From Judge Ana Reyes’ opinion in Miot et al. v. Trump et al. (D.D.C.), a case challenging DHS’ suspension of the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program for Haitians in the U.S., on the grounds that DHS Secretary Noem “preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” [The court agreed with the challengers that they were likely to succeed on their claim, and granted their motion to stay the DHS’ action].

It’s pretty powerful stuff.

On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: “America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.” More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. See 8 U.S.C. § 1254a (TPS statute). It provides humanitarian relief to foreign nationals in the United States who come from disaster-stricken countries. It also brings in substantial revenue, with TPS holders generating $5.2 billion in taxes annually.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take. [From her posting on X:

“I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. . . . WE DON’T WANT THEM.  NOT ONE.”

After a fairly exhaustive review of the facts and the relevant law – 83 pages worth – Judge Reyes writes:

“There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).

Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.

By accompanying Order, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Renewed Motion for a Stay under 5 U.S.C. § 705.

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In September 2024, Jodi Kantor published a stunning set of leaks concerning Trump v. United States. At the time, I wrote that the Trump leaks were “far worse than the Dobbs leak.” Apparently, Chief Justice Roberts was also bothered. 

Two months later, according to Kantor’s latest report, Roberts required all Court employees (but apparently not the Justices) to sign non-disclosure agreements. Indeed, this mandate came almost halfway into the clerkship. It is customary to require employees to sign NDAs before they learn confidential information, but the Chief switched course midstream. Presumably, the things learned before signing that document were not covered by the agreement.

This piece is the latest in Kantor’s string of articles about inside Court deliberations. Her past installments came in December 2023 about Dobbs, June 2024 about Bruen, September 2024 about Trump immunity, December 2024 about SCOTUS ethics, June 2025 about Justice Barrett, and November 2025 about the liberal Justices. As the dates reveal, Kantor has continued to publish articles after the NDAs were signed, so they do not see to have been entirely effective–unless the people causing the leaks were not subject to the NDA. As Kantor said in a recent interview, she is watching them. Query whether the NDA prohibited the disclosure of the existence of the NDA? At least the Chief is trying something.

Let’s walk through what we learned.

First, Kantor alludes to her sourcing:

Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract, according to five people familiar with the shift.

Five people is a very precise number. It is not clear if these people were subject to the NDA, or were even employees at the Court. This could be five people who learned of the NDAs second-hand. Of course, by using intermediaries, the leakers limit potential liability under the NDA.

Second, we learn about the timing of the NDAs.

Roberts summoned “employees” to an all-hands meeting in the grand conference room. Perhaps standing up the portrait of Chief Justice Marshall, Roberts asked the gathered employees to sign an NDA. I suspects this included all of the clerks. Did Roberts give any notice they would have to sign? Did they have to sign on the spot? If they declined to sign, were they terminated? Could they consult counsel? So many questions.

In September 2024, The Times published an article describing how the chief justice pushed to grant President Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The article quoted from confidential memos by the chief justice and other members of the court who applauded his reasoning. Weeks later, the chief justice abruptly introduced the nondisclosure agreements, after the term had begun.

In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.

The 2024 election was held on November 5. Two weeks later would have been the week of November 18. The Court released orders on November 18 (no grants), and held a conference on November 22. If I had to guess, this gathering was held late Friday afternoon after the conference, right before the holiday. Did Roberts ask his colleague to vote on whether to require NDAs? Does the Rule of 5 apply here, or did the vote have to be unanimous? Or did Roberts simply tell his colleagues what was coming? What a nice way to begin Thanksgiving break.

This is the sort of practice that employment lawyers detest: forcing employees to sign onerous agreements without any time to consider it–especially right before a major holiday. During the Dobbs investigation, Joan Biskupic reported that clerks were ordered to turn over their phones. Apparently the conservative clerks gladly handed over their devices while some of the liberal clerks lawyered up. Did all of the clerks actually sign the NDA, five months into their employment? If they declined, would they be fired? Would the Chief even have the power to fire someone else’s law clerk?

Third, we do not learn much about the contents of the NDA:

The New York Times has not reviewed the new agreements. But people familiar with them said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information. Clerks and members of the court’s support staff signed them in 2024, and new arrivals have continued to do so, the people said.

Who drafted the NDA? Did the Court do it in-house, or did they retain outside counsel? The policy was prepared “abruptly” so I doubt there was much time to seek counsel. If it was drafted in-house, what experiences does the Chief’s counsel have with a government-employee NDA–especially where the information is not classified? Maybe they used LegalZoom or asked ChatGPT? So many questions.

The problem of course is the Barbara Streisand effect. By enforcing an NDA, the Court will be forced to publicize the very confidential information it seeks to protect. At most, this policy will have an in terrorem effect, and perhaps increase the potential costs of leaking. After all, I’m sure some future Jack Smith, inspired by Jean Valjean, joined by the merry band of innovative lawyers in the Public Integrity Section, could transform the breach of an NDA into some federal criminal offense. This sort of trickery would otherwise be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court, but I see nine recusals.

Fourth, Kantor obtained a print copy of the “Code of Conduct for Law Clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States.” I don’t think the existence of this document has ever been confirmed. The booklet is dated, July 1, 2018. I don’t know if the book is printed annually at the start of each clerkship cohort, or if this document had been in effect for some time. I would have to guess the document was updated after the Dobbs leak, so perhaps a clerk from the OT 2018 class gave it to the NY Times. You know who you are.

At the bottom of the cover is a curious note:

This Code is a restatement of the rules and traditions that have governed the conduct of the Court’s law clerks and former law clerks continuously since they began to serve the Court and its Justices.

The Code is like the common law: it has always been in effect, yet always changes.

Kantor quotes from part of the booklet:

“The law clerk owes the appointing Justice, all other Justices, and the Court as an institution, duties of complete confidentiality, accuracy and loyalty,” instructed a 2018 version obtained by The Times, in which every page is labeled “confidential — for authorized internal use only.” The final page mentioned that breaches could lead to “appropriate sanctions,” but did not specify what those might be.

I doubt this handbook had any impact on the clerks’ behavior. If it did, the Chief would not have needed to level up with NDAs.

Fifth, Kantor explains that the NDAs may affect law clerks who seek to collect massive bonuses:

The agreements may complicate another Supreme Court tradition: former clerks cashing in on what they learn there. Law firms now pay clerks signing bonuses as high as $500,000. The court requires them to avoid working on its own cases for two years. But after that, former clerks often spend the rest of their careers monetizing the knowledge they gained from working directly with the justices and also reading still-secret older case files, some said in interviews. While they are not supposed to share specifics with clients, plenty of details slip out, the former clerks said.

I am intrigued about how clerks share information from “still-secret older case files” with clients. I had never thought about it, but I suppose clerks may keep some documents from their clerkships on the way out. (Back when I clerked, there was no VPN, so I stored files on my personal computer so I could work from home.) Would old SCOTUS documents still be valuable to clients? I suppose. But I am struggling to see this point. Then again “some,” meaning several clerks said this in interviews, so the practice must be common. I suppose there is a reason firms pay a $700,000 signing bonus for SCOTUS clerks who are barred from working before the Court for two years.

Finally, speaking of the Dobbs leak investigation, there is a nugget that I hadn’t seen reproted before:

The court conducted an investigation of its staff but mostly spared the justices, and the source was never publicly identified.

The Justices were “mostly” spared? So they were investigated to some degree? I need to know more.

I’ll have more to say about the NDA in a future column.

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If “you bring a gun” to Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro warned during a Fox News interview on Monday, “you’re going to jail.” Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was touting her crime-fighting efforts, elaborating on her argument that “taking guns off the street” helps prevent homicides, carjackings, and robberies. But her threat provoked objections from Second Amendment advocates, who noted that the Constitution guarantees the right to carry guns for self-defense and that there is nothing necessarily illegal about doing so in the nation’s capital.

The controversy over Pirro’s remarks is especially notable because it comes shortly after President Donald Trump and other federal officials dismayed gun rights groups by suggesting that Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis protester who was fatally shot by immigration agents on January 24, was asking for trouble by legally carrying a concealed pistol. Both episodes illustrate the tension between Trump’s avowed commitment to “protecting Second Amendment rights” and his frequently authoritarian tough-on-crime instincts.

“I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else,” Pirro said on Fox News. “You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back.”

That broad threat is hard to reconcile with the right to bear arms recognized by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said states may not require that people demonstrate a “special need” to carry guns in public for self-defense. Even before that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in the 2017 case Wrenn v. District of Columbia, had permanently enjoined the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) from enforcing D.C.’s “proper reason” requirement for carrying a handgun. Under current D.C. policy, carry permit applicants must be at least 21 and meet several other requirements, including registration of the weapon and completion of a firearms training course.

Notably, those requirements do not include residence in the District of Columbia. “Non-residents can obtain a permit in DC,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) noted in an X post responding to Pirro’s comments. “I bring a gun into the district every week,” Rep. Greg Steube (R–Fla.) wrote in another X post addressed to Pirro. “I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others. Come and Take it!”

The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) was also offended. “Jeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in DC, even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are,” the NAGR said on X. “Unacceptable and intolerable comments by a sitting US attorney. This is why we need Real Constitutional Carry nationwide. Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights.”

The National Rifle Association (NRA) likewise responded to Pirro’s comments by reiterating its support for reducing barriers to carrying guns in public. “Now is the time for Congress to pass HR 38, the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act,” it said. “Your right to self-defense should not end simply because you crossed a state line or into Washington, D.C.”

Twenty-nine states do not require permits for concealed carry—the policy to which the NAGR alluded. Several additional states have reciprocity policies that recognize carry permits issued by other states. While D.C. does not fall into either category, nonresidents such as Massie and Steube can still legally carry handguns there if they meet local requirements.

In addition to overlooking that point, Pirro’s comments seemed inconsistent with the agenda of the “Second Amendment Section” that the Justice Department recently established within its Civil Rights Division. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of that division, has said one aim of the new litigation project is facilitating the right to bear arms by challenging obstacles to obtaining carry permits such as “multi-thousand-dollar costs” and “unreasonably long delays.”

Last April, Dhillon noted that jurisdictions with “unreasonably long delays” included Washington, D.C. “The wait right now in DC for an appointment to apply for concealed carry is four months!” she said. Although the situation reportedly has improved since then, people who want to legally carry handguns still face bigger obstacles in D.C. than they do in most states, starting with the permit requirement itself. They can expect to pay about $500 for fees and training, and they have to register their guns with the MPD, a process that is possible only for handguns approved for sale in California, Maryland, or Massachusetts.

On Tuesday morning, Pirro responded to criticism of her threat, suggesting it did not apply to nonresidents with D.C. carry permits. “I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment,” she wrote on X. “Washington, D.C. law requires [that] handguns be licensed in the District with the Metropolitan Police Department to be carried into our community. We are focused on individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns and will continue building on that momentum to keep our communities safe.”

Pirro could have avoided this contretemps if she had spoken more carefully, and the negative reaction is not surprising in light of what happened after Pretti’s death. Although videos of the incident show that Pretti, who had a carry permit, never drew his pistol, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem falsely claimed he was “brandishing” the weapon. Her department issued a statement saying Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” adding that they “attempted to disarm [him] but the armed suspect violently resisted.” In reality, those officers did not see the gun until after they tackled Pretti.

The Department of Homeland Security nevertheless portrayed Pretti as a would-be murderer who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” And even after that narrative collapsed under the weight of the video evidence, officials such as FBI Director Kash Patel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, suggested that Pretti’s exercise of the right to bear arms was unseemly, unwise, illegal, and an invitation to police violence.

Trump, who initially described Pretti as a “gunman,” reinforced those claims. “I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines,” he told The Wall Street Journal the day after the shooting. “You can’t have guns,” he told reporters a couple of days later. “You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.”

Trump was still expressing that sentiment last week. “Certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” the president said during a visit to Iowa. “I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff.”

The idea that there is something inherently suspicious or threatening about exercising a constitutional right recognized by the Supreme Court understandably provoked complaints from Second Amendment groups such as the NRA and Gun Owners of America. Yet despite that experience, Pirro did not hesitate to threaten “law-abiding gun owner[s]” with jail if they dare to “bring a gun into this district.”

Even with the qualification that Pirro later added, she seems intent on vigorously enforcing D.C.’s strict gun policies, regardless of whether potential defendants pose a threat to public safety. In her view, it makes sense to fight violent crime by jailing visitors who erroneously believe their out-of-state carry permits are good in D.C. You might think “a proud supporter of the Second Amendment” would have different priorities.

Trump likewise presents himself as a Second Amendment champion yet periodically deviates from that stance. His lapses include not only his comments about Pretti but also the positions he took during his first term.

After the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Trump demanded a bump stock ban that the Supreme Court ultimately overturned, deeming it beyond the statutory authority of federal gun regulators. He also spoke favorably of requiring background checks for all gun transfers, raising the minimum age for buying long guns, and banning “assault weapons.” And he expressed support for “red flag” laws, saying police should “take the gun first” and “go through due process second” when they think someone is dangerous.

The second Trump administration, by contrast, has challenged D.C.’s “assault weapon” ban in federal court. But it is steadfastly defending other constitutionally dubious gun laws, including the federal bans on gun possession by drug users and people convicted of nonviolent felonies. In both cases, the NRA and other gun rights groups are vigorously challenging the administration’s position.

As these examples show, Trump’s desire to placate Second Amendment supporters conflicts with his crime-fighting impulses, even when the perceived threats are as improbable as medical marijuana patients or people who pleaded guilty to nonviolent felonies decades ago. Unlike Trump, critics of those pro-control positions, including Republicans who are normally allied with him, recognize that constitutional rights cannot be secure if they hinge on a politician’s idiosyncratic understanding of what public safety requires.

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AI data centers have become flashpoints in public debates over energy costs and grid capacity, leading some politicians to call for heavy restrictions on their operation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) is calling for an all-out moratorium.

Advanced nuclear power could provide a solution to these challenges—unless federal regulations get in the way.

Data centers create near-perfect conditions for the burgeoning small modular reactor (SMR) industry: enormous, concentrated energy demand that must be met 24/7. These compact nuclear power plants are designed to deliver steady power at a lower capacity than traditional reactors, so they could be uniquely positioned to meet that demand. Indeed, Meta recently struck 20-year agreements to purchase electricity from three nuclear power plants operated by a single provider, while also joining Oklo and TerraPower in an SMR development project. Google and Kairos Power have plans to deploy an advanced nuclear plant tied to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s grid.

Aalo Atomics is a Texas-based startup developing factory-built SMRs designed to operate on or near large energy users—exactly the model that AI infrastructure demands. “We’re talking about tens of gigawatts of power in the next five years,” Aalo Atomics CEO Matt Loszak told Arena last year. “Each gigawatt is like a whole city! When in history have like 20, 30 cities been created in a matter of five or ten years?”

In addition to meeting data centers’ power demands, SMRs could reduce these facilities’ environmental footprint. Last year, driven in part by increased data center power usage, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose by about 2.4 percent.

But there are big regulatory barriers. As Loszak pointed out to podcaster Eric Jorgenson, for example, regulators require test data for a new nuclear design license, but obtaining this data is “impossible” without first having that license.

Further, SMRs are subject to a Cold War–era, one-size-fits-all licensing framework. One rule, finalized in 1956, gives the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the authority to regulate all commercial reactors, which puts SMRs in the same fundamental licensing category as large, grid-scale nuclear plants. This framework was never designed for factory-built, modular reactors, and it contributes to unnecessarily onerous costs and wait times.

Fortunately, the NRC is working to modernize this system. Described by NRC staff as a “risk-informed, technology-inclusive regulatory framework for commercial nuclear plants,” 10 CFR Part 53 is a new rule better suited for advanced reactors, including SMR designs. It must be finalized by the end of 2027 but could arrive sooner.

Meanwhile, an ongoing lawsuit is challenging long-standing NRC authority. If successful, it could be a major step in cutting through the red tape that has long burdened America’s nuclear energy industry. 

That red tape carries real consequences. The Carbon Free Power Project, once expected to be the first U.S. commercial SMR rollout, was announced in 2015. It did not begin undergoing NRC design certification review until 2018. Final certification took effect in 2023, with commercial launch projected for 2029. In the time it took to receive federal approval, projected costs rose sharply—from roughly $60 to $90 per megawatt-hour—driven by financing costs, inflation, and schedule risk. As timelines stretched and costs ballooned, participating customers withdrew. The project was canceled the same year it received NRC approval.

Private sector interest in SMRs persists, as demonstrated by Meta’s deal with Oklo and TerraPower. But if SMRs are to meet the large-scale energy demand of data centers, major regulatory reform remains necessary.

“Many data center companies have a strong preference for electricity from SMRs, and are even willing to pay a price premium for it, because of the reliable, clean energy SMRs can provide,” says Josiah Neeley, an energy analyst at the R Street Institute. “The big question is whether SMRs can be permitted and built on a fast enough time scale to meet that growing demand.”

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Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.

This week’s newsletter takes on some rather unfortunate comments from President Donald Trump about his desire to keep housing prices high for current owners, even if it means less affordability for everyone else.

Additionally, we have an item on the Trump administration’s strange, probably illegal, but still interesting effort to preempt local permitting requirements for wildfire rebuilds in Los Angeles.

Also, if you’ll forgive some non-housing-related self-promotion, I’ve started a new podcast called Freed Up with my colleague Robby Soave. Each week, we shoot the breeze about the week’s news, plus movies, books, and more.

If you’re in the market for a podcast where the hosts discuss how to improve the rules of Risk or whether Mad Men is a Randian drama, this is the show for you.

Anyway, on with the housing news.

Housing Policy Can Be Win-Win

President Donald Trump caused a major stir for saying that he wants to keep the price of housing high for existing homeowners while also making it easier for first-time homebuyers to purchase a house.

“People that own their homes: We’re going to keep them wealthy. We’re going to keep those prices up. We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home,” said Trump during the Cabinet meeting last Thursday.

“When you get the housing—when you make it too easy and too cheap to buy houses, those values come down. I don’t want those values to come down,” he added.

Trump: "People that own their homes: we're gonna keep them wealthy. We're gonna keep those prices up. We're not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn't work very hard can buy a home." pic.twitter.com/V3cviRAO3F

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) January 29, 2026

The president’s comments clearly struck a nerve for a couple of reasons.

Trump said pretty bluntly what people often argue is the implicit goal of American housing policy: keeping prices high for incumbent owners at the expense of first-time buyers.

He also fully embraced the supposed contradiction of a housing policy that’s supposed to boost both homeownership and home values. The higher the values go, the fewer people are actually able to afford to buy homes.

There’s reason to be skeptical of Trump’s plan to use lower interest rates to square this circle.

As Daniel McCue notes in a brief for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, interest rates are “not abnormally high in historical terms. That is not the case for home prices which, after increasing by 50 percent nationwide since 2020, are at unprecedented heights in nominal terms, real terms, and relative to household incomes.”

Lower mortgage rates would reduce buyers’ monthly payments, but that only helps so much when prices are as inflated as they are.

Creating true housing affordability for homebuyers would require an expansion of housing supply to lower overall housing prices—the thing Trump said he did not want to do.

The good news is that the federal government does not have too much direct influence over the number of homes that are built in the country. It’s local and state governments that decide what’s allowed to be built where.

Local and state policies are overwhelmingly moving in the direction of enabling more supply, not less, through liberalizing zoning and building codes, relaxing growth controls, and streamlining permitting processes.

The president’s critics on social media were right to chide him for embracing a zero-sum, protectionist housing policy that limits new construction to increase home prices for current owners.

Yet it’d also be a mistake to completely dismiss the idea that we can lower buyers’ housing costs and raise property values at the same time. Contra the president, that can easily be accomplished by allowing more homes to be built on existing residential land.

Free markets are generally win-win institutions. One should expect that free market reforms in the housing sector would produce win-wins for homeowners, buyers, and builders.

When local officials “upzone” land to allow more housing to be built on it, one expects the value of that land to increase to reflect the additional development potential. If a single-family property is upzoned to allow apartment construction, the current owner will see a windfall increase in the value of their property.

For recent, real-world evidence of this, I’d suggest people watch this news segment from Sydney, Australia, where upzoning has created a hot seller’s market.

While upzoning drives up the cost of individual parcels, one would also expect it to drive down the overall cost of land, which is good for developers and builders. Expanding the supply of buildable land means there’s less competition among developers for each individual property. They can all expect to pay less for the land they consume as a result.

As homeowners sell off their more valuable properties to builders who turn them into denser developments, one would expect the overall price of shelter to fall to the ultimate benefit of new homebuyers.

Trump is given to zero-sum thinking in so many policy areas, and housing is no exception.

Supply-side reformers shouldn’t make the same error when advocating for policies that lower the cost of housing. Free markets in housing will be good for everyone.

Wildfire Rebuild Preemption

There is one area of the country where Trump is eager to see housing get built: Los Angeles.

Last Tuesday, the president issued an executive order that preempts local and state permitting requirements for federally assisted wildfire rebuild projects in the Los Angeles area.

The order says that property owners receiving federal disaster benefits can skip these local processes and instead self-certify to a federal designee that they’re in compliance with applicable building codes.

Such sweeping federal preemption is a pretty remarkable and unique means of speeding up the painfully slow wildfire rebuilding process.

Last January, wildfires burned down some 13,000 residential properties in the larger L.A. metro area.

It wasn’t until November 2025 that the city granted the first certificate of occupancy for a wildfire rebuild. According to the Associated Press, only about 900 homes are under construction.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have on the one hand attempted to streamline the permitting process by waiving some regulations and fees.

Instead of finally sending to Congress the federal relief Los Angeles needs to rebuild from last year's firestorms, Donald Trump continues to live in fantasy land.

Mr. President, you can actually speed up recovery by providing the assistance that survivors have been waiting for. https://t.co/0cSvoUkkMC

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 27, 2026

On the other hand, they’ve also suspended laws and issued new regulations that prevent property owners from selling off their land or rebuilding their properties as larger, denser developments.

Both expressed deep objections to Trump’s efforts to suspend local and state permitting requirements generally.

Whether the president can unilaterally preempt local land-use regulations for projects making use of federal funds is questionable legally.

“This is completely unprecedented in terms of the history of federal disaster aid,” Daniel Farber, faculty director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment at U.C. Berkeley Law, told Politico. “They’re gonna have a hard time making this stand up in court.”

Legal or not, it will be interesting to see local and state officials argue in court that the wildfire rebuilding process should take longer.

Quick Links

• A new bipartisan bill in Congress would make it easier for federal infrastructure loans to support transit-oriented development.
• The Senate has approved an appropriations bill that would increase federal housing funding to $77 billion, or roughly a 10 percent increase from the previous year.
• Bloomberg has a comprehensive look at Trump’s faltering affordable housing agenda.
• Preliminary data suggest that homelessness fell in 2025. The past several years have seen an unprecedented rise in homelessness rates, driven largely by an influx of migrants into big city shelter systems.

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