Miranda Green is HuffPost's National Investigative Reporter. She's based in Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES — The deadly wildfires in California have taken a lot of Donald Trump ’s attention in his first week as president, and although he traveled to Los Angeles to see the damage, his tone in addressing the crisis has been more of blame than of seeking immediate solutions.
In this July 15, 2015, file photo, a delta smelt is shown at the University of California Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Lab in Byron, California. California regulators announced on March 31, 2020, a set of new rules on how much water can be taken from the state's largest rivers that run through the delta.
“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it. All they have to do is turn the valve,” Trump told reporters at his firstThe delta smelt was first thrust into the national stage in 2009, thanks to Fox News. While the fight over the fish had been tumultuous locally, it wasn’t until it was listed as an endangered species in 2009 under Barack Obama that it got broader attention as a culture war issue.
“They have farms up here, and they don’t get water. I said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad, do you have a drought?’ And they said, ‘No, we shove it out to sea.’” I said, ‘Why?’ And nobody even knows why. The environmentalists don’t even know why,” Trump told the booing crowd. “They are trying to protect a 3-inch fish.”Trump went on to win over most of the counties in the region in 2016, and Nunes was appointed to be a member of Trump’s first transition team.
California Wildfires Devin Nunes Endangered Species Delta Smelt
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