The Headlines - How Congress Could Find Itself Paralyzed, and New Orleans Attack Update

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Plus, Kenyan villagers get a scare from space.   On Today’s Episode:Johnson Grasps for Votes to Remain as Speaker Ahead of House Vote, by Catie EdmondsonNew Orleans Attacker Most Likely Acted Alone, Officials Say, by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Isabelle Taft and Michael LevensonNew Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear, by Jacey Fortin and Jesus JiménezBiden Plans to Block Takeover Bid of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon, by Alan RappeportSouth Korean Officials Thwarted in Attempt to Detain President After Standoff, by Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young and John YoonNet Neutrality Rules Struck Down by Appeals Court, by Cecilia KangA Half-Ton Piece of Space Junk Falls Onto a Village in Kenya, by Lynsey Chutel 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 3rd. Here's what we're covering. We live in very serious times. We cannot afford any palace drama here. We have got to get the Congress started. At noon today on Capitol Hill, the House will convene to elect a speaker, but there are

already signs that it could be a contentious vote. The current speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, is the leading candidate, and he's been struggling to keep his party united behind him. Despite an endorsement this week from President-elect Donald Trump, several far-right lawmakers are upset with Johnson for compromising on a spending bill last month that narrowly avoided a government shutdown. And because the GOP holds such a razor-thin majority

in the House, Johnson can effectively only afford to lose one Republican vote. You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson. And you can take that to the bank. At least one Republican, Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, has already said pretty

emphatically that he won't back Johnson. If Johnson fails to win a majority, the voting could devolve into chaos, like it did in 2023 when it took four days and 15 rounds of voting for Kevin McCarthy to get elected speaker. Without a speaker, the House can't consider any legislation, swear in any new members, or even certify the results of the presidential election, which is supposed to happen on Monday. The FBI says it's found no definitive link between the New Year's attack in New Orleans and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, but cautioned that it's still too early to be completely sure. In Las Vegas, officials identified the driver of the truck, which went up in flames in front

of the Trump International Hotel, as an Army Master Sergeant from Colorado who'd been on leave from active duty. Authorities say he shot himself before the vehicle exploded. Any motive is still unknown. And in New Orleans, investigators say it now appears the driver who plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14, did act alone. Shamsa Dinbahr-Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran who died in a shootout with police after the attack, was, quote, 100% inspired by ISIS, according to the FBI, though it didn't say if he'd had any direct contact with the

group. The FBI also said that in videos posted to Facebook hours before the attack, Jabbar revealed he'd originally planned to harm his family and friends, but didn't think he'd get the kind of media coverage that he was looking for. Investigators are still digging into Jabbar's social media and interviewing those who knew him, trying to learn more about how he was radicalized. Meanwhile, more details are coming to light about the victims of the attack. You know, I'll see something that reminds me of him and I'll break down. I know that's going to happen probably for the rest of my life. Matthew Tenadorio was a 25-year-old who worked at the Superdome in New Orleans.

His father said they'd just had a family dinner on New Year's Eve before his son went out with friends. Reggie Hunter was a 38-year-old father of two. He and his cousin had decided to make a quick trip from Baton Rouge to celebrate the New Year. His cousin was injured in the attack but survived. And Nicole Perez was 27 years old with a four-year-old son. She'd just been promoted to manager at the deli where she worked, and the owner spoke about Perez with a local news station. She was a great mother.

She was allowed to bring her son into the office when he didn't have school. And so she was helping him learn to read. For more about the attack in New Orleans and those who were killed, listen to today's episode of The Daily. President Biden is planning to block a Japanese firm from taking over the century-old American company U.S. Steel. The $14 billion deal has been a political flashpoint since it was first proposed by Nippon Steel over a year ago. U.S. Steel has been struggling and said the takeover is the best way to keep the company going and its 20,000 workers employed. But

the United Steelworkers Union quickly came out against the deal and a federal committee has warned it could cut into America's steel production, a potential national security issue. The fact that U.S. steel is based in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, intensified the political debate over the last year over whether the deal should happen. Donald Trump called for the company to remain in American hands, and eventually so did Biden. He now seems poised to make that official as soon as today. Blocking the deal would be a departure from the U.S.'s long history of welcoming foreign

investment. It could potentially cause other foreign businesses to rethink trying to acquire American companies, wary of stepping into a similar political minefield. In South Korea, the country's political crisis descended into a tense standoff at the presidential residence today. Investigators tried to take President Yoon Suk-yul in for questioning on insurrection charges. Lawmakers voted to impeach him last month after he briefly declared martial law. But when police arrived to get Yoon, they ran into a wall of his supporters, as well as presidential bodyguards, and eventually

had to withdraw. Now, protesters on the other side, who want to see President Yoon arrested, have marched to the residence too and said they're planning to camp out. There's labcoverage at nytimes.com. For two decades, there's been a heated debate playing out about what's known as net neutrality. It's the principle that internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon should have to treat all internet traffic equally and not slow or block access like to content from their competitors. Those providers have opposed these net neutrality rules, calling them regulatory overreach. Meanwhile, big tech companies like Netflix and Google, along with some consumer advocates,

have fought hard for them. And it's turned into a head spinning back and forth. The Obama administration put net neutrality rules in place. Trump rolled them back. Biden reinstated them. But yesterday, a federal appeals court dealt the rules a final blow, ruling that regulators don't have the authority to impose net neutrality.

By overturning this regulation, consumers will now be vulnerable to the potential of a broadband provider deciding how fast your content is downloaded or uploaded, what kind of content gets to you sooner, if there's potentially even extra charges for content. Cecilia Kong covers tech policy for the Times. Those are all the concerns that led to the creation of these rules in the first place. I should say though that there have been very few examples of misuse by the internet service

providers so far, but consumer advocates and a lot of the public interest groups that have been advocating for net neutrality for years say that simply having the rules is what's deterred these companies from slowing down content and deciding what you get to see. So they're afraid that the course decision Thursday will have a real impact on what consumers are able to see and what they experience online. And finally, in a rural village in Kenya earlier this week, residents heard a loud boom. They looked up and saw a large circular object falling from the sky.

It looked like a huge steering wheel glowing red. Moments later, the eight-foot-wide metal circle crashed into some brush. It is a part of a space object, which is in form of a ring, a metallic ring. Authorities from the Kenya Space Agency say it was a half-ton piece of space junk. Now they're trying to figure out where it came from. After decades of space exploration and dozens of new rocket launches every year, there's a growing amount of debris in space. One estimate says there are about 4,000 tons of space junk

floating around Earth. The objects usually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere or land in the ocean, but not always. Last year, a small piece of debris from the International Space Station fell through the roof of a home in Florida. Pieces of metal from a SpaceX capsule have been found on a

Canadian farm. Regulators are trying to deal with the issue. Two years ago, the U.S. government handed down its first-ever fine over space debris. The TV provider Dish had to pay $150,000 for not moving its dead satellite away from Earth into a higher orbit. But one expert told the Times that efforts to manage space junk are not keeping up with the growing number of objects in space. He said humans can't treat space as a place, quote, where we can just dump stuff. Those are the headlines. This show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson,

Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann. We'll be back on Monday.