LOS ANGELES — Hours after President Donald Trump said the U.S. military had entered California and “turned on the water,” the state’s Department of Water Resources refuted the assertion.

“The military did not enter California,” the department wrote on X early Tuesday morning. “The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days.”

What You Need To Know

  • Hours after President Donald Trump said the U.S. military had entered California and “turned on the water,” the state’s Department of Water Resources refuted the assertion

  • “The military did not enter California,” the department wrote on X early Tuesday morning

  • The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days, the agency said

  • Asked about Trump's claim, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday “the Army Corps of Engineers has been on the ground in California to respond to the devastation from these wildfires"

Following reports that firefighters in the Pacific Palisades area north of Los Angeles encountered dry hydrants as they battled a wildfire that has claimed more than 6,300 structures and killed at least 11 people, Trump has frequently blamed the series of blazes in the region on California Gov Gavin Newsom. 

One day after the fire broke out earlier this month, Trump said the state’s policies contributed to the devastation by diverting water away from Los Angeles to protect an endangered fish. Trump has frequently said California has a spigot of water it can turn on to send water from the northern part of the state south toward the LA area.

Local officials say the city has enough water, but its system is not set up to fight wildfires as large or as intense as the ones that have been burning in and around LA since Jan. 7.

“The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday night. “The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!”

During her first news briefing as White House press secretary Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt avoided directly answering a question about Trump’s social media post that the military had turned on the water in California, saying only that “the Army Corps of Engineers has been on the ground in California to respond to the devastation from these wildfires.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is part of the U.S. Army and includes both civilian and military personnel whose primary task is planning, building and maintaining U.S. infrastructure. 

Leavitt said “water has been turned back on California” after the president visited the Pacific Palisades on Friday and “applied tremendous pressure on state and local officials including LA Mayor Karen Bass to turn on the water and to direct that water to places in the south and the middle of the state that have been incredibly dry, which has led to the rapid expansion of these fires.”

The governor’s office said Monday that the Trump administration has been spreading misinformation about the state’s water management. It cited data from the Association of California Water Agencies that said the state’s water supply did not hinder firefighting efforts and that reservoirs in California are at or above average storage levels for January.

“The transfer of water from Northern California to Southern California is not related to water availability to fight the fires in the Los Angeles area,” Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center Director Letitia Grenier said in a statement. “Currently, reservoirs in the Los Angeles area are mostly full.”