Wednesday marked one year since wind-whipped wildfires tore through the Palisades and Altadena in Los Angeles County, killing 31 people and destroying 13,000 homes. But President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have failed to act on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for $34 billion in federal recovery assistance — an unprecedented refusal to provide such requested assistance after a natural disaster. 

In the days after the fires broke out, outgoing President Joe Biden promised the federal government would cover 100 percent of the initial cleanup cost for the first 180 days. But he acknowledged it would not be nearly enough.

“I'm going to make an appeal right now to the United States Congress,” he said during a briefing on federal response to the fires last Jan. 9. “They're going to have to step up when we ask for more help to get people the kind of — they need, to get the kind of help they need."

It would be up to incoming President Donald Trump to make it happen. During a visit to Los Angeles just days after being sworn into office, the president told reporters while standing alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., that California was going to need a lot of federal help to recover.

“We’re going to take care of things,” President Trump said at the time.

But weeks turned into months, and now one year after the fires, not one penny of the money sought by Newsom has been appropriated.

“I can't imagine that other places in the country would face this delay if they were experiencing what California's experienced. I would never do this to one of my fellow countrymen who was suffering this kind of thing,” Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., told Spectrum News — and that was last spring.

The White House did not respond to a request by Spectrum News for an explanation of why it has not acted on Newsom’s request.

It was in February when Newsom submitted a request for nearly $40 billion in disaster assistance. Initially, after the White House failed to respond, the governor’s office told Spectrum News it remained hopeful for a bipartisan, multi-state aid package later in the year. Newsom’s office later reduced the request to $34 billion. But still, no response. 

At one point last spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., proposed tying conditions to any additional California aid, to win policy concessions from the Democrat-led state — an extraordinary demand.

“It's unconscionable. It's a terrible precedent. We should not be playing politics when it comes to helping those that are facing a natural disaster whose many have lost their lives, their properties, their homes, their livelihoods,” Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif, said at the time. But Johnson’s proposal did not produce any movement on the aid.

In June, when asked by Spectrum News if his public political disputes with Newsom were causing the delay in disaster relief, President Trump responded that “hatred is never a good thing in politics. When you don’t like somebody, you don’t respect somebody. It’s harder for that person to get money.”

In July, we pressed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on President Trump’s comments, asking if he would commit to providing disaster aid for California, regardless of the president’s feelings towards Newsom. 

“Look, we’re going to do the right thing at the end of the day, we’ll take care of the American people, we’ll take care of our federal responsibilities. But we’ve not seen the calculation nor the formal request yet. And I’m not going to act upon it until we do,” said Johnson. When we followed up that an official request had been sent to his office by Newsom in February, the speaker pushed back.

“I will get the request from the White House and the executive branch. That’s how this works. We’re going to follow the rules,” he responded, seeming to shut down any indication Congress would circumvent the Trump administration to appropriate the funds.

In December, Newsom wrote to President Trump, asking him to set their differences aside to help Californians. “It is not a matter of politics but of principle — ensuring that American families who lost everything are not left on hold,” Newsom’s letter said.

But the White House did not formally respond to that request either.

A spokesperson from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services told Spectrum News that “Congress’s prolonged inaction remains unheard of for a disaster this size, and families are left waiting for the essential support they need to begin rebuilding. California revised its $34 billion request to reflect federal funds already disbursed after the Palisades and Eaton fires, but the need is still the same, and critical recovery remains stalled until Congress acts.”

Although disaster relief in the past has been historically bipartisan and done with a level of urgency, Megan Mullin, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said it’s the “explicit and straightforward politicization of this response is what’s so unusual.”

“If those federal funds don’t come through, that will absolutely slow the recovery,” said Mullin, who pointed out that if the city and state has to compensate for the lack of federal funds, it could result in budget cuts elsewhere.

“What that means is eventually we have fewer police on the street, we have fewer investments in aging sewers and aging drinking water pipes, because the funds have to come from somewhere.”

Spectrum News asked the governor’s office to identify a specific project that has been unable to move forward without the federal funding, but it did not provide the information.

California has received some federal assistance apart from the governor’s request. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has approved more than $198 million in both individual and public assistance claims and the Small Business Administration says it has approved more than $3.2 billion in support of rebuilding homes, businesses and infrastructure impacted by the wildfires. But it’s a far cry from the $34 billion Newsom requested.

The OES spokesperson indicated that while SBA and FEMA programs have been able to fully support smaller disasters in the past, the sheer scale of the LA wildfires would prevent those same programs from meeting the long-term recovery needs.

“California’s communities need timely aid that matches the historic scale of loss. Delays hurt those trying to rebuild their lives,” the spokesperson said.

One year after the fires, Democrats remain angry with the lack of response from the administration.

“He lied. He basically said he was going to help the people there, and he has not yet done so,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Wednesday on the one-year anniversary of the fires. “He straight up just lied to the people in that meeting. He lied on camera, he lied to the American people, and I asked him to stop lying and to provide disaster aid to any state that America has been doing since we became a country.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who represents the Pacific Palisades community, has begged his fellow lawmakers on the other side of the aisle as well as the administration not to politicize the disaster. When asked late last month if he had hope the Trump administration would come through on requesting disaster relief from Congress, he paused.

“I’m certainly hopeful, but it’s hard to be optimistic,” he admitted. “I will say this — Trump has not blocked or taken extraordinary measures to block what was already in progress when he took office.”

“While he hasn’t really lifted a finger to help us, he hasn’t lifted a clenched fist to stop what was already in progress,” Sherman added. “But what was in progress was the basic package and the debris removal, and we need more.”