As President Donald Trump returned to office, many congressional Republicans and conservative pundits have mused about possibly forcing California leaders to change state policies to receive federal disaster money. The state is still grappling with deadly wildfires that have killed at least 28 people and destroyed nearly 15,800 structures.

On Jan. 19’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, host Kristen Welker referred to congressional discussions about tying the disaster aid to a debt ceiling increase, and asked her guest, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whether he would commit to providing aid with “no strings attached.”

Johnson said no, and that there might be conditions beyond a debt ceiling increase.

“We have a serious problem in California,” Johnson said. “Listen, there are natural disasters. I’m from Louisiana. We’re prone to that. We understand how these things work. But then there’s also human error. And when the state and local officials make foolish policy decisions that make the disaster exponentially worse, we need to factor that in.”

Johnson cited several examples, saying:

• The state cut $100 million from forestry management. (PolitiFact put that in context.)
• The Los Angeles Fire Department cut almost $18 million from its budget. (We wrote about what to know about the city’s fire department budget.)
• The fire department put money into “other crazy priorities.” (PolitiFact wrote about what to know about the department’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.)
• A reservoir outside Pacific Palisades was left empty. (We have written about California reservoirs here and here.)

Other congressional Republicans have increasingly called for tying any California federal disaster aid to changes in state fire management policies, an idea Democrats reject. Trump has blamed Newsom repeatedly for the recent wildfires and at a September California campaign stop threatened to withhold money “to put out his fires” if Newsom didn’t change state water policy.

Newsom, in a Jan. 16 letter to Johnson and other congressional leaders he shared on X, said disaster aid should come with no strings attached.

“Californians urge you to provide expedited supplemental disaster aid to assist the ongoing response without conditions or prolonged negotiation,” Newsom wrote. “Doing otherwise would delay the assistance our communities desperately need.”

It’s unclear exactly what changes Republicans are seeking in California, but experts said congressionally authorized disaster funding traditionally didn’t require policy changes first. Congress typically has sought reforms after providing aid, they said.

What are Republicans proposing?

That’s not yet clear. We asked Johnson’s office for details, and spokesperson Griffin Neal pointed us to part of Johnson’s Jan. 20 interview on the podcast, “Honestly With Bari Weiss.”

Johnson told Weiss if there’s “culpability” in California for the wildfires, aid ought to come with conditions. He again blamed California’s “crazy leftist policy choices.”

Weiss asked Johnson: If Louisiana’s Red River overflowed, what if House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were House speaker and wanted to attach conditions to federal aid?

“If the Red River overflowed because I was down there with dynamite blowing up the levees, then Hakeem would have a great point,” Johnson said. “That’s the effect, that’s what we’re talking about in California. They almost literally did that. And they set up the conditions for this calamity.” .

Johnson also said conditions on federal disaster money are “not unprecedented,” pointing to conditions placed on federal money given to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, such as rebuilding homes that were previously at low elevations higher, on stilts.

Those comments contradict Johnson’s Jan. 14 comments at a Politico Live event, at which he said that factoring California’s fire management policies into federal aid is “a brand-new idea.”

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., introduced the Wildfire Prevention Act, a bill he said sets standards for forest management on federal land.

“It should be attached to any disaster relief that goes to California,” he said in a Jan. 16 Senate floor speech.

Has aid been conditioned on state changes in past disasters?

Congress has traditionally passed postdisaster federal aid to states without demanding states to change policies, although there have been attempts to tie the money to other priorities.

In 2013, after Superstorm Sandy, a $50.5 billion aid package for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut was delayed as Senate Republicans tried and failed to offset the funding with other spending cuts. In 2017, Trump, Democrats and Republicans attached a debt-ceiling extension to an aid bill for Hurricane Harvey victims.

Trump in his first presidential term made partisan decisions about disaster aid, news organizations reported. Two former Trump staff members told Politico’s E&E News in October that Trump delayed aid distribution to Democratic states and favored Republican states.

Congress in December approved nearly $100 billion in disaster funding as part of a broader spending bill after Hurricanes Helene and Milton extensively damaged several Southern, Republican-led states. Leaders did not demand any policy changes of those states to pass that aid.

Requests for changes have typically followed disasters and federal funding

Peter Muller, a senior officer with Pew Charitable Trust’s managing fiscal risks project, said all federal disaster aid comes with some degree of conditions.

“Typically those conditions are part of a well-laid out program” with rules spelled out in advance, he said.

Muller said there are federal rules and standards about how infrastructure must be rebuilt to withstand future damage, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires states to have a hazard mitigation plan to qualify for some postdisaster benefits. But those things aren’t determined in a disaster’s aftermath, he said.

Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks federal spending, said disasters have prompted federal policy changes, such as National Flood Insurance Program reforms after the Great Flood of 1993. He said those changes included requiring people to buy flood insurance at least 30 days before a claim and communities to adopt certain flood plain management regulations to participate in the program.

His organization has “called for additional strings to be attached to disaster and mitigation funding, such as requirements for adequate building codes, zoning, disaster planning with a sliding scale of assistance,” Ellis said. “But that should be set out before disaster strikes so that states, counties, and localities know what the possible consequences of their decisions are and mitigate those risks.”

He added, “Disaster relief should be targeted and reduce future risk. The time to make adjustments to how disaster relief is meted out is before a disaster strikes, not when people are suffering and trying to rebuild.”

Rethinking disaster aid

Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said it’s too early for Congress to know exactly how California’s policies affected the wildfires there. He said after Hurricane Katrina, Congress approved aid first, then passed a 2006 law that changed some requirements for state and local mitigation efforts.

DeHaven said it’s understandable to not want to hand out federal aid and have to do it again after future disasters if nothing changes, “but that strikes me as something that would have to be, or should be, dealt with separately.”

He said the larger issue is that federal aid creates disincentives for states and local governments to do things necessary to protect their residents from disasters. It’s not unique to California, he said. The federal flood insurance program, for example, encourages people to rebuild in flood-prone areas.

Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said the federal government can put nonpartisan pressure on states relating to disaster funding. For example, presidents can increase federal cost shares after disasters if they determine that states made sufficient efforts to prevent disaster losses, he said.

Schlegelmilch said a partisan battle between Trump and Newsom is “not healthy,” but said “it is a good idea to revisit the relationship between states and federal aid for disasters.” That should be done “objectively in a very nonpartisan way,” he said.

PolitiFact staff writer Maria Ramirez Uribe and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.