LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some people across Los Angeles have worked for years to increase the number of trees that give respite from heat and air pollution.
The tree advocates have confronted increasing drought, bad trimming and objections from neighbors who resent leaves and sap. Now they wonder what this month’s devastating fires have done to their efforts.
City arborists have “sobering” photographs of large trees knocked onto homes and parkways from the same powerful winds that sent fires out of control, said Bryan Vejar, associate director of community forestry for TreePeople, an environmental nonprofit that works to plant and care for trees across Los Angeles. Other images show scorched canopies, he said.
The powerful Santa Ana winds damaged trees in South Los Angeles, Watts and Inglewood, historically underserved neighborhoods with less shade and TreePeople’s primary focus areas.
The air is still so bad that field crews cannot yet work safely. When they go out, he said, they expect to to find snapped, broken or dried out young trees.
New trees are vulnerable, and volunteers often have to go out and water them for the first few years.
“Events like this can greatly increase our mortality rates,” Vejar said.
Past fires and extreme winds have torn off many limbs and taken down trees, especially ones planted in narrow strips of land where there isn't room for much soil, he said.
When it’s safe, urban tree experts will go out to inspect, re-stake and retie trees toppled by winds, and remove and replace those that were lost.
Replanting trees in burned neighborhoods is harder because of climate change, said Will Berleson, a professor at USC’s Department of Earth Sciences and researcher with the university’s Urban Trees Initiative. Even though many of the city’s mature trees might be 30 or 40 years old, they “started growing at times when it was not as hot and didn’t have these kinds of wet and dry fluctuations that we seem to be seeing now,” he said.
Some experts see tree loss as an opportunity to teach Los Angeles residents about where they live and which plants are the best fit and that's not necessarily the iconic ones from Hollywood movies. They would like to replace non-native species like palms — which are more closely related to grasses — with trees that provide shade and can withstand extreme heat and drought.
Trees such as the coast live oak are a good option, said Aaron Thomas, director of urban forestry at the environmental nonprofit North East Trees. They are native to the region and are fire resilient — in fact, they need to burn to reproduce, he said.
Thomas, who grew up in Altadena, has family members who lost homes to the Eaton Fire north of Pasadena, which has burned more than 7,000 structures. His brother’s home burned, but the five coast live oaks in his backyard survived.
For him, it's another reminder that cities need to think about how to rebuild and reforest with native flora: “That’s what we need to do.”
But planting trees with climate-resilient features such as large canopies isn't always easy, and cities must consider community input when deciding what to plant. Trees that provide a lot of shade can make it difficult for drivers to see around corners and where space is at a premium, sometimes there’s just not enough room above or below ground to plant them.
Berleson added that it will take a long time for neighborhoods to look like they did before the fires.
Vejar said his group knows there will be setbacks, but that is reality.
“It’s climate change. It’s water restrictions. It’s extreme weather events,” he said. “And so in the face of this, all we can do is continue to build and rebuild and steward our urban forests in such a way that makes it more resilient in the face of these extreme weather events.”
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
FILE - Beachfront properties are burned to the ground by the Palisades Fire on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Firefighters put out a fire burning inside a tree after the Eaton Fire burned through the mountains of the Angeles National Forest near Mount Wilson Observatory north of Pasadena, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025.(AP Photo/Etienne Laurent)
FILE - A lone burnt tree remains on a hill after the Kenneth Fire burnt through hills in the West Hills section of Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Etienne Laurent)
FILE - Embers are blown off a burning tree as the Eaton Fire burns in Altadena, Calif., Jan. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Conservatives who have spent decades promoting deep cuts to government are giving mixed reviews to the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-led project to slash the federal workforce and reduce or end disfavored programs.
The Associated Press interviewed four veteran budget hawks, including some who have worked on Republican presidential campaigns predating Musk or President Donald Trump becoming dominant in GOP politics.
Some say Musk’s early targets demonstrate success and show more potential than previous efforts to downsize government due to his unique access and influence. Others say it’s too early to tell and argue that DOGE has stoked conservative outrage about specific agencies without going after much bigger pieces of the federal budget, like defense spending or programs with bipartisan support like Medicare and Social Security.
A list of savings provided by the White House last week noted at least $2.2 billion in initial savings identified by the group. The DOGE website has since noted at least $5.6 billion. Any total so far is a tiny fraction of Musk's initial goal of $2 trillion, the size of the federal budget deficit, or even the $1 trillion he has since mentioned more regularly.
Here's what the budget hawks said:
Norquist, whose government-cutting advocacy goes back to the administration of President Ronald Reagan, is famous for having said in 2001, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
He cheered Musk's early efforts.
“When you look at what they found after looking for a few days — I’m not going to second-guess some of the larger numbers they are talking about — this thing has paid for itself many times over now," Norquist said. As of last week, DOGE was operating with about $14 million, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
“Never mind if they find anything more,” Norquist added.
Musk is succeeding, no matter the final tally of DOGE's work, because he has unfettered access both to Trump and millions of followers on the social media platform he owns, X, Norquist said.
“You can’t bat it down and tell it to go away because X is out there before defenders of allowing Washington to do whatever it wants,” Norquist said. “That group can’t get over the fact that 10 million people read a tweet by Elon Musk listing five things suggesting Washington is out of control.”
Musk's early efforts appear to be aimed more at satisfying Trump's culturally conservative base than targeting the biggest government spending sources, said Riedl, a veteran Republican budget analyst who was chief economist for former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the conservative Heritage Foundation's senior budget researcher, and the architect of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 10-year deficit reduction proposal.
By seeking to eradicate racial and gender-based diversity, equity and inclusion spending from the the federal civil service, Musk is succeeding in getting the attention of Trump-styled conservatives with relatively few dollars to show for it, she said.
Cancelling so-called DEI contracts across the federal government is akin to cancelling the media subscriptions to national outlets such as The Associated Press, The New York Times, Politico and The Washington Post, she said. They are all regular targets of criticism from Trump's core supporters.
“So far, DOGE seems more about looking for symbolic culture war savings than truly reducing the budget deficit in any meaningful way,” said Riedl.
Likewise, Musk's effort to encourage many of the hundreds of thousands of eligible federal employees to accept terms to quit immediately in exchange for months of pay is seen by that same segment of voters as ridding the government of a force seen as thwarting Trump's policy agenda.
“These really get attention of Trump conservatives as fronts in the culture war, but ultimately do not save very much money at all," Riedl said.
A large majority of federal spending is tied up in Medicare and Social Security, veterans benefits, defense spending and interest on the national debt. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump insisted he would protect the two politically sacrosanct entitlement programs and expand the U.S. military, making these areas unlikely targets for cuts.
“If Trump were serious about the deficit, he'd be addressing Social Security, Medicare, defense and veterans benefits,” Riedl said. “And that's if the public even cares. I've seen no real evidence that they do.”
Only about a quarter of Americans said they were in favor of, as Musk recommended Thursday, eliminating entire federal agencies, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll conducted in January. Likewise, only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults said they favored eliminating a large number of federal jobs.
So far, DOGE's recommendations read like a public relations campaign aimed at discrediting the federal government, said Nowrasteh, an executive for the libertarian think tank and co-author of a report published in December recommending cuts to Musk's group.
Nowrasteh thinks the group may be shoring up its standing with conservative voters before it reaches for further buy-in among more moderate voters.
“They are trying to take down portions of the government that appear to be liberal or left leaning. And in the process, they are trying to expose some of the sillier aspects of what is being funded," he said.
The Cato Institute called for cutting 10% of the federal workforce — translating to a loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs — and requiring at least 10% compensation cuts for those that remain. Besides the defense and entitlement cuts, they also propose selling all federal land, turning national parks over to states for management, among myriad other dramatic changes.
“Most of the public is innumerate,” he said. “They don't know the difference between a million and a billion. It seems like a lot of money to you and me. But to the federal government, it's nothing.”
With Musk’s global profile and access in Trump’s world, DOGE has the potential to be far-reaching in a way previous efforts at deficit and budget reduction have not, said Madni, who leads a newer conservative budget and spending think tank aimed at working closely with Congress.
The access that Trump is granting DOGE means Musk’s team will have a view into a broad range of the government’s spending, she said. And Musk’s huge social media following, paired with Trump’s election victory, gives the project an air of momentum, Madni said.
“We see DOGE as an incredible opportunity to address some of the challenges that we have known existed in federal spending for a long time and haven’t really had the window to address,” she said. “It’s making budget cuts, budget review, cool again.”
She argued the Republican-controlled Congress would also be more likely to limit its budgets with DOGE's help.
“I think part of this conversation really has to be that DOGE is doing a phenomenal job already highlighting that there are places to make cuts, to reprioritize and save taxpayers money and reduce the deficit,” she said. “But besides that, there is Congress.”
Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk, joined by his son X Æ A-Xii, speaks in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (Photo/Alex Brandon)
