Mathews: California to Uncle Sam — shut up and do your job

USA Today

30-01-2025

Joe Mathews
Zócalo Public Square
Shut up, Uncle Sam. Or put up.
Yes, I'm talking to you, my federal government. I don't care if you don't like my tone.
Because, while falsely blaming California and its politicians for devastating fires, you never acknowledge your own culpability:
You are the arsonist, and not just politically.
Because half of California is yours.
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In fact, more than 47% of the land in this state belongs to the federal government. Just 3% is managed by the state.
The flames that leveled Pacific Palisades and Malibu are believed to have started in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (italics mine), managed by the National Park Service. (That's you!).
The blaze that turned Altadena to ash burned through the Angeles National Forest, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the United States (you again!) Department of Agriculture.
Let's be clear: Our firelands are actually your firelands. And you've managed your California land so poorly for so long — suppressing fire instead of managing it, letting fuels accumulate, providing insufficient personnel to handle our national parks, forests, wilderness, and recreation areas — that you've helped turn California into a tinderbox.
When President Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Republicans blame California's land management for our fires, you aren't just lying. You're trying to shift blame.
Now, if you had any honor — which you don't, but let's just say you did for argument's sake — you wouldn't just provide us with all the disaster aid we need. You'd announce major new investments in federal land management in California and elsewhere. After all, you own a quarter of all the land in the United States.
Instead, you are shamelessly working to make your land management even worse.
Project 2025, the governing blueprint for the new administration, outlines deep cuts to the already-diminished number of federal workers, which would exacerbate understaffing and poor management on federal lands. The cuts are now starting, with federal hiring and funding freezes leaving positions open and stopping wildlands projects.
You propose to do all this, while your administration, run by climate deniers, rolls back green investment, and encourages burning more fossil fuels.
Your current regime better hope hell isn't hotter than our mega-fires.
Even saying that, I want to make clear that I'm not like you. I don't want to shift blame. I want to solve problems.
Our state and its leaders must press you — for disaster aid and massive investments in public lands. If you won't make those investments, then we must insist that you surrender ownership of all federal lands in California to state and local governments and institutions, immediately.
That surrender should come with money to cover all the deferred maintenance from the last century. I'm thinking $500 billion, but let's negotiate.
If you refuse these terms, California's elected leaders should use every trick in the Congressional toolbox to force you to fork over. That should include attaching this transfer of public lands to every must-pass piece of Congressional legislation, including the debt limit.
California's state and local governments can apply pressure by y ceasing the collection of federal withholding tax dollars from their employees. If you're going to stiff us on funding, we shouldn't collect taxes for you.
If you won't manage or turn over your land, you and California could be headed toward divorce. A new YouGov poll commissioned by the think tank Independent California Institute found 61% support among Californians for peaceful secession from the United States.
Or maybe you can trade us to Denmark in exchange for Greenland, which you actually seem to care about. I don't know why the Danes would trust you to manage one of the world's wildest places, but I guess that would be Greenland's problem.
Like I said, Uncle Sam, the choice is yours. Either do your job, or turn over your land so we can.
But, either way, shut up.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.