Victims of the January 2025 wildfires unhappy with how insurers have handled their claims have filed lawsuits, protested and complained to local and state officials.

This week, they got support from an unexpected ally: President Trump.

“It was brought to my attention that the Insurance Companies, in particular, State Farm, have been absolutely horrible to people that have been paying them large Premiums for years, only to find that when tragedy struck, these horrendous Companies were not there to help!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

He also asked U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to give him a list of insurers that “acted swiftly, courageously, and bravely” to fulfill their legal obligation and another list of those that were “particularly bad.”

State Farm, California’s largest home insurer, is under investigation for how it has handled January 2025 wildfire claims. In a statement responding to the president’s post, it said it has received 13,700 claims, paid out $5.7 billion and expects total payments could reach $7 billion.

“Our leadership position in the California homeowners insurance marketplace means State Farm General Insurance Company — the State Farm company that provides homeowners insurance in California — insured more people impacted by this disaster than anyone else,” its statement read.

Tuesday’s post had its origins in a Feb. 4 visit that Zeldin and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler made to the Los Angeles area, where they met with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and Pacific Palisades fire victims, among others.

The visit was prompted by Trump’s criticism of the slow rebuilding process and by a Trump executive order allowing victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without having to deal with “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements.

At the time of the order, Bass dismissed it as a “meaningless political stunt,” saying the president has no authority over local permitting but could assist by speeding up Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Assn. industry trade group, in its response to Trump’s post, continued to point fingers at the government. It noted the fires were the third-worst natural disaster in American history in terms of insured losses, at $40 billion.

“Permitting can be a frustrating process, and it can always be improved,” it said in a statement. “Los Angeles has been approving permits three times faster than it was before the fire. However, permit issuance continues to lag.”

Barger, whose district includes the Eaton fire zone in and around Altadena, said this week that she defended the local permitting process to Zeldin. But said she also pointed out complaints about how insurers, and State Farm in particular, have handled claims.

“Many people feel that the insurance industry has let them down, and the number one company that we hear about is State Farm,” she said. “Obviously, Administrator Zeldin met with the president and outlined what I told him.”

Bass, who also spoke on the phone with Trump last month, issued a statement saying she “recently requested that the President intervene with the insurance companies to ensure they pay claims so that survivors can afford to rebuild.”

“I want to thank President Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin for taking action and working alongside us to help survivors get the support they need and deserve,” she said.

A White House official said Friday that the EPA was working to produce the list of insurers “as quickly as possible for the president” and the “best way for insurance companies to help is to immediately pay out what they owe so victims can rebuild their lives.”

Construction crews rebuild homes that were destroyed in the Eaton fire in Altadena on March 20.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Administrator Zeldin, on behalf of the president, is going to hold insurance companies accountable to the great people of California,” the official said.

The federal government has played a large role in the recovery, including leading the debris cleanup and, as of February, approving 12,600 Small Business Administration loans to fire victims totaling $3.2 billion.

However, a 1945 federal law, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, delegates authority to regulate the insurance industry primarily to individual states.

Joy Chen, executive director of Eaton Fire Survivor’s Network, which represents thousands of fire victims across Los Angeles, said her group believes the federal government has a larger role to play.

“President Trump has the opportunity to restore accountability to this broken system. Federal agencies have the tools to act,” said Chen, who has been sharply critical of State Farm’s claims practices and how California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has handled complaints against the company.

She specifically called for the Federal Trade Commission to examine “deceptive sales practices” that have left Americans underinsured and for the Department of Justice to investigate “industrywide claims practices that delay, deny or underpay payments owed to policyholders.”

Lara has defended his treatment of the company, noting regulators opened a probe of State Farm’s claims practices last year.

Martin Grace, a University of Iowa business professor and expert on insurance regulation, said that aside from the “bully pulpit” Trump exercised in his social media post, the federal government’s hands are largely tied.

“He can browbeat people, and Trump’s good at that. And I think the federal government, at one level, only has that. Now, Congress and the president together could say, ‘Listen, we don’t like what the states are allowing insurers to do, and we’re going to change the regulatory system,’” he said.

Grace noted that there was an insurance industry solvency crisis in the 1970s and 1980s that led to a 1990 Congressional report and federal pressure for improved state-level regulation, which was undertaken.

“Congress basically said, ‘Get your act together, or we’re going to take [regulation] back.’” And so the states got together and did a much better job on that,” he said.

Los Angeles attorney Richard Giller, who represents plaintiffs in lawsuits against insurers, said that the federal government could still take steps to improve the market.

Those might include establishing a federal reinsurance program that shares natural disaster risks with insurers, or covering the risk itself similarly to how the National Flood Insurance Program works.

“The catastrophe insurance industry in California is incredibly broken and needs some serious repair,” he said.

These highly skilled, highly educated foreign workers have been documenting the challenges of trying to build a career in the U.S. “If I don’t find a job, I have to leave the country.” “I sent out 907 applications.” “Have I ever truly relaxed in America?” They need an H-1B visa, which is given through a lottery system that allows U.S. companies to hire highly skilled international professionals for up to six years, in industries like tech and medicine. But the Trump administration has made changes to the program, requiring companies to pay a high fee and enforcing new rules that prioritize higher-paid foreign workers, in an effort to make more jobs available to Americans. This has forced some foreigners to rethink their career plans. “I think the U.S. is still the golden standard.” Wen-Hsing Huang came to the U.S. from Taiwan in 2022 for the tech scene, and was hired by Amazon on an H-1B visa. “I want to use my talents to change the world, and I think the United States was the best platform to do that.” Ananya Joshi came from India to attend a master’s program in Chicago in 2022. “So it was actually my my father’s dream that I had inherited because my father couldn’t go because of his financial situation.” Haina, a Chinese national, fell in love with the U.S. while studying in New York. She got her H-1B in 2022. “I remember there were a lot of companies, they would be able to sponsor.” Haina said she’s experienced a recent shift, where it has become harder to find companies that sponsor H-1B visas. “This time when I was job searching, I didn’t realize it could be a deal breaker. I just had my second interview of 2026, and it was a pretty short call.” (Recruiter) “I don’t think we’re eligible or able to do sponsorship for this role at the moment.” “They don’t even really get to know if I’m qualified, am I experienced, or anything. The decision is already made at that point.” “Please, please make sure that the company you’re about to work for has experience handling international hires.” Joshi said a start-up she interned with during grad school rescinded their promise to sponsor her H-1B visa. “Ask for everything in writing. And then there were jobs that were contract jobs. They would just reject me. They would only need people with a green card or a U.S. citizenship.” Even with an H-1B and a six-figure salary, Huang said he felt himself becoming anxious, as tech layoffs ramped up and Trump’s immigration policies kept changing. “I woke up every morning with this knot in my stomach, because my entire life depended on the policy I couldn’t control. The United States seems not very welcoming to immigrants that contribute to this country.” “The signals are, like, pretty clear at this point. They want to make this H-1B, is, like, risky and also, like, harder.” Hello, everyone.” Despite that, Haina says she’s determined to keep looking for a job until she’s forced to leave the country. “The pressure about where I’m going to be in the next of my career or, like, my life. I sort of like lost the ability to enjoy my life or just be happy.” “So I had to leave the U.S. Of course, I expanded my search beyond the U.S. Found a job in Germany.” Joshi packed up her life and started a new role with a European biotech firm in January. “I think I left at a good time, because there would have been more stress. I would have been stuck in a loop.” “It’s an endless cycle of anxiety.” After quitting his job at Amazon, Huang is now back in Taiwan, planning to launch his own company. “To bet on building an A.I. company that gives me complete control over my time, location and future. Staying in the United States is no longer the only way to achieve my American dream.”

Bryan Marsh was booed by the crowd as he approached the podium in Monterey Park’s City Hall. Things weren’t going as planned.

In front of a wall of people holding “No Data Center” placards, he outlined how his company, Australia’s HMC StratCap, invested tens of millions of dollars and became the city’s largest landowner after years of negotiations, clearances and hearings.

City officials had previously welcomed its plans to build a sprawling, new data center and the jobs and tax revenue that would follow, he said, but then things suddenly changed.

“There was no widespread opposition,” until late last year, he said as people in the room yelled, “You’re a liar!” “Now, for the last few months, the city has faced intense public pressure.”

California’s notorious NIMBYs have a new cause. They are worried that the data centers that power artificial intelligence will lead to pollution, higher power bills and worse. It is a nationwide movement gaining momentum and particularly poignant in California, arguably the birthplace of the AI boom.

It’s also one of the reasons most blue-collar jobs tied to the unprecedented buildout of data centers are going to other states.

Medhi Paryavi advises governments and companies on data center projects across the country. When he recently suggested California to a European executive looking to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, he was quickly dismissed.

“Absolutely not!” the executive snapped back, said Paryavi, the chairman of the Washington D.C.-based think tank International Data Center Authority.

The aversion to California is pretty standard in the industry. Land is expensive, electricity rates are high and there are too many regulations. Meanwhile, new roadblocks pop up regularly as the state’s outspoken citizens change the rules and protest.

Investors with a choice often choose elsewhere.

Signs of protest pepper frontyards in a neighborhood in Monterey Park on Wednesday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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“They’re looking for cost, time and availability of power,” said Paryavi. “California is not on the map.”

The artificial intelligence revolution might be led by companies from California, but most of the facilities housing the chips — and the jobs that come with building and maintaining them — are in other states.

Tech companies led by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are projected to spend $710 billion on data center buildouts this year alone, according to JLL, a real estate investment firm.

Despite huge plans, seemingly insatiable demand and low vacancy rates, the total capacity of data centers under construction declined last year for the first time in five years, according to CBRE. While construction boomed in some places such as Chicago and the Dallas area, those gains were offset by declines around Silicon Valley, northern Virginia and elsewhere, CBRE data showed.

A technician works at an Amazon Web Services AI data center in New Carlisle, Ind., on Oct. 2.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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Legacy markets such as California and Oregon are expected to lose more than half of their relative market share, with Texas set to become the country’s leading data center market within the next three years, according to a report by Bloom Energy, an energy company.

An estimated $98 billion in projects were blocked or delayed in the second half of 2025, more than all cancellations since 2023, said Data Center Watch, an organization tracking opposition to data centers across the U.S.

In California, some areas such as Vernon have welcomed data center investment, but there is a growing list of locals trying to stop data centers in Imperial County and elsewhere.

Progressive lawmakers Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently introduced a bill to pause all new data center construction until federal guardrails and safeguards are instituted for workers, communities and the environment.

The proposed data center in Monterey Park — the size of four football fields — is close to homes. It is expected to consume three times the energy used by the entire city, which residents say will raise their electricity bills and also increase noise and air pollution.

The empty property on Saturn Avenue had plans to be converted to a data center in Monterey Park, Calif.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The crowd of more than 200 people who gathered at its City Hall was overwhelmingly opposed to the data center. Supporters of the project were only a tiny minority. For hours, person after person stepped to the microphone to announce their anxiety. The center will hurt property values, AI takes jobs, big AI is a threat to democracy, it’s a “class injustice.”

“The tech bros are absolutely the Epstein class,” said one. “They are not the working class.”

“Let’s make this town a place where people want to come live, where people want to do real things, where they are not relying on a robot or a program or an app to run their lives,” said another.”

Supporting the data center, and trying to avoid a vote on its existence, were only a few people from HMC StratCap and some union representatives in orange worker vests.

They pointed out that the big investment had already been agreed to, would create jobs and that it was hypocritical for the city’s citizens to want the fruits of technology while, at the same time, being unwilling to accept its infrastructure.

“Everybody loves the juice, but they don’t like how it’s squeezed,” said a member of the sheet metal workers union from the area. “I am going to fight for my members to have a job to work at.”

To be sure, it is much more than just NIMBYism that makes it tough to build in California. Regulations aimed at protecting consumers and the environment make it harder to access the power that data centers need. The regulations also contribute to the high rents and building costs.

“There’s a lot of legislation, and a lot of red tape in the state of California you have to go through in order to get data centers approved,” said JLL real estate broker Darren Eades.

NTT, Vantage Data Center and downtown San José on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 in Santa Clara, Calif. Dozens of data centers being built for artificial intelligence are eating up Calfifornia’s electricity.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

One example he pointed to is the small power plant exemption, which stipulates that construction over 50 megawatts requires additional paperwork and a longer lead time for approvals. Larger data centers these days need 20 times that amount of power.

All of this makes it more likely that investors will avoid California. As hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent building data centers, it will lead to jobs in other states and countries.

“While it is the cradle of innovation, Silicon Valley is not the cradle of delivering AI outputs and delivering economic results,” Paryavi said.

Following the seven-hour hearing, council members greenlit a June ballot measure allowing residents to vote on a ban.

It was a victory for a new activist group called No Data Center Monterey Park, which spearheaded the rapid grassroots mobilization and worked with San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action to sign petitions and raise awareness. To pack the City Hall meetings, activists set up a mahjong parlor and a traditional Chinese lion dance performance to engage the largely Chinese community.

For HMC StratCap the council’s decision marked a significant blow. The Australian firm invested $40 million to acquire a 200,000-square-foot property intended for data centers, along with a larger adjacent parcel of land for an undisclosed development.

Things turned sour despite reassurances that the data center would generate $5 million in annual revenue to support park maintenance, libraries and repairs without raising residential taxes.

HMC StratCap has to win the vote in June or give up on the project. If it has to do that, it will be forced to sue the city.

“Our preferred path is not to litigate,” HMC’s Marsh said at the hearing. “We must, however, protect our legal rights.”

Now it looks like HMC StratCap may be giving up on the project.

A letter from its parent company in Australia, dated March 31 and posted on Monterey Park’s official website, said the company has withdrawn its application to build the data center.

The letter pointed to new restrictions on data center development in the city and the June vote on a ban.

“These regulations are not conducive for data center development,” it said.