--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, January 13th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Biden's legacy on domestic policy, how to safely recycle your old electronics, and why people are tipping less in restaurants. But first, to Los Angeles, where crews continue to battle wildfires that have killed at least 24 people and burned more than 12,000 homes and structures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Los Angeles County Sheriff says reports of missing people are rising and that the death toll is likely to go up. Heavy winds are expected to pick back up in the first few days of this week, coupled with ongoing dry conditions. Authorities worry that could slow down containment efforts and threaten new communities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A more complete picture of the devastation for residents of Los Angeles is also starting to emerge. More than 100,000 people are under evacuation orders, and for some, there isn't much to go back to.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was surreal. It's like stuff happened so fast. That's an Altadena resident named Les talking to Fox 11 Los Angeles.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Our home is nothing there but the chimney. I hope we bounce back. It's going to be a hard process, a slow process, but it's just going to take time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A man named Dale, who's 91 years old, lost his home in the Pasadena area where he'd been living for 60 years. He spoke to KCAL News after sitting outside and watching the smoking remnants of where his house stood.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Entire history is in the house. I'm going to break down again. That's what I feel. it's my whole life i'm okay i'll be okay i'm tough and even though i'm 91 years old i'll start over again
--:-- Shamita Basu: One woman in Altadena described to KCAL how she and her family escaped the fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We were having dinner i told my three-year-old and my one-year-old that i told them that we're having a fancy can of light dinner because the power went out and then we looked outside we saw a huge fire and we just packed whatever we can and we ran out. It was chaos.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's now struggling with how to explain to her child what's going on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm trying to figure out how to tell my three-year-old that we don't have a home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's been an exhausting few days for evacuees and for the firefighters trying to contain the fires and save people's homes. But even as conditions remain difficult, the community is letting those firefighters know they're appreciated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At one California In-N-Out burger restaurant, a group of firefighters who stopped in for a meal were met with cheers and a standing ovation from people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you would like to help, KQED has a list of organizations and how you can contribute. We'll link to that in our show notes page.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to Washington where it is President Biden's final week in office And all week long, we'll be digging into different parts of his legacy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, we look at his domestic agenda. When Biden took office, it was the height of the pandemic. And one of his first moves was to announce the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 billion economic stimulus package.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's not hard to see that we're in the middle of the once-in-several-generations economic crisis with the once-in-several-generations public health crisis. The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there's no time to waste.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden's plan greenlit the third round of direct relief payments sent to people during COVID. The first two rounds were approved under Trump. But Biden's plan was not popular with Republicans, who felt the federal government had already spent too much money on COVID response and were concerned more government spending would contribute to inflation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden also signed into law a major bipartisan infrastructure bill. It put over a trillion dollars toward American bridges, airports, roads, highways. And he oversaw the Chips and Signs Act, which helped move more manufacturing for semiconductors to the U.S. to make American industries less reliant on China and other countries for critical computer chips.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Arguably, his greatest legislative achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, incentivized businesses to invest around $500 billion in low-carbon energy and manufacturing, with a lot of that money going to red states.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, as Biden gets ready to leave office, unemployment is at historic lows. The economy added more than 250,000 jobs in December, far outpacing expectations. Medicare recipients have seen the price of insulin fall. And while Americans felt the large impact of inflation and with it high interest rates, it's been far lower here than in many countries around the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He made all this investment in restoring American manufacturing. The country is in actually quite good shape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Franklin Foer at The Atlantic, who's written extensively about Biden.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, he's leaving Donald Trump with material economic conditions for Donald Trump to be a very successful president if he doesn't lift a finger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Foer told us, despite all of Biden's legislative accomplishments, something didn't quite connect for many voters. His idea of persuasion and compromise and searching for something in the middle that actually gets done as opposed to demonizing one's enemies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'd say that that approach wasn't that successful in his presidency. I mean, it was successful in producing legislation, but it wasn't politically successful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And ultimately, he says that disconnect is what made Biden unable to deliver on one of his original campaign promises.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When he ran for office, he said that his primary mission was to defend democracy against autocracy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let get together and demonstrate to our great when they read about us that democracy democracy democracy functions and works And together there nothing we can do
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was saying that he was not going to allow Donald Trump to return to the White House
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so whatever great successes Joe Biden might have had over the course of his first two years, where he produced a bounty of domestic legislation, they're kind of erased by the fact that he failed on his largest objective of them all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, Thor says a president's legacy is hard to know when they first leave office. It takes shape over time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think that there still is a pretty good shot for Joe Biden that he gets re-rated over the course of the coming decades by historians in the same sort of way that Carter comes out better now than he did in the immediate aftermath of his presidency, where his name was kind of synonymous with failure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think there's a lot more similarities in terms of the economics of economic nationalism of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They're both guys who kind of sat at the threshold of new epics in American history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think they both played pretty significant roles in the birth of the new political orders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's talk about that one weird drawer that a lot of us have in our homes the one where we throw old electronics phones cords things that we know we need to throw out but we kind of don't know how to.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Recently, I had a strange conundrum where I had an old electric toothbrush and I didn't know what to do with it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Vox reporter Adam Clark Estes, who covers tech and as a result has accumulated a lot of accessories over the years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I know that it had a big battery in it and I didn't want it to go in the trash can and, you know, end up catching on fire somewhere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So I started looking into e-waste and then realized that I actually have a lot of it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I haven't wanted to send them to a landfill, but hadn't taken the time to figure out where to go.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Neither have most people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to a 2024 report by the UN, only around 12 percent of small electronics get recycled worldwide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Billions of pounds just get tossed in the trash.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And by one recent estimate, each person produces roughly 17 pounds of e-waste per year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That can be dangerous for a number of reasons.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Estes mentioned, there are fire risks that come with tossing out certain electronics, and our electronics are filled with metals that can end up in landfills with dangerous chemicals that can leach into the soil and groundwater and harm our health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Estes started to look into how to safely get rid of the e-waste in his home, he learned recycling old electronics is complex, more than your average recycling, which is partly why so few people do it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His advice? Look for businesses that are certified e-waste recyclers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A lot of big box stores are, including some recycling centers. Best Buy does, Staples does, Home Depot takes stuff like light bulbs and even Goodwill will take a lot of e-waste.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just check to make sure that your local Goodwill is equipped to do it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A certified e recycler will know how to tear down old phones laptops accessories even things like light up kids toys safely to get at the reusable parts
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Estes explained it's important to find ways to reuse those materials because it helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protects vulnerable parts of the world from the impacts of climate change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One thing that I tell just about everybody I know when they're looking to buy a new phone or a new watch or even a new laptop is buy refurbished.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's going to be cheaper and you're giving a second life to a product that was really resource intensive to produce.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But by getting into the habit of recycling your e-waste and telling other people to do it so that it becomes just as common and automatic as recycling aluminum cans, It's going to make a big difference.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a big week in Washington for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks. Senate confirmation hearings are set to begin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN reports this wave of nominations is different than Trump's first term. Loyalty to Trump is likely to feature much more prominently than it did in 2016, when many nominees tried to distance themselves from what Trump said on the campaign trail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Notable hearings include Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for defense secretary, who's faced a number of serious misconduct allegations and who's scheduled for Tuesday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And on Wednesday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who's nominated to be secretary of state, And South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, the pick for Homeland Security Secretary, will have their hearings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal reports people are tipping less in restaurants than they have in past years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tipping peaked in 2021. That's when 56 percent of people said they tipped servers 20 percent or more, according to one survey.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2024, only 38 percent of people tipped as generously.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal says some of the reasons for the tip dip is fatigue over rising menu prices and tipping prompts at places where tips aren't normally expected.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, if you can read big, loopy cursive writing, the National Archives needs your help.
--:-- Shamita Basu: About 200 years of digitized government documents ranging from 50s census records to 19th century immigration documents are in need of transcription.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One worker with the National Archives catalog told USA Today, reading cursive is a fading skill, and they're looking for citizen archivists who are up for the task.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll link to that story for details on how you can volunteer to help the National Archives and all the stories we talked about today in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker looks into America's relationship with ultra-processed foods and why it's taken scientists so long to understand their harms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
