Politics
Trump wants to upend California water policy. State officials say it could do harm
In one of the first acts of his second term, President Trump is seeking to put his stamp on California water policy by directing the federal government to put “people over fish” and send more water from Northern California to the Central Valley’s farms and Southern California cities.
Trump issued a memorandum Monday ordering federal agencies to restart work to “route more water” from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to other parts of the state “for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”
Trump directed his Interior and Commerce secretaries to report back on their efforts to implement the new policy by April 20. His order left unclear precisely how his administration will seek to carry out that objective.
President Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the approach outlined by the president could do substantial harm by putting water supplies at risk as well as protections for vulnerable fish species.
Nemeth said Trump’s order, on its own, does not change anything and that the current rules for operating California’s water delivery systems in the Central Valley — which were supported by the state and adopted by the Biden administration in December — remain in effect.
Presumably, the president is directing the agencies to again start the lengthy process of revising the framework that governs how the two main water delivery systems, the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, are operated.
“The process just completed in December 2024 took over three years, using the best available science to ensure the projects are operating in concert to balance the needs of tens of millions of Californians, businesses and agriculture while protecting the environment,” Nemeth said. “To abandon these new frameworks would harm California water users and the protection of native fish species.”
Trump similarly tried to alter California water regulations and policies during his first term. But when his administration adopted water rules that weakened environmental protections in the Delta, the state and conservation groups successfully challenged the changes in court.
That cleared the way for the Biden administration, working together with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, to develop the current plan and the supporting biological opinions, which determine how much water can be pumped and how river flows are managed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The rules govern the operations of dams, aqueducts and pumping plants in the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, two of the world’s largest water systems, which deliver supplies to millions of acres of farmland and about 30 million people.
Pumping to supply farms and cities has contributed to the ecological degradation of the Delta, where the fish species that are listed as threatened or endangered include steelhead trout, two types of Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, Delta smelt and green sturgeon.
Trump said in his memorandum that his administration’s plan in his first term would have delivered “enormous amounts of water” but that because the state lawsuit led to a “catastrophic halt,” the additional water “flows wastefully into the Pacific Ocean.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the ongoing wildfires in Southern California underscore why the state should be delivering more water south from the Delta.
In an interview with Fox News this week, Trump threatened to tie federal aid for wildfire recovery to whether California accepts changes in water policy. “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he said.
In a press briefing Tuesday, Trump said his administration will “take care of Los Angeles,” and he criticized the state for what he described as a lack of water flow.
“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it. All they have to do is turn on the valve,” Trump said during a press briefing Tuesday. “They created an inferno.”
But water managers and experts have said Southern California’s cities are not currently short of water, pointing out that the region’s reservoirs are at record high levels following plentiful deliveries of supplies in 2023 and 2024.
Newsom has said a change in water management in Northern California would not have affected the fire response. The governor’s office said on social media that California “pumps as much water now as it could under prior Trump-era policies,” and that “there is no shortage of water in Southern California.”
Even with ample supplies in reservoirs, local water systems were pushed to their limits in places as the fires rapidly spread, driven by strong winds.
When the L.A. water system lost pressure in parts of Pacific Palisades, some fire hydrants ran dry in high-elevation areas, hindering the firefighting effort. Newsom last week ordered an investigation into the loss of water pressure to hydrants, and the lack of water available from a reservoir in Pacific Palisades that was out of commission for repairs.
“While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,” Newsom said. “We need answers to how that happened.”
State officials have stressed that what Trump is proposing would do nothing to improve current water supplies in the Los Angeles Basin.
But Nemeth said if the Trump administration rejects the current water delivery rules and reverts to the earlier 2019 framework, that “has the potential to harm Central Valley farms and Southern California communities that depend upon water delivered from the Delta.”
The current rules and biological opinions provide additional flexibility that allows operators of the pumping facilities to the Delta to “respond more nimbly to real-time conditions,” Nemeth said. “Farms and cities have the potential to gain additional water supply, while endangered species are protected.”
Trump has indicated he intends to try to weaken environmental protection measures, and has questioned why the state should keep certain flows in rivers to help species such as the Delta smelt, “a little tiny fish.”
Federally endangered Delta smelt that were hatched at the UC Davis Fish Conservation & Culture Lab swim around a holding tank after being transferred from the lab to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach in 2019.
(Allen Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s a fish that’s doing poorly anyway,” Trump said this week.
Peter Gleick, a leading water and climate scientist, said Trump’s order on California water policy “is what you get when you mix bluster, ignorance, and disinformation.”
“There are no ‘enormous amounts of water’ that can be redirected legally, economically, or environmentally to different users in California, but perhaps this executive order will make some of Trump’s supporters feel like he’s doing something,” said Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in Oakland.
“He doesn’t really have a clue how California water systems work,” Gleick said. “If he cared about California water, which he doesn’t really, he would pay attention to climate change.”
Recent scientific research has shown that global warming, driven by fossil fuel burning and rising levels of greenhouse gases, has become a dominant driver of worsening droughts in the western U.S.
Examining the mix of factors behind the devastating wildfires, UCLA scientists said in an analysis last week that higher temperatures linked to climate change have contributed to the extreme dryness of vegetation in Southern California, one of the ingredients that is making the fires so intense.
“He doesn’t really have a clue how California water systems work. If he cared about California water, which he doesn’t really, he would pay attention to climate change.”
— Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of the Pacific Institute
Gleick said more than what the president says in “badly written executive orders,” people should watch what his appointees do — and how those actions affect efforts to improve water management.
“It remains to be seen just how disruptive Trump’s environmental appointments will be,” Gleick said. “The biggest risk is that it’s just going to delay or derail efforts underway to solve these problems.”
Trump’s call for delivering more supplies to farming areas and cities adds a layer of complication to arguments over water management in the Delta that have long pitted agricultural water districts against environmental groups, fishing advocates and Native tribes.
In recent years, fish populations have suffered major declines in the Delta and San Francisco Bay.
The numbers of spring-run Chinook salmon have plummeted. And with fall-run salmon populations struggling, officials shut down the commercial and recreational fishing seasons the last two years.
The longfin smelt, a species that once was abundant, was listed as endangered last year under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Environmental and fishing groups strongly criticized Trump’s water order.
Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Assn., said the previous rewriting of the rules during Trump’s first administration amounted to a “salmon extinction plan” because it deprived fish of critical flows they need to survive.
The closure of the salmon fishing season the last two years has already led to the loss of tens of thousands of fishing jobs, Artis said, and another weakening of protections “could further devastate fishing businesses, families, and communities.”
The group Save California Salmon said Trump’s directive continues a pattern of prioritizing the agriculture industry above the needs of other water users and the health of waterways and fish. The group also objected to the title of Trump’s memorandum, “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.”
“Protecting water quality, Delta smelt, salmon, and other species is not ‘radical environmentalism,’ ” said Josa Talley, a spokesperson for Save California Salmon.
“It is a matter of protecting water supplies and economies. Rivers must have enough water to sustain businesses, prevent toxic algae blooms, and ensure clean water for downstream communities,” Talley said. “Salmon survival is tied to our health and the health of our rivers.”
Times staff writer Colleen Shalby contributed to this report.
Politics
Rubio sanctions Cuban groups with ties to US nonprofit network funded by communist donor Neville Roy Singham
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio put U.S. organizations on notice: they can no longer do business with a key Cuban organization that has spent over six decades – since the launch of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959 – cultivating relationships with U.S. activists and groups, many of them now funded by communist American tycoon Neville Roy Singham.
The sanctions target the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym ICAP, an organization founded by Castro in 1960 to spread Marxist ideology and support for Cuba. Long ago, U.S. officials and intelligence assessments concluded ICAP is a key component of Cuba’s intelligence apparatus.
“For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism,” Rubio said. “The regime in Havana has recruited, trained and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond.”
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Marco Rubio moves to put sanctions on a group that Fidel Castro established in 1960 to spread Cuba’s communist influence in the world. (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, ICAP worked with U.S. nonprofits, including the People’s Forum, Progressive International and CodePink, to organize a March “convoy” that included controversial Marxist streamer Hasan Piker landing in Cuba to support Cuba’s communist party.
The trip has since attracted federal scrutiny, with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin confirming she received questions from federal officials about the trip, investigating whether she violated sanctions.
Late last month, Fox News Digital published a three-part series, reporting that federal investigators are examining Cuba’s alleged malign foreign influence operation in the U.S., investigating a network of 145 groups with collective revenues of about $1 billion, promoting Cuba’s agenda and communist ideology.
“Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s subversive and radical operations,” Rubio said.
The groups working closely with ICAP include the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, funded by Singham, a Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai. As reported, Singham has pumped $285 million into nonprofits since 2017 that have built very close relationships with ICAP and the communist government of Cuba.
Singham is married to CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
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ICAP is today led by Fernando González Llort, one of five former Cuban intelligence officers, known as the “Cuban Five,” convicted in the U.S. years ago on espionage-related charges and released after spending time in jail.
Critics say ICAP acts as a gateway for revolutionaries from around the world to get embedded in the propaganda, organizing tactics and strategic goals of the Communist Party of Cuba. ICAP has denied wrongdoing and says it’s a civil society organization.
ICAP was one of five entities that Rubio designated as off-limits under sanctions authorities established by President Donald Trump’s Cuba executive order. The sanctions also target Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), Minera La Victoria S.A. and the state-run tourism company Amistur Cuba S.A., which has arranged trips to Cuba with U.S. nonprofits in the Singham network.
Experts said the move signals that the Trump administration is focused not only on the Cuban government but also on U.S. institutions that U.S. officials believe help project Cuban influence internationally.
A declassified CIA report from the Cold War era, “Cuba: Castro’s Propaganda Apparatus and Foreign Policy,” described Cuba’s international propaganda and influence activities as a central component of Castro’s foreign policy strategy. The report named ICAP among organizations that act as important instruments for cultivating sympathetic political movements abroad and extending Cuban influence beyond the island.
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One of the most notable examples was the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuba solidarity program established in 1969 that brought generations of American activists to the island through exchanges organized with Cuban authorities and institutions including ICAP.
The program became one of the most visible pipelines connecting American activists to the Cuban revolutionary government.
Today, the Venceremos Brigade operates as a fiscally-sponsored project of the People’s Forum.
Lawmakers and federal authorities are examining whether organizations funded by Singham have acted on behalf of foreign interests without properly registering and have helped amplify messaging favorable to the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (C) listens to Progressive International’s general coordinator, David Adler, during an event at the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana, on March 21, 2026. (Ernesto Mastrascusa/AFP via Getty Images)
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During the recent convoy in March, Progressive International co-founder David Adler appeared alongside Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and ICAP President González at an official event hosted by ICAP.
Years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass participated in Venceremos Brigade trips, a connection that her mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt resurfaced during her campaign. Bass has denied any wrongdoing.
Supporters of such exchanges describe them as educational and humanitarian programs intended to foster international understanding. Critics argue they function as political influence operations designed to build support for the Cuban regime and its ideological objectives.
The Cuban government condemned Rubio’s sanctions shortly after the announcement.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the United States of escalating economic pressure against Cuba and attempting to intensify tensions between the two countries.
Hasan Piker, a Democratic Socialists of America member, and CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans meet in Havana, Cuba, as part of a “United Front” supporting the communist regime. (CodePink via Storyful)
“The Treasury Department has added new names of Cuban leaders, organizations and companies to an illegitimate sanctions list,” Díaz-Canel wrote on social media. “They are aimed at reinforcing the blockade measures and the scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States.”
Rubio’s warning extended beyond the sanctioned entities.
The action signals that the administration is increasingly focused on the networks, partnerships and influence channels that U.S. officials believe have helped advance Cuban interests abroad long after the Cold War officially ended.
“Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of sanctions themselves,” he said. “Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities.”
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Fox News Digital’s Reagan Schroeder contributed to this report.
Politics
Commentary: No, Mr. Hilton, our elections are not ‘a joke.’ It’s time for you to stand up to Trump
Well, that didn’t take long.
A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.
“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.
Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.
California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.
That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.
But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.
And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.
So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.
This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”
Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”
On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.
“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.
“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.
“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.
Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.
To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.
But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?
I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.
I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.
Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.
If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?
new video loaded: Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
transcript
transcript
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, now works for an office responsible for uncovering and defending against terrorism plots at the Pentagon.
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“Full pardon or commutation?” “Full pardon.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 4, 2026
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