Trump Announced A Hostile Takeover Of La’s Wildfire Rebuild. Collaboration Ensued.

President Donald Trump’s push to take control of rebuilding wildfire-scarred Los Angeles is over.

Despite the president’s recent vow that his administration would wrest authority from local governments to decide on the permits that underpin the effort to rebuild thousands of homes destroyed in last year’s Palisades and Eaton fires, federal officials will not advance more regulations to do so, a spokesperson for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told POLITICO.

The decision to stand down leaves just a minor rule allowing some property owners to forgo local reviews before they begin building as the only formal action to preempt local authority the administration has taken in response to Trump’s January executive order.

The retreat forestalls would have been an unprecedented incursion by a president into municipal affairs. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials had blasted the idea as illegal and unnecessary.

“This is typical behavior from the Trump administration who are more interested in getting headlines than actually helping with LA recovery or moving viable policies forward,” said Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos of the president’s decision to halt the permitting takeover.

Nonetheless, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who Trump appointed to oversee the administration’s response to the January 2025 blazes shortly after issuing his executive order on permitting, defended the president’s actions as a catalyst to recovery. The president’s order has laid the groundwork for new and ongoing collaboration between the Republican-led federal government and Democratic-run city and county of Los Angeles, Zeldin said.

Since the announcement, EPA officials said federal employees have embedded with local agencies, reviewing outstanding applications and making thousands of phone calls to wildfire survivors and builders to assist with permitting questions, Zeldin said.

The novelty of such cooperation, which has been all but non-existent in an administration that prizes bare-knuckle, partisan politics, was highlighted by EPA officials’ written response to POLITICO’s questions about the president’s order. In it, they not only provided a statement from Zeldin, but also included comments from Bass and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger that were supportive of federal intervention.

“Tremendous progress has been made since President Trump signed his executive order,” Zeldin said.

The Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 16,000 homes, businesses and other properties across swaths of coastal and inland Los Angeles. Only a handful have been rebuilt a year on, amid frustration over a lack of accountability for failures that worsened the disaster, problems with insurance reimbursements and high construction costs and stalled federal recovery funding.

The money dispute, which remains unresolved, was heightened by the constant lobbing of insults between Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, and Trump. The president’s Jan. 27 order continued the bellicose tone, saying that the disaster “marked one of the greatest failures of elected political leadership in American history” that “continues today with the abject failure to rebuild.”

The order called on federal agencies to develop regulations within 30 days to override local permitting rules that it contended were slowing down rebuilding.

“I want to see if we can take over the city and state and just give the people their permits they want to build,” Trump said when he signed the order.

The regulations would apply only to property owners who received federal emergency relief funds, though the effects would be widespread. Last year, the U.S. Small Business Administration approved 12,600 disaster loans for Los Angeles, an agency spokesperson said.

Legal experts questioned the move as a dramatic and, depending on how far-reaching the rules were, potentially unconstitutional expansion of federal power. Regulating land-use decisions, including issuing permits for home construction, is one of the core responsibilities of local government.

Days after Trump issued the order, the SBA advanced a proposal that would allow property owners who received federal loans and whose permit applications had been pending for 60 days to self-certify that they’re in compliance with health and safety codes and start building.

This rule, however, didn’t cut out local governments. Instead, it relied on them to continue to handle all inspections during construction and provide the final authorization before a home could be legally occupied. It also mirrored self-certification procedures that the city and county of Los Angeles already had implemented.

A spokesperson for Los Angeles County Public Works, which handles permitting for unincorporated areas affected by the fires, said she was unaware of any property owner who had taken advantage of the SBA process. A Bass spokesperson deferred questions to the SBA.

Maggie Clemmons, an SBA spokesperson, said the regulation was necessary to overcome permitting delays, but did not respond to a question about how many people were using it.

Multiple builders working in areas devastated by the wildfires told POLITICO that none of their clients had asked them to use the SBA process. Overall, they said, the cost of construction and struggles with insurance payouts were the primary barriers to rebuilding.

“The executive order was useless in my opinion,” said Kambiz Kamdar, who is building seven projects in Pacific Palisades and runs a website tracking reconstruction. “Permitting is not the issue and the solution they tried makes no sense.”

Daniel Gall, an EPA spokesperson, confirmed that the SBA rule was the only one affecting permitting that the administration would issue in response to the president’s order. He said that the order did not mandate federal agencies to write new permitting requirements, only that they “shall consider” doing so.

Gall pointed to the EPA’s work assisting the city and county review permits and credited the federal action with driving recent increases in permit approvals.

“We have not needed to create additional new regulations to very quickly help LA residents, and the results have already been substantial,” Gall said.

Zeldin’s appointment has changed the tone among local officials. He has a long relationship with Bass dating from when they served together in Congress.

The pair have met twice in the past month and talk multiple times a week, Gall said.

“Since he came here in late January, our teams have worked together to improve the permitting process and have collaborated on other ways to accelerate rebuilding,” Bass said of Zeldin.

The mayor, a Democrat who also has clashed with Trump over immigration enforcement, thanked the president repeatedly for his help on wildfire recovery in a Facebook post two weeks ago. Last week, she spoke one-on-one over the phone with Trump for the first time since the fires.

“I will do whatever it takes to keep the Palisades recovery moving forward,” the mayor said.

Barger, a Republican who represents the Altadena community affected by the Eaton fire, called Zeldin’s leadership “a gamechanger in our recovery efforts.”

“Strong partnerships produce real results, and that collaboration is what will move this recovery forward,” Barger said.

The union between the federal government and local officials has not gone unnoticed by wildfire survivors who’ve struggled while Trump, Newsom and others have pointed fingers at each other.

Jessica Rogers, executive director of the Palisades Long-Term Recovery Group, said Zeldin has been soliciting feedback from community groups about roadblocks to rebuilding beyond permitting and that since his arrival the city has been more forthcoming in providing updates and information.

“The energy has completely shifted,” Rogers said. “People are feeling good, positive. They’re excited even.”

A major outstanding issue remains federal funding. Neither the president nor Congress have advanced Newsom’s request for $33.9-billion in long-term aid. Zeldin has criticized the amount as inflated and unrealistic, especially given the governor’s criticisms of the president.

Rogers said that she’s hopeful that local and federal officials are now putting partisanship aside.

“I fully believe our money is coming,” she said.