House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that conditioning federal aid to California in the wake of devastating wildfires on policy changes in the state, including those involving election security, is a “common-sense notion supported by the vast majority of the American people.”
“What the terms are and the details of that, we will be working out, but entwined in all of that is the concern about election security in California,” Johnson said in a news conference at Trump National Doral in Miami, where House Republicans are holding their annual policy retreat and are expected to meet with President Donald Trump.
“Voter ID is a matter that again comports with common sense,” Johnson said. “Most American people see the value in it. It will be something we’ll be trying to advance.”
Trump visited Los Angeles on Friday to observe the damage done by the wildfires, which have killed at least 28, destroyed thousands of structures and left tens of thousands homeless. Before the visit, he said he wants California to implement voter ID laws and “I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.”
“After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen," he said.
Johnson said the conditions will be discussed when Trump dines with House Republicans on Friday night.
“I have not spoken to the president about that issue since he said that,” Johnson said. “He will be here tonight for dinner with us and that is one of the topics of discussion.
“There are a lot of issues going on in California and we have been lamenting the lack of voter security there for some time, election security. We were deeply concerned about it in this last election cycle, and we saw three of our seats frankly slip away from us in the weeks that it took counting ballots in California, when seemingly every other nation in America could get it done. It is inexcusable.”
Johnson said Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom has provided a lack of leadership, especially when it comes to the state’s response to the wildfires.
“It is so heartbreaking that California citizens are suffering because of a lack of state and local leadership on those issues,” Johnson said. “They did not manage the forests well, they did not manage the water well, and everyone knew for decades that the eventuality that we have seen over the last couple of weeks since the fire disasters began was foreseeable.
“They assumed the risk because of their crazy, far-left policies, so we talked about conditioning the aid that will go there to policy changes. I think that is a common-sense notion that is supported by the vast majority of the American people who do not want to subsidize crazy California leftist policies that are dangerous for people.”
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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