The Brief

For the past 25 years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has helped develop building codes, the construction standards that help houses survive hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. Now, the Trump Administration has ordered that to stop, according to people involved with the work.

NPR has learned that FEMA is dropping out of the latest effort to improve building codes, taking its name off recommendations that its experts have already developed and submitted, according to several people with knowledge of the changes. They spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns of reprisal from the Trump administration.

The recommendations FEMA submitted were filed with the International Code Council, an independent association that develops building codes used by states and local governments, since the U.S. does not have a national set of codes. The proposals FEMA is retracting its involvement from focus on helping homes survive strong winds, seismic shaking and rising floodwaters.

FEMA did not respond to questions about why it made the request and the ICC did not respond to questions about whether they were honoring it.

In recent years, Republican leaders have criticized FEMA and building codes, saying the regulations are burdensome. Strengthening building codes has historically been opposed by the homebuilding and construction industries over concerns about the cost. Studies show modern building codes have saved billions of dollars in damage from natural disasters.

Disaster experts say it's a concerning move, one not seen under the first Trump administration.

"FEMA is an important partner in making sure our country is resilient in the future," says Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. "When your family's safety is on the line, as well as the potential for losing everything, you better believe it's really important."

The ICC convenes experts and stakeholders in the building industry to review and improve building codes every three years, and is developing a new set of standards now. After they're approved, many local and state governments across the country adopt the codes, which set the mandatory construction rules in their communities.

Since FEMA pays out billions of dollars to help devastated communities rebuild, Congress directed the agency to encourage states to adopt more protective building codes for natural hazards. The damage from flooding alone hits $46 billion per year on average and is only expected to increase as hurricanes and rainstorms get more severe as the climate gets hotter.

"In an era of climate change, building codes take on a new importance" says Rob Moore, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group. "Everything we build today needs to be built for the world we're going to inhabit decades from now. And we know what the failure to do that looks like because it's all around us."

Homes at extreme risk of flooding can be raised to avoid severe damage, like these Texas homes, hit by Hurricane Beryl in July.

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The building code developments are part of a broader upheaval at the agency.

FEMA, which has more than 20,000 employees, fired more than 200 employees last week, according to a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. Some of those are staff FEMA relies on to deploy during disasters, a move that disaster experts say will leave the agency less prepared for hurricane and wildfire season this summer.

FEMA already faces chronic understaffing during major floods and wildfires and is thousands of people short of its recruiting goals, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

Learning from previous disasters

When Hurricane Andrew hit the coast of Florida in 1992, the Category 5 storm made history as the most destructive and costliest to date. In the aftermath, a team from FEMA inspected the damaged homes, examining the blown-off roofs and exposed walls for what went wrong.

They found a fairly simple item could make a huge difference: a simple metal bracket that secures a roof to the rest of the house. Many home builders were only using nails at the time.

Using that report, Florida officials adopted some of the toughest building codes for hurricanes in the country in 2001, requiring roofs be built to withstand higher winds. That code reduced Florida's losses from wind damage by 72% over 10 years, according to one study.

Since then, FEMA experts have used natural disasters as learning tools to pinpoint how building codes could be improved. That feedback has helped inform the ICC's International Codes or "I-codes", which are now being updated for a 2027 version.

Flood experts say FEMA's withdrawal is a worrisome sign about where the agency is headed under the new administration, given the key role the agency has played in strengthening building codes and supporting local communities in adopting them.

"It would be not dissimilar from something like: the federal government is no longer interested in the National Transportation Safety Board investigating things like air disasters," Berginnis says. "The fact is we have to study and understand these disasters, why they occur, how our buildings perform, and then we need a strong FEMA to help present some of the analysis and proposals for change."

Long term payback of building codes

In September, House Republicans held a hearing questioning FEMA's focus on building codes and the added costs for homeowners to meet them, like raising the main floor of a house higher to avoid floodwater.

"I worry that federal overreach regarding building codes is imposing unnecessary burdens on businesses and property owners," said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., at the hearing.

Studies show most building codes for floods and other hazards add 1% or 2% to the construction cost of a new home. Research also shows the benefits outweigh the initial investment. One FEMA study, looking at 18 million houses built since 2000, found that having modern building codes avoided $32 billion dollars in damage. After Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, researchers found that homes in Texas and Florida built with newer building codes had significantly less damage than older homes.

Building codes also play a key role in many of FEMA's programs. Some grants and funding are prioritized for communities that meet building flood standards. Regions also must adopt flood building codes in order to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, which offers flood insurance. Many homeowners are surprised to learn that their general homeowners insurance doesn't cover floods.

FEMA is also expected to halt a new rule designed to protect public buildings, like schools and police stations, from floods. The Trump administration rescinded the rule the first time in office, and it was then reinstated by the Biden administration. Under the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, public buildings must be built with a higher level of protection in order to receive federal funding from FEMA.

Experts say the standards for buildings today will matter for decades to come, since homes and public buildings endure for half a century or more.

"FEMA was supposed to be leading the discussion of how we build, where we build," Moore says. "It's really important to learn from the experience we just went through and rebuild better."

Ximena Bustillo contributed to this story.
Copyright 2025 NPR

MyLA311, the system designed to help residents access city services for graffiti removal or streetlight outages, got a makeover last year, but since then some Angelenos and Los Angeles city staff have reported it has been plagued by problems.

The city has received “numerous complaints” about the updated website and app, including issues with GPS and logging work, according to officials.

MyLA311 is set up so residents can report non-emergency issues and track requests for tree inspections, homeless encampment services and illegal dumping, to name a few. There are 86 options in neighborhoods, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, which helped launch the new system.

Staffers within the city’s Department of Public Works have said they’ve been frustrated by the rollout, according to city officials. They say it now takes longer to add their responses to service requests, and the city can’t record completed work that doesn’t have a service request connected to it.

City Council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez led a motion aimed at addressing the issues, saying they’ve caused concerns about the system’s overall functionality and accountability.

“Reports and individuals are telling us that because of this broken 311 app, folks are once again going back to using Excel sheets, phone calls, paper and pen in order to engage in service delivery, and I think that that's a problem,” Padilla said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

The motion instructs Public Works to make a formal report of any problems with the system, including how they may be affecting service timelines and completion rates, and asks the city’s IT agency to come up with potential solutions.

It was approved in a 12-0 vote Wednesday. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez and Adrin Nazarian were absent.

How we got here

Bass announced the launch of the new MyLA311 last year, saying the previous website and app were outdated and had lasted years past their lifecycle.

In a 2023 directive, she’d called for the system to be modernized with the goal of providing better customer service and communication about the status of residents’ requests.

“This new and improved way to request and receive city services is another example of how we are breaking away from the old way of doing things to make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer,” Bass said in a March 2025 statement.

But some people say the new system is falling short.

According to the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, the new app has “actually made it harder for Angelenos to request services.”

The Sylmar Neighborhood Council agreed the system needs improvements, writing in a community impact statement that MyLA311 fails to serve L.A. taxpayers effectively if it’s difficult to use or inaccurate.

In public comments, some residents cited “major issues” with the system, including GPS and location accuracy, invalid addresses and missing or incomplete service categories. One commenter wrote that addresses were being routed to other areas, some of them outside the city.

“As a result, they frequently lead to confusion in the field, delays in response and, in some cases, requests going unaddressed due to the difficulty in locating the reported issue or misdirection caused by inaccurate data,” the commenter said.

What’s ahead

The City Council approved several instructions aimed at improving MyLA311, including the following:

• Public Works is expected to report back on its issues with the system.
• The city’s Information Technology Agency is expected to report on system performance, including operational issues, and provide solutions as needed.
• Public Works and IT are expected to provide quarterly reports on service request data, including backlogs, average response times and requests received and closed.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Donald Trump, however, is trying to end it.

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration's decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency's decision-making either. Pressed by the court's three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

"None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That's your position?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"Correct," responded Sauer.

"What you're basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose," Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn't do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: "Wasn't that baseball game last night great!"

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: "Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s--thole country.' I'm quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, "So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren't allowed to look at all the context."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration's position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration's review as "a sham."

"The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president's racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular," Pipoly said. "The secretary herself described people from Haiti" and from other non-white countries as "killers, leeches, saying, 'We don't want them, not one,'" while "simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans."

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, "Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?"

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

"How about southern Italians?" Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Responded Pipoly: "Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time."

At the end of Wednesday's court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court's 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The last dog from the Eaton Fire taken in by Pasadena Humane has now been adopted.

Artemis the German shepherd was originally taken to the Pasadena animal shelter for emergency boarding. His family, which lost its home in the January fire, ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

"The silver lining to all of that is — with all this tragedy — this incredible story of hope where we were able to help foster these animals we’re returning home," said Sarie Hooker,  communications manager at Pasadena Humane.

During his stay at Pasadena Humane, the cream-color pup won over many hearts.

"He's just such a striking boy. He's got this really fun, loving personality. He's very regal," Hooker said.

Hooker said Artemis was adopted by a family through the shelter's foster-to-adopt program.

"He just did amazingly. And the next thing we knew, he was adopted," Hooker said. "So it's a happy story."

Artemis says hello to a new family.

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The Eaton Fire destroyed nearly 9,500 structures, including about 6,000 homes. Two days after the fire broke out, Pasadena Humane reported receiving more than 350 pets from displaced residents.

By the second week of the fire, the shelter had taken in some 600 pets, Hooker said.

" In totality, we were able to help with thousands of animals specifically for emergency boarding," Hooker said, including every kind of pet you can think of, as well as wild animals.

" We were seeing skunks, squirrels, hawks, owls, peacocks, raccoons, possums," she said.

Artemis isn't just the last dog to find a home — or return home — from the Eaton Fire.

He is the last animal.

" Artemis was our final, final animal — like dog, cat, critter. Anything else under the sun.  He was the last boy. So we're very happy," she said.

National and local organizers are calling on communities to abstain from work, school and shopping Friday in recognition of May Day.

The “economic blackout” is modeled after January protests in Minnesota following the surge of immigration enforcement and shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens.

“Our vision includes an economy that works for everyone with a living wage, strong labor protections and programs that keep families housed, fed, educated and healthy,” said Francisco Moreno, executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America, in a Tuesday press conference.

The organization is one of more than 100 involved in planning a Los Angeles May Day rally with the theme, “solo el pueblo shuts it down:  no school, no work, no shopping.”

This year’s largest planned gathering starts at MacArthur Park, a longtime hub for day laborers and street vendors. Last July, immigration agents in armored vehicles descended on the park. The ongoing immigration raids and city policies have contributed to the challenges street vendors face.

“Starting there really sends a message that we're here,” said Kristal Romero, press secretary for the  Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We're standing with this community, and if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

May Day’s history in LA

May Day, sometimes called International Workers' Day, started after an 1886 strike tied to the fight for an eight-hour work day. The protest turned violent after police attacked workers. In the 1990s, L.A. organizers started to connect the labor movement with advocacy for immigrant rights.

This year’s event also marks the 20th anniversary of 2006’s massive rallies in support of immigration reform.

Romero said the Federation has offered training on de-escalation, conflict resolution and non-violent protests and that hundreds of people will act as “peacekeepers” during Friday’s rally and march.

“ A lot of times, folks can get caught in echo chambers and it may really feel hopeless,” Romero said. “The big point of these events is to inspire hope to show people we're all here, we're all fighting for the same thing.”

Los Angeles County

MacArthur Park

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March begins at the corner of South Park View Street and Wilshire Boulevard and heads toward downtown L.A.
Organizers: Los Angeles May Day Coalition

L.A. City Hall

Time: Noon
Location: City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Organizers: Union del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition

Boyle Heights

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Mariachi Plaza, 1831 First St.
Organizers: Centro CSO

Long Beach

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March starts at The Marketplace, 6501 Pacific Coast Highway, and ends at Mother’s Beach.
Organizers: Long Beach Indivisible, more details here.

San Fernando Valley

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: Northeast corner of Topanga Canyon and Victory Boulevard, Woodland Hills
Organizers: Indivisible Woodland Hills, SF Valley Brigade, others

Santa Clarita

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: 24292 Valencia Blvd.
Organizers: Indivisible CA27

Orange County 

Orange

Time: 3 p.m. rally
Location: City Hall, 300 E. Chapman Ave.

Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Orange Plaza Circle, Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street
Organizers: OC Indivisible Coalition

Santa Ana

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Sasscer Park, 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana
Organizers: OC May Day Coalition