The Brief

A federal court on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from conducting warrantless immigration stops throughout a wide swath of California.

The ruling came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed after the El Centro Border Patrol traveled to Kern County to conduct a three-day sweep in January, detaining day laborers, farm workers and others in a Home Depot parking lot, outside a convenience store and along a highway between orchards.

The ruling prohibits Border Patrol agents from taking similar actions, restricting them from stopping people unless they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in violation of U.S. immigration law. It also bars agents from carrying out warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston said during a Monday hearing in Fresno that featured moments of heated exchange between government attorneys and the judge.

The ACLU filed suit on behalf of United Farm Workers, arguing that the stops violated the Fourth Amendment. The judge has not decided on the totality of the case, but on Tuesday granted the ACLU’s motion to stop the Border Patrol from conducting similar operations while the case moved through the courts.

“I think that it’s pretty clear that half of a century of really established law is being upheld. It's unfortunate that this is a cause for celebration. It’s not legal to snatch people off the street for looking like farm workers or day laborers,” said Elizabeth Strater, vice president of United Farm Workers.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta agreed. “That’s existing law, and the judge’s order reflects existing law.”

"You can't just indiscriminately stop people and search them without any appropriate reasonable suspicion or probable cause or without a warrant," Bonta said at a news conference in San Diego on Monday about conditions in ICE detention. "So, it sounds like the judge had seen enough and wanted to issue an order. "

The injunction is in effect in the jurisdiction of California’s Eastern District, which spans the Central Valley from Redding to Bakersfield.

After the January sweep, the man who led it, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, said his agents specifically targeted people with criminal and immigration histories. However, a CalMatters investigation revealed that the Border Patrol had no criminal or immigration history on 77 of the 78 people it arrested.

The court also ordered the Border Patrol to document every stop and provide reports within 60 days. During oral arguments on Monday, the government attorney said doing so would be burdensome to Border Patrol agents. Judge Thurston rebuked the government, saying: “They have to make a report for every arrest, not sure what the burden is.”

According to sworn declarations filed in court by those detained, Border Patrol agents slashed tires, yanked people out of trucks, threw people to the ground, and called farmworkers “Mexican bitches.”

Border Patrol attorneys characterized those examples as actions of individual agents, and not reflective of a policy from the agency.

Thurston disagreed. “The evidence is that this was wide scale” and not limited to individual agents, she said.

Border Patrol agents receive new training

Border Patrol attorneys didn’t offer evidence of their own to dispute the evidence presented by the ACLU, including stopping people based on their race and warrantless arrests. They tried to persuade Thurston that the order would not be necessary because the agency is already taking steps to retrain its officers. In a previous court filing, government attorneys said Border Patrol had issued guidance to retrain the El Center sector’s 900 agents on the Fourth Amendment in order to prevent warrantless arrests.

At Monday’s hearing, Thurston questioned why guidance would even be necessary since agents are trained on the Fourth Amendment in the academy.

Government attorneys told the judge 270 agents have received the training. Thurston asked for details on how the training was being carried out. “Shift by shift?” she said. But government attorneys said they did not know.

The packed courtroom was contentious at times. U.S. Department of Justice attorney Olga Y. Kuchins argued that the Border Patrol’s sweep in Kern County, known as “Operation Return to Sender” wasn’t standard policy. “This two-day operation does not a policy make,” she said.

Thurston asked how many days were needed for an operation to be taken as policy, and on what authority the government was relying on to establish this operation could not be interpreted as part of Border Patrol policy.

“Do you know of that authority?” Thurston said.

“I don’t know of that authority,” Kuchins said.

The injunction also compels the El Centro Sector to provide proof within 90 days, and every 30 days thereafter, that agents involved in these operations have been trained on these rules.

“This ruling is a powerful recognition that what happened in Kern County and surrounding area in January was illegal,” said Bree Bernwanger, ACLU senior staff attorney.

She called it a “powerful reminder that law enforcement agents – including immigration – cannot stop you, detain you because of the color of your skin.”

Another immigration sweep

Even after government attorneys pledged to retrain agents on the Constitution, El Centro sector traveled more than 200 miles north to Pomona last week and rounded up day laborers outside a Home Depot, an action reminiscent of the Kern County raid.

Witnesses say federal agents arrived in unmarked vehicles around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, and quickly surrounded the Home Depot parking lot on South Towne Avenue.

“When they saw that a critical mass was gathered, they executed the raid,” said Alexis Teodoro, a Worker Rights Director with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, agents arrested 10 and placed them into removal proceedings. No other agencies were involved, said Michael Scappechio, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Advocates are adamant that more than 20 people were initially taken into custody, based on piecing together the accounts of different witnesses about what happened.

Federal officials defended their actions, saying agents were initially targeting a single individual with an active arrest warrant. During the operation, nine other people were also taken into custody. Some of those detained had prior charges, including child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, immigration violations, and DUI, said Hilton Beckham, the assistant commissioner for CBP’s office of public affairs.

Jesus Domingo Ross, 38, was standing on a street corner looking for work near the Home Depot in Pomona last week when, he said, agents appeared from all sides, grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

“I panicked,” he said, describing the moment he realized he was in custody of U.S. immigration authorities. “Just with everything you’re seeing on the news right now, I really panicked because we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

He spoke to CalMatters on Saturday night during visiting hours at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, where he is now being held.

“I’m trying to keep my confidence in God to carry me through this,” he said quietly.

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

The State Department said Wednesday it will suspend the processing of immigrant visas for citizens of 75 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Somalia, whose nationals the Trump administration has deemed likely to require public assistance while living in the United States.

The State Department, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said it had instructed consular officers to halt immigrant visa applications from the countries affected in accordance with a broader order issued in November that tightened rules around potential immigrants who might become "public charges" in the U.S.

The step builds on earlier immigration and travel bans by the administration on nearly 40 countries and is part of President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to tighten U.S. entry standards for foreigners.

"The Trump administration is bringing an end to the abuse of America's immigration system by those who would extract wealth from the American people," the department said in a statement. "Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassess immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits."

The suspension, which will begin Jan. 21, will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant visas, or temporary tourist or business visas, who make up the vast majority of visa seekers. Demand for non-immigrant visas is expected to rise dramatically in the coming months and years due to the upcoming 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics both of which the U.S. will host or co-host.

Cable calls for screening of non-immigrant visa applicants

A separate notice sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates said that non-immigrant visa applicants should be screened for the possibility that they might seek public benefits in the United States.

"With the uncovering of massive public benefits fraud across the United States, the Trump administration is laser-focused on eliminating and preventing fraud in public benefits programs," said the cable that referred specifically to most non-immigrant visa applications and was sent on Monday.

The cable, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, urged consular officers to ensure that foreigners wanting to travel to the U.S. "have been fully vetted and screened" for whether they may rely on public services before they are issued a visa.

The cable noted several times that it is up to the applicant to prove that they would not apply for public benefits while in the U.S. and said consular officers who suspect the applicant might apply should require them to fill out a form proving their financial bona fides.

President Trump's administration has already severely restricted immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing for citizens of dozens of countries, many of them in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Consular officials must consider a range of personal details

The November guidance on which Wednesday's decision is based directed U.S. Embassy and consulate officials to comprehensively and thoroughly vet visa applicants to demonstrate that they will not need to rely on public benefits from the government any time after their admission in the U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes a statement to reporters while meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan at the State Department in Washington on Tuesday.

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Cliff Owen

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While federal law already required those seeking permanent residency or legal status to prove they wouldn't be a public charge, Trump in his first term widened the range of benefit programs that could disqualify applicants, and the guidelines in the cable appear to go further in scope.

Immigrants seeking entry into the U.S. already undergo a medical exam by a physician who's been approved by a U.S. Embassy. They are screened for communicable diseases, like tuberculosis, and asked to disclose any history of drug or alcohol use, mental health conditions or violence. They're also required to have a number of vaccinations.

The new directive expanded those with more specific requirements. It said consular officials must consider a range of specific details about people seeking visas, including their age, health, family status, finances, education, skills and any past use of public assistance regardless of the country. It also said they should assess applicants' English proficiency and can do so by conducting interviews in English.

Experts said at the time it could further limit who gets to enter the country at a time when the Republican administration is already tightening those rules.

The countries affected by the suspension announced on Wednesday are: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Copyright 2026 NPR

After a tense day of confusion and backroom negotiations, the Trump administration moved Wednesday night to restore roughly $2 billion in federal grant money for mental health and addiction programs nationwide.

The money had been cut off late Tuesday without warning, sending shockwaves through a segment of the country's patchwork system of public health that relies on grant funding.

"After a day of panic across the country, non-profits and people with mental health conditions are deeply alarmed, but also hopeful that this money is being restored," said Hannah Wesolowski with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

An administration official confirmed to NPR that the cuts, first announced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), were being reversed. They asked not to be identified because they didn't have permission to speak publicly about the decision.

They said all of the roughly 2,000 organizations affected by the whiplash series of events were being notified that full funding would be restored.

NPR was unable to confirm who triggered the initial decision to terminate the grants by sending letters that abruptly signaled programs no longer "aligned" with the Trump administration's public health agenda.

After sending the letters, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and SAMHSA went silent, offering no clarification to health care providers or the public about what would happen next or where patients should go for care.

The sudden defunding and lack of communication triggered a backlash from local officials and care providers, who said the American public would see a rapid dismantling of essential safety net programs.

"We provide treatment, life saving treatment," said Dan Lustig who runs the Haymarket Center, the largest non-profit addiction treatment program in Chicago, which treats people at high risk while using illicit drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamines.

"If people don't get access to treatment they just die. That's a fact," Lustig said. "You can spin this any way people want to, but people are going to die."

The American Medical Association weighed in, issuing a statement saying it was "deeply concerned" by the cuts and calling for grants to be restored.

"At a time when patients already face too many barriers to care, sudden funding disruptions risk leaving them without the support and treatment they urgently need," the statement said.

That message reached members of Congress. Republican and Democratic lawmakers scrambled to urge White House and Health and Human Services officials to reverse course.

"We heard from offices on both sides of the political aisle who were working on this issue throughout the day," said Wesolowski. The bipartisan pressure, she added, "really speaks to the power of the collaboration on this issue."

While most of the talks happened behind closed doors, some Democratic lawmakers publicly blasted the Trump administration and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for what they described as roughshod treatment of front-line care providers.

"After national outrage, Secretary Kennedy has bowed to public pressure and reinstated $2 billion in SAMHSA grants that save lives," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut.

"Our policy must be thoughtful – not haphazard and chaotic. This episode has only created uncertainty and confusion for families and health care providers," she added.

While confusion over funding was apparently short-lived, public health organizations and other sources told NPR that the termination letters demoralized staff in a system already weakened by deep cuts to Medicaid, enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress last year.

For 24 hours, it was unclear which programs would survive and who would still have jobs when the dust settled.

Dr. Yngvild Olsen, an addiction treatment physician who served as the director for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment inside SAMHSA until July 2025, said the turmoil also raised questions about who in the Trump administration is making key public health decisions.

"My understanding is that much of the staff at SAMHSA was caught unaware," Olsen said. "These were decisions made without the input of experts in these programs and experts in this [addiction and mental health] field."

For months, Trump administration officials have been signaling they think many of the country's current public health programs are ineffective and need to be replaced.

But public health experts told NPR there has been little or no communication with frontline groups that provide much of the actual in the U.S. Meanwhile, no clear plan from the administration has emerged. Instead, local government agencies and non-profits caring for patients have faced a series of threats, disruptions and funding chaos.

"This sparks a lot of uncertainty about who's making public health decisions in this country," said NAMI's Wesolowski.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The big news in L.A. food-land this week is the $1500 price tag for Copenhagen restaurant Noma’s upcoming residency here in L.A. In this economy? I think I’d rather fly to Copenhagen. Nonetheless, if you’re lucky (and flush!) enough to snag a reservation, please report back.

While that did not make any of our staffers' resolution lists, Senior Marketing Manager Patricia Tumang has some food goals of her own, including getting a coffee at Quat L.A., trying some dipping ramen for lunch at Tsuke Artisan Noodle in Pasadena and getting a basturma sandwich at III Mass Bakery & Deli in Glendale (new). Much more reasonable (and probably just as tasty!).

On the music calendar this weekend, our friends at Licorice Pizza recommend new-school SoCal punks Together Pangea at the Teragram on Friday, old-school SoCal punks Black Flag at the Roxy, or Beastie Boys associate Mix Master Mike at the Venice West. Saturday, there’s the big iHeartRadio ALTer EGO show at the Forum with Green Day, Cage The Elephant, Good Charlotte, Sublime, Twenty One Pilots, Gigi Perez, Myles Smith and Almost Monday. Nikka Costa is at the Venice West, or head to Riverside to see legendary teen idol Shaun Cassidy at the Fox Performing Arts Center. Plus, a treat on both Saturday and Sunday: Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra will be playing the Troubadour, with a 4 p.m. matinee on Saturday for those of us who like to be in bed early!

Elsewhere on LAist, you can follow Northeast L.A.’s “treat trail,” learn about the challenges facing Long Beach’s Planet Books and catch up with last weekend’s Golden Globe winners.

Events

Morleigh Steinberg: Someplace, Somewhere

Through Sunday, February 8
Arcane Space
324 Sunset Ave., Venice 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Morleigh Steinberg

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Arcane Space

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The small gallery Arcane Space in Venice punches above its weight, with top-tier shows and a winding venue that lets out to a very cool, neighborhoody patio in the back. Choreographer and artist Morleigh Steinberg owns and operates the gallery, which has hosted inspiring new artists and group shows lately, but this time she’s showing her own work. Steinberg’s mesmerizing nature photos are printed on silver mylar substrate and show her adopted Ireland (she’s married to U2 guitarist The Edge) in a new — and possibly even more emerald — light that you can imagine.

I’m Not a Comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce

Sunday, January 18, 2 p.m. 
La Mirada Theatre
14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada
COST: FROM $19.80; MORE INFO

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Courtesy La Mirada Theatre

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Freedom of speech is in the news daily, and no one championed the right to say what you want in a more direct way than comedian Lenny Bruce. Directed by Tony Award-winning actor Joe Mantegna, this one-man show (written by and starring Ronnie Marmo) combines Bruce’s classic comedy bits with biographical insight.

DTLB Live 

Saturday, January 17, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. 
Promenade N. between Broadway and 3rd Street, Long Beach
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Downtown Long Beach Alliance

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Usher in the new year with the Big Butter Jazz Band as the Downtown Long Beach Alliance kicks off the first DTLB Live!, a new recurring monthly event series bringing live music, crafts and family-friendly activities to the Promenade every third Saturday of each month. There will also be live swing dancers, a maker’s market with local vendors, food, drink and much more.

NFL Playoffs & Mimosas

Saturday, January 17, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. 
Chulita 
533 Rose Ave., Venice
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Watch the playoffs, drink a mimosa, soak up some sun on the patio — what could be better? There will also be tunes from DJ El Cizzle, and bottomless mimosas are $35.

Park Pages

Sunday, January 18, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 
L.A. Historic Park 
1245 N. Spring Street, Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

This whole week has been summer in January, so keep the sunny vibes going and bring your book, a blanket and a donation for Project Angel Food to the L.A. Historic Park for the first Park Pages, a new monthly group read and hang. The Fleuria indie book truck will be there, along with plenty of fellow sun-loving bookworms.

About Last Night

Saturday, January 17, 8 p.m. 
Three Clubs 
1123 Vine Street, Hollywood 
COST: $23.10; MORE INFO 

If you thought your dates were bad, just wait until you hear the unhinged horror stories of some of your fellow single Angelenos at About Last Night. The regular storytelling showcase features locals getting up on stage and sharing their funniest, most outrageous dating stories.

Chopstick-Making Workshop

Saturday, January 17, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. 
Allied Woodshop
4160 Whiteside Street, East L.A.
COST: $160, MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Ali Chen Studio

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More than one of our LAist staffers had “go to a woodworking workshop” on their 2026 L.A. resolutions list. What better time to start than just ahead of the Lunar New Year with this chopstick-making workshop at Allied Woodshop in East L.A., led by Ali Chen?

Greatest Story Ever Told with Guillermo del Toro 

Academy Museum 
6067 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile
COST: $5; MORE INFO

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MGM

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This is for my fellow film nerds and our raison d’etre for living in L.A. The Academy Museum (for only $5!) hosts this screening of a 4K restoration of 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, plus a lecture from Guillermo del Toro talking about George Stevens’ career on the film’s 60th anniversary.

MLK Celebration: Dream @ Blu’

Sunday, January 18, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
Blu' Arts & Wellness Gallery
580 Pine Ave., Long Beach
COST: FREE, DONATIONS WELCOME; MORE INFO

An afternoon of poetry, music and art honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. awaits you at the Blu’ Arts gallery in Long Beach. The day features acoustic jazz and spoken word poetry curated and hosted by Tommy Domino, an author, poet and teacher. Plus, enjoy the gallery’s work by current artists-in-residence, Shelton Gillis, Mohammed Mubarak and Wan Jean the Artist.

MLK Day Concert

Saturday, January 17, 7:30 p.m. 
Skirball Cultural Center 
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Courtesy Skirball Center

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The sounds of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of L.A. will fill the Skirball Center to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at this free concert. The group is the largest Black-majority orchestra in the nation, with more than 100 musicians and choir singers total.

Jam Session 
Friday, January 16, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. 
SteepLA 
970 N. Broadway, Ste. 112, Chinatown 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

One of my favorite discoveries of 2025 was the charming SteepLA, a teahouse in a Chinatown plaza that also houses restaurants and art galleries. They are launching jazz jam sessions, starting with one on Friday in their courtyard. Tea cocktails and their after-dark menu will be available.

Nine months had passed since a wildfire destroyed Mark Johnson's southern California home, and he was still waiting for State Farm to pay his claim. Desperate for a resolution, Johnson asked the insurer in October to negotiate a settlement so his family could rebuild.

"I was on the verge of leaving money on the table," Johnson recalls, "just to get some kind of assurance of what we could move forward with."

Then, just before Thanksgiving, a State Farm representative told him the money was on its way.

"Needless to say, it was a huge relief," Johnson says, fighting back tears.

Johnson isn't alone. State Farm is California's top home insurer, and many customers around Los Angeles started to get checks in November after L.A. County announced it was investigating complaints about how the company had handled claims from last January's wildfires, says Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

For homeowners, the battle to collect insurance money after the Eaton and Palisades fires has exacerbated a grueling recovery that's far from over. As Johnson's case with State Farm languished, he had to scramble for other sources of funding to try to rebuild. Other fire survivors have gone into debt while bouncing between rental housing, as they wrangled with State Farm and other insurers over coverage.
The struggle Los Angeles residents have faced with insurers mirrors what's happening in communities around the United States. Years of rising premiums, due in part to threats from climate change, have added to the frustration with insurance companies.

"This is a national issue," Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat, told reporters recently. He added, "the first commandment of the insurance industry is to pay as little, as late as possible."

Asked about its handling of insurance claims, State Farm sent NPR a statement from its website that says the company takes every claim seriously and tries to provide customers with appropriate coverage.

"The rebuilding process [in Los Angeles] is underway, but frustration with the pace is understandable," David Sampson, chief executive of American Property Casualty Insurance Association, an industry group, said in a statement to NPR. "Insurers have paid tens of billions of dollars to policyholders impacted by the fires, and that process continues."

Insurers face 'staggering' costs from LA fires

The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures around Los Angeles. They rank as the most expensive blazes ever globally, with $40 billion of insured losses, according to Swiss Re Institute, the research arm of reinsurance company Swiss Re.

Soon after the fires were extinguished, homeowners started to complain about how insurance companies were responding to the disaster.

"The price tag is so staggering for the insurers here that they are bringing strategies to try to limit the pain" they experience financially, says Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a national consumer advocate. "But it's nothing new under the sun what we're seeing."

In November, the Los Angeles County counsel opened an investigation of State Farm following reports from residents that the company delayed, underpaid and denied valid insurance claims. The county counsel's office declined to comment on the state of the investigation.

State Farm said in a statement on its website that the investigation is a distraction from its efforts to help fire victims recover.

Chen of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network says State Farm's alleged behavior was devastating for its customers.

"Around February or March, I realized that whether a family was recovering or not depended largely on which insurance company they were with, which was shocking," Chen says. "These are all people who have been paying [their] insurance premiums faithfully for 20 or 30 years, but only some of them were getting the benefits."

The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures around Los Angeles.

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Ryan Kellman

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The fight for insurance money has been especially hard for homeowners whose houses survived the fires but were contaminated with lead and other toxins from the smoke, according to survivors and consumer advocates.

"With total loss, it's a very clear-cut, 'OK, we either rebuild or we sell. And if we rebuild, it's this. And if we sell, it's that.' And we do not have any paths to take," says Krista Copelan, whose Altadena home suffered smoke damage and lead contamination in the fires. "It's 100% trying to figure it out, fighting every step of the way, having no clear-cut answers."

Until about Thanksgiving, Andrew Wessels says State Farm resisted replacing his family's personal belongings, like clothes and bedding, that had been contaminated with lead, insisting the items could be cleaned instead. As the one-year anniversary of the fires approached, Wessels still didn't know how much State Farm would pay to remediate lead contamination in his Altadena house. To get rid of all the toxic ash, Wessels says floorboards need to be pulled up and walls torn down.

"We're here almost a year later, and we haven't taken one step forward," Wessels said in December.

As they've waited, Wessels, his wife and two young children have moved a dozen times, and the family has taken on tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

A lot of families are in similar situations. In Altadena, 65% of residents are still in temporary housing, according to a report this month from Department of Angels, a nonprofit that was set up to help victims of last year's fires. In Pacific Palisades, the number is even higher, with nearly three-quarters of residents still displaced.

As the recovery has dragged on, the toll on residents has grown, according to the Department of Angels report. Around half of respondents said they have depleted much or all of their savings. And about the same share said they worry about their mental health.

"I think everyone has been overwhelmed and drained for, literally, the past 11 months," Copelan, a State Farm customer, said in December.

'They're trying to make it difficult'

More than a thousand miles east, in Oklahoma, State Farm faces separate allegations that it has shortchanged policyholders. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, recently accused the insurer of running a scheme to deny and minimize payments for roof damage from hail and wind.

"Oklahomans are paying rising homeowners insurance premiums yet receiving less protection in return, as State Farm simultaneously pursues additional rate increases while allegedly escalating its claims denials and underpayments practices," Drummond wrote in a December court filing.

Drummond's complaint is part of a growing wave of frustration with insurers nationwide as rising premiums strain household budgets.

In Texas, Democratic state Rep. Mihaela Plesa recently told reporters that homeowners who are struggling to pay for insurance in her district near Dallas routinely have their claims denied.

"That's not insurance, that's extraction," Plesa said. "That's a system that's designed to pull maximum dollars out of Texas pockets and providing minimum protection when disaster strikes."

And in southwest Florida, Jessica Gatewood, a Realtor, told NPR that home insurance feels like "a scam."

"You pay into it for, like, 30 years, 40 years, and then you have to make a claim, and they don't want to pay you what you actually need," Gatewood says.

The insurance industry says it has been dealing with years of rising disaster costs that have forced companies to raise premiums and to limit coverage in some high-risk areas.

The cost of disasters is increasing in part because climate change fuels more-intense storms, floods and wildfires that damage and destroy property. Additionally, people continue to move to coastal regions vulnerable to hurricanes and to forested areas prone to wildfires. That means more property is in harm's way. Then, when homes get damaged or destroyed, inflation has made it more expensive to rebuild.
Robert Gordon, a senior vice president at American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the industry group, says Florida and other states have also been plagued by cases of what Gordon described as insurance "fraud" related to alleged roof damage from storms, which he says have contributed to rising costs.

Construction workers build a home in the Palisades fire zone on the one-year anniversary of the fires.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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In California, Mark Johnson hopes to move into his rebuilt Altadena home by fall. Reflecting on his ordeal with State Farm, part of him wonders if the insurer was just overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. But he can't shake the feeling that all of the delays he faced were intentional.

"They're just trying to push you away," Johnson says. "They're trying to make it difficult for you so that you won't ask for much, so you'll be happy with whatever you get."

Copyright 2026 NPR