SWANNANOA: US President Donald Trump visited disaster zones in North Carolina and California on Friday, using his first trip since his return to office to turn emergency aid into a political cudgel.
Trump said he would sign an order that could scrap the federal disaster agency, stepping up his effort to exert presidential power over the levers of government, and to decide which states get money from Washington.
The Republican billionaire also threatened to withhold funding for Democratic-led California — a long-term target of his ire — to deal with devastating wildfires if it does not follow his orders.
The visit came as the White House said that Trump’s promised operation to expel millions of undocumented migrants had begun with the launch of deportation flights on military aircraft.
Speaking in North Carolina, where floods caused by Hurricane Helene last year that killed more than 100 people in the state, Trump said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had “really let us down.”
Trump said he would be “signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”
“We’re going to recommend that FEMA go away.”
– ‘Greatest president’ –
Trump met victims of the devastating floods, getting them to recount what they said were failings by federal agencies and insurance companies.
Trump is separately trying to leverage disaster aid over rival Democrats in California, even as fresh wildfires add to the toll of blazes that have killed some two dozen people and caused billions of dollars in damage.
He said he could withhold assistance if California does not change voting laws which he says allow undocumented migrants to vote — and linked that to a false claim that the state could solve its drought by simply opening a valve.
“In California I have a condition,“ he said. “I want two things, I want voter ID for the people of California… and I want to see the water be released and come down.”
“After that I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.”
Trump has previously slung insults at California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom — branding him an “idiot” — and baselessly claimed that California authorities diverted water supplies to save a kind of small fish called a smelt.
– Deportation flights –
Trump’s administration is also keeping the focus on migration, one of the key issues that fueled the 78-year-old’s extraordinary political comeback in November’s US presidential election.
The White House trumpeted the arrest of 538 undocumented migrants on Wednesday and said it had deported “hundreds” of migrants on military aircraft — a departure from the normal use of civilian planes.
By comparison, under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden there were a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 — a 10-year record — and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day.
Two US military flights carrying migrants arrived in Guatemala early Friday, a US defense official said. A total of 79 Guatemalans were aboard, according to the central American country’s migration institute.
“We’re getting the bad, hard criminals out,“ Trump said when asked about the flights. “Murderers, people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen.”
Trump repeatedly accused Biden of failing to crack down on an “invasion” of migrants illegally crossing the southern border with Mexico.
And his turbocharged bid to reshape America in the first days of his administration was also continuing with a planned video address to a huge anti-abortion march in Washington on Friday.
Tens of thousands of people attended the “March for Life” on the National Mall, waving US flags and carrying banners with slogans including “God’s choice.”
“I did a big clip for the March for Life, and we look forward to seeing it,“ Trump told reporters.
Trump recalled that he had signed a pardon for 23 anti-abortion protesters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
