Hegseth redirects troops to fight fires after Newsom warned of Guard shortage
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has attacked the White House and Defense Department for weeks, claiming that the deployment of National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles is leaving the state short-staffed during wildfire season.
About 4,000 California National Guard troops and 800 active duty Marines were deployed to LA, where they have mostly been standing around.
Newsom formally asked to pull back Guard troops on June 8, calling the deployment “unlawful” and a “serious breach of state sovereignty," The New York Times reported at the time.
Now, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears to be somewhat siding with Newsom. The Associated Press reported on Monday that Hegseth was pulling back 200 of the 4,000 to put on fighting southern California fires.
The KernFireGraph posted on X that the Juniper fire, south of Los Angeles, had grown to 175 acres on Monday morning. According to KTLA5, officials revealed that by 1:50 p.m. local time, the fire had grown to approximately 560 acres. There are now evacuation orders and warnings of future evacuations.
The Juniper fire adds to the Mindy fire, which burned over 100 acres as of Sunday evening and prompted evacuation orders, KTLA reported.
USA Today reported that the Wolf fire burned 1,400 acres as of Monday morning, after starting on Sunday.
"The cause of the fire is under investigation, but hundreds of firefighters and four night-flying helicopters worked through the night to contain the blaze," the report said.
The small number of guard troops dispatched to help with the fire leaves 4,500 soldiers still on the ground in Los Angeles.
As Task and Purpose wrote Sunday, "eight of the guard’s 14 firefighting teams" are deployed to Los Angeles.