The Brief

Lori Corral and her family lost their West Altadena home in the Eaton Fire.

Since they were forced to flee nearly three weeks ago, they’ve moved eight times and recently found a place to rent. Now, like many other families affected by the fires in Los Angeles County, they are turning their attention to rebuilding.

“At the moment, we are trying to secure contractors that might be able to rebuild this home at a cost we have available to us,” said Corral, who lived in the home with her husband Juan, and 13-year-old daughter.

So what are their options? And where do the thousands of similarly displaced residents start when looking to rebuild?

LAist has answers.

How to find a contractor

The best way to find a contractor is through personal references, said real estate developer Frank Pittelli, who's already been contacted to rebuild one home in Altadena.

“Work within your own network to try to find a team that your friends or family members or people that you trust have worked with in the past,” he said.

Experts say you will need to trust your contractor because it will be a long term relationship — two to three years.

If you have an architect, get recommendations from him or her too.

If you don’t know somebody who knows somebody, you’ll need to resort to the internet.

The California State License Board is the best place to verify that a contractor has a license and check for complaints. It also has a function where you can look for contractors in your area and has a useful disaster help center.

Do your research

Contractors are swamped with inquiries right now,

But Brandon Lursen, a general contractor with Fullerton-based Melior Building Co., cautioned against rushing to hire someone just because demand is high.

“Don’t jump into quick contracts with contractors,” he told LAist, adding that residents should take the time to make sure the contractor is licensed, bonded and insured.

“This can take a few days,” he said.

The board has placed signs that read, “Unlicensed contractors beware,” throughout the burn areas. They also note that it's illegal to contract without a valid California contractor’s license in a disaster area.

“I don’t look forward to hearing the stories of people who got screwed over after losing their home,” said Lursen, who noted that scheming or just plain incompetence is inevitable.

“What happens a lot is inexperienced contractors will give a very low price, and then they can’t finish the job because they didn’t price it correctly,” he said. “They end up walking away from the job, and they don't have insurance, they don’t have a bond.”

Displaced homeowners can check whether a contractor has a legitimate license at the Department of Consumer Affairs Contractors State License Board. You can also call (800) 321-2752.

Ask for references — and call those references, Lursen said. Ask if they were satisfied with the work, whether there was an inordinate number of change orders that increased the cost of the house, and whether the work was done on time.

If possible, review the work that was done.

“Research that team and to make sure there are no pending lawsuits, any complaints on the state board,” said Pittelli, the real estate developer. "Just make sure they’re on the up and up.”

More tips

The state license board suggests getting at least three bids for the rebuilding of your home.

Corral said she spoke with one contractor who offered both debris removal and home rebuilding, which might make it more convenient dealing with one contractor who provides both services.

L.A. County is offering free debris removal once the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clears toxic waste such as batteries, solvents and oils.

The state license board also says you should make sure “all project expectations are in writing and only sign the contract if you completely understand the terms.”

Other tips from the board are:

• Confirm that the contractor has workers’ compensation insurance for employees. 
• Avoid paying more than 10% down or $1,000, whichever is less. Avoid paying in cash. 
• Avoid letting payments get ahead of the work. 
• Keep a job file of all papers relating to your project, including all payments. 
• Avoid making the final payment until you’re satisfied with the job.

The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs also offers advice on how to hire a contractor.

Building costs rising

Pricing the building of a home correctly will be especially hard because the cost of materials and labor will increase with demand.

“Right now in Los Angeles, building costs are sky high,” Pittelli said. “As you have hundreds and hundreds of houses being built at the same time, supply costs have to rise — much as they did during COVID.”

Corral, who works at Disney Imagineering, said she and her family will continue to talk to contractors, including one to clear debris. She’s not sure she wants to wait for the government to do it.

One contractor offered his own architect to expedite the process of rebuilding. Usually, architects are selected separately.

Corral said she remains hopeful.

“We’re always moving forward,” she said. “We’re always looking for the hope, the healing and the message in all of it.”

The electric vehicle industry has taken a pummeling this year. The Trump administration, as expected, reversed a whole suite of federal policies that promoted or encouraged EVs.

California's ability to require the sale of EVs: gone. Federal rules about emissions and fuel economy — being rewritten. Federal penalties for car companies that sell too many gas guzzlers: zeroed out. The $7,500 federal tax credit? Kaput.

Meanwhile, automakers delayed or canceled a host of unprofitable EV plans.

The all-electric Ram 1500 REV was canceled before a single one was built. The all-electric Ford Lightning was discontinued despite some glowing reviews. (Both pickups will be replaced with extended-range electric vehicles, which come with both a big battery and a backup gas tank.)

The buzzy Volkswagen Buzz is still available in other countries, but no longer in the U.S. The GM Brightdrop van is no more. The list goes on.

As for sales? "It's a roller-coaster ride," says Stephanie Valdez Streaty, who monitors EVs for the data and services company Cox Automotive.

Sales spiked in August and September, during the last weeks that the federal tax credit was available, as buyers rushed to take advantage of the expiring opportunity. Cox estimated EVs hit an all-time high of 11.6% of the new vehicle market in September. Then sales crashed by 50% in October.

But here's a twist.

"Among U.S. shoppers who are in [the] market for new vehicles, the interest in electric vehicles actually ticked up a bit after the tax credit went away," says Brent Gruber, who runs the EV practice at consumer insights company J.D. Power.

It's the EV story you might not have heard this year: Despite the political and product planning whiplash, consumer appetite for EVs has been on a very smooth ride.

Overall, about 25% of new car shoppers are very interested in buying an EV, according to J.D. Power surveys. And with minor fluctuations, "it's held pretty consistent," Gruber says, despite what he calls the "turbulence" of this year.

"There's still a tremendous amount of interest," he says. "And from an EV owner perspective, we continue to see high levels of satisfaction once people do get into those products." In fact, EV owners are 94% likely to repurchase another EV for their next vehicle, he says.

BJ Birtwell runs the Electrify Expo, a traveling festival dedicated to EVs. He says EVs have suffered from being politicized, with a lot of right-of-center Americans rejecting them out of hand.

"There's still a cloud of skepticism around EVs across some parts of the country," he says. But put a skeptic behind the wheel of a new EV, he says, "and I'll tell you what I see: Smiles for miles." Test drives reveal the cars are fun to drive, he says, and a little research can show that charging at home is easier and cheaper than they thought.

An American slowdown 

Still, while Americans remain interested in EVs, it's undeniable that battery-powered vehicles are taking off more slowly than industry execs expected a few years ago. That's not just because of the policy reversal; it's also because of market realities. For example, while charging might be easy at home, it's a hassle for apartment dwellers who don't have that option. Meanwhile, vehicle prices — a challenge for the entire auto market — are even higher for EVs. Lower fuel and maintenance costs can't always overcome that up-front sticker shock, even for people who are hypothetically interested in buying.

This slowdown will have global consequences for the environment and for human beings: It locks in higher carbon emissions and air pollution for years to come.

The legacy automakers, of course, have lost billions of dollars on the EV designs they've canceled or postponed. But the delay hurts more than just the big-name auto brands. A whole network of suppliers sell parts to the automakers, and they also bear the burden when plans change.

Ken O'Trakoun of RPM Partners works with auto suppliers in distress. "The whiplash," he says, "between demand going up and demand receding, it has impacted a number of suppliers." They made investments in factories to supply automakers for vehicles that either aren't being made, or are being made at much lower volumes. "It's pretty disruptive."

The "ripple effect" from those suppliers "creates impacts on jobs," Valdez-Streaty notes.

Automakers, too, have laid off or reassigned employees away from battery plants and EV production lines as part of their adjusted timelines.

A clear global trend 

But while automakers are slowing their EV plans down significantly, they're not giving up on them, either.

Partly that's because of the enduring consumer interest; as long as there's a market, the automakers want to serve it. And partly that's because the automakers are all global companies. They want to be able to sell to the rest of the world, too.

"On a global scale, internal combustion engine cars already peaked back, like, eight or nine years ago," says Huiling Zhou, U.S. EV analyst for the research group BloombergNEF.

About one in four cars sold worldwide this year was electric, Zhou says — driven by China's remarkably fast embrace of those vehicles. And China, increasingly, is exporting cars around the world.

That means that the global market for cars that run on gas or diesel is shrinking, while the market for battery-powered cars is expanding — and China is dominating it.

If automakers want to compete around the world, they simply can't afford to get off the EV roller coaster.

Copyright 2025 NPR

When California adopted a law to regulate greenhouse gases 23 years ago — the first state in the nation to do so — it focused on the future dangers of global warming. But while California’s emissions have declined, they have kept rising globally, and the climate has worsened. Now, in an effort to build back momentum, advocates are bringing attention to current-day harms driven by climate change.

Among those affected by rising temperatures is Amanda Nevarez, who was left homeless by the Eaton Fire, one of two wildfires in Los Angeles County that together destroyed more than 16,000 homes and buildings and killed 31 people last January.

Nevarez now sleeps in a trailer just big enough for a bed, parked at a garage in South Los Angeles, where her friend transforms old cars into electric vehicles. The fire accelerated the decade-long displacement of tenants like her from Altadena due to rising housing costs.

The blaze had several causes, including an unusual lack of rain, a condition blamed on climate change. Using weather data collected since 1950, scientists ran simulations showing the conditions that dried out the foothills were 35% more likely because of global warming.

Nevarez’s life in the tight-knit community was upended after smoke left her rented home uninhabitable. The movie director has relocated more than a dozen times, burned through two cars and had to give up nearly all her possessions. Available work in the film industry has been nearly nonexistent, while local rents remain stubbornly high.

“I’ve always had to adapt,” Nevarez said, recounting challenges like the Hollywood writers’ strike in 2023. Reduced government assistance for food made her life harder. “It’s just a chain reaction of things piling up.”

Her experience shows how climate change is worsening California’s suffocating living costs, a reality frequently glossed over in politics today.

Amanda Nevarez.

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Democrats, who hold a supermajority in California, no longer trumpet policies to fight climate change, an analysis by the Washington Post found. While research shows most Americans are concerned about climate change, a December poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found only 4% of surveyed likely voters said the environment and climate change were the “most important problem” facing the U.S. Elected state officials and those seeking office are emphasizing pocketbook concerns.

Yet there’s a different way to view the issue than as a choice between tackling high prices or fighting climate change.

“You can’t solve the affordability crisis without solving the climate crisis,” said Noel Perry, the founder of Next10, which co-produced a report with UC Berkeley that identified the costs of global warming in everything from homelessness and rent to energy bills and groceries. He and other climate campaigners are trying to recalibrate their messaging to that political reality.

It’s true that California’s policies to discourage fossil fuel use add to costs. Power bills and gasoline are more expensive here than elsewhere in the country, which the state compounds by taxing to pay for grid upgrades in order to wean itself off oil and gas. Oil refineries and power utilities pass those costs on to consumers, widening income inequality, the state has said.

But climate pain is now a fact for many, added to the long list of other crises people face — inflation, mass deportations, housing prices and a frayed government safety net.

Heat, Drought and Floods

Rising temperatures, the clearest impact of climate change, are driving up home energy costs.

California faced its hottest summer on record last year, when Los Angeles broiled in summertime heat exceeding 110°F. Each additional day above 95°F increased the chance that the power to low-income households would be disconnected, as energy bills inch up an additional $20 to $30 a month, according to a 2022 UCLA study. Los Angeles DWP Chief Financial Officer Ann Santilli told NBC Los Angeles that bills “are very much driven by the weather.”

Among the state’s most energy burdened communities is a heavily Latino enclave in the San Fernando Valley, an area often exposed to the hottest temperatures in Los Angeles County. Residents of Arleta spend 6% of their monthly income on power and gas, impacting woman-led households the most, according to research by the Gender Equity Policy Institute.

Sitting among roughly 150 people gathered on a dusty church lot waiting to enter a food pantry in Arleta, a woman named Maria, who gave only her first name as she rushed inside, lamented high living costs and a lack of jobs. “There are rich people who live well, but the poor are now in a very bad state,” she said. A former assembly line worker for an aerospace company, she said she and her adult children now pool together their meager incomes.

Inside the small wood-paneled building, visitors shuffled past a mound of bread piled on a table and trays with potatoes and fruit stacked high. A lanky youth offered a warm smile and wildly varied surplus foods, from lasanga noodles to pickle mayonnaise, while early arrivals scored half cartons of eggs placed carefully in their bags. Lately, more people have started showing up at the pantry, a volunteer said.

Poverty surged when the U.S. did not renew pandemic relief efforts such as unemployment and rent assistance. Driven by high living costs, California has a higher share of residents living in poverty than any state except Louisiana. At the same time, a typical $100 grocery bill in 2019 now costs $130 in the state, partially a result of crop disruptions caused by drought and heat in Florida, California and elsewhere.

The squeeze is tighter for workers lacking permanent legal status, who aren’t eligible for federal public benefits programs and risk being detained when they leave home for work. “I think they’re going to evict us because we can’t afford the rent anymore,” said pantry visitor Guadalupe Salazar, a home health care aide whose husband stopped working as a gardener for fear of being swept up in the federal immigration raids.

Other research shows people hit hard by drought and floods. One study found that during a severe drought in 2015, the poorest residents of Glendale in Los Angeles County, with households earning less than $10,000 a year, spent 6.5% of their income for water, compared to 1.5% for households earning the median income of $52,451.

Further north, in the San Joaquin Valley farmworker town of Planada, where many residents lack permanent legal status, heavy flooding in 2023 left almost a quarter of the residents behind on bills and rent.

After the Flames

Los Angeles fires ranked as the world’s costliest disaster zone in the first six months of 2025 — far worse than Myanmar, where there was a big earthquake, or Brazil, where there was a severe drought. But since 2017 wildfires have frequently caused tens of billions of dollars in property damage, lost wages and health care costs each year.

The fires also drive up power bills. Ratepayers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric saw a rise of between $12.97 and $24.42 for a “Wildfire Fund” surcharge. The fund is raising $21 billion to pay out claims to victims of fires sparked by power lines. A new law increases it by an additional $18 billion through 2045, half from ratepayers and the rest from shareholders. Home insurance premiums, too, are shooting up due to rising fire damage.

For now, paying rent and power bills aren’t things that Nevarez needs to worry about. Instead she worries about mold — cleaning it and breathing it from the walls of her trailer. Most of it is now gone, but a damp smell lingers. She runs an air purifier at night.

To use the bathroom, she has to enter the garage, stepping past a yellow Ferrari spilling its wiry guts. The owner of Left Coast EV, Rev. Gregory “Gadget” Abbott, is preparing to install a salvaged battery pack and motor in place of the powertrain engine. The two friends met at the annual Burning Man festival. They enjoy each other’s company, sometimes cooking communal dinners with roommates using vegetables from a rooftop garden.

Nevarez, right, chats with Rev. Gregory “Gadget” Abbott at Left Coast EV.

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“I’m trying my hardest to lay out tracks in front of me to go forward,” said Nevarez, who said she feels like she’s fallen through the cracks. But with help from Abbott, she can work on film projects without the daily grind of just trying to survive. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where I’d be today.”

Amid converging affordability crises, some advocates are looking to energy and insurance companies to foot a big chunk of the climate bill.

Climate groups want to compel oil and gas companies, whose products heat the planet, to deliver reparations, including cash payments for those who’ve suffered from climate change. Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit that fights for consumer rights, sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom urging the state to pull wildfire compensation dollars from utility shareholders instead of ratepayers and force insurers to expand fire coverage.

But it’s an uphill climb. Legislation known as the Climate Superfund Act, a potential first step for making polluters pay for climate damage, stalled in Sacramento last summer before being shelved. While politicians, including some Democrats, take a step back, global temperatures continue to rise, upending lives in ways that continue to multiply.

Copyright 2025 Capital & Main

President Donald Trump spent most of 2025 hacking away at large parts of the federal government. His administration fired, bought out, or otherwise ousted hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Entire agencies were gutted. By so many metrics, this year in politics has been defined more by what has been cut away than by what’s been added on.

One tiny corner of regulation, however, has actually grown under Trump: the critical minerals list. Most people likely hadn’t heard of “critical minerals” until early this year when the president repeatedly inserted the phrase into his statements, turning the once obscure policy realm into a household phrase. In November, the U.S. Geological Survey quietly expanded the list from 50 to 60 items, adding copper, silver, uranium, and even metallurgical coal to the list. On Monday, South Korean metal processor Korea Zinc announced that the federal government is investing in a new $7.4 billion zinc refinery in Tennessee, in which the Department of Defense will hold a stake.

But what even is a critical mineral?

The concept dates back to the first half of the 20th century, especially World War II, when Congress passed legislation aimed at stockpiling materials vital to the United States’ well being. President Trump established the critical minerals list in 2018, with the defining criteria being that any mineral included be “essential to the economic and national security of the United States” and have a supply chain that is “vulnerable to disruption.” A mineral’s presence on the list can convey a slew of benefits to anyone trying to extract or produce that mineral in the U.S., including faster permitting for extraction, tax incentives, or federal funding.

As Grist explored in its recent mining issue, critical minerals are shaping everything from geopolitics to water supplies, oceans, and recycling systems. If there is to be a true clean energy transition, these elements are key to it. Metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel form the backbone of the batteries that power electric vehicles. Silicon is the primary component of solar cells, and rare earth magnets help wind turbines function. Not to mention computers, microchips, and the multitude of other things that depend on critical minerals.

Currently, the vast majority of critical minerals used in the United States come from China — some 80 percent. In his first term, Trump tried to increase domestic production of these minerals. “The United States must not remain reliant on foreign competitors like Russia and China for the critical minerals needed to keep our economy strong and our country safe,” he said in 2017. Securing a domestic supply was also a cornerstone of former president Joe Biden’s landmark climate bills, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, as Trump has taken office again, he’s made critical minerals an ever more central part of his policy platform. We’re here to demystify why this has been a blockbuster year for critical minerals in the United States — and where the industry may go in the future.

A highly unusual strategy

In March, Trump issued an executive order meant to jumpstart critical mineral production. “It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,” he said. The executive order was just the first step in a coordinated effort by the Trump administration to strengthen U.S. control over existing supply chains for copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and dozens of other critical minerals and to galvanize new mines, regardless of concerns raised by Indigenous peoples. The Trump administration has sought to accomplish these goals by both reducing the regulatory barriers to production and by investing in the companies poised to do it.

Since then, Trump has signed agreements with multiple countries to increase investments in critical minerals and strengthen supply chains. Most recently, the U.S. made a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which holds more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt. He has pushed federal agencies to make it easier for mining companies to apply for federal funding, and is inviting companies to apply to pursue seabed mining in the deep waters around American Samoa, near Guam and the Northern Marianas, around the Cook Islands, and in international waters south of Hawaiʻi — prompting global outrage and opposition from Native Hawaiian, Samoan, and Chamorro/CHamoru peoples. At the same time, Trump’s volatile tariff policies have made it harder for American companies to source minerals, and cuts to federal funding have harmed mining workforce training programs and research into critical minerals.

While the Biden administration provided grants and loans to various mining companies, Trump is deploying a highly unusual strategy of buying stakes in private companies, tying the financial interests of the U.S. government with the interests and success of these commercial mining operations. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has spent more than a billion dollars in public money to buy minority stakes in private companies like MP Materials, ReElement Technologies, and Vulcan Elements. In Alaska, that strategy has involved investing more than $35 million in Trilogy Metals to buy a 10 percent stake in the company, which is a major backer of a copper and cobalt mining project in Alaska.

In September, the Trump administration finalized another deal with the Canadian company Lithium Americas behind Thacker Pass in Nevada, which is expected to be the largest lithium mine in the U.S. The Biden administration approved a $2.23 billion loan to Lithium Americas in October 2024; the Trump administration then restructured the loan and obtained a 5 percent stake in the project and another 5 percent stake in Lithium Americas itself. (A top Interior Department official has since been reported to have benefited financially from the project.) That’s despite allegations that the mine violates the rights of neighboring tribal nations and is proceeding without their consent, which Lithium Americas has denied.

The outlook for critical minerals

Historically, the federal government has only taken equity stakes in struggling companies, such as through the Troubled Asset Relief Program that sought to stabilize the auto industry and U.S. banks during the 2008 financial crisis. “What we’re talking about here is something very different, which is an industry that has not yet launched,” said Beia Spiller, who leads critical minerals work at the nonprofit research group Resources for the Future.

“Whether that’s going to work, I think is unlikely,” Spiller continued. “The best way to get an industry up and running is to have policies that raise the tide for everyone, not just choosing winners.”

In reference to Lithium Americas, Spiller said, “If you actually look at the cost fundamentals, it’s not a very competitive company.” Lithium Americas mines metal from clay, an old process that requires a lot of land, open pit mines, and heavy machinery — whereas some newer operations use direct lithium extraction, which is more cost effective in the long term. “So we just took an equity stake in a company that is going to face headwinds in terms of costs — now the American public faces that downside.”

It must also be stressed that the Trump administration’s rapid push to shore up the U.S.’s control over critical minerals isn’t about transitioning the country away from fossil fuels. Instead, the whole effort seems to mostly be geared toward military uses. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” allocated $7.5 billion for critical minerals, $2 billion of which will go directly to the national defense stockpile. Another $5 billion was allocated for the department of defense to invest in critical mineral supply chains.

In October, a former official at the defense department told the Financial Times that the agency is “incredibly focused on the stockpile.”

“They’re definitely looking for more, and they’re doing it in a deliberate and expansive way, and looking for new sources of different ores needed for defense products,” the unnamed official said.

Last week the administration announced that it plans to take equity stakes in more mining companies next year. It’s possible, Spiller said, these investments could extend to outfits that are piloting deep-sea mining. That carries a new set of risks, as many banks refuse to insure deep-sea mining operations, it’s unclear whether seabed mining operations will be able to even get off the ground before the end of Trump’s term, and the legal repercussions associated with undermining the Law of the Sea could fracture the stability among global powers — and make global climate action that much harder.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of MP Materials.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/the-year-the-us-doubled-down-on-critical-minerals/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org