'Bargaining chip': Details emerge on GOP's possible conditions for California fire aid

Republicans have spent days injecting political demands into any talk of aid to California over the disastrous wildfires that torched some historic suburbs of Los Angeles, with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) even going so far as to say "they don't deserve anything." It's an escalation against the heavily Democratic and anti-Trump state, which has drawn years of ire from Republicans.

Now, according to Politico, Republicans are starting to converge on a strategy: offer California the relief they need, but only in exchange for certain policy demands being met.

“We don’t play politics with disaster aid,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said at a Politico Live event this week. “But there were policy decisions that were made in California at the state and local level, by all appearances, that made this exponentially worse, and so those are things that have to be factored in with regard to the level of aid and whether there are conditions upon that.”

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It is unclear exactly what policy decisions he is referring to, or what changes will be demanded, but the GOP may be looking to require California to rebuild with greater fire resilience, said the report. "Republicans have pointed to how Democrats pursued a 'Build Back Better' approach to massive infrastructure and climate bills that put similar strings on federal funding to improve climate resilience. President Joe Biden issued executive orders mandating “climate-smart infrastructure.”

But there is some bipartisan pushback to this attitude.

“You don’t condition it. We didn’t do that for Louisiana; we didn’t do that for Florida. I’m hoping that that was just a dumb thing that [Johnson] said, which on reflection won’t go any further,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose own state was recently ravaged by hurricanes, similarly said that demanding political changes in return for disaster relief is “not a good thing to do.”

Some Republicans, according to the report, even want to go further, and demand that Democrats capitulate to President-elect Donald Trump's debt ceiling demands as a condition of California receiving aid. Johnson has not yet endorsed this idea.