CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

NBC News - California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s response to the California wildfires in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” recorded Saturday, saying, “Mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.”Newsom appeared to be referring to Trump’s posts on Truth Social blasting Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass since the fires broke out Tuesday.

In one post, the president-elect baselessly claimed Newsom had blocked a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California.“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote, using an insulting nickname for Newsom.

In that post, Trump added that Newsom “wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!)” and “he is the blame for this.”

“Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month,” Newsom told NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff. “I’m very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”...

On Friday, Newsom wrote a letter to Trump inviting him to come to his state and tour the destruction. “I invite you to come to California again — to meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” the governor wrote. Newsom told Soboroff on Saturday that he had not received a response to the letter.

He added that he’s worried the president-elect may make good on his threats to withhold disaster aid from the state after his inauguration. Newsom cited Trump’s past efforts to withhold federal disaster aid from states with leaders he was feuding with. “He’s done it in Utah. He’s done it in Michigan, did it in Puerto Rico. He did it to California back before I was even governor, in 2018,” Newsom said.

NY Times - The Los Angeles painter Alec Egan had spent two years preparing work for a solo exhibition that was scheduled to open in late January at Anat Ebgi gallery on Wilshire Boulevard. Now every one of those canvases is gone....Egan is among several Los Angeles artists who lost their studios, their artworks — and in some cases their homes — in this week’s fires. Now many are picking up the pieces of their lives and worrying about whether they’ll be able to make a living anytime soon.

Diana Thater, an artist celebrated for her nature-inspired film and light installations, and her husband, the conceptual artist T. Kelly Mason, stored their archive — including decades’ worth of raw video footage, master tapes, hard drives and paintings — in a temperature-controlled garage that burned to the ground along with their home in Altadena.“It’s hard to live to be 62 years old and lose your entire life in one night,” Thater said from a friend’s house in nearby Atwater Village, where she and Mason are sleeping on the floor with their three cats....

The multimedia artist Kathryn Andrews lost her Pacific Palisades home and her entire art collection, including works she had bought or acquired through trades with prominent artists like Rashid Johnson, Jim Shaw and Charles Long. “They serve as markers of this beautiful network of friendship that happens amongst artists,” Andrews said. “It’s just really sad to lose that. Insurance can’t replace that. 

The Guardian - 34,646 homes and businesses in Los Angeles are now without electricity, according to Poweroutage.us, an outage monitor that tracks blackouts across the US.