At the least 10 folks have died and hundreds of properties and companies have been destroyed within the Los Angeles-area wildfires over the previous week. Regardless of the chaos taking part in out on screens internationally, conservatives and Republicans have chosen to go on the assault.
As has usually been the case, Donald Trump led the cost.
Trump made up a lie that California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent critic of Trump, refused to signal a “water restoration declaration,” which supposedly restricted the supply of water to combat the fires. Trump additionally falsely alleged that water within the space has been restricted as a result of environmental coverage defending an endangered fish.
On the identical time, Elon Musk (who spent hundreds of thousands to elect Trump) invoked a bigoted and unsubstantiated allegation that efforts to diversify the Los Angeles Fireplace Division had contributed to issues in responding to the fires.
“DEI means people DIE,” Musk wrote, referring to variety, fairness, and inclusion applications.
Musk additionally promoted right-wing lies that town’s emergency response funds had been minimize in favor of variety applications.
Trump’s allies in conservative media have made related arguments about variety applications purportedly affecting the fireplace division. Newsmax TV host Rob Finnerty known as the devastation “death by DEI,” whereas Fox Information host Laura Ingraham complained that California had prioritized “DEI, illegal immigrants” as an alternative of emergency response.
This isn’t new conduct for the correct. When California was hit by wildfires in 2018, when Trump was president, he pushed lies about Newsom and the state authorities purportedly losing water.
On the identical time conservatives are pushing these assaults on environmentalism and equality, they’ve largely ignored the position that local weather change has had in contributing to circumstances that make it simpler for large fires to start and unfold.
However why is the correct doing all this?
California is without doubt one of the most Democratic states inside america. Within the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris defeated Trump by 20 share factors. In actual fact, the final time a Republican presidential candidate received California was in 1988 (and even then, George H.W. Bush received it by lower than 4 share factors).
Over the many years, conservative politicians and right-wing media have steadily used California as topic of scorn and derision due to the state’s liberal politics. California has embraced many progressive insurance policies on the setting, gender equality, LGBTQ+ equality, and racial equality, whereas additionally being the house to the leisure business and far of the tech business.
When one thing dangerous occurs in California, conservatives flock to the problem to make use of it as “proof” that liberalism and the Democratic Occasion are additionally dangerous. As a substitute of expressing solidarity with fellow People coping with tragedy, a determine like Trump mocks California’s chief as “Governor Gavin Newscum.”
Paradoxically, at the least a part of the blame for the severity of wildfires may be attributed to conservatism. For years, the proper has downplayed the extent of local weather change, and Trump has repeatedly claimed local weather change is a “hoax.” The Republican Occasion has mocked insurance policies just like the Inexperienced New Deal meant to combat local weather change, and opposed the Inflation Discount Act, which invested billions in clean-energy efforts.
Local weather change is actual, and People (together with the remainder of the world) must take care of the fallout within the type of extreme climate and big fires. Conservatives may admit they had been incorrect and made the issue worse—or they may push lies about water and mock an American state whereas lives are misplaced.
They’ve chosen the latter and are prone to proceed doing so.
