President Trump’s executive order on rebuilding permits is a game-changer.
Thousands of residents who have been struggling to rebuild homes they lost in the Palisades and Eaton fires can take heart: help is on the way.
The Trump administration is taking over the permitting process for homeowners who have received federal funds, cutting through the red tape of state and local bureaucracy, which has dragged the process along for far too long.
There is good reason to trust the feds.
Though LA and California promised to speed up the process, the only parts of the rebuilding effort that have moved quickly have been those controlled by the Trump administration.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was supposed to take 90 days to remove hazardous waste. Trump gave them a new deadline of 30 days, and they finished in 28.
The Army Corps of Engineers originally said they would take 18 months to clear all the debris. Trump said that wasn’t good enough. They finished in just eight.
The Small Business Administration came in with loans for those who had lost everything. They provided a lifeline for fire survivors who were struggling to make ends meet.
The Trump administration got it done.
In fact, the federal government did so much, in the early days, that many fire survivors hoped it would lead the rebuilding effort.
Trump stepped back and gave Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass a chance.
But Newsom decided waste his effort on a podcast, and a scorched-earth legal and social media campaign against the president.
And Bass focused on fighting immigration busts — putting criminals with no right to be here ahead of law-abiding, taxpaying residents who had lost everything they had.
Yes, LA is moving faster than Paradise, California — a rural town in the mountains destroyed nearly a decade ago.
Is that the standard?
President Trump has had enough.
As he told The California Post, he sees Newsom as “incompetent.”
He warns that there is a hidden agenda: to build low-income housing in the fire zones.
Whether that is true or not, it is a fear shared by many residents: that their rebuilding permits are being slow-walked so that they will give up and sell their lots.
President Trump spoke up for them last year, when the mayor had kept Pacific Palisades residents away from the rubble of their destroyed homes for weeks.
After he rebuked Bass in public, she reopened the area to residents so that they could sift through their destroyed homes, and make peace with their losses.
Late last year, the mayor touted what she said was the first fully rebuilt home in Pacific Palisades. In fact, it was a show house, put up by a developer, without utilities.
Residents are tired of propaganda and false promises.
The president has shown that he cares, and that he is willing to take responsibility for rebuilding.
This is a major milestone — not just for fire survivors, but all Californians, who are typically ignored by the politicians we elect.
We deserve better from our leaders. And, finally, someone is listening.
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