March 7, 2026 - SACRAMENTO – After President Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately release more than $500 million in stalled FEMA funding for Los Angeles recovery — and to redirect the remaining funds from Noem’s $220 million vanity ad campaign that even Donald Trump criticized.

While Noem was cosplaying on horseback in a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign tied to her political consultants, she failed to sign key recovery contracts — delaying FEMA funding including for Los Angeles fire recovery. Governor Newsom is demanding the slowdown stop and Noem’s ad dollars be sent to Los Angeles fire-affected communities and survivors. 

Stalled aid

In addition to the $33.9 billion in recovery funding held up by President Trump, DHS has stalled existing FEMA funding to help rebuild schools, repair roads, and mitigate against future disasters — standing in the way of immediate recovery for the Palisades and Altadena communities.

Under Kristi Noem’s failed leadership, DHS implemented a policy that required her personal sign-off on every DHS contract, grant, or disaster award over $100,000 dollars, including FEMA public assistance and hazard mitigation grants. This added a new layer on top of FEMA’s normal expert review and has created a long line of pending FEMA awards waiting only on her sign-off, including more than $500 million to help communities and survivors of the LA firestorm. 

With Kristi Noem now exiting after months of defending this policy, the stakes are immediate: her $100,000 rule has stalled billions in FEMA disaster aid that FEMA staff have already vetted, leaving LA fire survivors and communities across the country waiting for checks that should already be in local coffers.​

What this means for survivors

For families in canyon and foothill neighborhoods, the delay is visible every day. In places like the San Gabriel foothills and the hills above Pasadena and Altadena, communities still have damaged park facilities, fenced-off trailheads, and patched-up roadways that wash out in heavy rain because permanent work cannot move at full speed without the promised federal reimbursement. Schools still wait for dollars to rebuild facilities and classrooms that burned or were heavily damaged.​

The same policy is also helping stall another $94 million in hazard mitigation program awards for the LA region. And because of DHS’ failure, uncertainty is now so severe that some recipients are withdrawing projects rather than gamble their budgets on an open-ended delay.​​

Hazard mitigation is the money that keeps the next disaster from becoming another LA fires story: it pays to clear dangerous fuels above neighborhoods like those along the Angeles National Forest boundary, harden power lines and substations that run through high-risk corridors in the Valley and foothills, elevate critical equipment at hospitals and water plants that serve Eastside and San Fernando communities, and retrofit schools so kids across LA County are safer when the next fire, storm, or earthquake hits. 

With Noem’s departure and bipartisan concern mounting over the delays, the administration should end this $100,000 dollar bottleneck, rely on FEMA’s professional review, and move these dollars to LA fire survivors and hard-hit rural communities instead of keeping them in limbo under a policy that has clearly failed to deliver faster or better oversight.

Source: Office of the Governor