California Dems Blame Wildfires On Trump After Their Party Created Tinderbox Of Regs

As California braces for another wildfire season, forestry experts warn that decades of regulatory mismanagement — not climate change or Trump-era budget cuts — have left forests dangerously overloaded with fuel.

Democrats have blamed climate change and agency rollbacks for creating tinderbox conditions, but forestry experts see a self-inflicted wound that began festering as far back as the Clinton administration. Three decades of environmental litigation, they say, has warped forest management into a Byzantine maze of legal delays and procedural dead ends — leaving millions of acres to accumulate fuel faster than anyone can clear it.

The blame game intensified Friday as Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom took to X to point fingers at President Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump isn’t just threatening CA’s disaster aid, he’s also pushing for dangerous cuts ahead of wildfire season,” the governor said Friday. “A 63% REDUCTION in the U.S. Forest Service’s budget. A 30% REDUCTION in workforce — 10,000 employees … He is literally playing politics with people’s lives.”