Gov. Gavin Newsom faces what may be his greatest political test and leadership challenge. He planned to greet President Trump upon his arrival in Southern California on Friday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom came into office in 2018 confronting one of the deadliest and most destructive fires in the state’s history: the Camp fire. Even before he was sworn in, Mr. Newsom accompanied Donald Trump, then the president, and Jerry Brown, then the governor, in inspecting a blaze that killed 85 people and consumed over 153,000 acres around the Butte County town of Paradise.
On Friday, more than six years later, Mr. Newsom will once again greet Mr. Trump as the president comes to Los Angeles to view the aftermath of the latest devastating wildfires that have swept California.
These new fires — in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles and in Altadena — serve as a reminder that Mr. Newsom’s tenure as governor has been defined by catastrophe and crisis, whether natural or man-made: fires, mudslides, atmospheric rivers, the Covid pandemic, the at-times violent protests against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd.
“It’s mind-boggling the number of natural disasters and otherwise he has to deal with,” said Anthony Rendon, who served as speaker of the California Assembly from 2016 to 2023. “It is something that has bracketed — and maybe even defined — his time in office as governor.”
But the challenge of the Palisades and Eaton fires, both in extinguishing them and in overseeing the rebuilding of entire neighborhoods in the most populous county in the nation, may be his greatest test yet.