The Headlines - Syria’s New Reality, and Trump Lays Out Aggressive Agenda

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Plus, the end of the Eras Tour.   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]. On Today’s Episode:With Assad Gone, a Brutal Dictatorship Ends. But the New Risks Are Huge, by David E. SangerTrump Signals an Aggressive Opening, Threatening ‘Jail’ for Cheney and Others, by Peter BakerDisappointed Protesters Vow to Keep Pressure on South Korea’s Yoon, by John Yoon and Brolley GensterU.S. Milk to Be Tested for Bird Flu Virus, by Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily AnthesFor Taylor Swift, It’s the End of the ‘Eras,’ by Victor Mather and Sarah BermanTaylor Swift’s Eras Tour Grand Total: A Record $2 Billion, by Ben Sisario

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Megan Specia. Today's Monday, December 9th. Here's what we're covering. We're here in a massive, massive traffic jam as thousands of Syrians who fled the country during the civil war are now making their way back to Syria for the first time, for some in more than a decade. My colleague Christina Goldbaum has been reporting from near the Syria-Lebanon border on the stunning downfall of the Syrian regime. In a lightning fast offensive, rebel groups overtook the capital city of Damascus yesterday, and they forced President Bashar al-Assad, whose family had long ruled Syria with an iron fist,

to flee the country. We're seeing people cheering and honking their car horns. A lot of people are blasting songs that were cheering on the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Others are either on top of their cars or hanging out of car windows waving flags of the Syrian opposition or holding their fingers up in a V, signifying victory. Footage from inside Damascus showed families wandering

through the abandoned presidential palace, taking artwork in chairs, and posing for selfies. It's a remarkable turn in a brutal civil war that was sparked by the Arab Spring in 2011. More than 500,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and millions more were forced from their homes. Now, the question hanging over Syria is, what happens next? The head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,

that's the rebel group that led the offensive, told me that there's a big focus on preserving the government infrastructure and institutions. Times reporter Raja Abdul Rahim has also been covering the collapse of the Syrian regime. It's actually a message that he has continued to give in his public statements to rebel fighters throughout the offensive, telling them not to destroy public property and public institutions and to preserve them. And he said that these would come under the oversight of the current prime minister till

there was some kind of transition. And so there's definitely a focus at this point of continuity. But what remains to be seen is what the changes will be. As of Sunday, Assad and his family have been granted political asylum in Russia, a longtime ally. And experts warn that if the rebels aren't able to stabilize what's left of the government in Syria, there could be a chaotic power struggle between the tangle of countries and groups with interests there. In the last 36 hours, the Turkish military

fired on Kurdish forces in the north of Syria. The US carried out airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State camps, and Israeli ground forces took control of a handful of military posts that had been abandoned by Syrian troops. I understand that on day one, you're going to be signing a flurry of executive orders. Can you give me just what are the top ones people should know about? A lot of it will have to do with economics. A lot's going to have to do with energy.

A lot's going to do with having to do with the border. In his first broadcast TV interview since the presidential election, Donald Trump previewed an aggressive opening to his second term in office. Speaking to NBC's Meet the Press, he vowed to try and end birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen. And Trump doubled down on his plans for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, saying that effort would also round up people with the right to be in the country. The estimated four million families in America who

have mixed immigration status, so I'm talking about parents who might be here illegally, but the kids are here legally. Your border czar Tom Homan said they can be deported together. Correct. Is that the plan? Well, I don't want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back. In the interview, the president-elect also said that on his first day in office, he'll pardon the hundreds of people charged with participating in the January 6th riot. And Trump said that members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated that attack,

including Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson, should face criminal charges. In a statement responding to the comments, Cheney said there would be no legal basis to pursue charges and that Trump was continuing his, quote, assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic. In South Korea, President Yoon Suk-yul has survived an impeachment vote as the fallout from his short-lived Declaration of Martial Law continues. On Saturday, lawmakers tried to impeach Yoon in the same assembly hall where a chaotic scene played out last week, when hundreds of soldiers had tried to seize the building

on his orders. But members of his political party boycotted the impeachment proceedings, with nearly all of them walking out before the vote. Yoon's political and legal troubles aren't over yet, though. Officials are now investigating whether his martial law order amounted to leading an insurrection. And today, the country's justice ministry barred him from leaving South Korea. Meanwhile, protests against Yoon in the country's capital over the weekend were the largest yet. And many demonstrators say they plan to keep pushing for his ouster.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that, starting next week, it will begin testing the nation's milk supply for the bird flu virus known as H5N1. The move comes nearly a year after the virus first began circulating through dairy cattle in the U.S. It's been detected in 15 states, but until now, testing has been voluntary, leaving federal officials in the dark about exactly how far the virus may have spread. And experts say that widespread testing is long overdue.

Pasteurized milk is safe from the virus, and there have been no known cases of illness from drinking raw milk. But dozens of farm workers who handle cattle have become infected. Some may have gotten sick after getting contaminated milk in their eyes. While the virus doesn't transfer easily among humans, scientists say every untreated infection raises the possibility that it could get better at spreading. And finally. Hi, my name's Emma.

I've come all the way from London with my best friend Sophie so that we could see the last night. Taylor just means everything to me. Her lyrics, her ethos, her music. And we've even been out for Taylor Swift tattoos today. Last night, tens of thousands of Swifties descended on downtown Vancouver for the final night of Taylor Swift's Marathon Tour. After almost two years and 149 sold out shows, it was the end of the eras. And the Times has learned

just how lucrative the global phenomenon was. The tickets alone brought in nearly $2.1 billion, double the ticket sales of any other concert tour in history. That doesn't even include resale tickets or the mountains of merch that her fans scooped up. For Swift, it's the end of a five continent whirlwind that she spent months training for. It included a cardio workout that some devoted fans even tried to match, singing her entire set list of about 40 songs while running on a treadmill. Those are the headlines today on The Daily, a deeper look at how Syria's president lost his grip on power.

That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Megan Specia. The headlines will be back tomorrow with Tracy Mumford.