President Joe Biden to visit Sacramento amid California wildfires, Gavin Newsom recall

President Joe Biden will visit Sacramento on Monday to survey wildfire damage and then travel to Long Beach to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom against the recall election, the White House and Newsom’s campaign said Thursday.

Biden will start his trip to the West on Monday in Boise, where he will visit the National Interagency Fire Center, according to the White House.

After his Long Beach stop, he will travel to Denver for an event to promote his national “Build Back Better” agenda.

Biden plans to highlight that climate change is making wildfire seasons last all year and emphasize that severe weather events like fires are hurting Americans economically. He plans to advocate for his proposals to build infrastructure that is resilient in the face of climate change.

Although no major wildfires have burned in Sacramento this year, the state runs its emergency firefighting operations out of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento County. Newsom’s office said Newsom will accompany the president during his visit to Sacramento.

California’s 2021 wildfire season is already breaking records. Nearly 2 million acres have already burned and several major fires have forced massive evacuations. Firefighters are still battling the Caldor Fire, which forced South Lake Tahoe residents to flee their homes last week. That fire has burned more than 200,000 acres in El Dorado, Alpine and Amador counties. The Dixie Fire in Butte, Tehama, Plumas, Shasta and Lassen counties has burned more than 900,000 acres. Both fires are still burning, but were more than half contained as of Thursday morning.

Biden previously visited Louisiana, New York, and New Jersey to survey damage from Ida, which hit Louisiana as a hurricane on August 29.

Biden’s Long Beach visit will mark the last big campaign event for Newsom’s “Stop the Republican Recall” campaign.

Vice President Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar also visited California to campaign for Newsom in recent days. Former President Barack Obama recorded an anti-recall ad for Newsom, which the campaign began airing Wednesday.

Election Day is Tuesday, the final day for Californians to cast ballots. More than 6.7 million Californians have already voted, according to a ballot tracker from Political Data Inc, with millions more expected to vote ahead of the deadline.

This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 10:00 AM with the headline "President Joe Biden to visit Sacramento amid California wildfires, Gavin Newsom recall."