Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is firing back after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that he said would cut through the “bureaucratic red tape” victims of the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires face when rebuilding homes.
Trump said the order would speed up reconstruction one year after devastating wildfires destroyed more than 38,000 acres and 16,000 structures, according to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
The executive order authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to override state and local procedural permitting requirements.
In a statement provided to Annenberg Media, Bass called the order a “meaningless political stunt,” and said the executive action was an attempt to divert attention away from the administration’s “continued attempts to terrorize U.S. cities.”
Trump’s order proposes that builders can self-certify to a federal agency designee that they have complied with state and local standards to avoid “inconsistent permitting requirements, duplicative permitting reviews, procedural bottlenecks and administrative delays.” The Trump administration’s “fact sheet” stated that the Palisades’ current permit processing takes an average of 93 days.
According to L.A. County Recovers, however, the permitting process under Regional Planning takes two weeks for initial review. Other departments, such as the Public Works Building and Safety Division and the L.A. County Fire Department, review initial submittals within 10 business days and recheck them within five business days.
Bass also said construction has started on more than 450 homes in the Pacific Palisades, and rebuilding plans are now approved at half the time compared to single-family home permits before the wildfires, but the White House emphasized that one year after the fires, fewer than 10 homes have been rebuilt.
“President Trump is taking decisive action to overcome California and Los Angeles’s permitting failures that have left numerous families, businesses, and houses of worship displaced and unable to rebuild a year after the wildfires,” the White House fact sheet stated.
Criticizing the executive order, California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, “With 1,625+ home permits issued, hundreds of homes under construction, and permitting timelines at least two times faster than before the fires, an executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful.”
Adam Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, explained that the executive order’s language is likely to invite legal action.
Trump’s executive order takes specific statutory authority from Congress. It gives FEMA and SBA the power to override state and local government permitting processes, which federal agencies don’t have the legal authority to do, according to Zimmerman.
Zimmerman said the order promises help that the executive branch can’t deliver on.
“That’s what I hate about this. You look at the situation where someone is coming in to promise that help is coming when they don’t really have the ability to offer that help,” Zimmerman said. “And so that’s also really kind of heartbreaking, too. It’s an unnecessary thing to do.”
Bass also said the president “has no authority over the local permitting process.”
“But where he could actually be helpful is by providing the critical FEMA funding we have been asking for, by speeding up FEMA reimbursements, and by regulating the industries that he alone can impact,” Bass said, referring to the insurance industry.
Zimmerman called for less politicization in the recovery process.
“Turning this into a political debate about whether or not the local permitting process is working fast enough is just making victims into pawns in a bigger political game, and it’s really unfair,” Zimmerman said.