Independent Agency Rules — Week of Jan 26, 2026

This week, the President signed an executive order directing federal agencies to override state and local permitting rules for rebuilding after the Los Angeles wildfires. The order, Addressing State and Local Failures To Rebuild Los Angeles After Wildfire Disasters, instructs FEMA and the Small Business Administration to create new federal rules that would replace local building permits with a system where property owners certify their own compliance. It also tells these agencies to consider skipping the normal public comment process when writing these new rules.

This might matter because decisions about building permits and land use have traditionally been made by state and local governments, not the federal executive branch. If implemented, this order could affect the independence of federal disaster agencies like FEMA, directing them to act as instruments of political conflict with a state government rather than following their established statutory missions. It could also set a precedent for the President to override local governance in other policy areas by declaring local authorities to have "failed."

There are important alternative explanations to consider. Most likely, this may be a reasonable response to a genuine crisis: thousands of families remain displaced a year after the fires, and real bureaucratic delays in permitting could justify federal intervention. Emergency streamlining of regulations after natural disasters has happened before. Alternatively, the order may be more about political messaging — criticizing California's governance on the anniversary of the fires — than about fundamentally changing how agencies operate. Legal challenges would likely slow or block the most aggressive provisions.

Limitations: This analysis is based on AI review of publicly available documents and reflects a single executive order rather than a broad pattern. Whether the order will be implemented as written remains uncertain.