 million annually.”
Another lie on the page reads: “California’s smelt fish policy led to the Southern California wildfires.”
The website calls the statement “outlandish.”
“This is an outlandish connection to make. The policy is not about water availability in Southern California,” it says. “Broadly, there is no water shortage in Southern California right now, despite Trump’s claims that he would open some imaginary spigot.”
Newsweek reported that a recent review of California’s state budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year reveals that Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom cut over $100 million from wildfire and forest resilience programs. The cuts include $5 million from fuel reduction teams, $28 million eliminated from state conservancies dedicated to wildfire resilience, $12 million cut from a “home hardening” experiment, $8 million from monitoring and research programs, $4 million from the Forest Legacy Program, and $3 million from funding for an inter-agency forest data hub.
