Newsom To Meet With Trump Over La Fire Aid, Water

SACRAMENTO, California — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently revived his relationship with President Donald Trump as he pushes for federal assistance for the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, is traveling to Washington for Wednesday meetings with Trump and Republican officials.

Newsom’s aides confirmed he left the state midday Tuesday. The planned meetings at the White House and likely Capitol Hill follow what Trump and Newsom described as a cordial phone conversation in recent days — part of a breakthrough in their on-again, off-again dynamic that had effectively ended shortly before the president left office in 2021.

Newsom, a top Democratic surrogate over the 2024 campaign, invited Trump to tour wildfire damage in Los Angeles but was not consulted on the trip nor was he scheduled to attend. But his aides requested to meet briefly with Trump on the tarmac, where they embraced after Newsom thanked him for visiting and implored him not to withhold — or condition — federal disaster aid. Trump has been pressuring Newsom to send more water to Central Valley farmers and Southern California — and has even taken matters into his own hands.

The White House visit will be the first by a high-profile Democrat with presidential aspirations of their own and follows the president’s sustained torrent of executive orders — moves that have sparked mounting criticism from the opposition party. Newsom, who is set to sign state legislation he called for to distribute $50 million for legal battles with the Trump administration, has pointedly called out the president for spreading wildfire misinformation, but the Democratic governor has been uncharacteristically restrained about the president’s moves more broadly.

Newsom, for example, did not raise any public objections Monday when Trump said he was “very happy” with the federal government after officials released too much water in the state.

"I almost called him by the other name," Trump said of Newsom, who he had been deriding as “Newscum.” "My little nickname for him."

Newsom’s calculation is that Californians — and particularly those who lost homes and businesses in the fires — are counting on him to help spearhead the recovery and don’t want him distracted by daily partisan warring or intraparty one-upmanship to try and win news cycles. The governor also has declined to publicly engage in election post-mortem discussion about what went wrong for his party and former Vice President Kamala Harris, contending that there will be plenty of time to sort that out when his state isn’t in the middle of a crisis.

Newsom’s last visit to Washington came in the final weeks of the Biden administration, where he appealed to the outgoing president and his staff to grant a series of waivers on health care and the environment. Newsom also met with Democratic congressional members. Biden spent some of his final days in office racing to expedite Newsom’s requests for federal disaster aid for the Los Angeles fires.