A revolution is underway in California’s insurance market that could provide relief to homeowners in high-fire-risk neighborhoods who have found it difficult to find insurers to cover their homes, typically a household’s most valuable asset.

Under new rules, state insurers for the first time will be allowed to use so-called catastrophe models to help determine the cost of home insurance. The models, developed by firms such as Verisk Analytics and Moody’s, are complex computer programs that aim to better determine the risk a structure faces from wildfires amid a changing climate. Here are five things to know about the models:

How do these models work?

The programs, first developed in the 1980s because of hurricane losses and increasingly applied to wildfires, typically run thousands of possible scenarios that enable insurers to determine their potential financial exposure in a disaster. The models are proprietary but take into account many factors, including meteorological conditions, an area’s topography, the amount of brush and other nearby fuel, and a community’s building density.

When setting individual home premiums, California is requiring insurers to consider a building owner’s fire mitigation efforts, such as installing a Class A fire-rated roof, closing eaves or doing brush removal.

Will the models increase the availability of insurance?

The regulations are intended to sharply increase the availability of insurance in areas that have high fire risk as defined by Department of Insurance maps released this year, which are expected to be updated soon. Homeowners in those areas have been flocking to the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which sells bare-bones policies. Southern California neighborhoods in those maps include ZIP Codes in Malibu, Beverly Hills and other communities in mountainous areas.

In exchange, large insurers are supposed to write policies in those neighborhoods equivalent to 85% of their statewide market share, meaning an insurer with a 10% statewide share should cover 8.5% of homes. However, critics such as Consumer Watchdog in Los Angeles say that those regulations have loopholes and that insurers have leeway to not meet that benchmark.

How will the new regulations affect my property insurance rates?

That’s a matter of debate. Catastrophe models are not specifically intended to lower rates, but insurers and the insurance department maintain that catastrophe models, by allowing insurers to more accurately calculate their risk, should allow for more gradual rate increases over time rather than requests for large one-time rate hikes, such as the 30% increase sought by State Farm in the summer.

Consumer Watchdog, however, says the models will lead to sharp rate hikes because the regulations allow insurers to keep essential details about the models under wraps despite a public review process established by the insurance department. The department disagrees and is supporting the establishment of a “public” model being developed by Cal Poly Humboldt and others that could be used in the future as a benchmark to evaluate the private models.

Will the new regulations affect me if I live in a city and not a wildfire zone?

Yes, sort of. Insurers in the state already include the risk of wildfire in their premiums, but it is based on historical claims data. Homes in neighborhoods that don’t face such a risk already pay lower rates, and that is not expected to change under the new rules. However, even homeowners in low-risk urban areas are facing rate hikes, and the department is hoping that the regulation, along with other regulatory changes — such as allowing insurers to include the cost of reinsurance in their premiums — will draw more insurers back into the market. Reinsurance is acquired by insurers from other insurers to help protect them from catastrophic losses.

When can I start seeing some relief?

The insurance department will start accepting applications from modeling companies Jan. 2 and expects that, after the public review process is completed, some could be approved in the first quarter. Insurers could then file for new rates based on those models. Those rate filings also must undergo a review that the department said could be completed for some as early as next summer, with more in 2026.

The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.

They especially hate the 14-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But most voters in both major parties support its work.

Musk and Andreessen recently made their case publicly. “Delete CFPB,” was Musk’s pithy policy position on X. Andreessen spun a conspiratorial tale on “The Joe Rogan Show” about how Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) uses the bureau to take away the bank accounts — “debank” — of anyone who doesn’t agree with her, especially Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Attacks by the two men resemble what Wall Street banks and predatory lenders have said since before the bureau came into existence in 2010. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon tried to strangle it in the crib during the congressional debate over its creation and now audaciously paints his $4-trillion, very profitable bank as a victim of regulation. Payday lenders took a case to the Supreme Court in an attempt to defund the agency (they lost). Most financial institutions belong to lobby groups that have sought to eviscerate the bureau.

These industries dislike the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau intensely because, bluntly, it does its job. Congress gave the bureau enforcement powers to stand up for consumers, and companies run or influenced by Musk and Andreessen have been on the receiving end. In one example from 2016, the agency sued a startup backed by Andreessen, Oakland-based LendUp, after it flouted federal law. Ultimately the bureau shut the company down in 2021 following repeated violations that included changing the terms of existing loans.

Andreessen is also an investor in San Francisco-based Synapse, a bank-like company that wiped out people’s life savings, as reported last month. No charges have been filed — yet.

PayPal, with which Musk was closely involved, has also faced sanction by the bureau.

Tech moguls might hold a grudge when justice is done, but the 118,101 LendUp customers who received more than $40 million of their money back thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau surely feel differently. Those people are not alone.

Since its creation, the agency has recovered more than $21 billion in restitution and canceled debts for tens of millions of consumers. Recently, in just one week, the bureau returned $1.8 billion to 4 million consumers who had been scammed by a group of credit repair companies scattered across the western United States. Bureau-created protections barring unfair fees, charges and terms for financial products have saved billions more.

So yes, Andreessen might have felt a little salty after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shuttered LendUp. And yes, companies that defraud clients are justifiably more likely to be shut down or “debanked,” if Andreessen wants to use that term. But the bureau also stands up for consumers who actually are debanked, like people who are suddenly cut off from their accounts because of race or ethnicity.

Not every case involves, as with “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, a call to the cops for banking while Black. The bureau works the much more insidious cases, like when companies systematically close accounts for discriminatory reasons, with no outward evidence of misdeeds. In fact, after the agency received numerous complaints about account closures and freezes, it created a rule — which will go into effect soon — to oversee digital payment apps and stop illegal debanking.

Indeed, the bureau’s director, Rohit Chopra, has explicitly called for a banking system that does not penalize identity or speech. On the podcast Organized Money, Chopra recently said: “We have to do more to stop debanking and make sure that people really have a right for all of their law-abiding activities to freely flow through the banking system.”

Musk’s attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hinges on his new role as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s go-to guys for shrinking government. In theory, that agenda appeals to an anti-bureaucratic, libertarian strain in American politics — a sentiment that has ebbed considerably since its high point in the Reagan years, given what Americans have learned from the savings-and-loan debacle, the predatory practices of credit card companies, payday lenders, and of course, the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. Voters like government agencies that work well and work for them. There’s a reason proposals to change Social Security are known as the third rail of American politics; the public relies on this program just as we rely on consumer protection rules.

My organization has researched what voters think of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mission and found support among Republicans, independents and Democrats. Standing up to Wall Street and predatory lenders and wrangling back ill-gotten gains on behalf of the little people is very popular. Other surveys confirm this finding.

In the coming months and years, the new president, his appointees and congressional Republicans are likely to try to kneecap a government institution that has done remarkable things for millions of families.

Musk and Andreessen are the leading edge of a false populism that hides an agenda that will unfold over the next four years designed to benefit the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. They can launch a campaign against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but they can’t change the facts or draw the battle lines: On one side are a handful of Wall Street bankers, payday lenders and Silicon Valley billionaires, who make money by breaking the rules. On the other side are the vast majority of Americans, who benefit from and value the bureau’s crucial work — but don’t have a billionaire’s megaphone.

Christine Chen Zinner is senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.

TikTok has filed for an emergency reprieve with the U.S. Supreme Court to buy more time before a nationwide ban on the social media app is set to go into effect next month.

“This Court should grant an injunction pending further review,” TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, said in Monday’s filing for a temporary injunction. A ban, they said, would “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.”

The fate of TikTok in the U.S. has been up in the air since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app because of national security concerns.

That set off four years of back-and-forth between TikTok and the U.S. government. In April, President Biden signed a law that required ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese entity; TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government in May.

The company this month lost a major court battle in its efforts to remain active in the U.S., setting up a potential showdown in the Supreme Court.

As things stand now, TikTok is scheduled to be banned in the U.S. on Jan. 19 if the tech company does not divest before then.

The move would result in “a massive and unprecedented censorship,” TikTok said. “Estimates show that small businesses on TikTok would lose more than $1 billion in revenue and creators would suffer almost $300 million in lost earnings in just one month unless the ban is halted.”

More than 170 million Americans use the video app, on which people share dance routines, news stories, recipes and funny videos.

“The Supreme Court has an established record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. “Today, TikTok is asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the 1st Amendment.”

Although he pushed for a ban during his first term, Trump reversed course while campaigning this year.

“For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump,” he said in a video posted on Truth Social in September. “The other side’s closing it up.”