Donald Trump announced that he has signed an executive order to “cut through bureaucratic red tape” and speed up reconstruction of tens of thousands of homes destroyed by the January 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires.

The US president’s order, which he announced on Tuesday but signed on Friday, seeks to allow homeowners to rebuild without contending with “unnecessary, duplicative or obstructive” permitting requirements, the White House said in a statement.

The order directs the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to find a way to issue regulations that would preempt state and local rules for obtaining permits and allow builders to “self-certify” that they have complied with “substantive health, safety and building standards”.

The order also directs federal agencies to expedite waivers, permits and approvals to work around any environmental, historic preservation or natural resource laws that might stand in the way of rebuilding.

But it’s not immediately clear what power the federal government could wield over local and state permitting.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, scoffed at the idea that the federal government could issue local rebuilding permits and urged Trump to instead focus on approving the state’s $33.9bn disaster aid request. Newsom has traveled to Washington DC to advocate for the money, but the administration has not yet approved it.

“An executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful,” Newsom wrote on social media. He added: “Please actually help us. We are begging you.”

The Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, echoed those pleas, saying in a statement that instead of trying to meddle in the permitting process, the Trump administration should speed up Fema reimbursements.

Bass called Trump’s move a “political stunt” and said he should issue an executive order “to demand the insurance industry pay people for their losses so that survivors can afford to rebuild, push the banking industry to extend mortgage forbearance by three years, tacking them on to the end of a 30-year mortgage, and bring the banks together to create a special fund to provide no-interest loans to fire survivors”.

The wildfires, which started on 7 January 2025, killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 residential properties in the Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and Pasadena communities. The largest of the blazes, the Palisades and Eaton fires, burned for more than three weeks and cleanup efforts took about seven months.

One year after the disaster, fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt, the Associated Press found. As of December, construction is under way for at least 511 homes in the Eaton fire footprint and at least 370 in the Palisades.

About 2,600 permits to rebuild had been issued across Los Angeles county by 5 January, according to county and city records published by the state, approximately 41% of the applications received. For the majority of burned properties, however, applications are not yet on file.

Bass said rebuilding plans in Pacific Palisades are being approved in half the time compared with single-family home projects citywide before the wildfires, “with more than 70% of home permit clearances no longer required”.

To many survivors, though, progress has felt slow. “It is predominantly the wealthy who are rebuilding,” Dr Thomas Chandler, the managing director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said.

Those with resources, especially developers who come equipped with knowledge and ready-made networks, were quicker to start.

Permitting assistance is “always welcome”, said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivor’s Network, a coalition of more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades fire survivors, but it’s not the primary concern for those trying to rebuild.

“The No 1 barrier to Eaton and Palisades fire survivors right now is money,” said Chen, as survivors struggle to secure payouts from insurance companies and face staggering gaps between the money they have to rebuild and actual construction costs.

Nearly one-third of survivors cited construction costs and insurance payouts as primary obstacles to rebuilding in a December survey by the Department of Angels, a non-profit that advocates for LA fire survivors, while 21% mentioned permitting delays and barriers.

Trump’s executive order also directs the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and Fema’s acting administrator, Karen Evans, to audit California’s use of Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funding, a typical add-on in major disasters that enables states to build back with greater resilience. The audit must be completed within 60 days, after which Noem and Evans are instructed to determine whether future conditions should be put on the funding or if even possible “recoupment or recovery actions” should take place.

Trump has not approved a single request for HMGP funding from states since February, part of a wider effort to reduce federal funding for climate mitigation.