NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-10-2025 7AM EST

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

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Lately on the NPR Politics Podcast, we're talking about a big question. How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy? Schools? Healthcare? Follow coverage of a changing country? On the NPR Politics Podcast. promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On the NPR Politics Podcast. Live from NPR News in Washington, on Korova Coleman, the firestorm in the Los Angeles region continues to rage. The L.A. County medical examiner says at least 10 people have been killed. The largest blaze is the Palisades Fire northwest of the city. It's about 6 percent

contained. Another huge blaze is the Eaton fire in Pasadena and Altadena. That is fully uncontained. NPR's Liz Baker reports on damage from the Eaton fire in one neighborhood. Clusters of colorful bungalows, some a hundred years old, used to give this Altadena neighborhood a lived-in cheerful character. Hole blocks are reduced to only two colors now, black and white, char and ash. Everything seems to be gone. Smoke still curls out of the ruins of the place 21-year-old Brian Jacobo and his parents and six siblings have called home for a decade. They fled on foot earlier this week, blinded by thick smoke, forced to leave everything behind.

I had three cats right here. I don't know what happened to them. Everything's going through my head. They could have ran. Jacobo and his family are staying in a shelter for now. He says he doesn't know where they're going to go next. Liz Baker and Peer News Los Angeles. Video sharing app TikTok goes to the Supreme Court today. It's asking the justices to block a federal law that bans the app. The Justice Department says TikTok's owner is based in China and that Chinese ownership poses a huge security risk to Americans' data. TikTok says it's done a lot to distance itself

from its Chinese-based parent company, and that should be enough. NPR's Bobby Allen says if the law stays in place, the ban takes effect this month. The Supreme Court upholds the law. It could start very soon. Apple and Google will then be legally required to remove TikTok from app stores.

Web hosting firms like Oracle that support TikTok have to cut ties. It could be the beginning of the end for TikTok. Now, if the Supreme Court strikes down the law, well, then it's just business as usual for the app. And here's Bobbi Allen reporting. The U.S. Census Bureau is asking for public feedback on its plans for the first major field test ahead of the next national head count in 2030. As NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports, the Bureau says the test in 2026 is designed to help produce an accurate tally of the country's residents.

Next year's census test is set to involve more than 600,000 participants in parts of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. Counting who lives in college dorms, nursing homes, and other group living quarters has long been a challenge. One of the potential changes the Bureau plans to test before the 2030 census is giving administrators and residents of those group quarters the option to fill out a census form online. Another change is training some census workers specifically to interview residents of group quarters as well as those of individual households. Public comments on testing plans are due in

early March. Results of the actual census in 2030 are set to be used to determine each state share of congressional seats, electoral college votes, and trillions in federal funding for the next decade. Hansi Luong, NPR News. It's NPR. A massive winter storm is spreading across the U.S. There are winter storm warnings posted from the Texas Panhandle to Virginia's Atlantic Coast. Tens of thousands of customers don't have power in Texas or Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri. Central Tennessee could get up to eight inches of snow. Dangerous ice is coming to Alabama, Georgia,

and parts of South Carolina. The state of Florida is suing Trinity Healthcare Services, its former CEO as a Florida congresswoman. The lawsuit alleges the state overpaid the company millions of dollars at the height of the pandemic. From member station WLRN, Carlton Gillespie reports the state wants that money back. The company was contracted to perform vaccine registrations in February of 2021. WLRN, Carlton Gillespie reports the state wants that money back.

The company was contracted to perform vaccine registrations in February of 2021. In one of the overpayments from the Florida Department of Emergency Management, Trinity Health Care received more than five million dollars for an invoice of just over 50,000. The suit alleges that Trinity Health Care took advantage of the pandemic and knowingly cashed a check 100 times the size of its usual invoice. The state tried to remedy its error this past June by demanding the money back, but the company refused.

Trinity Healthcare received the alleged overpayments when Congresswoman Sheila Sherveless McCormick was its CEO. She stepped down in 2021 to run for Congress as a Democrat. For NPR News, I'm Carlton Gillespie in Fort Lauderdale. The space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is preparing to launch a spacecraft into orbit on Sunday. The new Glenn rocket is wider than the rockets built by rival SpaceX. These wider rockets could help bigger payloads get into orbit. I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News in Washington. I'm Korva Coleman, NPR News in Washington.