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On Wednesday, over 1,000 people affected by a devastating fire gathered in front of the remnants of the historic Pacific Palisades Business Block Building. The rally saw speakers accuse Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of “negligence” in handling the disaster that ravaged their community a year ago.
Named “They Let Us Burn,” the rally and protest resonated with the crowd, especially when someone shouted, “fire them all — fire them now,” prompting widespread applause from those who filled two streets at the village center.
Amid the crowd’s stories of loss, Ann Juliano’s stood out. Having grown up in the Palisades, she held a sign declaring, “Not Wild. Not Natural. Stop the Propaganda.”
Ann Juliano family home burned down a week after she came back to the Palisades for her father’s funeral. (Lowell Cauffiel/Breitbart News)
Her sign was a direct response to Bass and Newsom attributing the uncontrollable blaze to climate change. This fire claimed the lives of 12 local residents and destroyed nearly 7,000 homes and structures in the coastal area.
Juliano’s grief was compounded by what she perceived as misplaced blame. Living in London and working in import finance, she returned to the Palisades in early January to attend her father’s funeral, only to face the aftermath of the tragedy.
“I was staying in the house we all grew up in,” she told Breitbart News. “It was a week after we buried my dad. And I was helping my mom get organized. We smelled the fire. And evacuated. We didn’t take anything with us. All the photos, the albums. Memories of my dad. I figured, I’d be back that night.”
Like thousands in the Palisades, there was no going back until days later, only find complete destruction, with metal and even glass melted into hardly recognizable debris by wind-driven firestorm.
For Juliano, there was nothing left but rubble.
Like Juliano, rally organizer and lead speaker Jeremy Padawer, took to the lectern and rattled off a list of alleged missteps and failures that created the inferno – none of which, he asserted, had anything to do with climate change.
Organizer Jeremy Padawer thanks the hundreds of fire victims who showed up January 7, 2026, to protest the government negligence for the Palisades fire on its one-year anniversary. (Lowell Cauffiel/Breitbart News)
He charged Bass and Newsom with using the climate as a scapegoat for their own shortcomings.
“If Newsom and Bass really believed in climate change, would they have had such an unprepared response?” he told the crowd.
Padawer, a toy entrepreneur and children’s animation producer, ticked off a litany of failures that are also the basis for numerous lawsuits against the city and state on behalf of thousands of fire victims.
“So many things have to go terribly wrong to burn down an entire city,” he said.
As reported by numerous outlets, the failures included useless fire hydrants, brush not maintained, dry local reservoirs, fire trucks out of service, and no staging of fire crews in anticipation of the high winds that had been predicted for days.
Most notably, criticism also included the failure of fire officials to monitor and completely extinguish an arson fire on state land a week before winds apparently reignited it and caused the January 7, 2025, blaze that spread into Malibu and other parts of the west side.
Padawer, who lost his home in the inferno, took particular aim at the state property, saying the Los Angeles Fire Department had been wanting to do fire prevention cutting there, but was not allowed to by the state as it was a “protected area.”
Fire victims filled the village center on January 7, 2026, to listen to speakers charge Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Los Angeles Mayor Bass (D) with negligence that led to the January 7, 2025, fire that destroyed the Pacific Palisades. (Lowell Cauffiel/Breitbart News)
“The fire started in an area that was protected to protect a milkweed plant,” he told the crowd. “How many people out there have a milkweed plant.”
Nobody raised their hands.
“I don’t,” Padawer responded. “I don’t have a house.”
The organizer also pointed out the lack of anyone in charge in City Hall the day of the fire.
As Breitbart News was first to report in October, the official ostensibly in charge of public safety on January 7, 2025, was not on the job.
Deputy Mayor Brian K. Williams, who was tasked with overseeing the city’s police and fire departments, was on suspension and being investigated by the FBI for calling in a phony bomb threat in October of 2024, allegedly to get out of a Zoom meeting.
“Where was the mayor?” Padawer asked.
“Ghana,” the crowd answered back. Bass at the time of the fire was in the African country representing the Biden administration to attend the inauguration of that country’s president.
“We have a deputy mayor,” Padawer continued. “Where was Brian K. Williams? The (response) team must have been in total shambles.”
Williams pled guilty and was sentenced last year to probation and a $5,000 fine for faking the anti-Israel bomb threat on City Hall.
Josh Lederer recounts failures of city and state government to a reporter on January 7, 2026, one year after the January 7, 2025, Palisades fire drove him, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter from their home. (Lowell Cauffiel/Breitbart News)
Before the rally, there was also palpable anger toward Mayor Bass for comments she made to an ABC affiliate this week regarding the protest, saying that “organizers are profiting off of this, and that is what I find very despicable, intentionally putting out misinformation, intentionally profiting from social media, book deals, etc.”
Mariam Engel, a fire survivor and one of the rally organizers, called that allegation “gaslighting.”
“This rally, the organization, is being funded by us,” she told Breitbart News as she stood next to commercial district ruins. “We are not accepting donations or selling anything. For the mayor to gaslight us in this way is outrageous.”
Padawer said he spent $40,000 to put on the anniversary protest, which included public address equipment, free T-shirts, and extensive signage.
Engel added that the only one profiting off the fires “is the city, if they continue to require people rebuilding to pay for the high amounts for building permits.”
The anger in the crowd against the governor and mayor seemed to be at odds with a community where Democrats historically have outnumbered Republicans two-to-one on registration rolls.
Rae Huang, a community organizer who started running for Los Angeles mayor in November and described herself as a “progressive,” was exceptionally critical of city leadership.
“The city was unprepared and incompetent,” she said. “Every department should have been coordinating and been prepared for the wind event.”
Rally organizers presented a list of demands to Bass and Newsom, who were invited to the rally but were no-shows.
The demands include full waiver building permit and inspection fees, suspension of property tax until homes are rebuilt and occupied, “clear, enforceable brush clearing” and a vegetation management plan, underground power lines, comprehensive evacuation planning, and “insurance reform” to help many of the homeowners who still are trying to be paid for their fire claims.
For those who want to rebuild, organizers explained that the permit process has been painfully slow, though Newsom claimed recently that “2,500” building permits have been approved in the past year for the Palisades and another fire in Altadena.
That figure from the governor, however, could be called misleading as most of those permits are not for entire buildings or homes, but ancillary permits such as electrical and other inspected construction, according to Crosstown, which tracks government data.
Of the nearly 7,000 structures destroyed, less than 600 have been for breaking ground on a new building, it stated.
As the rally unfolded, Natalia Osorio, another fire victim, stood listening in front of a shuttered business just off a small park where another organization was holding a memorial for the 12 people lost in the fire.
Natalia Osorio lost the home to her family of five and had a message for the governor and mayor on January 7, 2026, at the one-year anniversary protest of the Palisades fire. (Lowell Cauffiel/Breitbart News)
Osorio said she had been living in the Palisades with her husband and three daughters for 20 years until the fire took their property.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m very critical of Bass and Newsom.” She was wearing a shirt she had made.
It simply stated, “RESIGN NOW BASS AND NEWSOM.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more. He, too, lost his residence and lifetime of memories and belongings in the Palisades fire.
