The Headlines - Death Toll Climbs in L.A. Fires, and TikTok’s Last Chance

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Plus, goodbye to a hairy “Shrek” icon.   On Today’s Episode:New Fire Threatens Los Angeles, as Death Toll Rises to 10, by Corina Knoll, Soumya Karlamangla, Juliet Macur and Nicholas Bogel-BurroughsSupreme Court Denies Trump’s Last-Ditch Effort to Avoid Sentencing, by Ben Protess, Kate Christobek and Adam LiptakSupreme Court to Hear Challenge to Law That Could Shut Down TikTok, by Adam LiptakJudge Rejects Biden’s Title IX Rules, Scrapping Protections for Trans Students, by Zach MontaguePerry the Donkey, Model for ‘Shrek,’ Dies at 30, by Sara Ruberg Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, January 10th. Here's what we're covering. The largest fires burning in Los Angeles remain out of control this morning. They've burned more than 29,000 acres, about twice the size of Manhattan. And a new fire burst out last night north of the city, burning another thousand acres in just a few hours.

Officials now put the death toll from all the fires at 10, but have warned that the situation is still too chaotic to know for sure. There are still active fires. There are gas leaks. It is dangerous. When it is safe, we will go in there with the appropriate resources and make sure that we get an appropriate count. The L.A. County Sheriff said yesterday he was hesitant to even give a preliminary number. And the obvious question is, do you think it's going to grow? I am praying it doesn't,

but based on the devastation that is clear, looks like a bomb, an atomic bomb dropped in these areas, I don't expect good news. And we're not looking forward to those numbers. So far, few details about those who've died have been released, but several seem to have been trying to fend off the flames themselves. One victim in Altadena was found in his front yard, still holding a garden hose. The winds that have been fueling the flames are supposed to peak today, but the National Weather Service has warned

they could sweep back over the weekend and possibly next week. ["The Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the Fire and the scale of the destruction has the potential to make the housing crisis in the region even worse. Southern California was already facing a severe shortage of housing, and now hundreds and potentially thousands of homes have been destroyed. Mansions and Pacific Palisades, but also whole subdivisions of townhouses and bungalows in the suburbs. Rebuilding any of that could take years. In the meantime, people who lost their homes will enter the rental market en masse. That's almost guaranteed to drive up prices. The rising costs could have a domino effect,

displacing people who weren't even near the fires. One urban policy expert who lost his own home in the fires this week told the Times, it's very possible that this event is going to cause a big increase in homelessness. After months of legal battles and a last ditch appeal to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump is said to be sentenced today in the Manhattan hush money case. Trump will attend remotely. The process is moving forward

after the Supreme Court denied his emergency application for the justices to stop it. In their 5-4 decision, they noted that Trump is not expected to receive any jail time, he's not expected to even get probation, and he still has other legal options. After the sentencing, he can formally appeal his felony convictions. This is long way from finished. And I respect the court's opinion. It was a, I think it was actually a very good opinion for us. Yesterday, Trump downplayed the justices' decision to deny his request and vowed he will keep fighting the case. So we'll see how it all works out. I think it's going to work out well.

Meanwhile, TikTok will appear in front of the Supreme Court today in what is its last chance to stay in the United States. My colleague Sapna Maheshwari is covering another major case in front of the Supreme Court, a hearing today that will determine the future of TikTok. The White House says the app is a national security risk, since it could let its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, gather data from millions of Americans and control what they see online. Last year, Congress passed a law saying ByteDance has to sell off the app by January 19th

or it will be banned in the US. With that deadline now just over a week away, today's hearing is TikTok's final opportunity to make its case. So TikTok is arguing that this law is infringing on the free speech rights of Americans and the company itself. They're saying that the government can't just wholesale shut down an app that 170 million

Americans use on a monthly basis. And they're also saying that it can't be sold. The company has argued that China would block the export of its algorithm, the technology that fuels its recommendations. So the kind of TikTok-iness of the app itself, why you see the videos you see. And so in the company's view, the law is a ban, not an option to sell. And they say that that's unconstitutional. Sapna says the legal experts she's spoken with think the Supreme Court is likely to reject

TikTok's arguments and uphold the law. Come January 19th, that does not mean TikTok would immediately disappear off of people's phones. Instead, companies like Apple and Google would have to stop offering TikTok in their app stores. They couldn't push any updates either, which would eventually make the app unusable. But Sapna says there are still a few wildcards at play.

One of them is that Trump has signaled that he would like to save the app. The problem is for him that he's stymied in the options here. To come into office on the 20th means that he's entering the government a day after the law is supposed to go into effect. The law can also only be repealed by an act of Congress, which takes time. There's also some thinking that perhaps the Trump administration wouldn't enforce this law, but that would involve a lot of risk taking by companies that continue to carry the TikTok app.

So Apple and Google would have to really trust that the Trump administration is not going to change its mind about enforcing this law and actively choose to violate it. A federal judge in Kentucky has struck down the Biden administration's attempt to expand protections for transgender students. The case centers around Title IX, the 1970s law that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating based on sex. Earlier this year, the administration moved to update the law to prohibit schools and

staff members from rejecting a student's gender identity. Many Republican-led states immediately objected, filing legal challenges. The judge yesterday ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped. The judge also said the proposed change violates the First Amendment rights of teachers by requiring them to use students' preferred pronouns. Conservative lawmakers hailed the decision as a major victory, while legal groups focused on civil rights said the decision broke with a years-long precedent of broadening how Title IX is applied. The ruling also tosses out other updates the Biden administration tried to make to the

law. That included expanding safeguards for pregnant students and requiring schools to take a harder line on investigating cases of sexual assault. ["The House Flyers"] And finally. You might have seen a house fly, maybe even a superfly, but I bet you ain't never seen a donkey fly.

The donkey that served as a model for Donkey and Shrek has died. Perry, a Jerusalem miniature donkey, was 30 years old. He lived at a park in Palo Alto, California, where in 1999, a supervising animator at Dreamworks came by looking for a donkey to observe. He wanted to see how they moved. He brought a whole team of animators, and they shot reference video of Perry. Two years later, Shrek came out, with Eddie Murphy as the fast-talking, sassy sidekick donkey.

Perry's handlers say that his personality was sweeter and gentler than that, although he would occasionally try and take a bite out of your sweatshirt. He lived out his days at the park, though the costs of caring for an aging donkey can add up. At one point, a group of law students from Stanford just up the road wrote letters to DreamWorks asking them to recognize Perry for his work. They say they never heard back. But volunteers chipped into fund-raise to cover medical costs. Perry's handlers say that his stardom helped raise enough funds to care for him and his fellow donkeys at the park. That'll do, donkey.

That'll do. Those are the headlines today on The Daily, a roundtable on this week's biggest political news from Trump's plan for Greenland to Biden's last policy pushes. That's next in the New York Times audio app where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Adam Raskon, Paula Schuman, and Chris Wood. The headlines will be back on Monday.