Episode 6: facts and sources

Checkpoint California, with Ash Seiter — captain and public information officer with the Lone Pine Fire Department in Inyo County, and vice chair of the California National Party.

This page goes through the checkable claims made in the episode — the ones that were right as well as the ones that weren’t — with what the sources say and links to them. Times are where each point comes up in the published episode. Most of what Ash describes is his own experience as a firefighter, which we report as his account rather than checking it.

Our policy: if something said on the show is plainly false, we cut it before the episode goes out. If it’s off — a wrong number on a true point, a detail misremembered — we leave it in and correct it here and in the show notes. Corrections to this page: [email protected].

Corrections at a glance

• 2:50 — COVID-19 has killed about 1.2 million Americans, not 1.5 million.
• 4:31, 14:49 — About 65% of US firefighters are volunteers; roughly 80% is the share of fire departments that are all- or mostly-volunteer.
• 24:59 — The Grand Canyon Lodge was a Union Pacific project, not a New Deal one.
• 31:18 — The Californians who fought Australia’s 2019–20 fires were US Forest Service crews, not CAL FIRE.
• 40:12 — The Palisades Fire rekindling from a January 1 fire is the federal account, not a fringe theory — and that fire is alleged to have been set deliberately, not by fireworks.
• 60:35 — Recent reporting puts LA’s share of private land in Inyo County at about 90%; 97% is an older figure for Inyo and Mono together.

The claims, in order

1:03 — “Forty-four percent of Californians” would vote for independence

Right. Sean cites a poll from July 2025. YouGov surveyed 500 California adults for the Independent California Institute between June 11 and 23, 2025, and 44% said they would vote to declare California’s intention to “peacefully and legally withdraw from the United States, through negotiation with the federal government”; 54% were opposed. The margin of error was ±5.7 points. The institute called it a record high. It was fielded in June and reported in July. The same poll found 71% thought California would be better off negotiating a “special autonomous status” within the United States.

Sources: Independent California Institute · Newsweek

2:50 — “One point five million Americans died” of COVID

Off — correction. The CDC’s provisional death-certificate counts put cumulative US COVID-19 deaths at about 1.17 million through the end of 2025. Sean’s wider point — that the federal response was poor and the toll enormous — doesn’t depend on the exact figure.

Sources: CDC / NCHS provisional counts

4:31 and 14:49 — “Eighty percent of the country is volunteer fire”

Partly right — correction. It depends what you count. The National Fire Protection Association’s figures: of about 1.04 million US firefighters, 676,900 — 65% — are volunteers. But 82% of fire departments are all-volunteer or mostly volunteer (64% all-volunteer). Because volunteer departments are concentrated in rural and lower-density areas, they protect about 30% of the US population. Ash’s first statement (4:31) fits the departments figure; his second (14:49, “eighty percent of the people in that system… are volunteers”) fits it less well — the people figure is about two-thirds.

His underlying point — that much of rural America, including his own district, depends on volunteers paid little or nothing — is well supported; the National Volunteer Fire Council has documented falling volunteer numbers alongside rising call volumes for years.

Sources: National Volunteer Fire Council fact sheet (NFPA data) · US Fire Administration registry summary

6:46 and 17:57 — Mutual aid through Cal OES

Right. Cal OES is the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which runs the state’s mutual-aid system: it moves local engines and crews — including small rural departments like Lone Pine’s — to large incidents elsewhere in the state, and reimburses them. That’s how volunteer and part-paid departments end up on fires hundreds of miles from home, and how, as Ash describes, some of them find funding they couldn’t raise locally. Ash’s accounts of the Vista Fire (19:59), the Timber Fire and the Palisades Fire are his first-hand experience.

20:41 — “Forty-five to forty-eight percent” of California is federal land

Right. The Congressional Research Service’s September 2026 update puts federal land in California at about 45.4 million acres — roughly 45% of the state; earlier CRS editions gave figures closer to 47–48%, which is where the range comes from. Most of it is national forest, Bureau of Land Management land and national parks.

Sources: Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data · Ballotpedia summary

24:13 — The Forest Service “got rid of a lot of firefighters”

Right, in substance. The administration said firefighters were exempt from the 2025 federal job cuts, but the cuts reached them anyway. DOGE-driven reductions removed roughly 3,400 Forest Service workers; as many as 1,400 employees holding “red cards” — wildland-fire qualifications, often carried by staff whose main job is something else — left through buyouts and early retirement; and a freeze on seasonal hiring hit the pool of seasonal crews. The Forest Service later asked people who’d left to come back for the fire season, and waived the cap on seasonal firefighters’ hours to stretch the staff it had. Reporting also documented the low morale Ash says he saw.

Sources: Government Executive · Government Executive (seasonal hours) · Firehouse · Colorado Newsline

24:46 — The North Rim and the Grand Canyon Lodge

Mostly right; one correction. The lightning-caused Dragon Bravo Fire, reported on July 4, 2025, burned about 145,500 acres and destroyed 113 structures on the North Rim, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge. The bronze statue of Brighty the burro survived — though badly damaged, with two legs and an ear missing — and was moved to the South Rim for assessment.

The correction: Sean calls the lodge “an edifice to the great New Deal era”. It was built in 1927–28 by the Utah Parks Company, a Union Pacific railroad subsidiary, to a design by Gilbert Stanley Underwood; it burned in 1932 and was rebuilt, scaled back, in 1936–37. Railroad tourism, then, rather than the New Deal.

This one also bears out what Ash says about federal fire management (21:58, 24:13): the Dragon Bravo Fire was first managed under a “confine and contain” strategy — allowed to burn within a defined area — and switched to full suppression only a week later, as it grew in heat, low humidity and wind. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later told a Senate subcommittee that “in retrospect, an approach of suppression versus containment might have saved hundreds of millions of dollars of historic properties.”

Sources: National Park Service, lodge history · KJZZ on Brighty · 12News on Burgum’s testimony · NPR

31:07 — Firefighters from Mexico

Right. Seventy-two firefighters from Mexico arrived in Los Angeles on January 11, 2025, to help with the Palisades and Eaton fires; Governor Newsom announced their arrival, and they cut containment line in the Tarzana area. Sean’s recollection was of cooperation with Baja California specifically; the crews we could document came from Mexico’s federal agencies.

Sources: KTLA · Fox LA

31:18 — CAL FIRE in Australia?

Correction (Charles asked, and wasn’t sure). Californians did help fight Australia’s 2019–20 bushfires — but they were federal crews. The deployment ran through the National Interagency Fire Center and drew on the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service; at one point 159 people, 87 of them Forest Service — the largest deployment of US firefighters abroad. The “California firefighters” in the news were a Forest Service crew from the Angeles National Forest. We found no record of a CAL FIRE deployment. Ash’s broader point stands: wildfire agencies trade crews across borders, and Australia and New Zealand had sent firefighters to California in 2018.

Sources: NIFC, January 2020 · USDA · KQED

32:26 — The State Guard “cannot be federalized”

Right. The California State Guard is a state defence force under federal law, 32 U.S.C. § 109, which provides that such forces “may not be called, ordered, or drafted into the armed forces” — unlike the National Guard, which the President can federalize. It serves under the governor alone. (Individual members aren’t exempt from federal service as individuals; the force as a whole is.) It’s a volunteer force used for emergencies including wildfires, floods and earthquakes.

Sources: 32 U.S.C. § 109 (Cornell LII) · California State Guard

34:54 to 39:00 — Why the Palisades Fire couldn’t be stopped, and the hydrants

Right, and the official analysis agrees. Ash’s account — hurricane-force winds, embers “flowing down streets like rivers”, and hydrants that lost pressure rather than running out of water — matches what investigators found. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said demand ran at about four times normal for fifteen hours straight; by 3 a.m. the three million-gallon tanks serving the upper Palisades had run dry, and hydrants at higher elevations lost pressure. A state analysis concluded that even with more storage, the flow the system could deliver would have been overwhelmed.

One thing the episode didn’t mention: the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Palisades had been drained since early 2024 for repairs to its cover. Officials acknowledged its absence likely contributed to diminished pressure in the upper Palisades, and Governor Newsom ordered an independent investigation. Ash’s point about burned houses’ sprinkler and supply lines bleeding the system is his first-hand observation; we didn’t find it covered in the official reports.

Sources: CalEPA / state water supply analysis, Nov 2025 · Palisadian-Post · NBC News

40:12 — The Palisades Fire “rekindled” from a January 1 fire

Correction — and Ash was more right than he thought. He offered this as “getting into conspiracy theory… not the official record”, and said the earlier fire was started by a firework. In fact it is the official federal account. In October 2025 federal prosecutors charged Jonathan Rinderknecht, a former Pacific Palisades resident, with maliciously setting the Lachman Fire just after midnight on January 1, 2025. Firefighters held it to about eight acres, but investigators say it kept smouldering underground in the roots of the dense vegetation, and on January 7 the Santa Ana winds brought it back to the surface as the Palisades Fire. Prosecutors allege it was set deliberately; fireworks were an early theory, not the finding. (Rinderknecht has been charged, not convicted; we haven’t checked the case’s progress since early 2026.)

The holdover fire Ash describes from his own area (40:44) — the Horseshoe Fire, smouldering for weeks before winds drove it down a canyon — is his first-hand account.

Sources: US Attorney’s Office, Central District of California · CBS Los Angeles · ABC7

48:26 to 50:00 — Southern Inyo Hospital

Broadly right. The Southern Inyo Healthcare District runs the small hospital in Lone Pine — the only hospital within about 60 miles, and the nearest for hikers on Mt Whitney and visitors to Death Valley. In September 2025 it had eight days of cash on hand and more than $2 million in unpaid bills; local officials asked Governor Newsom for $3 million in emergency funding, and the district authorized a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing as a fallback. The state then awarded it $400,000 from its Distressed Hospital Small Grant Program (one of four hospitals chosen), and the county approved a $500,000 loan; the district rescinded the bankruptcy authorization and paid down about $1 million in arrears. That matches Ash’s account of the state and county stepping in, and of the sums involved being in the hundreds of thousands.

Two figures we couldn’t confirm: that the hospital “lost fifty percent of their funding” when Medicaid was cut — reporting at the time cited rising labour and supply costs and projected federal Medicaid cuts — and “almost eight million visitors a year” to the area (Death Valley alone gets more than a million).

Ash’s larger worry is well founded. A March 2026 analysis by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer-advocacy group, looks at the 2025 budget law, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cut $911 billion from federal Medicaid and CHIP spending over ten years. It counts a hospital as at risk if, on average from 2022 through 2024, it lost money and got at least 20% of its revenue from Medicaid, CHIP and other low-income government programs, using the hospitals’ own cost reports to Medicare. By that measure, 446 hospitals are at heightened risk of closing or cutting services. California has more than any other state: 83 of 269, or 31%. Both of Inyo County’s hospitals are on the list: Southern Inyo in Lone Pine and Northern Inyo in Bishop. In other words, both were already losing money and heavily dependent on Medicaid before the cuts begin. Southern Inyo is listed as a government-owned Critical Access Hospital, the Medicare designation for rural hospitals with no more than 25 beds and usually more than 35 miles from another hospital.

Sources: CalMatters · Inyo Register on the state grant · Inyo County board, loan approved and bankruptcy rescinded · Public Citizen, The Big Ugly Threat to Safety Net Hospitals · Public Citizen’s list of at-risk hospitals

52:57 — Inyo County “very purple”

Right. Joe Biden won Inyo County in 2020 by 14 votes, about 49% to 48%, after Donald Trump had taken it with 52% in 2016. Trump won it back in 2024 with just over 50% to Kamala Harris’s 47%. Ash’s broader point — that many “red” counties are closely divided — is borne out by Inyo.

Sources: ABC7 county map · Ballotpedia

60:34 — LA “owns ninety-seven percent of all private land”

Close — correction for precision. Sources differ by what they measure. The most recent, a 2024 investigation by AfroLA co-published by the Guardian, reports that the LA Department of Water and Power owns 90% of the privately available land in Inyo County, which takes in the Owens Valley, and 30% of all the land in neighbouring Mono County — 252,000 of Inyo’s 6.5 million acres, the federal government holding most of the rest. The 97% figure comes from older accounts of LA’s holdings — about 300,000 acres, “97 percent of all privately owned land in Inyo and Mono counties” together. “They own the entire Owens Valley” is shorthand: LA owns most of what’s private there, not most of the land.

The same investigation backs the rest of what Ash says about the relationship: the Owens Valley supplied about 73% of Los Angeles’s water in 2023, and LADWP leases much of its land back to residents and businesses, having tightened lease transfers since 2016 — a story of a city acting as landlord to a county, much as Ash and Sean describe.

Sources: Katie Licari, AfroLA / Guardian US, May 29, 2024 · UCLA Law Review

68:30 — Newsom “making deals with Finland”

Right. On September 23, 2026, during Climate Week NYC, Governor Newsom and Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, signed a memorandum of understanding between Finland and the State of California on commercial and economic cooperation — clean technology, aviation and defence innovation, health and biosciences, research, and forest bioeconomy. California is Finland’s seventh partner state in the US.

Sources: Office of the Governor · Finnish Government

What we didn’t check

Ash’s first-hand accounts — the fires he’s worked, how his district pays its volunteers, the food at federal fire camps, the drones he watched lay backfires — are his experience, reported as such. Opinions and predictions, from both hosts and the guest, aren’t fact-checked. The end-of-show banter about food recalls was banter.