POLITICO Nightly: LA wildfire victims have another problem

 

****CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS US ALL! 

THIS HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE TO 

REDUCE OUR RISKS! ****

By Natalie Fertig and Zack Colman A home burns during the Eaton Fire in Altadena, Calif. today. | Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images BEHIND THE BLAZE — As of this afternoon, more than 1,000 structures have burned in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood in the last two days. The news gets worse — many of them recently lost the most important thing that families rely on when disaster strikes: insurance. When national insurance company State Farm announced it would drop coverage for tens of thousands of Californians last year, the Pacific Palisades community suffered more policy non-renewals than anywhere in the state, according to a San Francisco Chronicle investigation that relied on California Department of Insurance data. The national insurer planned to scrap 1,626 of 2,342 policies in that zip code, or 69.4 percent. It’s part of a larger trend: California had the nation’s fourth-highest insurance non-renewal rate in 2023 behind Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina, per a report published in December by the Senate Budget Committee . Coastal states face hurricanes and flooding in the East and wildfires in the West, and generally have the highest non-renewal rates in the country — but not exclusively. Nearly three percent of insurance plans in Florida were not renewed in 2023, the report found, compared to just 0.8 percent in 2018. In California, 1.7 percent were not renewed compared to 0.9 percent in 2018. “[The non-renewals] are a signal of market distress,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who commissioned the report as chair of the Senate Budget Committee in the last Congress, said today. “It’s deadly, deadly serious.” Insurance is designed to protect homeowners from paying out of pocket for costly rebuilds. But affordability and availability in disaster-prone areas are shrinking as insurers recalculate risk, often driven by climate change that fuels more frequent and intense wildfires, hurricanes and floods. Some states have tried to fill the gap left by private insurers: California, Colorado and Florida all have versions of a Fair Insurance Requirements Plan, a state-backed insurance plan intended as a last resort. The fires ravaging Los Angeles this week, however, could break the state’s 1960s-era FAIR plan, which has become increasingly popular in recent years in fire-prone areas and has been on the verge of bankruptcy for years. Whitehouse has spent the last 2 years using his gavel to investigate insurers who drop coverage or hike rates in regions affected by climate change. He says the fires devastating the Los Angeles area show that few places in the country are safe from disruption. “It’s kind of a shock to the system nationally, and it will make insurers even more cautious about climate-related property risks of any kind in any location,” Whitehouse said, adding it to the “multiple punch” of the Florida hurricanes and the devastation in 2024 in North Carolina. In December, his Senate Budget Committee produced a report on the climate-driven insurance crisis that paints a bleak picture: The increase in non-renewal rates driven by the uptick in climate-related disasters, it says, will continue to destabilize insurance markets — and by extension, housing markets. Property values will continue to decrease for homes that cannot be protected, and could spark a repeat of the 2007-8 housing crisis. “A home too endangered to insure will only become more endangered,” the report states. There isn’t a lot Capitol Hill can do about it, however. The primary paths to solve this, Whitehouse says, are through programs like the flood insurance program, FEMA funding, and addressing climate change. Despite this, a few policy plans are in the works. Ron Wyden is currently circulating legislation that would streamline federal processes to make communities as disaster-resistant as possible, says a spokesperson for the Oregon Democratic senator. A significant 2.4 percent of insurance policies were not renewed in Oregon’s heavily forested Josephine County in 2023, double the figure in 2018. States like Oregon are issuing new regulations intended to make homes better able to withstand natural disasters, but Wyden’s office says the federal patchwork of regulations and incentives is complicated to navigate, uncoordinated, and often leaves tinderboxes mixed in alongside fire-resistant buildings. The patchwork makes it hard for insurers to calculate the risk, and therefore more likely to pull out or hike up rates to an unsustainable level. Wyden’s bill intends to help communities prove to insurance companies that they are coverable and should not be abandoned. Being unable to predict the risk is the beginning of “the cascade that leads to the crash,” Whitehouse says. Shoveling money at FEMA doesn’t solve the problem — which he says can only be solved through addressing climate change. “Moving the deck chairs around on the insurance industry Titanic may provide some temporary distraction,” Whitehouse said. “But when the day comes that this cascade begins, there’s no stopping it.” Camille von Kaenel contributed reporting . Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s authors at nfertig@politico.com and zcolman@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @natsfert and @zcolman . What'd I Miss? — Garland prepares to release Jack Smith’s report on 2020 election subversion case against Trump: Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to publicly release special counsel Jack Smith’s final report detailing evidence that Donald Trump criminally conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters. But Garland will withhold from public release a second volume of the report describing Smith’s second case against Trump for amassing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021. The Justice Department revealed Garland’s decision this morning in a court filing opposing Trump’s effort to block Smith from releasing his final report altogether, “since the President-elect is no longer a defendant in any Special Counsel matter.” 34 FELONY CHARGES FOR FALSIFICATION OF BUSINESS RECORDS! IT IS UNCLEAR WHAT TRUMP HOPES TO ACCOMPLISH... — Trump asks Supreme Court to block hush money sentencing: President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to halt his Friday sentencing for his hush money criminal conviction after a New York appeals court judge declined to intervene. Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the high court early today after the New York appeals court on Tuesday turned down his request to indefinitely postpone the sentencing. The trial court judge scheduled to sentence Trump on Friday, Justice Juan Merchan, has indicated he doesn’t plan to send Trump to jail and will permit him to attend the proceeding virtually. — Biden approves sweeping disaster declaration for SoCal fires: President Joe Biden approved a sweeping disaster declaration for the Southern California fires , committing a wide range of federal assistance to the region amid fears that President-elect Donald Trump would balk at helping out the Democratic bastion. Appearing with California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a fire station just outside the site of the devastating Palisades fire, Biden called the conflagrations “astounding.” THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION ****THIS INFORMATION NEEDS TO BE AVAILABLE TO MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS! KASH PATEL HAS HAD FINANCIAL DEALINGS WITH TRUMP THAT NEED TO BE SCRUTINIZED, AMONG OTHERS! PETE HEGSETH WAS REMOVED FROM 2 VETERANS GROUPS FOR MISMANAGEMENT OF $$$....THERE ARE NUMEROUS OTHERS WITH QUESTIONABLE BACKGROUNDS! SENATORS: MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS!  BEHIND SCHEDULE — With less than two weeks until Donald Trump takes the oath of office, only a small handful of his nominees appear on track for immediate confirmation — sparking tensions between the Senate GOP and Trump’s inner circle. At a private lunch on Tuesday, Republican senators discussed whether they should — or even could, under law and Senate rules — advance Trump nominees without final FBI background checks, financial disclosures and other paperwork, according to a person in the room. They discussed whether they could at least hold confirmation hearings without documents submitted, holding off on final action until the process is complete. And the subject of nominations could come up again this evening, when Trump meets with Republican senators on Capitol Hill. ***THANK YOU SENATOR CASSIDY! RFK JR IS UNQUALIFIED, NO SCIENCE EDUCATION, TOO MANY FALSE STATEMENTS....WE ARE FACING A POTENTIAL BIRD FLU OUTBREAK WHICH WILL REQUIRE VACCINES & AGGRESSIVE ACTION FOR WHICH RFK JR IS INCAPABLE OF ADDRESSING! UNIMPRESSED — The new chair of the Senate committee that oversees the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately endorse President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency after meeting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wrote in a tepid social media post following the meeting that he had a “frank” conversation with Kennedy and that the two spoke “at length” about vaccines. On Sunday, Cassidy, a doctor, told Fox News that Kennedy, who has for years contradicted health authorities by advocating against vaccination, was “wrong” about them. AROUND THE WORLD Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right Austria Freedom Party, speaks to the media on Tuesday in Vienna. | Michael Gruber/Getty Images ORBAN ADMIRER — Europe’s next national leader looks likely to come from the far right . With Herbert Kickl in pole position to become chancellor of Austria, the European Union’s establishment is bracing for fresh torment ― and another punch in the guts in its stand against Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Kickl, who would become Austria’s first far-right leader since World War II, has made no secret of admiring Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and is likely to follow a similar playbook: cozying up to the Kremlin, clashing with the EU mainstream, and pursuing hardline policies in areas like migration. If his Freedom Party (FPÖ) takes charge, it would mean a swathe of the EU, from Hungary through Austria to Slovakia under outspoken Prime Minister Robert Fico ― and potentially to the Czech Republic, where former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is leading in polls ahead of an election in October ― would be sympathetic toward Russia three years into Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It also brings back disturbing memories for Brussels, which in 2000 saw the FPÖ under one of Kickl’s predecessors, Jörg Haider, become part of Austria’s governing coalition. At the time, other governments within the EU broke off bilateral contacts with Vienna. LET ME IN — President-elect Donald Trump has invited Jair Bolsonaro to his upcoming inauguration, but the former Brazilian president may not be able to attend — he surrendered his passport to authorities while under investigation for allegedly helping plan and participate in a 2023 coup attempt in an effort to remain in office. “My lawyer, Dr. Paulo Bueno, has already forwarded a request to Minister Alexandre de Moraes for me to have my passport returned so that I can attend this honorable and important historical event,” Bolsonaro wrote on X in Portuguese today, the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 8 coup attempt. At the time, it was reported that TRUMP LACKIES provide direction to BOLSONARO to duplicate TRUMP'S attempted overthrow A week after the inauguration of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, pro-Bolsonaro supporters stormed and ransacked government buildings in Brasilia, which has led to a slew of legal issues and comparisons to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as Brazil’s Federal Police accuse Bolsonaro of involvement in the scheme. The former president has denied any wrongdoing. Nightly Number 40 The percentage decrease over the last decade of what the average in-state public university student pays in college tuition after financial aid and grants. RADAR SWEEP SLOW AND STEADY — The Mojave desert — the vast stretch between Las Vegas and Los Angeles — has for decades been an ideal place for people outside the law to hide evidence of crimes such as cars, toxic waste or, sometimes, dead bodies. They can lie there undiscovered for years until someone stumbles upon them. Increasingly, however, that’s happening to a group of field technicians who are walking the desert in search of or monitoring threatened tortoises — and finding human remains. For Outside Magazine, Mark Sundeen blends the story of a missing person with a deep profile of these scientists. Parting Image On this date in 1969: Family members of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan attend his trial in Los Angeles for the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death; his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. | David F. Smith/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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Protesting Cornell University’s Suspension and threatened Deportation of graduate Student Momodou Taal for Protest Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | – Dear Interim President Kotlikoff, Provost Bala, Dr. Lombardi and Ms. Liang: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our extreme concern about your decision to temporarily suspend Cornell graduate […]

Hezbollah is not Finished Yet ( The National ) – The assassination of Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut will not diminish the group he once led. The killing demonstrates the counterintuitive notion that eliminating the head of an organisation does not always destroy it. Hezbollah has a bureaucratic set-up, with a robust ideology and communal support. Any armed […] Ibrahim Al-Marashi10/01/2024 ( The National ) – The assassination of Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut will not diminish the group he once led. The killing demonstrates the counterintuitive notion that eliminating the head of an organisation does not always destroy it. Hezbollah has a bureaucratic set-up, with a robust ideology and communal support. Any armed organisation that benefits from all three tends to survive the death of its leader. The October 7 attacks led by Hamas proved to be a conundrum for Hezbollah. Before that, the group had been challenged by Lebanese protesters, including by members of the Shiite community, since 2019, for controlling a corrupt Parliament and allowing Iran to violate Lebanon’s sovereignty. The war in Gaza allowed Hezbollah to deflect attention from its domestic woes, by launching rockets against Israel, in solidarity with Hamas, but not doing enough to risk immediate Israeli retaliation. It forced Israel to keep some military forces in the north and the evacuation of civilians from there. Nasrallah’s death will most likely lead to a significant proportion of the Lebanese public rallying behind Hezbollah. The protests in 2019 were a domestic matter. With the assassination having been carried out by a foreign state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may end up uniting the Lebanese people in a way that has been elusive since the end of the nation’s civil war in 1991.   In 1992, the year after the civil war ended, Israeli helicopters killed Hezbollah’s then secretary general, Abbas Al Musawi, as well as his wife and six-year-old son in a motorcade. In Ronen Bergman’s book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, he documents how some Israeli military figures had opposed the killing as “Hezbollah was not a one-man show, and [Al] Musawi was not the most extreme man in its leadership”. Indeed, they warned, he “would be replaced, perhaps by someone more radical”.   Al Musawi was succeeded by Nasrallah, who proved to be more charismatic and eloquent. At the time, Hezbollah was a small militia, employing suicide bombs as its most powerful weapon. When Nasrallah emerged, he put a military commander, Fouad Shukr, who was killed in July in a similar strike, in charge of stepping up sophisticated guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces in the south of Lebanon. These attacks, as well as rocket launches, compelled them to withdraw in 2000, marking a rare and significant Israeli loss to an Arab military force. In this respect, history is a study of irony, of unintended consequences, as Israel’s assassination scored a vendetta, only to witness a replacement who proved to be a more adept leader – a possibility that exists with Nasrallah’s successor. The group has a top-down, military-style bureaucracy, while at the same time maintaining a diffuse and decentralised military command structure to operate if higher-level commanders are killed during battle. Its bureaucracy, with clear chains of command, will enable it to select a new leader. It has routinised its leadership succession, whereby the secretary general is appointed by a council, so that the legitimacy of the successor derives from the position and not the individual.   As a tactic, Israeli assassinations do not address the underlying problems of conflict in the region. Strategically they backfire, as assassinations might lead to unpredictable outcomes, like in 1992 Hezbollah adheres to the “Axis of Resistance” ideology, along with Iran, the Houthis of Yemen and Hamas in Palestine, based on resistance to Israel and the US. However, the group also blends Lebanese nationalism, as well as a southern Lebanese identity, invoking how the region has suffered from Israeli actions since its first invasion in 1978. The ideology does not depend on a leader for its articulation or propagation. As a set of ideas, it existed before Nasrallah became the leader in 1992. Hezbollah earned credit for driving Israeli troops out of Lebanon as 2000. One of the factors behind this success was the willingness of the group’s members and followers to sacrifice their lives for their cause. Their propaganda focuses on seeking inspiration from the success of Iran’s revolution in 1979. This dynamic contributes to the third factor Hezbollah enjoyed: popular support within certain communities. The group’s presence in the south of Lebanon is enabled by a network of sympathetic Arab villages, that goes beyond just its Shiite Muslim base, including some members of the Christian community. There is an argument to be made that, instead of waging war against Hezbollah, Israel could have declared a ceasefire in Gaza as the one-year anniversary of the conflict approaches. This would have done far more damage to Hezbollah by depriving it of the rhetorical oxygen it has often used to justify its rocket attacks, which the group said it would have ceased once the fighting in Gaza ended. As a tactic, Israeli assassinations do not address the underlying problems of conflict in the region. Strategically they backfire, as assassinations might lead to unpredictable outcomes, like in 1992. In the long term, Israel’s tactical military strikes are no panacea for political violence compared to multilateral peace and development strategies. Both the US and France, permanent members of the UN Security Council, had pushed for implementing the 2006 Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to monitor the area south of Lebanon on the border with Israel, creating a buffer zone. A cessation of hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon would have been the best long-term solution, achieving a more sustainable security than continued conflict that only creates a new generation of Lebanese and Palestinians seeking atonement from Israel. As the one-year anniversary of the war in Gaza is upon us, it appears that Mr Netanyahu is seeking another year of conflict to maintain his hold on power. Reprinted from The National with the author’s permission. —– Bonus video added by Informed Comment: Al Jazeera English: “Hezbollah ‘prepared’ for Israel’s ground incursion: Hezbollah deputy chief” Filed Under: Hizbullah, Israel/ Palestine, Lebanon About the Author Ibrahim Al-Marashi is Associate Professor of History at Cal State San Marcos. He co-authored with Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018) and with Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Routledge, 2017) .

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Why an Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a Mistake The Battle for the Soul of American Science: The Pentagon goes to School The Path to Nasrallah’s Assassination The War of Legitimacy: How the International Criminal Court and the UN Gen. Assembly Challenged Israeli, US Impunity Climate Change-Driven Hurricanes and Wildfires are causing Home Insurance Rates to Skyrocket Water as a Weapon of War in Gaza (The New Lines Institute) Climate Change-Driven Hurricanes and Wildfires are causing Home Insurance Rates to Skyrocket Climate Crisis Climate Change-Driven Hurricanes and Wildfires are causing Home Insurance Rates to Skyrocket The Conversation09/29/2024 By Andrew J. Hoffman, University of Michigan | – (The Conversation) – Millions of Americans have been watching with growing alarm as their homeowners insurance premiums rise and their coverage shrinks. Nationwide, premiums rose 34% between 2017 and 2023, and they continued to rise in 2024 across much of the country. To add insult to injury, those rates go even higher if you make a claim – as much as 25% if you claim a total loss of your home. Why is this happening? There are a few reasons, but a common thread: Climate change is fueling more severe weather, and insurers are responding to rising damage claims. The losses are exacerbated by more frequent extreme weather disasters striking densely populated areas, rising construction costs and homeowners experiencing damage that was once more rare. Parts of the U.S. have been seeing larger and more damaging hail, higher storm surges, massive and widespread wildfires, and heat waves that kink metal and buckle asphalt. In Houston, what used to be a 100-year disaster, such as Hurricane Harvey in 2017, is now a 1-in-23-years event, estimates by risk assessors at First Street Foundation suggest. In addition, more people are moving into coastal and wildland areas at risk from storms and wildfires. Just a decade ago, few insurance companies had a comprehensive strategy for addressing climate risk as a core business issue. Today, insurance companies have no choice but to factor climate change into their policy models. Rising damage costs, higher premiums There’s a saying that to get someone to pay attention to climate change, put a price on it. Rising insurance costs are doing just that. Increasing global temperatures lead to more extreme weather, and that means insurance companies have had to make higher payouts. In turn, they have been raising their prices and changing their coverage in order to remain solvent. That raises the costs for homeowners and for everyone else. The importance of insurance to the economy cannot be understated. You generally cannot get a mortgage or even drive a car, build an office building or enter into contracts without insurance to protect against the inherent risks. Because insurance is so tightly woven into economies, state agencies review insurance companies’ proposals to increase premiums or reduce coverage. The insurance companies are not making political statements with the increases. They are looking at the numbers, calculating risk and pricing it accordingly. And the numbers are concerning. The arithmetic of climate risk Insurance companies use data from past disasters and complex models to calculate expected future payouts. Then they price their policies to cover those expected costs. In doing so, they have to balance three concerns: keeping rates low enough to remain competitive, setting rates high enough to cover payouts and not running afoul of insurance regulators. Photo by NASA on Unsplash But climate change is disrupting those risk models. As global temperatures rise, driven by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use and other human activities, past is no longer prologue: What happened over the past 10 to 20 years is less predictive of what will happen in the next 10 to 20 years. The number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. each year offers a clear example. The average rose from 3.3 per year in the 1980s to 18.3 per year in the 10-year period ending in 2024, with all years adjusted for inflation. With that more than fivefold increase in billion-dollar disasters came rising insurance costs in the Southeast because of hurricanes and extreme rainfall, in the West because of wildfires, and in the Midwest because of wind, hail and flood damage. Hurricanes tend to be the most damaging single events. They caused more than US$692 billion in property damage in the U.S. between 2014 and 2023. But severe hail and windstorms, including tornadoes, are also costly; together, those on the billion-dollar disaster list did more than $246 billion in property damage over the same period. As insurance companies adjust to the uncertainty, they may run a loss in one segment, such as homeowners insurance, but recoup their losses in other segments, such as auto or commercial insurance. But that cannot be sustained over the long term, and companies can be caught by unexpected events. California’s unprecedented wildfires in 2017 and 2018 wiped out nearly 25 years’ worth of profits for insurance companies in that state. To balance their risk, insurance companies often turn to reinsurance companies; in effect, insurance companies that insure insurance companies. But reinsurers have also been raising their prices to cover their costs. Property reinsurance alone increased by 35% in 2023. Insurers are passing those costs to their policyholders. What this means for your homeowners policy Not only are homeowners insurance premiums going up, coverage is shrinking. In some cases, insurers are reducing or dropping coverage for items such as metal trim, doors and roof repair, increasing deductibles for risks such as hail and fire damage, or refusing to pay full replacement costs for things such as older roofs. Some insurances companies are simply withdrawing from markets altogether, canceling existing policies or refusing to write new ones when risks become too uncertain or regulators do not approve their rate increases to cover costs. In recent years, State Farm and Allstate pulled back from California’s homeowner market, and Farmers, Progressive and AAA pulled back from the Florida market, which is seeing some of the highest insurance rates in the country. State-run “insurers of last resort,” which can provide coverage for people who can’t get coverage from private companies, are struggling too. Taxpayers in states such as California and Florida have been forced to bail out their state insurers. And the National Flood Insurance Program has raised its premiums, leading 10 states to sue to stop them. About 7.4% of U.S. homeowners have given up on insurance altogether, leaving an estimated $1.6 trillion in property value at risk, including in high-risk states such as Florida. No, insurance costs aren’t done rising According to NOAA data, 2023 was the hottest year on record “by far.” And 2024 could be even hotter. This general warming trend and the rise in extreme weather is expected to continue until greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are abated. In the face of such worrying analyses, U.S. homeowners insurance will continue to get more expensive and cover less. And yet, Jacques de Vaucleroy, chairman of the board of reinsurance giant Swiss Re, believes U.S. insurance is still priced too low to fully cover the risk from climate change. Climate change is a major factor in the rising cost of insurance. Join us for a special free webinar with experts Andrew Hoffman of the University of Michigan and Melanie Gall of Arizona State University to discuss the arithmetic behind these rising rates, what climate change has to do with it, and what may be coming in your future insurance bills. Wednesday, October 9, 2024, 11:30 a.m. PT/2:30 p.m. ET. Register for the webinar here. Andrew J. Hoffman, Professor of Management & Organizations, Environment & Sustainability, and Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Filed Under: Climate Crisis, Super Storms About the Author The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media outlet that works with academic experts in their fields to publish short, clear essays on hot topics.