The Headlines - Wildfires Roars Through L.A., and Trump Floats U.S. Expansion

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Plus, the end of Facebook fact-checking.   On Today’s Episode:Fierce Winds Whip Up Devastating Wildfires in Southern California, by Yan Zhuang, Corina Knoll and Soumya KarlamanglaTrump Floats Using Force to Take Greenland and the Panama Canal, by David E. Sanger and Michael D. ShearMeta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term, by Mike Isaac and Theodore SchleiferPeter Yarrow, the Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, Dies at 86, by Jim Farber 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 Wednesday, January 8th. Here's what we're covering. I'm just south of the Pacific Palisades where the fires are burning right now. And I'm right on the evacuation route where people are trying to get out of this region. And I can just look down the street here and see dozens and dozens and dozens of cars full of people. My colleague Emily Baumgartner is in Los Angeles, where a fast-moving wildfire is tearing through the Pacific Palisades, destroying homes and forcing at least 30,000 people to evacuate. The area is a wealthy neighborhood along the coast full of windy dead end roads

and people trying to flee have been caught in stalled traffic. These cars are packed with their children, their pets sitting on their laps. I saw several people just sort of running across the street toward their cars, stuffing possessions into the trunks, stuffing food and water into the trunks, just trying to get out of this area as quickly as they can. The fire has shocked officials with its speed and its spread. It's been fed by powerful winds that grew stronger overnight and are expected to continue through this morning.

The only sounds that we can hear out here on the scene are just these rushes of wind. It is absolutely screaming loud when the wind comes through and the sound of palm fronds that are crashing down from the palm trees so loud, it sounds like an explosion. And these sounds, the sounds of the wind and the effects of the wind are really what sort of epitomizes this particular fire because the wind is the reason that no one really knows where this is gonna go next and what makes it so unpredictable and so frightening for so many residents.

All night, alerts have been going out to residents in neighboring areas that may soon be in the fire's path. Just after midnight, the city of Malibu said everyone there should be prepared to leave. A city council member sent a message saying, quote, the Palisades fire is a monster. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of Los Angeles County in the East, a separate wildfire, this one just above Pasadena, is also burning out of control, forcing evacuations there. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost power in the region. As of early this morning, no deaths have been reported, but officials have warned that the full impact of the fires won't be clear until they're contained. I'm just telling you, this will be the golden age of America.

This is the golden age of America. We're going to have a great country again. At Mar-a-Lago yesterday, Donald Trump held a rambling hour-long press conference that included conspiracy theories and a long list of grievances. They want in your washing machine to have very little water coming out of the washing machine. He veered from complaints about water pressure in household appliances. And you know, you can talk about windmills.

They litter our country. To a vague promise to ban new wind energy projects. He said the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America. But his most striking comments were his threats to add territory to the United States. Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time.

Long before... He repeated a plan to push Denmark to sell Greenland Saying that Chinese and Russian ships have been appearing around the polar island He doubled down on his statements calling for Canada to become the 51st US state And he also made the case for the US taking back control of the Panama Canal Which the US handed over to Panama in the 70s? Trump claimed that China is currently running the canal, which is not true. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going

to use military or economic coercion? No. When pressed by reporters, Trump refused to rule out taking Greenland and the Panama Canal by force. I'm not going to commit to that now. It might be that you'll have to do something. It's not clear if Trump intends to follow through on these threats or if it's just a negotiating tactic. After the press conference, world leaders pushed back forcefully. The Prime Minister of Greenland said Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland.

Panama's foreign minister said it would never turn over control of the canal. And Canada's outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on social media, quote, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States. Hey everyone. Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots

around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Metta, announced yesterday that the company is ending its fact checking program that monitors posts on its social media platforms. The company launched the multi-billion-dollar effort after the 2016 election, and Facebook came under fire for allowing misinformation to spread unchecked. Multiple studies showed that Facebook's fact checks were effective at reducing the spread of false information. But in a video posted online, Zuckerberg claimed that ultimately the fact checkers were too politically biased.

What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it's gone too far. Zuckerberg's announcement seems to be the latest example of his company aligning itself with the incoming Trump administration. The president-elect has long claimed that social media platforms have censored conservative voices. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people. And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes

and too much censorship. The end of the fact-checking program will affect what billions of people see online. And misinformation researchers called the policy change deeply concerning, saying it could open the floodgates for hateful content, misleading posts, and conspiracy theories. Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that it will be a trade-off. He said more, quote, bad stuff will be out there unchecked. But he said fewer people's posts and accounts will be taken down unnecessarily. Going forward Zuckerberg said they'll turn to the same approach

to handling false posts that Elon Musk adopted when he bought Twitter. Musk got rid of the platform's restrictions on online speech and turned to a program called Community Notes, which relies on users themselves to police false and misleading content. I don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go. Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary has died. He was 86 years old. Yarrow got into music after taking a college class on American folk stories

that inspired him to start singing and playing the guitar. Around 1960, he was introduced to Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stuckey and the trio went on to bring the crunchy folk music scene into the American mainstream. The group was known for its progressive politics. To help express NSONG, what this great meeting is all about. I give you now Peter, Paul and Mary. They performed at the March you now, Peter, Paul, and Mary. They performed at the March on Washington, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind. They also recorded one of the most iconic children's songs of the era, written by Jero. He always insisted that Puff the Magic Dragon had nothing to do with smoking marijuana, but people heard what they wanted to hear, and the song floated up to the top of the Billboard charts, even spawned an animated TV show.

Eventually, Peter, Paul, and Mary moved toward solo projects, in part because Yarrow pleaded guilty to making sexual advances towards a teenager. He served three months in prison before being pardoned by President Carter. But the case continued to hang over his career, and a performance of his was canceled in 2019 during the height of the Me Too movement after there were protests. Mary Travers died in 2009, so Stucki, Paul, is now the only surviving member of the folk trio. Those are the headlines.

Today on The Daily, a look at the rise and fall of Justin Trudeau. That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow.