President Donald Trump has signed an executive order paving the way for a federal takeover of California’s wildfire recovery efforts, the White House announced on Jan. 27.

Coming one year after the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon wildfires in Los Angeles County, the order tasks the leaders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration with developing measures to supersede state and local authority and help expedite the rebuilding of homes and businesses that have yet to be replaced.

The order also directs them to audit the state to learn whether it spent all of the nearly $3 billion it received in Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds, as well as how it was spent.

“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 told the California Post when he signed the order on Jan. 23.

The Palisades fire raged for almost the entire month of January 2025, killing 12 people and destroying more than 6,800 structures as it burned across more than 23,400 acres.

The Eaton Canyon fire burned more than 14,000 acres, destroying approximately 9,400 structures and damaging hundreds more. It took the lives of at least 19 people and injured several firefighters.

Tens of thousands of people were displaced.

The White House released a fact sheet with the executive order, claiming that only about 2,500 of those destroyed homes and businesses have received permits to rebuild and that fewer than 10 have been rebuilt.

The White House blamed state and local permitting processes and environmental reviews, which it said cause significant delays, drive up costs, and prolong economic hardships.

Trump also called out multiple alleged failures on the part of state and local governments in not just the recovery efforts after the wildfires, but also the mitigation practices beforehand and the immediate response to the fires.

He specifically called out Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, saying that the fires’ disastrous results were “one of the greatest failures of elected political leadership in American history.”

Bass rebuked Trump’s order, calling it another political stunt and arguing that he had no authority over the permitting process.

In a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, she also denounced his claims of failed progress, saying that more than 450 homes in the Pacific Palisades have begun reconstruction and that more than 70 percent of the home permit clearances are no longer required, cutting the approval time for single-family home projects in half from what it was before the fires.

“The President should handle his business, because we are handling ours,” she said.

She urged the president to speed up Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements and sign another executive order that demands that insurance companies pay survivors for their losses. She urged banks to extend mortgage forbearance by three years and to “create a special fund to provide no-interest loans to fire survivors.”