A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A look at how the president is wrapping up his first few days in office with a trip across the country. He heads to Asheville, North Carolina, today before arriving here in Los Angeles.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Both communities are grappling with recovery from disasters, but there is some politics at play, too.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. NPR's White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram joins us now to talk about this. Deepa, so two disaster zones. What's the president going to be doing while he's in these two states?
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Yeah. Well, we're waiting to hear more information. This is the first week of the new Trump administration, so they're still working out some of the details of these kinds of presidential movements. What we do know is actually from the president himself. He said he's going to Asheville, North Carolina, and that city was absolutely devastated by Hurricane Helene in September. There was massive amounts of flooding. And this was all in the middle of the presidential campaign. And the disaster became political when Trump started posting online that the Biden administration wasn't doing enough to help. He spread misinformation about aid relief, saying Democrats were withholding aid from Republican areas, and was misrepresenting how much money there was for rebuilding efforts. Parts of North Carolina are still recovering and rebuilding, and Trump talked about it in his inaugural address.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So then after Asheville, North Carolina, then he comes to Los Angeles.
SHIVARAM: Correct. So he's...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
SHIVARAM: ...Headed there after weeks of wildfires in LA. It's set to be one of the most expensive natural disasters in the U.S. in a long time. And FEMA has enough money right now, but there is going to be a lot more federal aid needed as the city works to recover. But Trump sees it as an opportunity for political leverage. He's trying to build support in Congress for some of his legislative priorities, like tax cuts and government spending measures, and having support from some Democrats who want the wildfire aid passed might make that easier. Here's Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HANNITY")
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I will say that Los Angeles has changed everything, because a lot of money's going to be necessary for Los Angeles. And a lot of people on the other side want that to happen, and they want it now. That's fast.
SEAN HANNITY: In North Carolina, too.
TRUMP: Well, they don't care about North Carolina.
SHIVARAM: California is led by a Democrat, and Governor Gavin Newsom and Trump often spar. Newsom has invited Trump to come out to LA, but it's not known if Trump will meet with him. And I'll say, North Carolina's current and previous governors are both also Democrats.
MARTÍNEZ: So using disaster relief as political leverage - that doesn't sound very typical.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, Trump is really leaning into leveraging the California aid, and any other element of it is - that he's asking for the state to change their water policies in order for them to get any money. It's not clear how far Trump intends to go with that request, but he's been talking about it for days. I spoke with Henry Brady. He's a professor of politics at Berkeley in California. And he said doing this also kind of sets up a slippery slope for both parties.
HENRY BRADY: In general, most of the Congress doesn't probably want this to happen because if this starts, where does it lead eventually? In the Midwest, if you have tornadoes, you have to change your laws to have basements that are safe. If you are in New Orleans and you have a hurricane, you've got to stop building houses on flood plains and on and on and on.
SHIVARAM: And in Congress, you know, some Republicans agree with Trump on this, but I will say there are some California Republicans who are pushing back, saying that there should be no conditions on this aid.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Thanks a lot.
SHIVARAM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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