Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly appealed to United States President Donald Trump for assistance in helping Los Angeles recover from the devastating wildfires as the city prepares to host the 2028 Olympics. Trump isn’t making things easy, however, as he continues to push verifiably false claims about the situation, but California is pushing back.
The whole situation started when Gavin Newsom acknowledged Trump’s role in securing the 2028 Olympics for Los Angeles, noting that it was “an opportunity for him to shine” as the city works to rebuild from the devastating wildfires for the global event.
“President Donald Trump was helpful in getting the Olympics to the United States of America — to get it down here in LA. We thank him for that. This is an opportunity for him to shine, for this country to shine, for California and this community to shine,” Newsom said earlier this month.
“That’s why we’re already organizing a Marshall plan. We already have a team looking, reimagining LA 2.0, and we’re making sure everyone’s included.”
However, Trump did not seem quite as eager to work with California.
Over the past several days and weeks, Trump has continued to spread misinformation and make inaccurate claims, even telling Sean Hannity on Fox News that he might consider withholding aid from California unless the state agrees to “let water flow down,” echoing a verifiably false claim that Newsom and other California officials were deliberately preventing water from Northern California from reaching Los Angeles.
“Look, Gavin’s got one thing he can do,” Trump said according to the New York Times. “He can release the water that comes from the north. There is massive amounts of water, rainwater and mountain water, that comes, too, with the snow, comes down as it melts, there’s so much water, they’re releasing it into the Pacific Ocean.”
Trump went on to insist that water from the Pacific Northwest was readily available to Los Angeles but was instead being diverted into the Pacific Ocean through a so-called “valve” – which does not exist.
“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it,” Trump claimed during a press conference on Tuesday. “All they have to do is turn the valve, and that’s the valve coming back from and down from the Pacific Northwest, where millions of gallons of water a week and a day, even, in many cases, pours into California, goes all through California down to Los Angeles. And they turned it off.”
This led Trump to declare a victory over the situation, claiming he had personally intervened using the “United States Military” and “emergency powers” to “turn the water on” from the Pacific Northwest.
“The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
This post is completely inaccurate. The military did not intervene, there is no “valve” that can simply be “turned on” as Trump suggested, and more importantly, no pipeline of water even exists from the Pacific Northwest to California. Such a project has been considered in the past but quickly dismissed as logistically impossible and far too expensive.
Needless to say, California was quick to call out Trump for this misinformation.
The California Department of Water Resources swiftly refuted this claim, making it clear that Trump’s assertion was entirely false.
“The military did not enter California. The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful,” the California Department of Water Resources said in a post on X.
Additionally, the State of California issued a detailed fact-check of the Trump administration this week on a webpage titled “Hear the experts give the real facts on California water” which cites many experts and trustworthy sources as it debunks many of Trump’s claims.
John Buse, general counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, was so confused by Trump’s blatantly false statements that he could not even make sense of them, saying “It’s difficult to explain what he’s talking about because nobody knows what he’s talking about. The idea of a valve and water will just flow is preposterous.”
Meanwhile, Miles Johnson, the Columbia Riverkeeper, said that the idea that a valve could simply be cutting off water to California “is completely far-fetched and detached from reality.”
“Scientists, water managers, state leaders, and experts throughout the state are calling out the federal administration’s ongoing misinformation campaign on water management in California,” the state’s website reads. “Fact: There is no spigot to magically make water appear at a wildfire, despite the administration’s false claims.”
Clearly, Trump was spreading misinformation. And the state of California was not going to let that happen.
