A Senate subcommittee hearing about last year's deadly Los Angeles County wildfires erupted into a partisan blame game over Federal Emergency Management Agency aid and claims the city mishandled the fires.
The conflict arose at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing to discuss the aftermath of the January 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles,
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. asked Republicans on the panel to support authorization of $33.9 billion in FEMA aid requested to help Los Angeles communities affected by the blaze.
The wind-whipped fire, which was the reignition of an arson fire that was believed extinguished, exposed missteps by fire agencies and local officials, said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chair of the Subcommittee on Investigations.
Given the federal government has a $3 trillion deficit, states and communities should expect less help from Washington especially when their own preparation and response is lacking, Johnson said.
"Let's make something clear," Johnson said. "The reason California is requesting $33.9 billion in after-action support is because of the utter incompetence and failure of California's elected officials."
Johnson formed the committee to investigate the Los Angeles fires at the request of Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, who was contacted by some Palisades' residents whose homes burned. Los Angeles city and county officials have been conducting their own
"The victims deserve to know what happened," said Scott, of why he asked Johnson to hold hearings on the fires. "The federal government has spent billions in California for fire mitigation and disaster prevention. Has there been any value in that?"
The fires started and spread amid drought conditions and bone-dry wind gusts.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom had
"There is no question the Palisades fire was a horrific calamity," Blumenthal said. "Communities were wiped out, thousands of homes were burned to the ground and 13 people lost their lives."
"But it was far from the only natural disaster," he said. "In Texas, last year, 135 people lost their lives. In my own state, a flash flood killed two people in 2024. And this year, a storm brought freezing rain affecting much of the East Coast."
Blumenthal also criticized reductions in FEMA staff and slowed release of disaster funding, though threats in 2025 by President Donald Trump to dismantle the organization have not been realized.
In 2025, the federal government slashed FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program that helps with house hardening costs to protect homes from fires and cuts were made to firefighter funding, Blumenthal said.
"The responsibility for these cuts goes to (Homeland Security) Secretary Kristi Noem, who has weakened FEMA making it harder for Americans to be prepared and recover from these disasters," Blumenthal said. "Noem wanting to approve every contract over $100,000 slowed the response to flooding in Texas (in July.) It also affected $5 million in hazard mitigation and $80 million in public assistance funds in my state."
"Expenses already approved are stuck in Secretary Noem's endless cue," Blumenthal said. "Survivors from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina have received only $1 billion of the estimated $60 billion in storm damages."
He claimed that millions in storm mitigation funding from Florida, Louisiana and Texas have been withheld.
"I think we should hold the same kind of investigation of FEMA as we are to this fire," Blumenthal said.
The day after the hearing Noem announced the
Rating agencies have had long-standing assumptions that state and local governments ratings were protected when natural disasters occurred because of the availability of FEMA recovery funding and grants from the Small Business Administration and Housing and Urban Development.
The Trump administration's approach challenges those assumptions.
"Trump administration and congressional initiatives, as well as longer-term challenges to the U.S. sovereign's finances, may result in a fundamental shift in the federal-state relationship, with more fiscal responsibilities and risk pushed to state and local governments," Fitch Ratings analysts wrote in a November report. "This could have negative rating implications for state and local government credit quality."
So far, Eric Kim, a Fitch senior director, said ratings have not been affected at the state level, and it's been hard to get a firm number on FEMA layoffs.
"Has it had an effect in terms of individual responsiveness, sure, it might slow things down to some extent," Kim said. "But it's hard to quantify, because we have not had to test it in any significant way."
Fitch's sector outlook for state and local governments is neutral; and the majority of outlooks for state and local governments is stable, he said.
"We haven't seen pressures on state governments in how the federal government is responding to aid," Kim said. "It has been important historically. There are states where the level of federal aid following disasters has been important."
It's also unclear if the broad changes proposed to FEMA will occur, because the road map expected from the FEMA Review Council in December wasn't released and its meeting that month was canceled, Kim said. Trump then issued an executive order postponing release of the recommendations to March 25, he said.
"There haven't been any fundamental changes in how FEMA responds, because the council hasn't released its report," Kim said.
Any recommendations from the council also would have to be approved by Congress, he said.
