Daily Caller
Like Administrative Arson, California’s Bad Ideas Spread Like Wildfires
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Frank Ricci
California’s wildfire crisis is a result of a mix of poor public policy, excuses and administrative overreach. This crisis is not solely due to natural phenomena but is exacerbated by years of misguided priorities and policy mismanagement.
In California, regulation has often been elevated to a near-religious status, where compliance with progressive ideals sometimes comes at the expense of public safety. This regulatory environment turns practical solutions into bureaucratic nightmares, where even simple tasks require navigating an endless maze of permissions and paperwork.
The result is a state where water resources are mismanaged, from inadequate retention to failing to have sound contingency plans for pumping when power is out or ensuring the system is designed to handle the fire load.
There is an overemphasis on environmentally friendly policies without adequately balancing the needs of the population or accurately measuring their impact and effectiveness.
When your home is on fire, you need a quick, competent response, properly supported by staffing, resources and clear lines of authority.
The prioritization of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) over merit-based hiring is evident in places like the Los Angeles Fire Department under Chief Kristin Crowley. Her commitment to DEI is often highlighted, leading one to question if this has potentially compromised operational readiness.
The primary focus of fire departments should be on the priority of life safety, incident stabilization and property conservation. When diversity overshadows meritocracy, there’s a shift from equal opportunity to equal outcomes.
Across blue states, there is a trend where HR managers focus more on diversity and soft quotas than ensuring applicants have the necessary physical strength, mechanical aptitude and cognitive ability for the job, regardless of immutable characteristics.
LAFD Assistant Chief Kristine Larson, in a recorded statement, responded to a query about her ability to rescue someone from a fire by saying, “Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? Well, my response is he got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”
In the same clip, she focused on the racial composition of firefighters rather than their competence.
Merit should be blind to race or sex; it is about ensuring that firefighters or officers can master the skills, knowledge and ability needed to do the job.
Victor Davis Hanson has commented: “It was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.”
Moreover, fire departments in cities like Los Angeles, Seattle and New York are still dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic. There is a call for the reinstatement of firefighters who were dismissed for not being vaccinated, suggesting this was an opportunity to purge viewpoint diversity.
Elected officials should not socially engineer fire departments. True diversity comes from educational opportunities like school choice, opportunity scholarships and breaking the stranglehold of teachers’ unions while holding superintendents accountable.
Qualified personnel and proper water management alone won’t mitigate fires. Congress and California need to untangle the web of conflicting government agencies in wildland fire and forest management, ensuring clear lines of authority for public safety.
Environmentally friendly logging and cooperation with fire services for forest management could provide jobs, create fire lines, and ensure quicker response times.
Advanced technology for early detection, such as sensing fire towers, drones and satellites, should be utilized to direct air assets, allowing for a rapid response with helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft to stop or slow the spread of fire from the onset.
America does not have enough staffed air assets stationed, properly geographically deployed and on alert to respond at a moment’s notice. This means deploying air assets throughout the West Coast and in some cases changing policy to allow flying at night and ensuring availability seven days a week. The same applies to bulldozers and other heavy equipment; they must be pre-approved and ready to respond before any incident occurs, cutting through the red tape.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and the federal government have not met expectations, offering excuses rather than solutions. The public demands accountability not just promises. It is time for California to adopt common-sense wildfire management, focus on merit, manage natural resources wisely and reduce the bureaucratic hurdles that hinder effective action.
Only then can we address this crisis with the urgency and efficiency it demands.
Frank Ricci is a Fellow at Yankee Institute and was the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Ricci v Destefano. He retired as a Battalion Chief in New Haven CT. He has testified before Congress and is the author of the book, Command Presence.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a pair of high-stakes meetings next week in order to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, Trump said on Truth Social Thursday.
Trump will meet with Putin in Budapest, Hungary after an initial round of negotiations between Russian advisors and U.S. diplomats led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio next week, the president said in his post. Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday to discuss the war and his conversation with Putin.
“The United States’ initial meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with various other people, to be designated. A meeting location is to be determined,” Trump said in his post. “President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.”
“President Zelenskyy and I will be meeting tomorrow, in the Oval Office, where we will discuss my conversation with President Putin, and much more. I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he wrote.
Putin congratulated Trump on the historic deal between Hamas and Israel, and thanked First Lady Melania Trump for her work on protecting children in Ukraine, the president said in his post.
Trump said Wednesday that India will stop buying Russian oil, a deal that the administration said was fueling the war effort in Ukraine.
The meeting will mark Putin’s first visit to any European Union member state since before the invasion of Ukraine, when he attended a summit in Germany on the subject of peace.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The Trump administration is fighting to block a global carbon tax that a United Nations (UN) agency is attempting to pass quietly this week.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a UN body based in London, is meeting this week to adopt a so-called “Net-Zero Framework,” which would levy significant penalties on carbon dioxide emissions from ships that exceed certain limits. The Trump administration argues the proposal could raise global shipping costs by as much as 10%, ultimately driving up prices for American consumers.
“President Trump has made it clear that the United States will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or harms the interests of the American people,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in a joint statement Friday.
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“The Administration unequivocally rejects this proposal before the IMO and will not tolerate any action that increases costs for our citizens, energy providers, shipping companies and their customers, or tourists,” the cabinet secretaries wrote.
This week, the UN is attempting to pass the first global carbon tax , which will increase energy, food, and fuel costs across the world. We will not allow the UN to tax American citizens and companies.
Under the leadership of @POTUS, the U.S. will be a hard NO. We call on…
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) October 15, 2025
The proposed tax is part of the IMO’s broader goal to bring global shipping to net-zero emissions “by or around” 2050. Qualifying ships that fall short of emissions targets would face taxes ranging from $100 to $380 per ton of CO2.
Notably, the tax would be paid directly by shipowners rather than governments.
The Net-Zero Framework could generate between $11 billion and $12 billion annually from 2028 through 2030, paid into a UN-controlled fund, according to University College London. Meanwhile, other estimates warn that if the global fleet misses the IMO’s targets by even 10%, the annual cost of emissions could climb to $20 to $30 billion by 2030 and potentially exceed $300 billion by 2035.
Some critics equated the proposal to “taxation without representation,” noting that an unelected committee would have the authority to set and potentially raise the tax.
The Trump administration is urging member states to reject the proposal and has threatened retaliatory measures against countries that support it. These include investigations into anti-competitive practices, visa restrictions for maritime crews, commercial and financial penalties, higher port fees for ships tied to those nations, and possible sanctions on officials promoting climate policies.
“The Trump administration is right to draw a hard line against the UN’s latest scheme to export its climate agenda through global taxes and trade barriers,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Isaac said the proposed carbon tax, along with other measures — including the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to disclose environmental and social impacts — “represent an alarming attempt to impose costly, extraterritorial regulations on American businesses and consumers.”
“These measures threaten U.S. sovereignty, inflate energy and transport costs, and weaponize climate policy as a tool of economic coercion,” Isaac said. “The United States must not tolerate foreign governments using environmental pretexts to dictate how we trade, build, and move goods. President Trump’s firm stance puts American workers and energy security first, where they belong.”
Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, also commended the administration’s efforts to block the UN measure.
“Not only does [Trump] oppose the UN carbon tax, but he has instructed his administration to take action against nations that try to implement it against the U.S.,” Milloy told the DCNF. “I am simply in awe of his commitment to ending the international climate hoax, which has long been aimed at stealing from and otherwise crippling our country’s economy and national security.”
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