Still No Progress Made On Arranging Trump-Putin Summit, Kremlin Says
The Kremlin on Tuesday responded to various international reports saying that progress is being made on preparations for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. From the start of Trump’s inauguration, admin officials have said the world can expect such a meeting to happen ‘soon’.
Additionally, on Monday there were widespread reports saying a likely venue would be one of the Gulf countries known for holding a relatively neutral stance on the Ukraine war, such as Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to these reports Tuesday when pressed by reporters. He downplayed the reports and said simply there’s no new information regarding such a potential meeting, also as there’s yet no agenda.
Of course, the anticipation and expectation is that achieving ceasefire and peace settlement in Ukraine would be the number one priority and focus of such a summit.
“Before discussing a venue for such a meeting we must first determine what the meeting will be all about. There is no news on that front,” the Kremlin spokesman told RBC.
Trump confirmed on Sunday that his administration had “meetings and talks scheduled with various parties, including Ukraine and Russia.”
Additionally, senior Russian diplomatic officials recently made trips to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but the Kremlin is reportedly concerned about hosting a meeting there, given both Gulf states’ close ties to American miliary and intelligence services.
As early as ten days before the Jan.20 inauguration, Trump touted that a meeting was already being arranged:
Donald Trump has said that a meeting is being arranged between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The US president-elect gave no timeline for when the meeting might take place.
“He wants to meet and we are setting it up,” he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump had also in early January proclaimed, “President Putin wants to meet,” and that “He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.”
Putin himself has generally responded positively, and issued warm congratulatory remarks upon Trump’s election. But at the moment Moscow is certainly in the driver’s seat and with most leverage regarding the Ukraine war.
But Trump is meanwhile threating to strangle the Russian economy by orchestrating a global oil price collapse …which is perhaps more likely bluff meant to gain leverage at the negotiating table. Arab leaders would have to be on board such an unlikely scenario as well, which would be a tall order. Russian diplomats are already likely working overtime to guard against such Gulf assent as well.
Panama Mulls Port Deal Cancellation With China After Rubio’s Sunday Rumble At Canal
Days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasted the Panamanian government for allowing Chinese “influence and control” over the Panama Canal and called for “immediate changes,” a new report suggests that discussions are underway with President José Raúl Mulino’s administration to end Chinese-backed port deals.
Bloomberg reports that the Mulino administration is considering canceling critical port contracts held by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports PPC, a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. The report cites sources familiar with the discussions.
If the deals are canceled, the move by Panama could serve as a major concession to ease President Donald Trump’s concerns over China’s influence at strategic ports near the canal—an issue he has called a national security threat.
During a visit Sunday to Panama, Rubio told Mulino and other Panamanian government officials not to renew its deal with China’s Belt and Road economic program. Following the meeting, Panama promised free passage for US warships and said it would withdraw from China’s BRI program.
“Trump has made a preliminary determination that the current position of influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party over the Panama Canal area is a threat to the canal,” said US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce on Sunday.
Trump Effect Continues: Panama Bends The Knee, Will Not Renew “Silk Road” Deal With China After Rubio Visit https://t.co/lIv8ySTMvF
Also on Sunday, Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland: “We’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen.”
Rubio has warned that Beijing could leverage the ports to disrupt the global shipping channel, posing a risk to critical US supply chains. He also claimed that China could use the ports as staging points in future military operations.
Shifting the focus to CK Hutchison Holdings and its potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party, an analysis of public records shows several key risk factors, including forced labor concerns and high political exposure to state-owned enterprises.
Here’s the upstream ownership profile of CK Hutchison Holdings. Notice some familiar names?
Here is more color on those direct owners and shareholders of the HK-based holdings company.
If Panama bends the knee to Trump, like Mexico and Canada, on border security, then this would be another win for the ‘America First’ agenda.
Beyond concerns over canal security, Trump admin folks should scrutinize CK Hutchison Holdings’ direct owners and shareholders. We did the first leg of FININT above…
Everyone already knows how a showdown between an alpha male and a beta male will end, but it doesn’t make it any less entertaining to watch, and since President Trump took office just a few weeks back, we’ve been treated to a number of performances.
So far, we’ve seen foreign leaders like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Panama’s José Raúl Mulino, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau all get in line with Trump’s demands, but his team is working the same magic stateside too—it happened between New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan, and it was comedic gold.
Act I: New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced at an event this past weekend that he and his wife Tammy were hosting an illegal alien in a space above their garage, and he dared the Feds to “try to get her.”
NJ Governor Phil Murphy just said he is hosting a migrant in his home to avoid deportations.
Jonathan Turley pointed out the obvious virtue-signaling, wondering aloud how it served the interests of this alleged illegal alien for her location and illegal status to be paraded in front of law enforcement, making her “political game” for people like Homan. It would be somewhat similar to the Dutch citizens hiding the Frank family in the Secret Annex calling up a Nazi hotline to report hidden Jewish individuals.
Act II: Tom Homan, the epitome of a no-nonsense law enforcement officer, calls Murphy’s bluff…
…saying he’s “got note of it, won’t let it go,” and “will look into it” to make sure that Murphy is not involved in criminally harboring an illegal alien:
JUST IN: Border Czar Tom Homan says he plans on going after NJ Governor Phil Murphy who taunted the Trump admin when he revealed that he was housing an illegal immigrant.
Murphy: We are housing an illegal above our garage. Good luck to the Feds who will try to get her.
…and his claim that he was housing someone over his garage was more of an idea than a reality.
Here’s the update, from a report at the New York Post:
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s office furiously tried to back-peddle Monday after he boasted that he had opened his home to a migrant and taunted the Trump administration “to try to get her.’
…
Murphy was just referring to a legal resident who is in his circle of friends and was worried about President Trump’s return to the White House, the governor’s rep said.
‘No one’s ever lived in the home’ under those circumstances that the governor described, the representative insisted.
Murphy is exactly who you don’t want fighting your battles—at the first sign of pressure, he’ll roll over and sell out the moment he thinks it might personally cost him anything.
In the last few days, Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) has effectively put an end to USAID, gelded the General Services Administration (GSA) tech division, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Treasury, and fired corrupt people in the FBI – and that’s just the short list.
With the war on USAID, GSA, OPM, and the Treasury alone, DOGE is saving taxpayers at a rate of one billion per day. All of this has driven the Democrats into a frenzy as they insist that an elected president managing the government is a coup. Unfortunately for them (but not for us), they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
President Kennedy founded USAID via Executive Order 10973 in November 1961: “Administration of Foreign Assistance and Related Functions.” It was meant to be a permanent clearing house that would work with the State Department to distribute money intended to help advance technology and financial competence in low-income countries. It reflected the fact that, in 1961, the U.S. was still the last country standing after WWII. The vision was to benefit America by fortifying poor countries against Soviet depredation.
Image by Grok.
USAID has strayed far from that mandate. The Daily Mail assembled a helpful list of examples of USAID’s hard-left blank check policy. This list includes:
$30 million to study HIV in Africa among sex workers and so-called “transgender” people.
$38 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other Chinese research labs.
$1.5 million to an LGBTQ+ group in Serbia.
$2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam, with only one battery station built.
Money for a “trans” care clinic in Vietnam.
$25,000 for a “trans” opera in Colombia
$32,000 for “trans” comic books in Peru.
$500,000 to expand atheism in Nepal.
The Clinton Foundation was also a huge USAID winner:
The Clinton Foundation raked in Millions from USAID.
In 2010, USAID managed $4.4 billion for Haiti under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Clinton Foundation was a significant player in those Haiti “efforts”.
None of this advanced US interests. All this money—your money—was for leftist social engineering and, seemingly, political money laundering. Elon Musk is right that it needs to go.
Things weren’t any better with money going to GSA, where its technology arm, in Luke Rosiak’s words, was “a far-left agency that viciously subverted Trump during his first term.” The GSA had a government-wide computer office—“@18F”—that still has a “trans flag” as its logo. It aggressively enforced extreme DEI policies, including illegally excluding people from activities by race or sex. (Read Roziak’s thread for more examples of GSA tech’s leftist depredations.)
Elon Musk revealed that the Treasury Department was cutting checks to terrorist organizations and known fraudsters:
The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.
They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.
And, of course, Trump fired all the FBI agents involved in the war against those of Trump’s supporters who showed up at the Capitol on January 6. The Acting FBI Director fought back, which leads to the point of this article: It’s almost certain that none of these people has a legal leg to stand on, whether it comes to the way Trump has stopped the money flow or the firings.
First, Trump’s refusal to fund corrupt agencies: Since 1801, under the aegis of Thomas Jefferson, presidents have had a power known as impoundment. This means the president gets to decide how to spend—or not spend—money that Congress has allocated.
In other words, the generation that ratified the Constitution believed that this was an appropriate exercise of executive power. However, in 1974, in yet another piece of Watergate fallout, Congress enacted the “Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” which says that the president must submit to Congress his plans not to spend money.
Given the history of impoundment (the ratifying generation approved of it), it’s highly unlikely that this act is constitutional. The fact that no president has yet challenged it doesn’t change this reality. Additionally, because Trump has a majority in Congress, if he were to submit his impoundment plan, the greater likelihood is that it would give him a pass. (RINOs would have a hard time explaining to voters why they want America to pay for “trans” comic books in Peru.)
Second, Trump’s ability to fire employees: Here’s a slimmed-down version of the history of presidential power in this area.
In 1789, the First Congress debated whether the Constitution gives the president the unilateral power to remove Executive Branch officers. Ultimately, Congress simply said that when the president fires someone (a tacit acknowledgment that he has that unilateral power), a lower-level employee must take custody of records until a new officer is appointed.
That debate has led the Supreme Court to hold several times that Congress has no direct role in firing officials. (See, e.g., Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 723 (1986); Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 146 (1926); Parsons v. United States, 167 U.S. 324, 338–43 (1897).)
There was a fight over this power when Andrew Johnson attempted to fire an Executive Branch officer whom Lincoln had appointed, violating the Tenure of Office Act, and leading to Johnson’s impeachment. However, the Senate did not convict Johnson, and by 1887, Congress repealed any requirement that the Senate approve firings.
When the 19th century ended, the president’s unilateral power to fire officers was unquestioned. This makes sense because if the Founders had wanted to extend the “advice and consent” power to firings, they could have done so. This standard continued through the 1920s.
Things changed in the 1930s when an activist Supreme Court created a new standard, which has affected (or infected) the government to this day: It held that if Congress designates an agency as “independent,” Congress, not the president, has the power over dismissal, with the president as its agent. This was the go-ahead to create a fourth branch of government that is neither legislative, executive, nor judicial, although, as we’ve repeatedly seen, these “independent” agencies all claim those powers.
The big issue of our day is whether these “independent” agencies are constitutional—I say they’re not because they are not one of the three branches of government established under the Constitution. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has, of late, been pulling back from the 1930s template.
Here’s another legal concept: “The greater includes the lesser.”
In this case, it means that if the president has the power to fire officials, he has the power to fire lesser employees working under those officials.
And one last legal concept: President Trump has appointed DOGE and Elon Musk to act as his agents when it comes to reasserting executive control over government agencies.
Agents acting within the scope of their assigned agency have the same authority as the principal.
I’m confident that President Trump is acting entirely within the authority the Founding Fathers and ratifiers of our Constitution intended him to have. However, we know that these issues will end up before the Court and, perhaps, before Congress.
I’m hopeful that, as President Trump and DOGE expose an escalating amount of government fraud, abuse, and waste, despite the escalating Democrat pushback, Congress and the Courts will understand that they will not have the American people at their backs if they strike down his legitimate use of constitutional power. Or, as this tweet thread says, nobody is going to be very sympathetic to Democrat lamentations and threats:
Criticizing Musk for wanting to protect taxes is like crying because someone shut off your corruption tap.
20,000 Government Workers Take Trump Buyout Offer As Mass Layoffs Loom
Approximately 20,000 federal workers, or around 1% of the federal workforce, have accepted the Trump administration’s “buyout” offerbefore Thursday’s deadline, Axios reports, citing a senior administration official.
The offer allows federal employees to stop working immediately and continue to be paid through Sept. 30. And with the door open for another 48 hours, the White House expects more to take the offer.
“We expect more to come. If you see what’s happening at USAID, it’s just one piece of the puzzle,” said the official, referring to the federal agency which oversees foreign aid programs full of rogue employeesthat were funding all sorts of woke, anti-American projects around the world.
The buyout offer has faced heavy opposition from unions and other organizations, which argue that the offer is illegal, there’s no guarantee people will actually get paid (lol), and it’s something that Congress would need to authorize. The Trump admin rejects those assertions, and says it’s following through on its promise to restructure the federal government.
Last week, the administration sent out a memo offering to pay all federal workers an 8-month severance through Sept. 30.
The official further stated that the administration is still trying to implement a hiring freeze, which has proven more difficult than expected as some agencies continue to hire new workers.
According to the report, the normal attrition rate within the federal workforce is around 6% per year, suggesting that some of those who have taken the buyout offer were planning to leave government service anyway.
Layoffs Likely
According to the Washington Post, the assistant commissioner of a division of the General Services Administration told staff early this week that mass layoffs across the federal government are “likely” after the ‘buyout’ offer expires Thursday.
“Please know that I empathize with the tough decisions you each are having to make,” wrote Erv Koehler, assistant commissioner of general supplies and services at GSA, in an email obtained by the Post. “Please focus on making the best decision for you and your particular situation.”
According to Koehler’s email, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service “is being asked” to cut its program by 50%, which reflects the agency’s goal to half the size of its staff.
Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell held his first press conference under President Trump’s second term. Powell swiftly addressed the topic of Trump in the Q&A Session, stating:
I’m not going to have any response or comment whatsoever on what the President said. It’s not appropriate for me to do so.
Powell followed up, reiterating that he has had “no contact” with President Trump.
A reporter from Reuters asked about a 2021 central bank conference, quoting Powell who said:
… throughout my career in both public and private sectors, I’ve seen the best and most successful organizations are all from the ones that have a strong and persistent commitment to diversity and inclusion. These organizations consistently attract the best talent by investing in and retaining a world-class workforce.
It would have been better if he cited specific organizations. Without specifics, it’s just a vague talking point used to support the political ideology of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
The reporter then asked if Powell still believes this, asking if the Fed will remain “consistent with the recent executive order prohibiting diversity and inclusion efforts?”
Powell remarked:
So, let me say, yes, in answer to your first question. But, to the second question I’m going to say this, we are, like others, we’re reviewing the orders and the associated details as they are made available, and as has been our practice over many administrations, we are working to align our policies with the executive orders as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.
Which seems to be a roundabout way of saying he will comply with the executive order.
Along these lines, and the new cultural policies the Trump administration has signed into law, Powell was asked about a lesser publicly known announcement that took place on January 17:
The Federal Reserve Board on Friday announced it has withdrawn from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
… launched at the Paris One Planet Summit on 12 December 2017, is a group of Central Banks and Supervisors willing, on a voluntary basis, to share best practices and contribute to the development of environment and climate risk management in the financial sector and to mobilize mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy.
Essentially, it sounds like another supranational organization, comprised of a collective of central banks worldwide, aimed at planning and coordinating eco-friendly, or green initiatives.
The Fed withdrew from the NGF only several days prior to Trump taking office, as Powell explained his reasoning:
But it was really not driven by politics, it was driven by kind of the disconnect between the work of the NGFS and our mandate. Other central banks have different mandates, and belong to the NGFS, we have no criticism of them, but it just isn’t, it’s not right for the Fed.
Whether this counts as a win for Trump, a pre-emptive move by Powell, or an idea Powell genuinely thought was best, we’ll never know.
But it sounds like another bullet was dodged, given that history consistently demonstrates that centrally coordinated economic planning, especially central banking, has often been detrimental to liberty, freedom, and the purchasing power of the US dollar.
“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” President Nayib Bukele said in a statement on X.
He added that he’d take the deportees “for a fee” and house them in a megaprison known for hosting gang members.
“We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
Rubio called Bukele’s offer “an act of extraordinary friendship”, adding that:
“No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this.”
Of course, there are plenty who dislike this idea – our ‘most dangerous criminals’ deserve better… apparently?
There would be serious legal hurdles to sending American citizens abroad, according to analysts including Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“I don’t care what Bukele says, the United States cannot legally banish Americans — such authorities died centuries ago,” Reichlin-Melnick said in a social media post.
A State Department advisory says El Salvador’s prison and detention center conditions are “harsh and dangerous,” while overcrowding “constitutes a serious threat to prisoners’ health and lives.”
Latino advocacy group the Board of the League of United Latin American Citizens called the deal “a sad day for America,” per CNN.
LULAC “opposes treating deported non-criminal migrants like cattle who can be shuttled from one country to another without regard to their home of origin,” added Roman Palomares, the group’s national president and chair.
While Bukele’s anti-crime strategy transformed El Salvador from one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America to among the safest, his strategy has attracted criticism from human rights groups.
In 2022, Amnesty International said “El Salvadoran authorities have committed massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment.”
“A country that was once known for violence and for the inability to live openly and freely with one’s family and enjoy life has now become one of the most secure in the hemisphere thanks to his leadership, to the difficult decisions that had to be made,” Rubio said alongside El Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill in the capital, San Salvador, on Monday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a tour of Latin America, praised the offer as unprecedented without saying whether the Trump administration would accept it – or whether it would even be legal to do so in the case of US citizens.
In open defiance of President Trump’s January 28 executive order to “protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” New York Attorney General Letitia James on Mondaywarned hospitals that pausing so-called “gender-affirming care” for gender-confused minors violates state law.
Trump specified in his executive order that the term “child” or “children” referred to individuals under 19 years of age, and the phrase “chemical and surgical mutilation” meant “the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex; and surgical procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their natural biological functions.”
The EO notes that the above procedures are often referred to as “gender affirming care.”
“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the EO states. “Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
The EO continues:
“Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
James stated in a letter to health care providers and organizations that receive federal funds that denying such “care” to children in New York violates state laws that protect against discrimination based on sex and gender identity.
“Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligations to comply with New York State laws,” the letter states.
“Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law.”
The Trump White House put out a statement Monday morning celebrating these reports, saying the president’s executive action is already delivering on his promise to protect American kids.
“It’s already having its intended effect — preventing children from being maimed and sterilized by adults perpetuating a radical, false claim that they can somehow change a child’s sex,” the White House stated.
“Hospitals around the country are taking action to downsize or eliminate their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ programs.”
Four hospitals in Virginia, Colorado and Washington, D.C. have reportedly paused their “gender affirming care” for minors while they evaluate Trump’s order.
Additionally, NYU Langone Health, a leading New York City hospital system, began canceling appointments for gender dysphoric children last week, according to the New York Times.
“Rank Insubordination”: Rubio Says USAID Full Of Rogue Employees
Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for what he called “rank insubordination,” and is full of rogue employees who do whatever the hell they want.
“Well, that was always the goal was to reform it, but now we have rank insubordination,” Rubio told Fox News, in comments just one day after President Trump announced that Rubio would serve as the acting head of USAID – which itself came after Elon Musk’s DOGE team descended upon the agency and revealed that “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing. That’s why it’s got to go. It’s beyond repair.“
According to Rubio, “Now we have basically an active effort — their basic attitude is, ‘We don’t work for anyone, we work for ourselves, no agency of government can tell us what to do.”
“So the president made me the acting administrator,” he added. “I’ve delegated that power to someone who is there full-time, and we’re going to go through the same process at USAID as we’re going through now at the State Department.”
According to Rubio, USAID has lost its focus and abandoned the “national interest” – telling Fox: “They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency, that they are out — they’re a global charity, that they take the taxpayer money, and they spend it as a global charity irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not in the national interest.”
🚨RUBIO: USAID rife with “rank insubordination” — “we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”
“They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency…they’re completely unresponsive. They… pic.twitter.com/LQOKRDUlBk
“One of the most common complaints you will get if you go to embassies around the world from State Department officials and ambassadors and the like is USAID is not only not cooperative — they undermine the work that we’re doing in that country, they are supporting programs that upset the host government for whom we’re trying to work with on a broader scale, and so forth,” Rubio added.
On Monday, deep state crusaders Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) staged a dramatic protest outside the USAID headquarters, with Omar suggesting that Trump’s move to fold the agency into the State Department was “what the beginning of dictatorship looks like!” – and Raskin suggesting that Elon Musk had “illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” adding “Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID,” and that Musk “doesn’t have the power to destroy it.”
What Raskin actually means is that he wants his kickbacks and bribes to continue.
US lobbying/law firms who launder foreign donations (which are actually US taxpayer foreign aid coming full circle!) need to be investigated and shut down. https://t.co/5yVDqfZOtY
Anita Ghazarian and Simon Penny live in a house on the westernmost edge of Altadena—missed by the flames from the catastrophic Eaton Fire, but still close enough to be blanketed in ash. Farther east, in the burn zone, they own a house they rent out, which was minimally damaged.
As soon as the electricity comes back on, Ghazarian’s insurance adjuster told her, the rental house is considered habitable.
“How can I tell my tenants to move back into a house where the entire backyard is filled with ash and broken stuff and the houses around it are all burn zones? Are the kids going to play in that backyard?” Ghazarian asked.
In a maze of online maps, residents can find themselves in an uncertain space: Their house might be in an EPA “normal” zone, meaning it has been repopulated after evacuations, and also marked green on a county map (showing no or minimal damage), and yet surrounded by obliterated structures and covered in ash.
Such intact structures risk being cross-contaminated by nearby burned structures, according to research from the University of Colorado at Boulder that looked at health impacts from smoke in homes after the Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in 2021.
After Colorado’s Marshall Fire, more than half of the hundreds of people surveyed experienced symptoms from wildfire smoke six months after the fire, and continue to report symptoms even after extensive remediation.
Homes untouched by the fires had high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including benzene and toluene, carried in by ash and smoke from the homes that did burn.
In scope and scale, the Los Angeles disaster dwarfs the tragic Marshall Fire, and threatens a commensurate environmental crisis.
Los Angeles County’s two major fires, in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, burned through 40,000 acres, about 60 square miles, and killed 25 people, destroying more than 16,000 structures and reducing whole neighborhoods to rubble.
In total, five concurrent fires burned more than 55,000 acres—around three times the size of Manhattan.
“We’re now in the disaster after the disaster,” said Jane Williams, executive director of the nonprofit California Communities Against Toxics.
“And exactly the same thing that happened at 9/11 is happening here, where everyone just wants to return to normal, and they put pressure on public officials to say everything is safe, and everybody goes back to drinking the water and breathing the air,” she told The Epoch Times.
At the same time, nearly three weeks in, some residents had not been allowed back to see the ruins of their homes, search for memorabilia or fully process what had happened.
That tension—between the need to rebuild, and the untold hazards left by the fires—will shape the largest disaster recovery in California history.
Williams, who has worked with governments and communities in the aftermath of some of the largest disasters in recent memory, including the 2023 Maui fires in Hawaii, expects that even in environmentally conscious California, advocating for caution will be difficult.
“You’re going to see workers in scuba gear with Tyvek suits and booties over their shoes and gloves, removing hazardous waste. And across the street, you’re going to see kids playing in a playground,” she said.
Federal agencies in charge of the cleanup have outlined enhanced safety protocols for collection and disposal of hazardous waste and debris, but there are critical blind spots.
In particular, questions remain about the habitability of structures left intact by the fires, and the safety of air, soil, and water in impacted areas.
This issue is likely to take center stage in areas impacted by the Eaton Fire, where destroyed homes are surrounded by thousands left intact but saturated with smoke and ash.
Appetites for risk vary. Some residents whose homes survived never left; others want to return immediately. But a lack of clear guidance or standards in the federally led cleanup has left many more in limbo.
As displaced residents face the challenges ahead, many are wondering who is ultimately responsible for protecting their health and safety—and why the burden of proof appears to be on their shoulders.
As for the ash-covered soil, Ghazarian wonders if she’ll need to remove it herself.
The Army Corps of Engineers, in the second phase of a two-part federal cleanup plan, will remove six inches of soil from damaged and destroyed properties. That process may take up to a year or longer, and it is unclear if it will apply to intact structures like Ghazarian’s rental property. The first phase, currently underway, involves mandatory hazardous material removal by the EPA.
At a recent town hall meeting for the Eaton Fire recovery, the county Department of Public Works (DPW) said it has no plans to test soil. The EPA has said that testing air, soil, and water is the responsibility of local agencies.
Insurance companies are not lining up to spend thousands of dollars on the effort, either, Ghazarian said. “They say, no, that’s not our problem.”
Her partner, Penny, who grew up accustomed to wildfires in Australia, said he was amazed there was no organized response from authorities to test ash for a baseline before the expected rains came.
“There’s no county, state, or apparently federal agency that has the responsibility for testing toxic ash fallout from fires. There’s no one who is responsible,” Penny said. “The Army Corps of Engineers is telling us it’s L.A. County DPW [Department of Public Works], and DPW is saying it’s [L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn] Barger’s responsibility, and Barger is saying it’s the EPA. They’re backing this thing around and it’s like, where is the regulation?”
Penny spoke with an industrial hygienist about doing work on the house, and the hygienist told him, “It’s the wild, wild West out here.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and its Department of Public Works did not respond to requests for comment.
In this vacuum, exiled neighbors have turned to social media to organize. In Facebook pages, group emails, Zoom meetings, and text messages, they are posting results of heavy metal tests from private contractors and thinking about how to map their data.
They also share tips—for example, if you request soil testing and your insurance denies it, go ask FEMA in person.
In a Reddit forum on the subject, one Altadena resident posted results from an inspector who tested dust samples in her home for lead and asbestos. The results showed lead up to 33 times federal and state regulated levels—in areas where there was no visible dust, in a house outside the burn zone.
“While I know I can get the interior cleaned up, what worries me is that all of this stuff is also on the street, in the soil, on our yards,” the resident wrote.
Altadena residents have reason to be concerned about asbestos, which is blamed for much of the post-9/11 public health crisis.
In the case of the Eaton Fire, the vast majority—35,543 out of 41,128—of structures in the burn zone were built before 1979. That means they are more likely to contain asbestos, the cheap, fire-resistant material that was used widely in construction starting in the 1930s before being phased out in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“This is the largest cleanup in California’s history,” Williams said.
The largest before it, created by decades of contamination from the former lead-battery giant Exide in Los Angeles, was a fraction of the size and had third-party monitors, air monitoring, extensive worker safety, and community safety protocols, Williams said.
“All those protections we already have in place are going to go by the wayside here. And you’re talking about 50 square miles of ash and debris and toxic waste that have to be removed.”
Even at Ghazarian’s home outside the burn zone, there is heavy ash residue.
“Can you garden? Can you eat off it? Can you have kids play in that backyard?” Ghazarian asks. “What is going to happen in three, five, 10, 20 years to people who inhabit that house?”
She is having a hard time finding companies equipped to test for a long list of contaminants known to be in play after the fires.
“We’re just going to be left to our own devices and we’re not sure when we can move back. Is it safe? What about our tenants? And who is going to be in charge of all this?”
Residents grappling with these questions have created a petition to demand clear standards for remediation and testing, claiming the lack of guidance is putting them at risk.
“The goal here is not to keep people from their homes. Instead we demand official guidelines clarifying for homeowners and insurers what is safe when,” the petition reads.
“Choice ultimately should lie with the homeowner if they want to return early, but we don’t want homeowners to be forced home sooner than is safe.”
Nearly a quarter-century after 9/11, more than twice the number of people have died of exposure to contaminants released in the fall of the Twin Towers than in the attack itself—of respiratory, cardiac, and digestive disorders, as well as cancers.
In the days immediately after 9/11, the former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the public the air was safe to breathe—a statement for which she later apologized. Subsequent investigations revealed officials intentionally downplayed dangers amid insufficient data.
As of 2021, 24,000 people have been diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer, including mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive malignancy caused by asbestos exposure that can take decades to manifest.
