NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-11-2025 7PM EST

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have outlined their plans to slash the federal workforce with the help of a team of quote, small government crusaders. What's in store for federal workers and how are they planning for change? This January 1A's.gov series guides you through various government agencies and the people working for you. Listen to the 1A podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in New York City, I'm Dwahleesai Kautel. The special counsel who led investigations on President-elect Donald Trump has resigned

from the Justice Department. The separation of Jack Smith from the DOJ took place on Friday and only surfaced today during a court filing. It remains unclear if Smith's findings on Trump's alleged involvement in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results will ever be made public in whole or in parts. Catastrophic wildfires continue to burn in the Los Angeles area for the fifth straight day. At least 11 people are dead. We get the latest from Elise Hue. The LA County Sheriff is working with the coroner's office and FEMA to conduct searches. LA County Sheriff is working with the Coroner's Office and FEMA to conduct searches.

LA County Sheriff Robert Luna says specialized search and rescue teams will use cadaver dogs to search for missing people as well as remains. Due to safety concerns, we are unable to safely search the impacted areas during the hours of darkness. So this will only be taking place while there's light. Firefighters have struggled to contain the biggest palisades fire in West Los Angeles. It grew by about 1000 acres overnight. For NPR News, I'm Elise Hue in Los Angeles.

One way people are getting information to stay safe from wildfires is in the form of a mobile app from member station KQED in San Francisco, Alexander Gonzalez has more on that. The app is called WatchDuty. It gives real-time alerts and brings together other key information, like evacuation warnings and power outages. Monitoring all this is a nonprofit made up of former emergency personnel.

John Mills is the CEO of WatchDuty. We are actually listening in real time to first responder radio traffic. And that's how we get such granular intelligence that is not normally found anywhere else on the internet. Mills says in the first 48 hours since the L.A. fires began, the app got more than one million downloads. For NPR News, I'm Alexander Gonzalez in San Francisco. President Biden awarded Pope Francis with the nation's highest civilian honor on Saturday, the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. NPR's Juliana Kim reports. President Biden was scheduled to travel to the Vatican this weekend to meet with Pope Francis, but canceled in order to monitor the California wildfires. The White House said the two were able to speak over the phone on Saturday.

The White House says Pope Francis received the award for his commitment to serving the poor as well as advocating for world peace and the environment. President Biden is the second Catholic president in U.S. history, while Pope Francis is the third pope to receive the medal. The two have had a good rapport for many years, well before Biden took office. Juliana Kim, NPR News. And this is NPR News from New York City. North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia have been captured by Ukraine's special forces

in Russia's western Kursk region, an area that Kyiv took last summer by surprise. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the two men are wounded and have been transported to Kyiv, where they are receiving medical assistance. On social media, Zelensky shared photos of two men on cots. Both had bandages, one around his jaw, the other on his hands. Ukrainian security service, the SBU said only one North Korean soldier had documents, a Russian military ID. For the first time in more than 100 years, the Department of Justice has published a report on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Max Bryan

with member station KWGS reports. In the massacre, a white mob killed as many as 300 people, leveled more than 1,000 homes, and destroyed prominent businesses in the area known as Black Wall Street following an unsubstantiated report that a black teenager assaulted a white woman. Now the DOJ says there are credible reports that some members of law enforcement murdered black residents in the massacre. And unlike the first report produced in the weeks after the massacre, the document issued Friday asserts that the white mob's quote, opportunistic violence became systematic and stemmed from racial bias. Federal authorities say prosecution opportunities are prohibited by expired statutes of limitations

and the fact that perpetrators are dead. However, DOJ officials say the report is still important for history. This is NPR News from New York. What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.