Trump visits disaster zones in California

Trump said he would sign an order that could scrap the federal disaster agency, stepping up his effort to exert presidential power over the levers of government and to decide which states get money from Washington.

The Republican billionaire also threatened to withhold funding for Democratic-led California -- a long-term target of his ire -- to deal with devastating wildfires if it does not follow his orders.

But faced with the destruction left by terrifying fires that ravaged California, Trump was emollient, pledging the "federal government (is) standing behind you. 100 percent."

"I don't think you can realize how rough it is, how devastating it is, until you see it," he said after flying over the damaged areas.

"I mean, I saw a lot of bad things on television, but the extent of it, the size of it... it is devastation. It's incredible. It's really an incineration."

Trump's comments came after he threatened to withhold assistance if California does not change laws which he says allow undocumented migrants to vote -- and linked that to a false claim that the state could solve its drought by simply opening a valve.

"In California I have a condition," he said. "I want two things, I want voter ID for the people of California... and I want to see the water be released and come down."

In Los Angeles a briefing with politicians and firefighters that began with empathy quickly derailed as Trump began claiming California had an "unlimited" supply of water.

He then embarked on an extended complaint about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

"FEMA is incompetently run, and it costs about three times more than it should cost," he said.

Speaking in North Carolina earlier, where floods caused by Hurricane Helene last year killed more than 100 people in the state, he said that FEMA had "really let us down."

Trump said he would sign an executive order to overhaul or even get rid of FEMA.

"We're going to recommend that FEMA go away," he said.

Deportation flights

Trump's tour came as his administration also kept the focus on migration, one of the key issues that fueled the 78-year-old's extraordinary political comeback.

The White House trumpeted the arrest of 593 undocumented migrants on Friday, after 538 arrests on Thursday.

It said it had deported "hundreds" of migrants on military aircraft -- a departure from the normal use of civilian planes.

By comparison, under Trump's predecessor Joe Biden there were a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 -- a 10-year record -- and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day.

Two US military flights carrying migrants arrived in Guatemala early Friday, a US defense official said. The Central American country's migration institute said a charter flight had also arrived, with a total of 265 people on board the three planes.

And the White House said Friday that four flights had arrived in Mexico a day earlier, despite multiple US media reports that authorities there had turned at least one plane back.

"We're getting the bad, hard criminals out," Trump said when asked about the flights. "As bad as anybody you've seen."

Trump repeatedly accused Biden of failing to crack down on an "invasion" of migrants illegally crossing the southern border with Mexico.

And his turbocharged bid to reshape America in the first days of his administration saw him move to undo abortion access at home and abroad on Friday.

He signed another executive order Friday revoking Biden-era protections for abortion access put in place after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right for the procedure, as well as US abortion funding overseas.

Trump barely snatched one final victory from the jaws of defeat late Friday as his nominee for defense secretary, former Fox News co-host Pete Hegseth, was narrowly confirmed by the US Senate.

After the vote stalled at a tie, Vice President J.D. Vance had to intervene to save Trump's pick for Pentagon chief, only the second time in history a vice president has had to do for a cabinet nominee.