In his first trip since returning to the White House, President Trump traveled today to two areas of the country recently devastated by disasters. He first stopped in the parts of North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, and then headed for Los Angeles, where catastrophic wildfires continue to burn.

In North Carolina, Trump met with families struggling with an extremely slow and costly recovery from last year’s flooding. There, the president said he was considering shutting down the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “FEMA’s not good,” Trump said.

He also said that states should respond first to disasters, which is already how the system works. FEMA steps in only if a state can’t handle a disaster on its own, or at the request of a governor. Officials in both parties have suggested improving the agency, but few have called to shutter it. It has long been supported by members of Congress, who control its funding.

In Los Angeles, where Trump was set to land around the time this newsletter arrived in your inbox, the president was planning to visit neighborhoods destroyed by one of the most damaging fires in California’s history.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to withhold aid from the state unless it changed environmental policies that he claimed had prevented enough water from going to Southern California. But experts have said that the problems with fighting the fires had nothing to do with water transfers from the north.

The latest in California: Much-needed rain is expected to help firefighting efforts this weekend.