Right-wing media are echoing a recent executive order from President Donald Trump pinning the blame for Los Angeles’ delayed recovery from last year’s wildfires on the state and local government, specifically construction permitting holdups. But the order, which the White House says will speed up permitting processes, fails to address key factors, like unpaid insurance claims and insufficient funding. The coverage omits how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s mismanagement is hindering disaster response and recovery.

Experts are skeptical about whether federal agencies even have the authority to implement the executive order, and survivors say a lack of access to money to fund construction is more of a barrier to rebuilding than permitting. Meanwhile, DHS has reportedly created a “$17 billion bottleneck” that is impeding federal disaster response, and the administration denied Los Angeles $34 billion in disaster relief. 

• Trump’s order directs the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration to find ways to “preempt State or local permitting processes, and other similar pre-approval requirements, that each agency has found to have unduly impeded the timely use of Federal emergency-relief funds.” The White House wrote that it would implement a system where builders would “self-certify to a Federal designee from each agency that they have complied with all applicable substantive State and local health and safety standards with respect to the structure proposed to be rebuilt using Federal emergency-relief funds.” Notably, LA County already launched a self-certification program back in May 2025 “to fast-track reconstruction in fire-scarred neighborhoods.” [WhiteHouse.gov, 1/27/26; Pasadena Now, 5/8/25]
   
• Trump might not have the legal power to implement the order in the first place. “Legal experts and state officials have questioned whether federal agencies have the statutory authority to override local building codes or land-use laws,” reported FOX 11. Daniel Farber, the faculty director of the Center for Law Energy & Environment at University of California, Berkeley, told Politico “This is completely unprecedented in terms of the history of federal disaster aid,” adding, “They’re gonna have a hard time making this stand up in court.” The move may violate the 10th Amendment and legal precedents which have been used to “argue against the federal government wresting away control of regulations, such as land-use rules, that are traditionally held by state and local government.” [FOX 11, 1/27/26; Politico, 1/27/26]
   
• Some survivors and city officials say more money is what’s needed most. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, a Republican, responded to Trump’s executive order, saying that while she welcomes “any effort to responsibly accelerate rebuilding,” the county “already has a local self-certification process to help expedite rebuilding.” She continued, “The most urgent need in the Altadena region is financially driven. Families lack the capital to kick start or continue their rebuilding plans.” Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, said that “the number one barrier to Eaton and Palisades fire survivors right now is money.” [LACounty.gov, 1/27/26; The Associated Press, 1/28/26]
   
• A McKinsey report recommending how LA could accelerate recovery is largely inconsistent with Trump’s new executive order, which focuses solely on permitting. The report recommended that local governments optimize their own systems based on previous successes, identifying “gaps between insurance payouts and rebuilding costs” as “significant challenges.” The firm also pointed out that “Los Angeles has built momentum in permitting,” has already adopted multiple processes to accelerate rebuilding, and in striving to “ensure long-term community health and resilience, speed must be balanced with safety, compliance, and sustainability.” [McKinsey & Company, 1/22/26]

• Right-wing media insisted that climate change had nothing to do with the wildfires, despite the clear connection, and instead blamed forest mismanagement and water policies. In reality, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water policies have no relationship to the LA fires or low water pressure in fire hydrants, debunking another popular narrative on the right, while the conditions driving the fires and their clear connections to climate change were dismissed. [PBS News, 8/9/21; Media Matters,  1/10/25, 1/10/25, 1/15/25]
   
• As The New York Times correctly observed, “a megadrought” driven by climate change “has sapped water supplies, ravaged farms and ranches, and fueled wildfires across the American Southwest for going on 25 years.” The latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found with “high confidence” that anthropogenic “warming over land drives an increase in … the severity of droughts.” [The New York Times 7/16/25; United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 8/9/21] 
   

• The California Post, the Murdoch-owned sister tabloid to the New York Post, featured the executive order in an “exclusive” interview with Trump on January 27, the day after the paper launched. “I want to see if we can take over the city and state and just give the people their permits they want to build,” the president said. The article lauded Trump for allowing “the federal government to maneuver around the needless obstacles imposed by Democratic leaders” and blamed “thumb-twiddling California Democrats” for delays in rebuilding. [California Post, 1/27/26; New York Post, 1/5/26]
   
• In an interview with Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said that “only a fraction” of small business loans have been dispersed to victims in California, and blamed “city permitting backlogs,” calling them “a really supreme outrage.” During the interview, Loeffler said that the executive order is “not a performative half measure, which is what seems to be going on locally. This is full-on permitting and rebuilding right now.” [Salem News Channel, The Alex Marlow Show, 2/4/26]
   
• Fox News host Sean Hannity complained that a recent profile of Gavin Newsom in Vogue “left out a number of important topics” like the LA wildfires and “why people can’t get a building permit.” He added that Newsom is a “full-time Tweety bird podcaster” but a “never-time governor” who is “MIA always.” [Fox News, Hannity, 2/3/26]
   
• Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo interviewed Loeffler, who said, “President Trump is saving Californians from failed local leadership — state leadership, Gavin Newsom — who have failed to help the residents rebuild.” Bartiromo said the executive order addresses “permitting delays which have stalled local rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles for over a year.” Loeffler credited Trump for having “sped disaster recovery, and then we sped disaster relief in the form of small business loans, 12,000 of them, $3.2 billion dollars. What we found out is they have delayed permitting, the stalling, the bureaucracy that has crowded out that ability to rebuild. So President Trump is again leading for California to rebuild.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 1/30/26]
   
• Fox host Jesse Watters said “Trump is doing what Newsom couldn’t” by signing the executive order targeted at LA because “Democrats let it burn and would not rebuild.” Watters said, “Trump is doing what Newsom couldn’t — grabbing a shovel. [President] 47 signed an executive order for the feds to fast-track rebuilding LA after Democrats let it burn and would not rebuild. If Newsom really wants the Oval, he might want to fireproof his excuses.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/28/26]
   
• Hannity said that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin would be in charge of implementing the order “as part of the administration's commitment to facilitating a swift recovery” and claimed that Newsom “can't get people their building permits and help them and assist them and have insurance companies pay homeowners.” Hannity called the 2025 wildfires “predictable” and blamed “empty hydrants, empty reservoirs.” [Fox News, 
  Hannity, 1/28/26]
   
• Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked real estate broker Josh Altman if Trump could “fix the problem in Los Angeles” — Altman replied “absolutely” because last year Trump “accomplished in six weeks what the state and local level says were going to take six months to the year.” [Fox Business,Varney & Co., 1/28/26]
   
• Newsmax anchors Bob Brooks and Katrina Szish spoke with former California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, who blamed Newsom for slow wildfire recovery because his administration spent money on “homelessness,” which had “zero support,” and “unemployment fraud” instead. Maldonado said Newsom’s recovery efforts are “useless” and Trump is the one “trying to move this forward and help the people of California.” [Newsmax, American Agenda, 1/28/26]
   
• In the same interview, former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told Newsmax viewers that California wants to take “that $34 billion prize coming from the feds, they want to feed it into their bureaucratic mess, and only a trickle of it, if ever, will get down to the survivors.” He added that Trump is “trying to bypass that whole mess.” [Newsmax, American Agenda, 1/28/26]

• In the order, Trump requested an audit of a $3 billion grant program which, according to FEMA's website, “provides funding to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to develop hazard mitigation plans and rebuild in ways that reduce or mitigate future disaster losses in their communities.” The order directs FEMA head Karen Evans, the third acting administrator during Trump’s second term, to “make administrative determinations” with the possibility of “imposing future grant conditions” and even making communities return money they were previously awarded. No new funds for this Hazard Mitigation Grant Program have been awarded to any state since March 2025, according to PBS. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, accessed 2/4/26; WhiteHouse.gov, 1/27/26; PBS News, 1/28/26; CNN, 11/24/25] 
   
• According to The New York Times, Noem’s requirement for her office to personally review and approve all FEMA expenditures exceeding $100,000 has created “a $17 billion bottleneck.” This includes millions in delayed aid to one Iowa town where “huge floods damaged or destroyed 500 homes” in June 2024. The city administrator says its “annual budget is typically less than $10 million, so the city has had to borrow $19 million to make ends meet, at a cost of $1,800 in daily interest that is not eligible for FEMA reimbursement.” [The New York Times, 1/27/25]
   
• This same review process reportedly delayed response to the catastrophic Texas flooding in July 2025. According to CNN: “Texas did request aerial imagery from FEMA to aid search and rescue operations, a source told CNN, but that was delayed as it awaited Noem’s approval for the necessary contract. FEMA staff have also been answering phones at a disaster call center, where, according to one agency official, callers have faced longer wait times as the agency awaited Noem’s approval for a contract to bring in additional support staff.” [CNN, 7/10/25]
   
• In 2025, FEMA cut approximately 20% of its staff, including “some of its most experienced and knowledgeable leaders” — this year the reductions could reportedly impact 50% of staff. On January 2, CNN reported: “The cuts target FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) teams, which form the backbone of the agency’s operations during and after a disaster, and could be just the beginning of a larger effort by Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security to shrink FEMA. … CORE employees make up about 40% of FEMA’s workforce — over 8,000 people — working full-time hours on temporary contracts. Several thousand of these workers will see their contracts end in 2026.” Additionally CNN reported that FEMA leaders were told that the goal is to cut staff by over 50% by the next fiscal year, which begins in October. [AccuWeather, 4/24/25; CNN, 1/2/26, 1/5/26]
   
• Under Noem, the Trump administration has hurt national disaster preparedness by installing inexperienced leaders. Trump’s initial acting FEMA administrator was fired in May 2025 after testifying that the agency shouldn’t be abolished. He was replaced by David Richardson, who had no emergency management experience, according to CNBC. In early June, Reuters reported that Richardson had told staff he didn’t know that the United States had a hurricane season. Staff said they were unsure whether Richardson was joking, and he resigned in November. [The New York Times, 6/12/25; CBS News, 6/13/25; Politico, 5/8/25, 11/17/25; CNBC, 6/2/25]
   
• Program and staff reductions along with public statements from Noem suggesting that FEMA would be eliminated have reportedly left the agency ill-prepared for extreme weather. In May 2025 — just weeks before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season and peak extreme weather — CNN obtained an internal memo warning that FEMA was “not ready” for hurricane season. According to the internal assessment, preparations for hurricane season have been “derailed” and issues abounded at the agency, “including a general uncertainty around its mission, lack of coordination with states and other federal agencies, low morale and new red tape that will likely slow responses.” [CNN, 5/15/25]
   
• Further crippling the agency, the Department of Homeland Security has involuntarily reassigned dozens of FEMA staff to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation efforts. A letter to Congress arguing that FEMA’s leadership has hindered its ability to effectively manage emergencies signed by about 180 agency employees “points to the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which states that transfers are prohibited ‘except for details or assignments that do not reduce the capability of the Agency to perform its missions.’ The reassignments to help ICE, employees say, do just that.” [The Washington Post, 8/6/25, 8/25/25]
   
• Rollbacks on flood risk standards and canceled preparedness programs have put communities at greater risk. On his first day in office, Trump revoked federal flood protections which require federally funded infrastructure projects to comply with design requirements that harden them against flood risks. “The goal of the standards were not only to protect human lives and homes, but also to save taxpayer money, preventing a never-ending cycle of destroy-rebuild-repeat,” Truthout reported. In April 2025, Trump canceled a FEMA program started during his first term in 2018 that allocated billions of dollars in disaster preparedness grants to “help local, state and tribal governments protect residents from future disasters such as floods, wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes,” NPR explained. Even some Republicans have asked Trump to reconsider the cuts because, as Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said, the program providing the grants “protects families and saves taxpayer dollars in the long-run. That’s efficient in my book.” [Truthout, 7/12/25; NPR, 5/1/25; Cassidy.Senate.gov, 4/10/25]