The Brief

To sift or not to sift? That’s a question a lot of us who lost homes in the Los Angeles fires have been asking ourselves and each other.

In the quiet moments after these infernos, you’re jolted into remembering what is gone: keepsakes that marked a time in your life, things made by the people you love, belongings of loved ones no longer with you.

At the same time, the thought of digging through rubble seems so overwhelming. What if you find nothing, or nothing salvageable? What about all the toxins?

Amid these competing thoughts, I found myself at my burnt-out home in Altadena earlier this week. Joining me were 10 church volunteers armed with shovels and sifters recruited through Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian disaster relief organization.

Samaritan's Purse recruits volunteers from churches to help families recover valuables from disaster zones, and provides all the necessary equipment.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

Led by evangelist Franklin Graham, Samaritan's Purse has developed a niche helping people recover personal items from disaster zones across the country. Over the last two decades, it’s spent increasing time in California assisting those displaced by fires coming at an intensifying pace because of the climate crisis.

Leading the team at my property for three hours is Nancy Valentine, a retired ophthalmologic technician from Albuquerque, N.M. who spends months of the year volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse.

“This is our joy and privilege to come alongside you in a really difficult, difficult time,” Valentine said.

By its count, Samaritan’s Purse has assisted more than 200 households in Altadena out of 1,000-plus that have requested help from across L.A. County. The group says they are still waiting for the green light from L.A. officials so volunteers can enter Pacific Palisades, where access remains restricted.

Like a tornado

I learned about the nonprofit through my mother-in-law who, while on a flight out to Los Angeles to help us after the fire, struck up a rapport with another passenger who works with Samaritan’s Purse.

I'd been feeling pressure to decide whether to search the remains of my home, given the push by federal and state officials to speedily clean up burn areas. Afterward, government or private contractors would come in with excavators.

So when a volunteer from Samaritan's Purse called, we set a date to meet up this week.

Samaritan's Purse provides volunteers with the tools to sift for personal items, including sledgehammers and reciprocating saws.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

First order of business for Valentine was to map out the house. She asks where the front door.

I point to the concrete steps leading up to an entrance that is no more. But I’m disoriented by the lack of interior walls. It takes a moment for me to realize the dishwasher is now sitting in the living room.

“You know, things move,” Valentine said. “Fire creates a tornadic kind of thing lots of times in structures. The other day, we found china on the opposite side of the house of where the china hutch was, and some plates were still intact. Go figure.”

Across burn areas, word about Samaritan’s Purse name is spreading through word of mouth and churches.

I’ve asked people working for county agencies to recommend groups that salvage valuables and have come up empty. No other group seems as focused on this work as Samaritan’s Purse and certainly not at this scale.

Since the fires, nearly 600 people have volunteered with the group, mostly through their churches in Southern California. The volunteers convened at my house are one of several teams dispatched across Altadena that day, most of them hailing from Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties, along with two women from Massachusetts and Minnesota.

Everybody is suited up in Tyvek coveralls, goggles and respirators, including myself. Valentine kicks off the day with prayer before everybody is dispatched to different sections of the house.

“Father, we want to be a blessing to Josie and her family,” Valentine says, head bowed.

A Hollywood beginning

Believe me when I say a prayer circle happening at the end of my driveway is not something I ever envisioned. Then again I never thought my house would burn down. Things got even more surreal when the leadership team from Samaritan’s Purse showed up. That included COO Edward Graham, trailed by a photographer and videographer.

Graham is the grandson of the late Billy Graham and the son of Franklin Graham, who runs Samaritan’s Purse out of North Carolina. It was founded, though, in California by Bob Pierce who had also started World Vision. Its offices were in Hollywood.

Since the Eaton Fire, leadership from Samaritan's Purse headquarters in North Carolina have been visiting homes where their services have been requested.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

“And then when Dad took over back in the 70s, he moved it to Boone, North Carolina,” Graham said.

Graham says the non-profit first deployed to California in a major way more than 20 years ago as the Cedar Fire raged through San Diego County. The non-profit has since then built up a base in Fullerton, so they can provide meals and help with cleanup and rebuilding.

“We have semi-trucks, kitchen trailers and cook trailers that we have in one of our warehouses in Fullerton,” Graham said. “So we're spread out with equipment between here, Texas and back in North Carolina.”

You can see the white Samaritan’s Purse box vans all over Altadena and Pasadena. outfitted, I now know, with sledgehammers used to get at items buried under fallen walls. When that’s not enough to cut through the mesh and plaster, out came the power tools.

Finding treasures

Over by where our fireplace once was, Christina from Massachusetts was looking for any ceramics that might have survived. She’s retired from managing contracts in the aerospace industry. I ask her why she travels to do this painstaking work of sorting through detritus.

“Jesus commands us to go and do unto others and love your neighbor, and that's what we're doing,” she said. “We're hoping that this softens your heart and makes you like, ‘Wow, I want that'.”

A charred robot recovered after the Eaton Fire.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

As the volunteers’ shift wound down, they presented me with a Bible with their inscriptions and prayed again in a circle before departing for lunch, which would be followed by a visit to another home.

It moved me to no end to see complete strangers put so much effort into trying to make my family feel a little bit more whole again, and to see them treat my home with such care and respect even though it’s now grayish-brown piles of ash and rubble.

But in some of those piles are memories. The volunteers found a tin robot I bought in my 20s, its bright varnish now dulled by soot. A charred alarm clock has retained its familiar form but will never trill again. A tin box protected the Trivia Pursuit cards inside, intact but the questions faded away, likely from the passage of time.

I’ll admit I'd be disappointed if that’s all that was recovered. But a small ring that belonged to my mom was uncovered. Two tin Christmas angels my mother-in-law gave my husband made it too.

A scorched alarm clock, never to trill again.

(

Josie Huang

/

LAist

)

And I yelp with surprise when I’m presented with a figurine I think is made out of jade. It’s of an old man with a long beard and enormous forehead, holding in one palm the peach of immortality – a symbol of longevity in parts of Asia.

Valentine and I both marvel at its unmarred surface, the intricately carved lines still in sharp relief.

It will no doubt have a special spot in a permanent home that we’ll have again, one day.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Emma Lopez, a mother of two in Koreatown, can picture a new green space in the vacant, dirt lot in her neighborhood.

The lot Kingsley Drive and 4th Street is expected to become a new pocket park through a deal between the city and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. The deal has not been finalized yet. But Lopez has her concerns.

Lopez, 44, said many of the parks built in recent years have not been consistently cleaned, making them difficult for families like hers to use.

“I have to take my children outside of the city for clean playgrounds,” she said. “If they’re not going to have regular cleaning and disinfecting of them, then I would be against it.”

The roughly 7,400-square-foot corner parcel would be transferred to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, which would oversee its conversion into green space.

The proposal is scheduled to be discussed Thursday morning during a meeting of the Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners. The meeting will take place at the Westchester Recreation Center with a Zoom option also available to the public. 

Emma Lopez, a mother of two in Koreatown, can picture a new green space in the vacant, dirt lot in her neighborhood.

Commissioners are expected to consider final authorization to acquire the property for park use along with a commitment of park fees, environmental clearance under the California Environmental Quality Act, and acceptance of Measure A technical assistance funds.

Up to $2 million in park fees collected from nearby developments could be used to purchase the site, according to city records, though additional funding and planning approvals would still be needed before construction can begin.

Some Koreatown neighbors say they welcome the addition of a park, especially since the area  lacks accessible green space.

Andy Rider, who for seven years has lived about a block from the site, said there are few nearby places where residents can spend time outdoors.

“It’d be nice to have a small park for kids here locally that maybe aren’t able to get bikes or drive there,” he said. “I just like something other than looking at a dirt hill every time I pass by there.”

The property has long been eyed for development, with previous plans for a five-story building with 19 residential units.

Now, city officials are looking to preserve it as green space in a part of Los Angeles that has limited park access.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust has led efforts on the site since 2024 and is expected to hand it over to the city if the plan moves forward, according to a staff report from the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

Still, not everyone agrees that a park is the best use for the land.

Chance Morgan, who lives about five blocks from the site, said he would prefer to see the space used for housing. 

“Nothing against it, but personally I would always love more housing above all,” Morgan said. “This is a very cramped area and there’s a lot of people who don’t have a place to live.”

While he acknowledged that a park could benefit some residents, especially those with kids and dogs, Morgan said the need for housing outweighs it.

Others are also thinking about how the space would be used — and who it would serve.

“Hopefully it’s a safe place for homeless people to spend the night,” said Olivia Yoon, who previously experienced homelessness and is now living close to the vacant lot. 

Yoon emphasized that unhoused people are often misunderstood and should not be excluded from public spaces.

“Homeless individuals… they’re very nice people,” she said. “Just because they’re struggling does not mean they use illegal drugs.”

She added that basic resources like water would be critical if the park is built.

“Hopefully there’s a water fountain so they can get water and it’s a safe place for us all, ” she said.

Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents the district, has voiced support for adding green space in Koreatown.

Spokesperson Devyn Bakewell said Hutt is working with the Recreation and Parks Department to move the project forward more quickly, and that they will soon launch community meetings so residents can help shape what the park will look like and how it will serve the neighborhood.

There are no firm dates for any meetings. 

Tori Kjer, executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, said in an interview earlier this year that Koreatown is so “thoroughly developed” compared to other neighborhoods in LA that there is very little available property for new parks.

The site on Kingsley Drive was the property the land trust ended up buying after nearly two decades of trying to understand and identify different sites in the area, she said. 

Steve Kang, president of the city’s Board of Public Works and a Koreatown resident, said the project — similar to the Pio Pico Library Pocket Park — is part of a broader push to bring more green space into one of the densest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

“This is a partnership between the city of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department and the community,” Kang said, noting the site is in an area with many families and seniors.

Kang added that additional funding will be needed to build out the park, and that neighbors will play a key role in shaping what amenities are included.

Based on conversations he’s had, Kang said there is broad support for the project, though some residents have raised concerns about how the space will be used. 

“When you activate a site like this into a beautiful community space, that actually is more of a deterrent for any types of encampments,” Kang said, addressing those concerns.

He said the commission is expected to approve the proposal, which would allow the city to take control of the site and move into the next phase of planning — gathering community input.

California Republicans have an unusual shot of claiming an upset victory in the governor’s race this year — but to win, neither of their candidates can get too far ahead of the other just yet.

With eight major Democratic candidates splitting the liberal vote, both Republican candidates, former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, could come in first and second in the June 2 primary and move on to the November ballot.

That would shut out Democratic general election candidates, an extraordinary event that pollsters and strategists of both parties agree is the only viable chance for a Republican to become governor. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one in California and the GOP hasn’t won a statewide race in two decades.

Both Republicans can only advance to November if they split the Republican vote essentially evenly, giving each enough to surpass their Democratic opponents. That’s thanks to California’s top-two primary system, in which the two candidates with the most votes advance to the general election regardless of their party.

Democrats insist it won’t happen, though they face mounting pressure over the risk in a year when the party is hoping to turn out liberal voters for U.S. House races in November.

And neither Republican is strategizing to shut the Democrats out. Instead of trying to keep the other alive through the primary, Hilton and Bianco are running campaigns like any other candidate: seeking to defeat each other. Hilton has spent the past few months attempting to consolidate Republican support by attacking Bianco, who has been happy to return the ire.

“There’s an amazing irony there, that they need to beat each other but they both need to succeed at the same time,” GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said. “It cuts against human nature and cuts against the way you put together campaigns.”

An intra-Republican primary

Despite very different backgrounds, Hilton and Bianco are running on similar policies.

Hilton is a British political strategist who’s written extensively about populism, reducing bureaucracy and decentralizing power, and Bianco is a bombastic local sheriff who is pushing the boundaries of police authority over elections.

Both are pushing a deregulation agenda, railing against Democratic-backed environmental policies they blame for raising the state’s cost of living. Their targets include the landmark California Environmental Quality Act, which requires environmental reviews for new construction.

Both Republicans also want to reverse prison closures, boost oil production to lower gas prices and reduce or eliminate the 61-cents-a-gallon gas tax.

Hilton wants to shield the first $100,000 of earnings from the state income tax (a goal Democrat Katie Porter shares) and significantly lower taxes on higher earners by cutting 18% of the state budget, including areas he claims are fraudulent or wasteful such as using cannabis tax revenue to support substance abuse programs. Bianco also wants to cut, and bring in oil revenues to eliminate the income tax entirely.

Hilton, one of the race’s top fundraisers, has raised more than $6.6 million so far, exceeding Bianco’s haul by more than $2 million. The two are second and third to Democratic former Rep. Katie Porter in the total number of campaign donors — one measure of popular support.

Polls show they remain neck-and-neck at or near the top of the pack, with one survey released last week by the California Democratic Party showing Hilton and Bianco statistically tied with 16% and 14%, respectively. To be competitive, they each need to win over independent and undecided voters, some of whom lean Republican and most of whom are fixated on the state’s cost of living crisis. The California Republican Party is slated to take an endorsement vote at its convention next weekend.

Each has tried to outrank the other on conservative credentials.

Hilton has attacked Bianco for having “too much baggage” related to liberal causes, pointing to a video showing the sheriff kneeling during the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests, as many police officers did then to de-escalate crowds, and later describing his actions as praying. Under Trump, the FBI this year fired several agents who had done the same.

“It’s a question of character and honesty and judgment,” Hilton said in an interview.

Bianco pointed to the two Republicans’ continued tie in the polls as proof Hilton can’t carry the party. He’s called Hilton, who worked for the conservative U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, “a fraud amongst Republicans” in part because a political crowdfunding startup Hilton co-founded in 2013, Crowdpac, later rebranded to exclusively support Democrats.

And each has aimed to align himself with Trump without saying the president’s name directly. While both are vocal fans of the president, nearly three-quarters of California voters disapprove of him, and Democratic voters in particular are motivated this year to vote against the president’s agenda. Hilton and Bianco have both blasted Democrats for linking the gubernatorial race to Trump.

Hilton, who once called for an audit into Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, is promoting “CalDOGE,” a program to look into reports of fraud and waste in California government. It’s a nod to Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that slashed federal spending and employment last year. So far, as part of the project, Hilton has held press conferences criticizing state grants to nonprofits with advocacy wings that support liberal causes, like stricter environmental laws and holding voter registration drives; he’s vowed to cut them as governor.

Bianco, who endorsed Trump’s 2024 re-election by saying America should “put a felon in the White House,” told KTLA last fall if he had the president’s support he’d downplay it on the campaign trail. Asked last week if he’s seeking the president’s approval, he said he instead wants “the endorsement of every single person in this country.”

“You have an entire Democrat field trying to label me as Donald Trump, and the reason why is because they have absolutely nothing to run on,” he said in an interview.

He has embarked on an unprecedented effort in Riverside County to recount ballots from last year’s special election based on what local elections officials say is inaccurate and flawed raw ballot data, a move that mirrors the Trump administration’s seizure of 2020 ballots in Georgia. But Bianco has insisted it’s not political. The investigation, he said this week, is on hold amid legal challenges.

Who is Bianco?

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks with the press after announcing his bid for governor at Avila’s Historic 1929 Event Center in Riverside on Feb. 17, 2025.

(

Gina Ferazzi

/

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

)

The ballot seizure is one of the many ways Bianco has courted controversy as county sheriff, a seat to which he was first elected in 2018 with hefty campaign contributions from the union that represents sheriff’s deputies.

The three-decade law enforcement officer and one-time member of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers gained attention in 2020 for fighting state orders to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, refusing to enforce masking or stay-at-home rules or to mandate vaccination for deputies. He also opposes school vaccination laws.

He’s often criticized the state’s sanctuary law that limits police cooperation with federal immigration agents, simultaneously insisting he’ll do everything he legally can to help immigration agents but clarifying to Riverside County residents that deputies do not enforce immigration laws and take reports of crimes from anyone. He’s presided over a spike in deaths in county jails that he’s attributed to fentanyl and suicides, though the state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation.

He has ties to an evangelical pastor in Temecula who helps elect Christian conservatives and is pushing to increase the influence of Christianity in government.

His pitch to voters is that he’s an outsider — and he’s prone to using hyperbole to prove it, calling environmental activists who sue to stop development “terrorists,” promising to “completely destroy special interests” and saying if elected he’d “take a nuclear bomb” to the decisions made in California government.

He’s running, he said, to offer a change from the “crime and corruption” he says has defined state politics and claims he’s the only candidate with strong executive experience (though several Democratic opponents have led state or federal agencies, or major cities.)

He’s endorsed by several law enforcement groups, some of which have also jointly endorsed a Democrat, and funded by campaign contributions from dozens of officers and police chiefs, various business owners and the powerful Peace Office Research Association of California, a special interest with outsize influence at the Capitol. The law enforcement association extends to his title as Riverside sheriff on the ballot, which will give him an edge over Hilton, GOP strategists say.

“Every other person in this race is nothing but a career politician,” he said. “We're over career politicians, millionaires, billionaires, bright, shiny objects and career politicians and strategists. California is sick of that.”

Who is Hilton?

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a press conference outside the California attorney general’s office in Sacramento on Aug. 5, 2025. Hilton announced legal action to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta from pursuing mid-decade redistricting.

(

Fred Greaves

/

CalMatters

)

Hilton, meanwhile, is making lofty promises like $3-a-gallon gas and halving electricity bills, and says he has experience from London to achieve such cuts.

The son of Hungarian immigrants to Britain, Hilton got his start in the Conservative Party there before moving to the private sector and returning to politics as Cameron’s director of strategy from 2010 to 2012.

The British press noted Hilton’s penchant for casual dress and credited him as the ideological force pushing the party to loosen workplace regulations, cut welfare, shrink the size of government, lower taxes and withdraw from the European Union. Hilton was disillusioned with Cameron’s progress, the Washington Post reported, when he left his team after two years to join his wife, tech executive Rachel Whetstone, in California and take a sabbatical at Stanford. The couple still maintain several properties in central London.

“The government has lost its ultimate radical,” The Economist declared of his departure from 10 Downing Street in 2012. “In his visceral disdain for the state, reverence for local communities and commitment to enterprise, he might be the most deeply conservative figure at the very top of this government.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a press conference outside the California attorney general’s office in Sacramento on Aug. 5, 2025. Hilton announced legal action to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta from pursuing mid-decade redistricting. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters He founded Crowdpac in 2013 with two partners, a Stanford professor and a Google executive, with the stated goal of getting more people engaged in politics by using software to match their views with candidates they could support financially. The platform, he highlighted at the time, was used by a Black Lives Matter leader to crowdfund a run for Baltimore mayor and by anti-Trump Republicans hoping for a Paul Ryan presidential run. In 2015, he wrote a column in the Guardian supporting a higher minimum wage in Britain and walking back his own prior campaigns against one.

Years later, Hilton left the platform when Crowdpac, having mostly been used by Democrats, stopped helping Republican candidates in what executives called “a stand against Trumpism.” It later shut down and relaunched again as a Democrats-only platform. By then, Hilton had already endorsed Trump for president in 2016 and landed a weekly Fox News show, which ran from 2017 to 2023. He’s now returned fully to his conservative roots, pushing to “massively reduce spending” and regulation the same way he did in the U.K.

“I have a very clear message of change that's practical and positive and not ideological,” he told CalMatters.

Hilton has raised the third most in the race, behind Democrats Tom Steyer, a self-funding billionaire, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who has pulled in millions of dollars primarily from Silicon Valley. Hilton has put $200,000 of his own money into his campaign, and counts among his supporters Uber, Fox Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech executives who have also supported Democrats: Google founder Sergey Brin and Ripple executive Chris Larsen.

Will Democrats really be shut out of the race?

Experts say a Democratic shutout is unlikely, unless the field remains entrenched.

“It depends upon those two Republican candidates who are splitting the Republican vote fairly evenly right now, doing that, and then having more than a half a dozen Democrats with no one that is a leading favorite, which is what we've seen so far,” said Mark Baldassare, director of polling at the Public Policy Institute of California. “But one thing I would say is it’s still early.”

Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks has also used that reasoning. He has started an incremental public pressure campaign to prompt lower-polling Democratic candidates to drop out, but the candidates have resisted so far.

Hilton, too, dismissed analyses that both Republicans must advance for either to have a shot of winning the seat, calling it a hypothetical exercise from GOP strategists.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about, I mean these are the kinds of people who have been losing for 20 years,” he said. “The idea that the Democratic Party is just going to concede California is obviously ridiculous. … It’s going to be a Republican against a Democrat.”

Bianco said he’s running against Hilton, whom he called a “career strategist,” as much as any of the Democrats. He said he hasn’t thought too much about who his opponent would be in a general election.

“It really doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I’m not doing this for Republicans. I’m not doing it for Democrats, independents, anything like that.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

FIFA is once again raising prices for a substantial number of games in the upcoming World Cup tournament that will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.

The price increases took place in FIFA's latest sales window that kicked off on Wednesday, with 40 out of 104 games now costing more than in the last sales window, according to an NPR examination of prices.

The hikes can be stark. The most expensive "Category 1" tickets for the final will now cost $10,990, a broad area that covers most of the lower two bowls of MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the last game of the tournament will be held in July.

That's significantly more than the nearly $8,700 at which these tickets were priced in FIFA's previous sales window earlier this year — and much higher than the $6,370 at which they were priced when sales kicked off last year.

The increases come even after FIFA has faced heavy criticism about the record prices being charged and its adoption of dynamic pricing for the first time. A group representing European fans and consumers called FIFA's prices "exorbitant" and filed a formal complaint this month with the European Commission in a bid to get the soccer body to lower prices.

Meanwhile, a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to FIFA accusing the organization of "price gouging at the expense of the people who make the World Cup the most-watched sporting event in the world."

FIFA has not replied to NPR's queries. But previously FIFA has justified its prices citing strong demand for tickets as well as noting it's adapting its pricing to the North American market. FIFA has also repeatedly said it's a non-profit that steers the vast majority of revenue from the World Cup to grow soccer around the world.

Price increases cover a wide range of games

Most of the price increases in the initial stage of the tournament were for teams that tend to draw more fans such as Brazil, Argentina, England and Germany — as well as co-host Mexico.

Although price hikes tended to be of less than $100, they still mark a substantial escalation from the initial prices at which FIFA started selling those tickets. Some increases were quite big though. Mexico's opening game against Saudi Arabia now costs as much as $2,985, up from $2,355 in FIFA's last sales window and up from its initial price of $1,825.

Most of the knockout games also increased in price, including the one being held in Philadelphia on July 4th — and the hikes tend to get more substantial for match-ups later in the tournament.

For example, the two semi-finals of the tournament also saw hefty price hikes. The game that will be held in Dallas in July will now cost as much as $3,710, up substantially from $3,295 in the last sales window.

The current sales window will last all the way through the tournament. FIFA has not said how many tickets are left to sell, only that it will continue to drop tickets periodically, including potentially for games that appear to be sold out.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Topline:

Why now: HMC StratCap notified the city on Tuesday that it was pulling its proposal to build a data center in a local business park after months of pressure from residents and advocates who raised concerns about pollution, energy use and health risks. The parent company of the developer — DigiCo Infrastructure REIT — said that HMC sought to "work with the City to establish productive land uses" for its Saturn Street property "that are supported by the broader community." Representatives for HMC StratCap have not responded to requests for comment.

Why it matters: For people pushing back on data centers in the region, Monterey Park is shaping up as a test case for how local organizing can stop them. The developer’s decision to withdraw its application comes ahead of a June 2 special election on Measure NDC. If approved at the ballot box, Monterey Park would be the first to ban data centers by public vote. The developer, which had threatened legal action against the city for data center restrictions, now says it will not contest the proposition.

The backstory: The data center proposal had been moving through the city's planning pipeline for two years before it started showing up on the City Council's agendas and coming to the attention of residents, who were outraged the plans had not been well-publicized by the city. Hundreds of people flooded City Hall during council meetings over the last several months, demanding the city heed their concerns. In response, the council approved a temporary moratorium on data center development, put the issue on the ballot and will consider a separate ordinance banning data center development altogether.

What’s next: Members of groups like No Data Center MPK and San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action are celebrating the application's withdrawal, but say they will continue to advocate for Measure NDC and the data center ordinance, which the City Council is expected to vote on in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, organizers are joining the effort to stop a proposal to build a battery energy storage system in the City of Industry, which they see as laying the groundwork for a data center.

Go deeper: How Monterey Park residents pushed back on a data center — and changed the course