President-elect Donald Trump’s long-standing threats to place conditions on California wildfire aid are gaining traction with Republicans, looming over the government’s response to the devastation in Los Angeles and infuriating Democratic leaders who said such actions would be unprecedented.

Some Republicans have suggested tying the aid to government funding or an increase in the debt ceiling, which Trump tried to pressure lawmakers to do last month but struggled to sell to House Republicans. Others have suggested forcing California to change its water policies. Linking disaster funding to other priorities could increase the GOP’s leverage — but it could also backfire, with some Republicans already joining Democrats in condemning the threat.

Withholding natural disaster aid to force policy changes would mark a major escalation in the feud between national Republicans and leaders of Democratic-run cities and states. Recent hurricane funding for mostly GOP-led states passed Congress without any strings attached. Republican senators from two storm-ravaged states have pushed back on the idea of conditions for fire aid in Los Angeles.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other congressional Republicans said this week that federal help should have strings attached, while criticizing California’s liberal policies and management of natural resources. Trump has spent the past week complaining about — and misconstruing — California’s water policies, and he has repeatedly threatened to withhold disaster aid on the campaign trail.

“We’re going to take care of your water situation, and we’ll force it down his throat,” Trump said of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last fall during a rally in Coachella, Calif. “And we’ll say: Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have.”

Compounding Democratic ire is the volume of misinformation that Trump and his allies are spreading to justify their stance. They have falsely claimed that Southern California lacks water because of poor policy decisions, but in fact its reservoirs are full. Some have also unfavorably compared California’s circumstances to that of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, claiming that government could not have prevented disaster there, unlike California. In fact, extensive research has shown that poor maintenance of New Orleans’s levees contributed to catastrophic flooding.

The Trump transition team did not respond Tuesday when asked if he still believes the aid should come with conditions and if he would seek to change federal coverage of the fire costs. President Joe Biden has pledged to cover 100 percent of the initial disaster response costs for 180 days.

Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat from Southern California, said in an interview that the push for aid with conditions is “unconscionable” and “sets a terrible precedent.”

“When this happens in Florida again — which it will happen; when it happens in the Carolinas; when it happens with tornadoes in Oklahoma or other places, we are going to provide them the aid that they need, because that is what Americans do,” Carbajal said.

Some Republicans have been critical as well. John Kasich, the former Ohio governor and GOP presidential candidate, called it a “huge mistake” on Tuesday.

“Americans help Americans regardless of whether a state is red or blue,” Kasich wrote on social media. “Brute politics is becoming a scourge on our country.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R) of Florida — a state hit hard by hurricanes last year — told HuffPost that Congress should provide aid for California “the way we do everybody else.” And Sen. Thom Tillis (R) of North Carolina said those pushing for conditions should “put themselves in the same position as people of western North Carolina,” who are still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

House Democrats, many of whom represent California, are furious at the idea of any constraints. Democratic Caucus Chair and Californian Pete Aguilar said his party would not support disaster aid with conditions.

“Disaster aid for wildfire victims who have lost their homes and businesses shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip, no matter what state they live in,” echoed Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who on Tuesday introduced a bill with Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) that would provide local governments with more resources to prevent and fight fires.

Johnson reiterated on Tuesday that California fire relief may face extra scrutiny in a GOP-led Congress.

“The Americans there that are affected, you know, desperately need help. But you’ve also heard us talk about our concerns with the governance of California,” Johnson said during his weekly news conference. “To the extent that there is complicity involved … I think that’s something that needs to be carefully regarded.”

It’s not yet clear how or when Congress will address wildfire relief. Lawmakers are waiting to learn more about the cost of the fires, which are still largely uncontained and have killed more than 20 people.

Placing conditions on fire relief could be politically perilous for Republicans from California, many of whom represent competitive swing districts that determine the House majority. Two California Republicans, Reps. Ken Calvert and David G. Valadao, sit on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, responsible for cobbling together funding for the government and disasters. Calvert — who represents a district southeast of Los Angeles and has friends who lost homes — suggested in a brief interview that he was interested in aid conditions.

“We probably want some safeguards that we can use to make sure things like this don’t happen again,” he said, after saying Los Angeles “shouldn’t have had this level of a disaster.”

Valadao did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s threat has haunted Gov. Newsom since the November election. It was one of the reasons the Democratic governor called an emergency special legislative session late last year to establish a multimillion-dollar legal fund to challenge any Trump administration moves.

When President Biden immediately promised to reimburse 100 percent of California’s fire response costs for 180 days, Newsom pointedly said he did so without any “politics” or “kissing of the feet” — a shot at Trump — and said he hoped that attitude would prevail with the next administration.

Trump has not specifically threatened to alter Biden’s pledge to cover the full cost of California’s recovery effort for six months, but he has accused Newsom — who antagonized him and was one of his most outspoken critics throughout the 2024 campaign — of “incompetence.”

Newsom’s office did not have an immediate comment Tuesday on what actions California would take if Trump tried to unravel Biden’s funding pledge for fire response efforts.

Keely Bosler, who served as the director of the California Department of Finance under both Newsom and former governor Jerry Brown, noted that while the federal government generally covers 75 percent of disaster relief to state and local governments, the president has discretion above that. In the course of a major recovery effort there will also be constant negotiations between state and federal officials about what specific costs FEMA will cover, she said.

“What I think Gov. Newsom and others are going to be worried about is that difference between the 75 percent and the 100 percent, because the 100 percent is really at the discretion of the President,” Bosler said. Still, she said, “It would be a pretty big deal to come in midstream and change that decision.”

Before the fires broke out last week, Newsom proposed that the state set aside $4.5 billion in the 2025-2026 fiscal year budget in its Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties, more than previous years. He said the additional dollars would be intended to provide “flexibility” “so that we have a posture, if we need to, to push back against those assaults.”

On Monday, Newsom proposed that California lawmakers should commit to providing at least $2.5 billion in funding for Los Angeles, calling the proposal part of a “Marshall Plan” to help the city rebuild.

When asked how California would respond to any effort by the Trump administration to reverse Biden’s disaster aid decisions, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said, “We are committed to protecting California’s people, values, and resources, and we won’t hesitate to take action if we believe the President-elect has violated the law.”

One irony of the dispute is that California is a donor state to federal coffers, sending more money to Washington that it receives in return — one of only a handful of states for which that is true.

Trump’s fixation on California’s water policy has frustrated experts who say it has nothing to do with the fires raging around Los Angeles. In social media posts last week, Trump suggested that Newsom is depriving the region of water and noted that some fire hydrants had run dry.

“Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State,” Trump wrote in one post.

But Southern California’s reservoirs are full - even above historical averages, several experts told The Washington Post. Fire hydrants ran dry because demand was suddenly so high that the water supply, which relies on storage tanks and gravity, suffered a catastrophic drop in pressure, they said.

Plus, Los Angeles doesn’t get its water from the Northern California systems Trump has focused on, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no faucet that connects those things,” Hartl said. Marianne Levine contributed to this report.

previous coverage

• Fire tornadoes are a risk under California’s extreme wildfire conditions

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