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Like Administrative Arson, California’s Bad Ideas Spread Like Wildfires

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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.

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‘The One Place We Really Need To Change Policies’: One Of RFK Jr.’s Top Priorities

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday evening on Fox News that the “one place” he wants to see policies changed is within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Kennedy was confirmed as the new HHS secretary on Thursday, with the Senate’s final vote hitting 52-48. On “The Ingraham Angle,” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said his critics will call his new plan a “nanny state.” She asked if he would ban food items like McDonald’s Big Mac.

“Oh, we’re not going to take [that away]. That’s what I’m saying. If you want to eat a Big Mac, you ought to,” Kennedy said. “But you ought to. But, you know, McDonald’s ought to be incentivized to use beef tallow when it’s cooking its Big Macs. So that they’re good for people rather than using seed oils or some other cooking oils that are actually going to probably make you sicker.”

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“So we want to do a number of things but not take away choice from people,” Kennedy added. “The one place that I would say that we need to really change policies is in the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches because there the federal government in many cases is paying for it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.”

SNAP, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, provides food benefits to low-income families. Within a 2021 USDA report, the study said that nearly nine out of 10 SNAP participants faced barriers in “providing their households with a healthy diet throughout the month.”

During his run for president, Kennedy called out his concerns for Americans’ health, as Centers for Disease Control data states that over 100 million adults in the U.S. suffer from obesity and over 22 million adults have severe obesity. After withdrawing from the race and endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump for president, the term “Make America Healthy Again,” also known as MAHA, was coined.

WATCH:

Kennedy told Ingraham he believes in “freedom of choice” and wants to bring “radical transparency” so Americans can understand the effects of what they’re consuming.

“If you want to eat Twinkies, you ought to be able to eat them, but you ought to know what’s in them,” Kennedy said. “So a lot of what I’m going to do is about radical transparency, about making people understand, allowing people to understand and empower them with understanding that if you eat that, it may seem cheap, but it’s going to cost you in the long run. You’re going to get diabetes.”

“There are certain additives. We have 10,000 additives in our food,” Kennedy said. “The Europeans have 400. Many of the additives that we have are just illegal in Europe. We need to move more and more toward the European standard.”

Kennedy has previously addressed his concerns about seed oils in American food, telling Fox News during an October 2024 interview that the “unhealthy ingredients” are in the country’s foods due to being “heavily subsidized” despite “very serious illnesses, including body-wide inflammation.”

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Trump, Putin have begun negotiations to end Russia-Ukraine war

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that negotiations to end the Ukraine-Russia war are underway following a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump said Putin agreed to begin negotiations over Ukraine during the call, with the president saying he would inform Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the negotiations imminently, according to a Truth Social post. Since the war began in February 2022, the U.S. has spent over $130 billion aiding Ukraine.

“We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering, that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many!” Trump said on Truth Social. “We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, “COMMON SENSE.” We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”

Zelenskyy said Friday that he was open to a peace deal amid Trump’s request for Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earth elements and other minerals in exchange for aid. During his campaign, Trump vowed to bring peace to Ukraine and the world.

Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Ukraine joining NATO and returning to its 2014 borders, when it retained control over Crimea and the currently disputed Donbass and Donetsk regions, was not “realistic.”

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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