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, an EPA spokesperson 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 what 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.
