Newsom and California are frequently the target of Trump’s ire. Some of his most memorable criticisms of the state have been over how it manages its wildlands in the face of wildfire risk. In his first term, Trump suggested California should be “raking” their forests to clean up dead brush and trees.

DOGE officials visited the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s water pumps in Northern California and said they’d worked with the agency to increase water deliveries south, as Trump has been pushing California to do.

Trump is taking aim at water supplies for an endangered fish, but scientists say he’s missing the point. It’s one of California’s thorniest problems. The nation’s most populous state is full of sprawling cities, vast farmland, rich ecosystems — and it must decide how to divide scarce water resources among them.