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Trump Delivers Remarks in California on Wildfire Recovery, Jan. 24, 2025

January 24, 2025 · The White House · 1:03:49

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visited Pacific Palisades, California, on Jan. 24, 2025, carried on the White House channel (uploaded Jan. 25), touring wildfire damage, meeting homeowners and first responders, and sitting for a roundtable with local officials and residents. Every homeowner he met, he said, told him they want to rebuild: “They love the area. They love the people. It’s like a family,” as he described the conversations. Residents and members of Congress raised insurance cancellations and the scale of federal rebuilding aid, as aired in the roundtable.

The President said he was signing an executive order to open up the pumps and valves in the north so that, in his words, hundreds of millions of gallons of water flow down into Southern California, and that the federal government would essentially waive all federal permits — declaring a national emergency so permits could issue immediately rather than over years — and he asked local officials to match that speed in their own permitting, as he stated the measures.

Why it matters

The California stop, made the same day as his North Carolina hurricane visit, is the first disaster-recovery test of the term: the administration’s model, as the President stated it on site, is federal speed on water and permits paired with pressure on state and local governments to move at the same pace.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the water-release executive order and the federal permit-waiver pledge as stated on Jan. 24, 2025 — recorded here as stated by the President.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Delivers Remarks in California” (YouTube, 2025-01-25; event Jan. 24, 2025, Pacific Palisades, CA) — official description and broadcast transcript as aired.