--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, January 9th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamit Debesu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, the legacy of Jimmy Carter's promise to never tell a lie, the two coaches who are making college football history, and the Today Show prepares to say goodbye to Hoda Kotb. But first, to the devastating scenes in Los Angeles, where multiple uncontrolled wildfires have destroyed homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The entire town, as we've known it for decades, is gone. We were running down, you could see palm trees, just like random palm trees on fire. So I'm sure leaves are burning and falling down, and it's literally apocalyptic. This is the worst fire I've ever encountered.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are at least five major fires burning. The first and biggest broke out in Pacific Palisades, followed by others near Altadena, the San Fernando Valley, and the Hollywood Hills. And authorities have said these are among the most destructive fires to ever hit Los Angeles.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: CNN spoke with Governor Gavin Newsom, who said their resources were maxed out quickly as these fires multiplied. We've depleted all our resources in Northern California. We'd already pre-positioned on Sunday, hundreds of personnel, specialty units, water tenders, dozers, engines, helicopters, and it wasn't enough.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Officials have reported at least five fatalities, but that's expected to climb as search and rescue efforts continue. Thousands of homes and buildings have burned. Authorities also say there are a high number of injuries to people who chose not to evacuate.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Lots of people have lost power at some point, and there are air quality advisories in effect, with many saying it's hard and even dangerous to breathe. The LA Times warns that the tiny particulate matter in the air can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The LA County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney said at a press briefing yesterday evening that firefighters and resources from other states, including Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, had arrived to help fight the fires. And the Pentagon has offered aid as well.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: LA City Fire Chief Kristen Crowley said at the same briefing that citizens should stay informed through trusted channels, and that people living near wildland areas need to be prepared to follow all evacuation orders as soon as they are given.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We are not out of danger. You can see the active fires that are burning. With strong winds that are going to continue throughout the night, I can tell you and assure you that firefighters and first responders remain focused on protecting lives and property.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: All Los Angeles Unified schools are closed today, and officials say two elementary schools that serve more than 700 students in the Pacific Palisades area were completely destroyed. And there's a reason that the fires got so bad so fast.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's been an unprecedented windstorm, with gusts reportedly reaching up to 100 miles per hour. Embers can travel for miles on a gust of wind. California is also in the middle of an unusual winter drought. This is typically the rainiest season.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But according to the LA Times, the last time the city received more than a tenth of an inch of rain was last May. Here's Newsom again, speaking with CNN.
--:-- Governor Gavin Newsom: There's no fire season in California. It's year-round. But to have this level of the acuity of fires is without precedent.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These guys were just up there to try to mitigate the embers going two miles and getting just to go a quarter of a mile.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Firefighters have struggled to contain the blazes because fire hydrants in the area are reportedly running dry or have weak water pressure. Fire officials say they were drawing water faster than tanks could be refilled.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Here's L.A. County Fire Department Battalion Chief Brenda Simonian, who spoke with KCAL, while she and her team tried to extinguish flames that were tearing through a senior center.
--:-- Brenda Simonian: We're losing water pressure up here. We have a lack of resources. The wind, as you see, is pushing it very violently. And the lack of water is a huge, huge hurdle that we're trying to overcome.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So we can save as much as we can. All the hydrants have run dry.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In addition to the human toll, the economic impact on Los Angeles is expected to be massive. Insurers were already pulling out of California in recent years because of the high risks of natural disasters like these fires, and this disaster could create an even bigger strain.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Homes in the Pacific Palisades are worth on average $3.5 million. And preliminary estimates put the total cost of damage of all the fires at $10 billion.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Officials say winds should die down today, which could provide some respite for firefighters. But because conditions are so dry, even moderate winds can still be dangerous.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is a rapidly moving story. You can follow the latest in the Apple News app. We're going to include a link in our show notes to an article with a list of organizations working on the ground to help.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The state funeral service for President Jimmy Carter is today in Washington, after which the former president will be transported to his beloved hometown of Plains, Georgia, to be laid to rest next to his wife, Rosalyn.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As the nation reflects on his legacy, there's one word you'll hear often, honesty. It was the cornerstone of Carter's commitment to the American people when he took office.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I would not tell a lie. I would not mislead the American people. And I would not betray your trust.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Mark Fisher recently wrote about Carter's legacy with honesty for the Washington Post. And he spoke to historians who say that Carter largely delivered on his promise to never tell a lie.
--:-- Mark Fisher: I think you'd have to give him at least an A minus. He certainly made that effort in a way that most other presidents have never seen reason to do so.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In fact, Fisher writes that Carter's commitment to honesty may have also been his downfall, as he dealt with everything from the Iran hostage crisis to rampant inflation and high gas prices.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He's got one crisis after another to deal with, and he insists on leveling with the American people. And he infamously gives this speech that later became known as the malaise speech, even though he never used that word.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in that speech he says, look, I'm going to level with you. I'm going to tell you that things are bad. I'm going to tell you that there's no easy way out and there's a lot of difficult time ahead of us.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And boy did Americans not want to hear that. And so his numbers just collapsed after that speech. Which is why politics is so complicated.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In polls, Americans consistently say they want their politicians to tell the truth. In fact, in a poll last summer by YouGov, a research group, Americans said that honesty was one of the top three qualities they care about most in a president.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I think it's clear that while people say they want to hear the unvarnished truth, they really don't. There's no better proof of that than the election of Donald Trump.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Washington Post ran the numbers, and in his first term, Trump said things that weren't true more than 30,000 times. That's an average of 21 false statements a day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Still, that didn't seem decisive in how voters made their choice in this election. And because Trump has found that his style works with American voters, that is starting at some level to become normalized in our politics.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are very few Jimmy Carter-type characters in our politics today. The humility that Carter pervaded, that we just don't see in our politics these days.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that's partly Trump's influence, but it's partly the mood of the country. Fundamentally, Fisher told us he thinks we're in a moment where Americans' trust in just about everything, from politics to institutions is being redefined.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, we talk a lot about how trust has collapsed and people don't trust their doctors or their religious leaders or their political leaders. And across all of the traditional measures of trust, it's fallen off a cliff.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And yet, we live in a moment where people are trusting things that they would never have trusted before. We're trusting driverless cars. So it's not that trust is gone, it's that we're redefining it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And we're thinking about who we trust in very different ways. And a new generation is saying, we just define trust differently than you do. And that's interesting and exciting and scary all at once.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so in our politics, we haven't figured out what to trust. And the re-election of Donald Trump is the ultimate expression of that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to college football where Penn State and Notre Dame will make history before they even step on the field tonight in the Orange Bowl.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's because of their coaches, Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame and James Franklin at Penn State. They are the first two Black coaches to get this far in the college football championship race.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's Rachel Bachman, a senior sports reporter with the Wall Street Journal. She told us about one big reason that we've never seen a Black coach win a national title in the history of college football.
--:-- Rachel Bachman: College football has been slower to diversify its top ranks, even though about half the players in college football are Black and more like two-thirds are non-white.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: College football has been around for over a century now, but we didn't see a Black coach lead a school from one of the five major conferences until 1981, when Northwestern University hired Dennis Green.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Over the last decade, the number of Black head coaches of major college football programs has remained pretty stagnant, holding steady at 12%. But in recent years, we've seen a surge in hiring at the position level.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In 2009, around 38 of position specialist coaches were Black. By 2022, that number jumped to 57.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Bachman told us that Freeman, the coach at Notre Dame, and Franklin, the coach at Penn State, both understand just how big the stakes are in tonight's game, not only for their teams, but for all of the Black coaches inspired to follow in their footsteps.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yesterday, they were asked about this at a press conference. Here's Franklin.
--:-- James Franklin: I don't take it lightly. I really don't. I've gotten a ton of messages from people all over a country that I've worked with or know. But ultimately, but ultimately, it's about Penn State and it's about Notre Dame and our teams going out in the field and competing and representing our schools and our conference.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Whoever comes out on top will face the winner of Friday's Cotton Bowl, either the University of Texas or Ohio State, later this month in the national championship.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Before we let you go, here are a few other stories we're following today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it plans to release Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on President-elect Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Though a separate part of the report pertaining to Trump's alleged retainment of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago will not be publicly released at this time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: After Trump won this election, federal charges on both of those cases were dropped.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Chances are that someone you know is sick right now with COVID, the flu, or a particularly nasty outbreak of norovirus going around.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's the viral stomach bug typically accompanied by vomiting, GI distress, fever, and body aches. And according to the CDC, norovirus cases are way up compared to this time last year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Vox has some tips on how you and your family can stay healthy. One thing to know is it takes very little exposure to get sick, so keep those surfaces clean.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And this one might be obvious, but wash your hands. Alcohol-based sanitizers don't really do a great job of killing norovirus, so you'll want to stick with soap and water.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, for 17 years, Hoda Kotb has greeted Americans every morning on the Today Show.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She's been one of the nation's most beloved hosts and media personalities, and tomorrow she steps down from her role to spend more time with her young daughters.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She spoke with Jimmy Fallon about why she made this decision a few months ago.
--:-- Hoda Kotb: I was telling them, you know, mommy is going to be able to take you to school, and they go, oh, Wednesday? I go, no, honey, not Wednesday. Next week? I go, no, honey, not next week. Probably, you know, somewhere January, February.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I might as well... You're like you're ruining this moment. I might as well, like, continue working forever for them. It's like to the end.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Craig Melvin, another Today anchor, will replace her. And as for copy, she'll finally be able to turn off that 3 a.m. alarm that she's been using for years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Though with two young kids, getting more sleep might still be a challenge. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a Narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Bloomberg Businessweek examines the popularity of Zin and concerns the nicotine pouches are hooking young people.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
