When disaster strikes, people come together to help. They open their wallets, their hearts, and their minds to help those in need. But what happens when someone takes advantage of that goodwill? That’s exactly what appears to be happening with California Governor Gavin Newsom. He’s turning what should be a moment of support for wildfire victims into a political power grab.
It's actually far worse than just using ActBlue. He's DIRECTLY benefiting from this tragedy that he helped cause.
"Gavin Newsom Is Using Fire Fundraiser to Raise Funds for HIMSELF" pic.twitter.com/5OfsgA9aot
— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) January 12, 2025
Fundraising Through ActBlue: A Controversial Move
Recently, Gavin Newsom and Senator Elizabeth Warren used fundraising posts to solicit donations for fire relief efforts. But there’s a catch—they routed donations through ActBlue, a widely known Democratic fundraising platform.
Here’s why this is an issue. ActBlue charges a 3.95% processing fee. That’s money taken right off the top of every donation, funneling it toward the platform that ultimately benefits Democratic campaigns. And while that fee might not sound massive, it adds up quickly when thousands—or even millions—are donated.
People were quick to point out alternative routes for donating. You can donate directly to organizations like the United Way or local firefighter foundations. These organizations don’t skim processing fees that end up in political ecosystems.
But that’s where things took a darker turn.
Redirecting Donations to Political Campaigns
Newsom’s approach goes even further than just using ActBlue. His campaign has set up a site called “Californians Fire Facts”. If you visit this site, you’re redirected to an entirely different domain: GavinNewsom.com.
At first glance, this page might seem like it’s genuinely focused on wildfire relief. There’s information about the fires, resources, and, of course, a big “Donate” button. But here’s where it gets shocking. Clicking that button doesn’t actually send your money to wildfire victims—it sends it to Gavin Newsom’s “Campaign for Democracy.” This is a political action committee (PAC) aimed at boosting his political influence.
The funds that remain after ActBlue’s fees and whatever fees Newsom’s PAC takes are sent to the charities. But that’s just on the first donation. After that, it gets ugly.
Collecting Donor Data: The Real Endgame
If siphoning donations wasn’t bad enough, the true goldmine for these campaigns lies elsewhere: your personal data. When you donate through Newsom’s link, you’re required to provide your email and phone number. This information becomes a valuable asset, feeding future political campaigns.
Why does this matter? Because once they have your data, campaigns can continually reach out to you through text messages and emails. Imagine donating $50 to help fire victims and then months later receiving messages like, “Help Gavin Newsom continue his fight for California.” These pleas subtly encourage more donations, but this time, none of the money goes to wildfire relief—it goes directly into political coffers.
For campaigns, data is currency. Building lists of donors—especially ones compelled by emotional causes like fire relief—is a surefire way to secure long-term financial support. Many donors might not even realize they aren’t sending money to where they intended. It’s a bait-and-switch, plain and simple.
Ethical Questions and Accountability
The ethical implications here are staggering. Wildfires wreak havoc on families, homes, and livelihoods. Using that devastation as a platform for political gain crosses a line. Newsom’s campaign isn’t just raising funds—it’s leveraging tragedy for political advantage.
What’s even more troubling is the precedent this sets. If political leaders can blur the lines between charitable giving and campaign fundraising, trust in these systems erodes. People begin to question whether their donations are truly helping, or if they’re just padding the pockets of politicians.
Donate the Right Way
If you want to help wildfire victims, skip the middleman. Here are better options:
- Donate directly to local organizations. The United Way or the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation are strong choices.
- Support the local fire relief funds directly. Find out which nonprofits are actively helping on the ground.
- Research before clicking ‘Donate.’ Look closely at where your money is going and what organization is behind the ask.
Your dollars should provide relief, not political ammunition.
Final Thoughts
Using a crisis to boost a political profile is beyond reprehensible. Whether it’s Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, or anyone else, this kind of behavior should disgust everyone, regardless of political belief. Tragedy isn’t a fundraising opportunity—it’s a call to act selflessly.
California deserves leaders who prioritize public service over personal gain. This isn’t that. It’s wrong, and people need to call it out. When you’re asked to give, take an extra moment to ensure you’re truly helping those who need it. Political games have no place in disaster relief.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.