Ron DeSantis ‘ready to help’ California as Hurricane Hilary bears down

DeSantis laid out priorities at start of Session. Now Floridians share theirs. Image via Colin Hackley.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been unsparing in his criticisms of California, but he offered help as a rare hurricane heads the state’s way.

“Hurricane Hilary is approaching Southern California and is projected to make landfall as a tropical storm. In Florida, we know how challenging storms can be and have significant experience responding in their wake — we stand ready to help the people of California in any way we can,” DeSantis, who is currently in New Hampshire for his presidential campaign, posted to X Saturday.

We’ve reached out to the Governor’s Office to see if the Governor or staffers have reached out to the Golden State to preemptively offer resources or manpower. DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are still working out the terms for a debate in the fall, but it appears the storm may bring a truce.

DeSantis’ comments offer a contrast to posturing on the presidential trail against California, its laws, and its people.

During a campaign trip to Iowa last week, the Governor criticized a California law protecting pregnant pigs, a measure similar to one enshrined in Florida’s own Constitution.

The Governor, while at a Never Back Down bus tour stop in Atlantic, said his presidential administration would not “let California regulate how farmers in Iowa conduct their business on things like, you know, these pork producers have to follow California law to do this stuff.”

“It doesn’t even make any sense,” DeSantis said.

Earlier this year, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a California law called Proposition 12, which mandates more room for breeding pigs. The Court sided with the state against the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, industry groups that contended California law would impose unreasonable burdens on pig farmers.

The California law holds “no person shall knowingly engage in a commercial sale within the state of whole pork meat for human food if the whole pork meat is the product of a breeding pig, or the product of the immediate offspring of a breeding pig, that was confined at any time during the production cycle for said product in an enclosure that fails to comply with all of the standards set forth in Chapter 10, Article 3, regarding Breeding Pigs.”

The storm will affect Los Angeles, one of a few cities DeSantis has called a “disaster zone.”

“I mean, we can’t be successful as a country if every urban core in our country is a disaster zone,” DeSantis said. “Look at San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC, New York City. They’ve all declined significantly and the number one reason is because of lack of law and order.”

DeSantis has also derided San Francisco for residents who relieve themselves on city streets.

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t affect people’s lives. I was just in San Francisco. I saw — in 20 minutes on the ground — people defecating on the sidewalk. I saw people using fentanyl. I saw people smoking crack right there in the open, right there on the street. It was a civilization in decay,” the Governor said at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in June.