CALIFORNIA/CLIMATE CHANGE/NATURAL DISASTERS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump plans to travel to California on Saturday [11-17-18] to tour the damage and meet with those affected by the wildfires that have ravaged the state. He is expected to land at Beale Air Force Base and travel to Paradise, the town in Northern California that has been decimated by fire. The visit will come a week after he blamed state officials for the destructive blazes, erroneously attributing the cause of the fires to poor forest management and threatening to withhold financial payments to the state. But he has since praised the state’s efforts, praising the firefighters’ ‘incredible courage’ and promising federal assistance. The president has visited the state just once since he was elected, preferring instead to attack its leaders and policies from a distance…The statement drew a backlash from firefighters, experts and residents who were watching their homes being devoured by the infernos. Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who has frequently clashed with the president over climate change and other issues, forcefully responded to the attack by calling the fires the ‘new abnormal.’ He added that those who deny human contribution to climate change are ‘definitely contributing to the tragedies that we are now witnessing and will continue to witness in the coming years.’”
–Jennifer Medina, “President Trump to Visit California in Wake of Fires,” The New York Times online, November 15, 2018