Politics and views in the United States.

President Donald Trump considers dismantling FEMA. Scott Bessent becomes the next Treasury Secretary, and the North Carolina Supreme Court ballot saga continues. 

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

Frankly, FEMA's not good.

I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and whether it's a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time.

After surveying natural disaster damage, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at FEMA.

The order doesn't break up the emergency agency and give that role to the states, as Trump says he wants to, but Republicans, including the president, have criticized FEMA, even repeating the conspiracy theory that money for Hurricanes Milton and Helene recovery was spent on migrants.

Trump is also repeating misinformation about California's water policies and joining those in Congress who want to tie fire relief to loosening environmental rules.

State water watchers say his new executive order would override state environmental protections by sending more water south from Northern California.

Bruce Resnick, with the nonprofit LA Waterkeeper, says that would mean taking advantage of the fires to benefit water-hungry corporate farms.

He says LA already gets plenty of water.

In LA County, we import about 700 million gallons of water a day, about the 1.2 billion gallons we use.

We flush it, we treat it again, and then we dump 450 to 500 million gallons of that back into the ocean.

A separate plan from local officials could help the LA area by aiding the county, the city and the water district to reclaim hundreds of millions of gallons more of used water per day.

The Senate confirmed Scott Besant as Treasury Secretary in a bipartisan 68-29 vote.

The first thing he'll have to deal with is raising the debt ceiling.

The Treasury Department began taking extraordinary measures on Jan. 21 and may stop paying into health, disability and retirement funds for various federal employees.

In the longer term, Besant says he wants to look into creating an external revenue service that collects tariff revenues.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina Supreme Court election saga continues.

The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, wants 60,000 overseas ballots thrown out.

He's arguing those voters did not present ID required for in-state voters when registering, even though that rule didn't apply to them.

The race is still uncertified, and Jennifer Rubin with the North Carolina League of Women Voters says trying to get rid of properly cast ballots in an attempt to overturn a loss erodes confidence in elections in the state and beyond.

These kinds of actions sow distrust in people's minds in the election process.

And it also should be a real alarm for North Carolina voters that something like this could happen.

Three recounts have all found Griffin lost, but only by about 700 votes.

Connecticut advocates want lawmakers to strengthen the state's TRUST Act, which limits how much local law enforcement can help with federal immigration actions.

The new White House is threatening any state or local officials who don't cooperate with planned deportations, and critics charge the TRUST Act would make Connecticut a sanctuary for immigrants who commit crimes.

Supporters say that distorts how the law actually works, and they worry the Lake and Riley Act, passed by Congress which mandates detention for illegal immigrants arrested on minor charges, could also impact the TRUST Act.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.