President Trump Attends a Briefing on the 2025 Hurricane and Wildfire Season Outlook & Preparedness

We're doing it much more so now and we can save a lot of a lot of lives, but a lot of cost, a lot of damage, a lot of everything. And with me, as you know, Marco is doing something very, very important right now. So I'll take a pass on Marco Rubio, but he's with us in spirit. Kristi Noem, Doug Burgum, Brooke Rollins and a couple of other very well known people are standing behind me. They're going to say a few words as to what they're doing with respect to response on wildfires and stopping wildfires due to proper management, proper forest management. And I just want to thank you all for being. And maybe Brooke, I'll ask you to start.

That sounds great, sir. And Secretary Bergam, first of all, thank you Mr. President for inviting us here to the White House to provide an update on our coordinated efforts across your federal government to ensure our nation's wildland firefighting system is focused on fighting wildfires quickly and and effectively. Sir, you have made it clear from the beginning that strong leadership and decisive action and the protection of American lives and communities are the top priorities for both Secretary Burgum and for me. This fire season. As you can see from the red areas on the map over here on the President's left, this is going to be an above normal fire season. Which is why we wanted to, sir, ensure that we were taking direction from you and moving forward. This means that a higher likelihood of of large and intense wildfires than typically expected for this time of year. For the next few months this means that people, homes, communities and landscapes are at risk and the need for firefighters and fire support personnel is clear. America has the largest and the most well respected wildland firefighting force in the world. Secretary Burgum and I already have given direction to our firefighting organizations to take whatever actions are necessary to to ensure that we are operationally ready. The Department of Interior and the Department of agriculture employ over 17,000 federal wildland firefighters every year. At the peak of fire capacity our surge with their interagency, tribal, state, local, we'll have approximately 13,000 additional wildfire personnel. We know that the best and most cost effective way to stop these terrible fires is, is to remove the fuel load that feeds them. And we can talk a little bit about the timber executive order and the timber leadership the President has led on. We are working at both of our agencies to eliminate all red tape, cut costs and increase our timber sales and active management to reduce the intensity of these wildfires when they start. We are increasing timber production by 25% thanks to President Trump, with the goal of not only supporting our industry partners and our rural communities, but also reducing the number of catastrophic wildfires. Finally, both the Forest Service reducing hazardous fuels on our 4.2 million acres and the Department of Interior on their 2.4 million acres annually, getting rid of the low value overgrown trees and brush crowding of our forest. One final point, we are 96% capacity in terms of our firefighting hiring. And this is actually ahead of where President Biden and his team was a year ago. So I want to make sure that's very clear. We are all on board and moving forward with a fully operational. We will be more ready than ever before for this season.

Thank you so much, please, Doug.

Well, thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Secretary Rollins, for the partnership that we have between the U.S. forest Service and the Department of Interior. There's over 700 million acres of surface land that the federal government manages in this country. And under President Trump's orders, we are now actually managing that land. When we get back into timber production, as driven by his eo, we're actually then helping rural communities, we're helping people that are in the lumber business, helping bring those lumber products back home. As we stepped away from this industry, President Trump is now bringing it back. And we as a nation, we're now, before President Trump backed up, we were burning more timber than we were harvesting in this country. When we spend a dollar on prevention, we save hundreds of dollars on the back end on firefighting. This is going to save Americans dollars when we're out there preventing fires and stopping fires when they begin versus letting these fires become huge and then causing the destruction we have. With the growth of our country around urban areas, there's been a 30% growth of what's called the wildlands and urban interface. When this happens, people start building homes like the tragedy that President Trump visited in California where so many people lost their lives. But this is where we're essentially creating cities in the middle of forests, but not doing the forest management and creating that deadly fire load out of there. But now we intermix communities with above ground power lines. This can lead to dangerous situations. So President Trump committed to us doing fire management. We'll reduce that fire load. In addition to that, there's a proposal which Russ has included in the President's OMB budget for the unification. Because between Secretary ROLLINS and the U.S. forest Service across Interior, we have four different firefighting groups across U.S. fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian affairs, the National Park Service. These five groups under the proposal are going to be unified in terms of their leadership. And so we've got consistent strategies and consistent tactics. But then when we have these thousands of people that are out there fighting fires and putting their lives at work to protect our communities, we also have to step up, as President Trump knows, with our military. We've got to make sure that these brave firefighters are out there, actually have the same equipment. In some cases, we're getting decades behind in terms of giving them the technology they need for either early detection or for saving their own lives. We've got some great examples of where we have good collaboration going between the federal government in Alaska, the state of Alaska, for example, and then also at the National Interagency Fire center in Idaho, where we are already coordinating. Brooke and I have already held a joint briefing with the fire leaders about this fire season. So we'll continue to unify this work. But we have to work with the states because this year there have been 1.2 million acres already burned. Only 25% of that's been on federal. The other 75% has been on state lands or private lands. And so together, we have to work to protect America's resources. And under President Trump's leadership, we've got the guidance through the EOs to make that happen.

Thank you very much, Doug. He's doing a great job. They all are. Russell, vote.

Sure. Thanks, Mr. President. From a funding perspective, the accounts that support the important work that these cabinet secretaries are doing are funded. They're flush. The main one, the Disaster relief fund, has $13 billion. It's projected to get us all the way into the end of the fiscal year. So we're in a very good place. And we've been. The President has personally been a steward of the taxpayer resources on every one of the expenses the states have come in for to put us in a position where we are ready for this season. Thank you.

Great job. Thanks.

Yeah. Mr. President, we are in hurricane season right now. It will last for the next several months and we are prepared for what is coming. We are anticipating that we will have higher than usual activity during this hurricane season. We could have three to five major storms, up to a dozen other hurricane level level thresholds that we will meet throughout this season. And FEMA stands prepared and has been working with all of our regions on training, pre deploying resources, making sure that individuals are out there ready to respond to each state as they bring the necessary resources to take care of their people. But also, sir, you've been very clear that you want to see FEMA eliminated as it exists today. So I'm preparing all of these governors that they will have more control or the decisions on how they respond to their communities so that it can help it happen faster, that they can pre deploy resources and help coordinate on communication as well. So while we are running this hurricane season, making sure that we have pre staged and worked with the regions that are traditionally hit in these areas, we're also building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding. But we all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousands, if not millions of people. And President Trump does not want to see that continue into the future. So this agency fundamentally needs to go away as it exists. And we need to have a response to states that supports them when terrible things come and when the worst day of their lives happens to where the financial resources are there, but they have decision making power right there in the state to respond. So the next several months we expect it to be high activity and the federal government is here to support the people of the United States with President Trump's leadership. While he's doing that, he's also going to make sure that they're better set up for the future so that they have the ability to really take care of their families when a crisis or a terrible storm does hit. We've got many governors that just recently had terrible, tragic losses from tornadoes, from other events that went through their states. And FEMA was extremely responsive and they've all been very happy, I think, Mr. President, you even spoke to one of those governors this morning who is very happy and the Missouri governor as well, who is very happy as soon as something happens in their state. I'm in direct communication with the governors to make sure they have what they need, but also making sure that they have the ability to make decisions to respond to the people that live in their states.

Thank you everybody. So we want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level a little bit like education. We're moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That's why they're governors now. If they can't handle it, they shouldn't be governor. But these governors can handle it and they'll work in conjunction with other governors. They'll give each other a hand. But the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment. Very, very expensive and it doesn't get the job done. You saw what happened in North Carolina under the past administration. And when we got in, we did a great job for North Carolina, brought it back. But it was a disaster. FEMA and it has not worked out well. It's extremely expensive. And again, when you have a tornado or a hurricane or you have a problem of any kind of in a state, that's what you have governors for. They're supposed to fix those problems. And it's much more local and they'll develop a system, and I think it'll be a great system. And also when it comes to forest fires. So for years I've been meeting with heads of other countries and they are forest countries. They call themselves Forest Austria and others. And they say, we're a forest nation. We're, we live in a forest and they don't have forest fires. And in one case, he said, you know, our trees are much more flammable than California. But we don't have forest fires because we cleaned the floor. We sweep the floor of leaves, of dead debris, of trees that fall because after 18 months, the tree is like real, it's like tinder wood. And it goes up, it virtually exposed. Well, we don't take the trees out. California is a disaster. What they've done in California, they don't do anything. And if you did, you wouldn't, you almost would not have forest fires. And you could say you, in theory, you shouldn't have any forest fires. And we spend billions and billions of dollars a year because people don't clean the forests. And we're going to clean the forests. We're going to start cleaning them. We're going to get rid of dead wood. The environmentalists say, oh, no, let it regenerate. It doesn't regenerate. It just sits there and it usually catches fire. And we're going to have a whole new system, and it's called forest management. And if you look at some of these countries in Europe and other places that literally live in forests and very flammable forests and they don't have problems, and they, they call me, they don't even know how it's possible that we can have the fires that we have, and the people behind me know that very well, and we're going to start working on that system and we're going to save a lot of trees. We're also going to cut down trees and replant new trees, and that whole industry is going to be growing because we don't need the help of anybody. We have just about more or as much, but more than almost anybody else in terms of lumber and wood. So we're going to be doing some great work having to do with forest fires. It's going to start effective, really. It started a few months ago, and it's forest management. And Doug, I think you're really the head of that interiors. I guess you're the largest landlord, perhaps anywhere in the world. I understand that's a very good. That's a nice position. You may want to just give a few words on the cleaning of the floor of the forests.

Well, happy to do that. And of course, as President Trump had said, yes, between Interior and Forest Service, it was just part of USDA 700 million acres of service surface area. Much of that is in forest land. That is a tremendous resource. It's part of America's balance sheet. When we let it burn, then we actually have to spend money coming through FEMA and other places. So we spend taxpayer dollars cleaning up a mess that could have been prevented under President Trump. When we get back into the timber business, which up to 30 years ago, we were one of the great timber producers in the world. Communities thrived in these rural communities. We had lumber mills, we had. We had manufacturing, we had furniture makers in this country. All of that went away when we stopped harvesting our own timber. And today we import about as much timber as we used to harvest ourselves. If we can get back in the timber business, that can help on the balance of trade, reduce imports from foreign countries and have American jobs. But to make that all happen again, under President Trump's leadership, we have to get back in the timber business and get back in the game. And when we do that, we have to make sure that we're doing prevention, not just fighting fires after they all get out of control. And so, again, working with OMB and others to make sure that we've got the budget for doing the prevention work and the forest management up front reduces the expense and the cost on the back end of fighting these massive fires. But again, coordinating across all of our five different major firefighting groups today, it's like having five generals in the field. Field, they may have different strategies and different tactics. They even have different pay levels. Brooke and I are working to make sure that regardless of which service and branch that you're in, that you're going to have a similar pay, that we're going to have everybody equipped with the right technology to protect them when they're out in the field. Just basic stuff that they don't have today. That we were giving our military 20 years ago in terms of then using technology to be able to identify fires when first start. I mean, with infrared satellite drones. I mean, there's technology where we can pick out a fire when it just barely begins and it costs us nothing to put it out versus when it scales up and becomes these massive fires that endanger communities, lives and our firefighters. So President Trump, of course, has got a common sense strategy. He's empowering all of the leadership that's standing up here today for us to go get this job done. It's going to get America back in the timber business. We're going to put out fires when they're small and as opposed to when we can't control them when they're large. And we're going to have revenue coming into the federal government from those timber sales, as opposed to those timber leases to the private companies, as opposed to revenue going out through FEMA after the fact when we're cleaning up a mess. So the whole thing makes complete sense. And Brooke and I and Christy and Russ, we're all excited to go out and implement the President's vision.

And we have some of the best timber anywhere in the world. We don't use it. We freed it up. Lee Zeldin's done an incredible job in that regard from environmental restrictions that are ridiculous and a lot of it has been freed up. The rest of it is being freed up. Some areas will protect, continue to protect, but we're going to be freeing up most of it. And again, we have some of the best in the world. And when I hear you say that we lost more in fires than we produce is so crazy because we shouldn't lose very much at all. I mean, I could say we shouldn't lose any if it was perfect, but it should not be ever like what we've seen. We're sending billions of dollars to California all the time. Because obviously in California they are not doing a good job in any way, shape or form, any other thing either. So with that, I'm heading to Fort Bragg right now. I think helicopters landing as we speak. But if you want, we'll take a few questions.

Mr. President, invoke the Insurrection act to.

Deal with the situation in California.

If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see. But I can tell you last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible. We have, as you've seen, it was on most of your networks, people with big heavy hammers pounding the concrete and pounds pounding curbs, pounding it breaking up all and handing these big chunks of concrete to people. And they were taking that concrete going up in bridges and dropping it into the roof of a car. They were throwing it at our police. They were throwing it at our soldiers that are there. And we got it stopped and we have them in custody right now. Look, if we didn't get involved right now, Los Angeles would be burning just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost. Los Angeles right now would be on fire, and we have it in great shape and not playing around. Will you determine whether or not there is an insurrection? Take a look at what's happening. I mean, I could tell you there were certain areas of that of Los Angeles. You could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible. But these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They get money. And when you take a look at what they do, where they show up and everyone say, what's he doing? He's pounding the curbs. This one guy's pounding the curb, breaking the curb and handing big pieces of granite. In some cases, it's granite, granite and concrete to other people. And they're running out with it. And then we watch the other people and they try and throw it into the face of the soldiers, throw it into the face of the police. And they hurt some people very badly. They go up on bridges, they drop it down on the cars. As the cars are moving. They're not breaking the curb because they're doing a demolition service. They're breaking it to hand out to people as a weapon. That's a bad. It's bad stuff. I've never seen that before.

Mr. President, how soon do you want to see FEMA eliminated and what's your message to the governors about how much more an expense is going to fall to states?

Well, it's not going to be so much the states. We're going to give out less money. We're going to give it out directly. It'll be from the president's office. We'll have somebody here, could be Homeland Security. But we're going to give it out through a method where it's given out. As an example, I just gave out $71 million to a certain state. They were looking to do about 120. They were very happy with the 71 million. We did a little cutting and they were very happy with it. So we're going to do it much differently. We think after this, Christie, I'd say after the hurricane season, we'll.

Yes, sir. You set up A FEMA council. Over the next couple of months, we'll be working on reforms and what FEMA will look like in the future as a different agency, as under the Department of Homeland Security to the president's vision. And it will empower governors to go out and respond to emergency situations. And that what the president does best is to make sure that the taxpayers are only fulfilling the need to which is appropriate and that people are responsible to respond to their own people closest to home.

So if a certain state, as an example, gets hit by a hurricane or tornado, that's what a governor, you know, a governor should be able to handle it. And frankly, if they can handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn't be governor. And Mr. President, when is the last.

Time you spoke with Governor Newsom?

A day ago. Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job. He's doing a bad job, causing a lot of death and a lot of. A lot of potential death. If we didn't send out the National Guard and last night we gave him a little additional help, you would have. Los Angeles would be burning right now. Los Angeles would be not a lot different than what you saw take place in California and Los Angeles just a little while ago. And, you know, you got to remember, we have the Olympics coming and we don't want people looking at Los Angeles like it was. Like it would have been. It would have been bad. Last night they had total control. If we didn't have the military in there, the National Guard. And then we also sent in some Marines. We had some bad people. We have people, they look in your face and they spit right in your face. They're animals. And these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They're agitators. They're paid. Do you think somebody walks up to a curb and starts hammering pieces out, has all the equipment necessary and starts handing it out to people to use as a weapon? These are paid insurrectionists or agitators or troublemakers. You can call it whatever you want. And we ended it. And we have in custody some very bad people. Some very bad people. Mr. President, did you see the guy throwing the rocks at the police cars as they went by and crushing their windows and endangering our police? We're not going to let that happen yet.

Pardon me, Mr. President. On those Marines, Governor Newsom has described them as political pawns. I'm curious for your reaction to that and what you see as the Marines role and what are their rules of engagement.

All I want is safety. I just want safe area we have, Los Angeles, was under siege until we got there. The police were unable to handle it. You could speak to the chief. He said it on television three nights ago. He said, this is more than we can handle. They said that. And the LA police, I know a lot of the police in L. A, they're good, they're great people, but they're given instructions not to do this, not to do that. But in this case, they were trying their best. They were not able to handle it. It was out of control when we got there. And you have to remember, I've been here before, and I went right by every rule, and I waited for governors to say, send in the National Guard. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do it, and they just wouldn't do it. It kept going on and on, got worse and worse. And in Minneapolis, that city was burning down. Seven days. And I said, I don't care. The governor, who's a governor that just happened to be running for vice president, a total. You talk about an incompetent governor. He's an incompetent person that he was picked. Well, I was actually very happy he was picked for other reasons. But this guy wouldn't call the National Guard. And we ultimately just sent in the National Guard. We stopped it, but that was after seven days. And I said to myself, if that stuff happens again, we've got to make faster decisions because they don't want to do it. The radical left, it's usually radical left and it's usually governors that are Democrat. And they don't want to call them in, they don't want to save lives, they don't want to save property, they don't want to call them in. I don't know what it is. We sent them in not early, we sent them in late, as far as I'm concerned. But big problems, as you know, three nights ago, big problems were ensuing. If we didn't send in the National Guard quickly, right now, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground.

The Marines is, a lot of people think, an escalatory step, though. These are guys who fight wars. Are you at all concerned that things could get out of hand with Marines?

When I see people throwing concrete into cars, when I see people, the kind of people that I saw on your network doing danger to the police and to the military and to the National Guard, no, it's okay. You know, you start running out of people when you have 2,000 people. From a National Guard standpoint, we have a very big military, but the National Guard they needed a little extra help, and we sent them a little. And we did a great job. Last night we had. Well, you got a lot of cars go up in smoke and flame and you had a lot of bad scenes, but it was pretty minor by comparison. This morning it's very calm. We'll see what happens later. But they know if they go there, they're not going to get anywhere. Because we have the National Guard, though we backed it up with a number of Marines. Yeah.

Mr. President, do you agree with Governor Abbott soon signing legislation to mandate the Ten Commandments in school classrooms?

Having to do with what?

Governor Abbott is soon going to sign legislation to mandate displays of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms. Do you support him?

I have to take a look at it. I'm going to have to look at it. Well, National Guard be in California indefinitely. How. How long will they be there? Until you think? Until there's no danger. It's easy. Look, it's common sense. You ask me that question when there's no danger, they'll leave. You would have had a horrible situation had I not sent them in. Horrible. You'd be reporting on a lot of death and a lot of destruction. That's not going to take place. I think if you look every night, it got less and less. They were met with very strong force. The bad people, the bad sick people that do what they do. But these are paid people. In many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases. And they really are their agitators. I was wondering if you had any response to Mexican President Sheinbaum who condemned the violence there. Have you been in touch with her at all? Said what? I was wondering if you had any.

Response to what Mexican President Claudine Sham said in her.

What she say she condemned the violence in la. Oh, I do, too. Have you been in touch with her at all? Well, you think I don't condemn it. I condemn the violence in la, ladies and gentlemen. But I also stopped the violence in la and by doing what I did, I stopped the violence in L. A. That would have been. I think maybe I'd ask Christie to speak to that. That would have been an unbelievable tragedy. We would be talking. I don't know that would even be here right now. It would have been so bad. I'd probably maybe be out there. I don't know. But, Christy, could you speak to that?

Absolutely. So in 2020, I was a governor of a neighboring state to Tim Walls and watched him let his city burn. And the president and I have talked about this in the past. And he was not going to let that happen to another city and to another community where a bad governor made a bad decision. So Claudia Sheinbaum came out and encouraged more protests in la and I conducted condemn her for that. She should not be encouraging violent protests that are going on if people are allowed to peacefully protest. But the violence that we're seeing is not acceptable and it's not going to happen in America. This President is standing up for the average American who wants to walk their child to school every day, safely run their small business and provide for their families. That's the action that he's taken. He has every authority under the Constitution to send these national guard under Title 10 into these communities and make sure that operations go smoothly, that law enforcement officers are protected, that they can continue to do their work without fear of being injured or killed or disrespected, and that they can go home to their families at night. So I'm incredibly proud of the President for activating the National Guard and for sending in these Marines because these Marines are specifically trained to meet the need that we have on the ground in LA right now. And, and Governor Newsom has done a disservice to the status of California for many years. The people there should never elect him into a leadership position ever again.

The Governor's a nice guy, but he's grossly incompetent when it comes to his railroad that he's building where it's like 30 times over budget. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Now it doesn't even go to San Francisco and la. It's way short of it. After years of work and overruns like nobody's are, those contractors are some of the wealthiest people in the world. I guarantee you that. Because that money goes to those contractors. They just, they just did a number on the wallet of the people of California. That train, you should look at that train. That is the greatest. I've never seen cost overruns. I've seen cost overruns and great incompetence over my life. I've never seen anything like that.

Mr. President, these protests obviously started in reaction to these large scale ICE operations in Los Angeles. Should people expect expect to see similar operations in the rest of the country and with similar protests?

Yeah, as you know, we're moving murders out of our country that were put here by Biden or the auto pen. The auto pen really did. I mean, the people, whether it's Lisa Monaco or whoever operated the auto pen, these are criminals. People are criminals that allowed these criminals into our country. And I don't think that Biden knew what the hell he was doing. I don't think he even knew about it. But when they opened up our borders for the whole world to come in. Yeah, we're going to get them out. We're getting them out. We're starting to get acknowledgement from the courts that, you know, is a system. They come in without courts and they go out. They want trials and everything else. I think that's starting to work out now. Judges are starting to see what a terrible situation. And as many of those people that you saw on television last night are criminals that were allowed into our country by Biden and they want to stay, and we don't want them. And they come from jails and they come from mental institutions and they come from all over the world, not just South America, and we're not going to let them stay. And this is the first perhaps of many or perhaps, you know, if we didn't attack this one very strongly, you'd have them all over the country. But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they're going to be met with equal or greater force. Then we met right here. We did a great job. The people, you, Christy and Tom Holman and all of the people, Pete Hegseth, all of the people involved did an amazing job. We stopped a disaster, and it looks like a planned disaster, not just. This didn't just happen. They had weapons, they had tools. They had everything you needed. I mean, they were throwing iced water in bottles, in glass bottles at officers and at soldiers. These are. You could not use the word insurrection, but you could also use the word. These are very dangerous people. They're bad people. They were met with heavy force and they folded. And they may be there a little bit tonight. They be there a little bit, but it seems to be getting less and less because they're going there and they're met with a very heavy force. And if they weren't, you would have. That city right now would be on fire. It would be burning down the rest of it. What's left over because the other fire was started because they wouldn't allow water into L. A. They wouldn't allow water into California because they had it all shifted out to the Pacific Ocean. And I turned it around and I told them to do it in my first term, and they didn't do it. We had Covid and they didn't do it, and I told him to do it. We did it in the second. Now we have billions of gallons of water flowing down. But Newsom should have done this. He's an incompetent man, an incompetent governor. Okay, any other questions?

Mr. President, do you have any message to adversaries as the army kicks off 250 year birthday celebration?

I just think it's amazing. We're going to have a fantastic June 14th parade, Flag Day. It's going to be an amazing day. We have tanks, we have planned planes, we have all sorts of things. And I think it's going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change. You know, recently, as you know, with World War II, the victory of World War II, I called up France and they were celebrating the victory, but we helped them a lot, as you know. I don't have to get into that, but I called up other countries. They were all celebrating the victory. We're the only country that didn't celebrate the victory and we're the one that won the war. Okay. If it wasn't for us, that war, you would be speaking German right now. Okay, we won the war. And you might be speaking Japanese, too. I mean, you might be speaking a combination of both. We won the war and we're the only country that didn't celebrate it. And we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday. We're going to have a lot of. And if there's any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. By the way, for those people that want to protest, they're going to be met with very big force. And I haven't even heard about a protest. But you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force. Thank you very much, everybody.