“I don’t want to panic, but what do you take?” Tens of thousands of Californians have asked themselves the same question as wildfires continue to eat their way through miles of brush and countryside in Hughes — the latest domino to fall in an already ravaged Los Angeles County. As ash rained down and the winds howled, residents tried to decide what to do. Another 2,700 miles away in Washington, D.C., leaders wondered the same thing.

More than two weeks into this nightmare, there’s an obvious tension on Capitol Hill between helping these desperate families and holding politicians accountable for refusing to take these threats seriously. President Donald Trump hasn’t pulled any punches against radical California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), whose government was inexcusably unprepared for a disaster of this magnitude. “I took criticism because I said, ‘You have to manage your forest,’” Trump recalled telling him. Now, he shook his head, “I’ve never seen anything like it. We look so weak.”

Why, the president demanded to know, is California diverting water way up north in California into the Pacific Ocean?  “Look, Gavin’s got one thing he can do: He can release the water that comes from the north. There [are] massive amounts of water, rainwater, and mountain water that comes down with the snow, comes down … as it melts. There’s so much water,” Trump said. “They’re releasing it into the Pacific Ocean. And I told him for — it’s a political thing for the Democrats. I don’t know.”

Frankly, Trump told Sean Hannity in an interview Wednesday, “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down into their system,” Trump told Hannity in an interview Wednesday. Two days earlier, the president signed an executive order demanding that very thing. Recognizing the magnitude of human suffering, the president emphasized, “We’re going to take care of Los Angeles.” But, he pointed out, the leverage is now with the federal government.

“…[T]hey’re going to need a lot of money. Generally speaking, I think you’ll find a lot of Democrats are going to be asking for help, so I think maybe that makes it more one-sided,” Trump predicted. As far as he’s concerned, Congress should link any disaster relief to “them practicing the science of forestry.”

A week into the blaze, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) took flak for suggesting that there should be strings attached to any federal aid. “Look,” he reiterated to Hannity, “there are natural disasters, but there are manmade disasters as well, and they’ve made terrible decisions. They knew exactly what they were doing. That reservoir outside the Pacific Palisades, 117 million gallons, it was empty for a year. Why? They were trying to save a smelt fish or something. I mean, their policies are upside-down. They made decisions that made that disaster exponentially worse, and this is what the American taxpayer is demanding of us everywhere else in the country.” 

How that view will play out with his caucus is unclear. There’s been open grumbling, especially among the California Republicans, that Congress shouldn’t “play politics with people’s livelihoods.” This is “a slap in the face to the Southern California wildfire victims and our brave First Responders,” vented Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), whose district is south of L.A.

Others think it’s high time the state’s leaders pay for their recklessness. “Everything has conditions, especially the way California wastes money,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) said. “We want to help people and we want to help with that, like we’ve helped with others. But California is very, very irresponsible. … It isn’t unreasonable to say, ‘What does it take to put things back in a way that’s going to be stronger and more resilient going forward?’ Especially when you’re talking about many, many billions,” LaMalfa argued. There’s got to be a way to ensure the money gets to the people, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) warned, not to an “out-of-control California.”

On the ground, local Republicans like Assemblyman Bill Essayli, think the crisis should open the door to major overhauls of state policy. “There [are] some changes we need to make in the law,” he told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice. “And a lot of the changes honestly have to happen in the governor’s branch. He’s got a lot of control as the executive over the state. But from a legislative perspective,” he explained, “we’ve got to get the regulations out of the way so that … the firefighters can prepare the state for these wildfires specifically. We have controlled burns that we need to do across the state in the safe seasons when it’s safe to do so. We need to clear all this brush. And the most efficient way to clear it is, frankly, to burn it. But because of decades of environmental regulations, we don’t do that anymore.”

Then, Essayli went on, “We have to let the lumber industry go back into the wildlands and remove the dead trees. We need to upgrade and underground our power infrastructure. A lot of these fires get ignited by failing electrical infrastructure. So there [are] several things we can do to clear up the regulatory burdens so we can make the state more fireproof, or at least fire resistant.”

Imagine, he said, a state the size of California spending just $200 million on wildfire prevention. It’s “laughable,” he pointed out. “We’re spending over $5 billion a year just to give illegal immigrants health care in the state of California. We’re going to spend about $1 billion in the budget on this high-speed train to nowhere. So it just shows you where the priorities of the Democrat[ic] Party are. They’re not interested in the basics of governing. They’re not interested in public safety, transportation, [or] mitigating disasters. … They’re very unserious people,” Essayli warned, “and they’re wholly incompetent, as you can see playing out on the national stage right now with both Gavin Newsom and [L.A.] Mayor Karen Bass.”

And there’s a lot of frustration with individual communities who’ve dealt with this before, the Republican underscored. “We’ve had some really devastating fires in the past — [in] just the last couple of years — and it didn’t get the national attention that this fire got. … [But] now, because celebrities are involved, it’s become a bigger issue. But regardless, there are real victims of all socio-economic classes. The federal government is ultimately going to have to step in and help them. I fully support that, and I fully support getting aid directly to the victims. But when it comes to reimbursing the state for its expenses, I think it’s appropriate to attach some conditions to that, because otherwise, this is just going to continue the way it is.”

It’s going to be a long haul, locals acknowledge. Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, has heard so many horror stories. “I mean, literally, imagine if you had two minutes,” he asked on the “Outstanding” podcast with Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm. “You’ve been in your house for 30 years or 40 years. You have two minutes to decide what you are going to preserve, possibly, of anything else. Obviously, you get your family out, but anything else? All those possessions are potentially up for grabs.”

Looking at the images across California, Keller almost can’t believe it. “We have seen just an absolutely shocking amount of devastation. I’ve seen some people … call it apocalyptic. And I think at least for these regions, I think that’s partially true.” It really does “look like a Hiroshima kind of situation,” Backholm chimed in, “it’s just ash that’s remaining now.”

And the infuriating thing, Keller acknowledged, is that it didn’t have to be this way. “If I could sum everything up into one word, it would be priorities. What is it that our leaders are valuing and prioritizing? Either we are valuing and prioritizing actions and policies which can lead to human flourishing and mitigating human suffering and risk and disaster — or we are prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion? What future do you really want to have?”

Hopefully, the Californian said, this will be a “tipping point.” “I think a lot of people, including Democrat[ic] voters in California, suddenly start to look at that and say … ‘Maybe they don’t actually care about me. … Maybe they actually don’t know what in the world they’re doing. And maybe after 40 years of almost unanimous Democratic governance, maybe we should look at doing something different.’”

Regardless of the political implications, Keller implored America to continue to pray for the state “on every level.”

“Obviously, pray for the immediate aftermath of these fires. Pray that, miraculously, God would send us some rain. I know for other parts of the country, you guys are dealing again with either snow or with almost flooding levels of rain. If we literally had an inch or two inches of rain, it would probably either put out or dramatically mitigate these fires. … Please, please pray for people not to lose their lives — and for people to be safe, for property to be safe, for firefighters to be safe. But then I would also say,” he continued, “please pray that God would give us in California, and indeed around the country, the leaders we need — and not the leaders we deserve. We need to have wise elected officials who are going to listen to the very real signs of the times and respond accordingly, even if it goes against some of their preconceived ideas or ideologies.”