On today’s show: Politico fact-checks criticisms being lobbed at L.A. lawmakers over the wildfires. Plus, what happened with fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades? LAist has the story. Trump is set to be sentenced in his hush-money case. USA Today details what to expect. The Supreme Court hears arguments Friday in a challenge to government efforts to force a sale of TikTok. Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains how the case pits national security against free speech. Also, author Ryann Liebenthal speaks with In Conversation about what Biden’s administration has accomplished on student loans, and what we might see under a Trump administration.
Chapter 1: What are the latest updates on the California wildfires?
Good morning. It's Friday, January 10th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, TikTok goes to the Supreme Court, Trump is set to be sentenced in his hush money case, and why canceling student debt is a tricky issue. But first, to the L.A. fires, where more than 9,000 homes and structures have now been destroyed or damaged.
Chapter 2: What actions did President Biden take regarding the wildfires?
And at least 130,000 residents are under evacuation orders. The Los Angeles County Sheriff said that some areas look like a bomb had been dropped on them. Yesterday, President Biden addressed the nation, and he said the federal government would cover 100% of the costs for the initial disaster response.
That includes debris removal, temporary shelters, salaries for first responders, and more for 180 days.
Chapter 3: What criticisms is LA Mayor Karen Bass facing?
Let me close with a message to the people of Southern California. We are with you. We're not going anywhere. To the firefighters and first responders, you are heroes.
Meanwhile, in the press and on social media, there's a lot of criticism being lobbed at LA's mayor, Karen Bass, who is a Democrat. For the first 24 hours of the crisis, Bass was a constant presence online. She declared a state of emergency and urged residents to flee, but she herself was far from the fires on a diplomatic mission in Africa.
Bass and her team say that she was in communication with top officials the entire time she was away and returned to Los Angeles as fast as possible.
I've been in constant contact with our fire commanders, with county, state, and federal officials. I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications. So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight. When my flight landed, immediately went to the fire zone and saw what happened in Pacific Palisades.
Bass is also being criticized for reported cuts to the city's fire department budget. There's been a lot of confusion about this and criticism from the left and the right, so it's worth taking a moment to clear it up. It is true that in June, Bass signed a budget that cut the fire department's funding by more than $17.5 million, or around 2% of the previous year's budget.
But Politico notes that's only a part of the story. The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department, and a separate fund was set aside that ended up adding $50 million to the fire department budget year over year. Still, fire officials say they're understaffed and under-resourced.
One of Bass' most outspoken critics is real estate developer Rick Caruso, who ran against her in the 2022 mayoral election. His daughter lost her home in the wildfires, and he's been blasting Bass and the city for the lack of available water. Here he is on the local Fox affiliate earlier in the week.
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Chapter 4: What issues arose with fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades?
Well, what is most concerning to me is our first responders and our firefighters who are trying to battle this. There's no water in the Palisades. There's no water coming out of a fire hydrant. This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. It's not the firefighters' fault, but it's by the city.
But the L.A. Department of Water and Power says that isn't quite right. At issue wasn't supply, but strain on the system that feeds hydrants. Here's Kevin Tidmarsh, a reporter with LAist.
Chapter 5: How is the LA Department of Water and Power responding to the crisis?
You have a water system that was not designed to fight fires, that is under a tremendous amount of stress.
Water to those hydrants is supplied by massive tanks that hold a million gallons each and are designed to maintain pressure as water is pumped up hills. The water department says the tanks and palisades were filled to capacity, but as firefighters drew more and more water while the flames spread, the system just couldn't hold. Here's Tidmarsh again.
And the city was not able to get water into these three tanks, maintaining the water pressure fast enough. It's not an issue of supply like a lot of people out there, you know, making these statements on social media, in the press. It's an issue of infrastructure, of not being able to physically move the water fast enough.
Another factor at play are the high winds, which have forced firefighters to battle these blazes almost exclusively from the ground while getting very little aerial support. Greg Pierce, the director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, told Tidmarsh a lot of this was to be expected and that any government would be taken by surprise with a disaster of this magnitude.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, he added, is one of the most prepared and efficient in the country, and the department achieves that regardless of who is in charge. Despite all the finger-pointing among politicians, Tidmarsh told us that on the ground in Los Angeles, people are coming together to support each other. Let's turn now to a big legal development.
The Supreme Court declined to delay President-elect Trump's sentencing in the New York hush money case. Trump is scheduled to be sentenced this morning. It comes after a jury convicted him of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 election.
The judge in the case says he will not give Trump jail or probation. Still, this will cement his status as the first felon to occupy the White House. The sentencing takes place early this morning, so check the Apple News app for more updates. Also today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the government's efforts to force a sale of TikTok to an approved buyer by January 19th.
The social media app used by over 100 million Americans is owned by the China-based company ByteDance. And for a long time, U.S. lawmakers have raised concerns that the Chinese government could secretly force ByteDance to share sensitive American user data or use the app to surveil and manipulate Americans, all of which TikTok claims has never happened.
At the heart of the legal case before the court today are two longstanding principles that Vox's Ian Millhiser told us are now on a collision course.
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Chapter 6: What is the legal status of Trump’s hush-money case?
there is a First Amendment principle that is in conflict with the broader national security principle.
The First Amendment prohibits the government from deciding who owns media companies and who controls political communication in the U.S. At the same time, the federal government also has a long history of blocking foreign nations from U.S. communications. A lower court judge who upheld the recently passed law that led to this ultimatum for TikTok to sell or be banned cited the 1912 Radio Act.
That allowed only U.S. citizens or companies to obtain a radio operator's license. It was later repealed and replaced, but the general principle is still a part of US law today.
foreign nationals, companies with significant foreign ownership cannot operate a radio station in the U.S. So it is very, very well established that for certain critical communications infrastructure, the government can say U.S. only. You have to be a U.S. citizen or a U.S. company in order to own and operate this.
And all that's happening here is the government is saying we want to apply the same rule that has been applied all along to other forms of communications infrastructure to a social media company, to TikTok.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the Supreme Court case regarding TikTok?
TikTok, meanwhile, is expected to call on the court to remember that time and again, they have ruled under the First Amendment that the government cannot dictate what is published by media companies or how those decisions are made. But the Justice Department, the defendant in this case, argues that a foreign company like ByteDance has no First Amendment rights to begin with.
With the January 19th deadline for TikTok looming, the Supreme Court will be on the clock to make a decision quickly. TikTok said it plans to shut down the site in the United States by that date, unless there is action from the court. But they could still see a last-minute lifeline thrown their way.
A group created by the billionaire former owner of the LA Dodgers, Frank McCourt, said they made an offer to buy TikTok from ByteDance. According to CNN, the group, including Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary, did not disclose the value of said offer. you 45 million Americans, or about one in six adults, have student loan debt. The total debt bill comes in around $1.7 trillion.
It's so high that it's the second highest source of consumer debt surpassed only by home mortgages. And it's become a hotly contested political issue in recent years. Democrats and President Biden say at least some of this debt should be forgiven. His administration has canceled nearly $175 billion in student debt for roughly 4.8 million borrowers.
Republicans, by and large, disagree, and they say debt is a matter of personal responsibility, and that canceling the debt just passes the bills on to other taxpayers unfairly.
Something like a third or more of the student loan portfolio is not really anticipated to be paid back ever.
That's Ryan Liebenfall, author of the book Burdened, Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis.
So when we talk about forgiving debt, in some ways it's forgiving debt that is never going to be repaid. So, you know, if you don't forgive it or you don't cancel it, which is the term I prefer, right? you're just going to spend a lot of money trying to collect it and drive someone into penury.
You know, just going to push them all the way down, garnish their wages, their social security for effectively the rest of their life.
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