--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, January 24th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, reports of price gouging in the midst of the wildfires in L.A. After TikTok briefly went dark, where it might go next? And the Oscar goes to AI? How to judge an actor's performance when it's been digitally enhanced. But first, of the more than 1,500 pardons President Trump handed out earlier this week for people who rioted at the Capitol on January 6th, at least one woman has rejected the offer.
--:-- Pam Hemphill: Pam Hemphill told NBC that it would send the wrong message. Think about it. The message is, if I took a pardon, that what I did that day was OK. They were criminals. They broke the law. I broke the law. Pay the price.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Trump has been clear he doesn't see it that way. He's referred to January 6th as a, quote, day of love and described the rioters as patriots.
--:-- Tom Jackman: I have sat in the court for four years and watched the evidence and watched the videos. It's on video. This is not somebody's word against somebody's word. This is we can see what happened. We can see these individuals attacking the police, overrunning the police, using stun guns on the police, throwing flagpoles and fire extinguishers at the police.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The pardons are not popular with the public, according to a number of recent national polls. One conducted by Reuters and Ipsos during Trump's first two days in office found 58 percent of people surveyed disapproved of the idea of broad pardons.
--:-- Tom Jackman: But Trump and his loyalists are eager to change the history books. In fact, Speaker Mike Johnson announced the House would form a subcommittee to investigate, quote, false narratives about January 6th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jackman told us he has heard concerns from people that the pardons could embolden extremists to carry out other politically motivated attacks.
--:-- Tom Jackman: That's a serious fear that a lot of terrorism-type folks are looking at, that people will think, heck, I can go out and attack a liberal judge or a liberal prosecutor or a liberal reporter that I don't like because this political violence has been approved and sanctioned by the president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so even if I get caught, he'll let me out. Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, the leaders of The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, respectively, received some of the harshest sentences for their roles in the violence on January 6th. Now they're out of prison and they're already talking about retribution.
--:-- Enrique Tarrio: Success is going to be retribution, okay? And it's up to us. And when I say us, I include your listeners on there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know we got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next hundred years.
--:-- Josh Kaplan: I recently sat down with Josh Kaplan who covers America militia movement for ProPublica and he told me how militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers feel like the pardons give them a pass.
--:-- Josh Kaplan: There's a lot of excitement about it. You're seeing people who feel confident that this is going to be great for their organizations, that there are people that have been keeping their distance still out of fear of potential legal repercussions, and those people are now going to feel invincible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean, to give a little historical perspective here, the last event similar to January 6 in the history of these movements in America was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 when a man with militia ties blew up a government building and killed more than 100 people.
--:-- Josh Kaplan: It's one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history. The militia movement did not recover from that for over a decade. That is what a lot of people, including a lot of people in the militia movement, thought would happen after January 6th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So this reshaping of the narrative, it really matters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kaplan is my guest on this week's episode of Apple News in Conversation. We talk about the future of militias and one man who took it upon himself to become a mole within these groups just so he could spill their secrets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll queue up that episode to play next, or you can find it in the podcast app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And now to Los Angeles, where authorities continue to battle multiple wildfires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rain is expected over the weekend, which may bring some relief to a city that's seen thousands of structures destroyed and many more residents displaced.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As authorities attempt to get these fires under control, there have been widespread reports of price gouging in the housing market, which is illegal in California during a state of emergency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this week, California's Attorney General Rob Bonta filed charges against a real estate agent in a community near Altadena.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's the first lawsuit of its kind related to these fires.
--:-- Liam Dillon: The AG alleges that this real estate agent raised the price on a rental home by 38 percent, which was, according to the AG, in violation of state law that says you can't raise prices after a natural disaster by more than 10 percent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The real estate agent who was charged with price gouging told Dylan it was all a misunderstanding.
--:-- Liam Dillon: He says he raised the price after learning the property was in a desirable school district and eventually rented it to fire victims for what he claims is below market value.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Attorney General Bonta is under a lot of pressure to go after price gougers as fires rage in the city.
--:-- Liam Dillon: People in the community have been compiling spreadsheets documenting price changes for rentals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As of midweek, the AG's office said it sent out 500 warning letters in response to tips.
--:-- Liam Dillon: The LA Times has seen increases ranging from 20 to as much as 60 percent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You have 11,000 or more homes that have been destroyed in these two major fires in Los Angeles.
--:-- Liam Dillon: That means tens of thousands of people who could be looking for immediate housing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And what we've been finding in the market is reports of bidding wars and reports of landlords taking advantage of needy folks and raising prices on the rental units.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so there's been a lot of pressure on the attorney general.
--:-- Jason Oppenheim: Big price jumps in the housing market have even caught the attention of celebrity real estate personalities.
--:-- Jason Oppenheim: I couldn't believe it. So I started taking screenshots and posting them on social media.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Jason Oppenheim, one of the stars of Selling Sunset, a show about luxury home sales in Los Angeles talking to NBC News.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And even though the AG has so far gone after just one landlord, there is a chance it'll serve as a warning.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And I think, you know, as much as one individual prosecution, you know, may be a drop in the bucket for the circumstances that are going on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to the chaos involving what happens next to TikTok, the app used by around 170 million Americans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After hitting up against Congress's deadline to either find a new buyer or be banned in the U.S., the app went briefly dark on Saturday, only to reemerge on Sunday when Trump promised a way forward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And TikTok was pretty vocal in crediting Trump with the turnaround.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But numerous outlets have reported it's not clear whether he actually has the power on his own to save TikTok.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The executive order only directs the attorney general to not enforce the ban passed by Congress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's why you're not seeing TikTok return to app stores yet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there are some viable avenues to save TikTok that have emerged.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The most obvious and legally plausible, Congress would have to repeal the ban.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democratic Senator Ro Khanna have introduced a bill to do exactly that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But The Verge says their efforts will surely face opposition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The ban was passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there are members who still fear that the Chinese government may use the app to spy on Americans or disseminate disinformation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was their primary motivation for giving TikTok this ultimatum in the first place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that fear, you might remember, really originated with Trump in his first term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He led an effort to ban TikTok in 2020 over national security concerns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And his 180 on this issue has been confusing for lawmakers.
--:-- Mark Warner: And the irony in all this was Donald Trump was the first guy to point out this problem.
--:-- Mark Warner: Matter of fact, his administration had to convince me. They did a great job of convincing me and the overwhelming members of Congress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another possible avenue we could go down, TikTok, gets sold in the next 70-some-odd days before Trump's executive order expires.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has suggested that the U.S. or a U.S.-based company take ownership of 50% of the app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although China had previously opposed the sale of TikTok, in recent days it seems like its foreign ministry has warmed up to the possibility of joint ownership between ByteDance and an American company.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Beijing change in tune may have to do with tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since taking office Trump has threatened an additional 10 tariff on Chinese products and Chinese officials may be trying to bring the temperature down by cooperating on other fronts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has also said he is open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison making the purchase, although neither of them have said they plan to do so.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A group including billionaire entrepreneur Frank McCourt and backed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary has made an offer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Social media creator MrBeast is part of a group of investors that have expressed interest in buying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's also Perplexity AI, an artificial intelligence startup that's put an offer in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But if none of these options materialize, we might have another moment in April when Trump's executive order expires and when the app could go dark again, this time possibly for good.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few other stories we're watching today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A lot of people on Facebook and Instagram this week were questioning why, seemingly out of the blue, they were following President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's an easy explanation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those accounts, which are managed by the White House, transfer from the person who held the title before to the next person.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This practice started during the Obama-Trump transition, but since it happens so infrequently, it's not surprising we forget about it when these transitions roll around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What's more confusing, though, and something we don't have a good answer to yet but will be following, is why some users are reporting issues with unfollowing these accounts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For what it's worth, a meta-spokesperson said it may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to the Academy Awards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nominees have been announced.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The movie Emilia Perez is leading with 13 nominations, setting a record for a non-English language film.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tied for second with 10 nominations each were Wicked and The Brutalist, a film about a Jewish-Hungarian architect who flees Europe after World War II.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The film is getting attention for its use of artificial intelligence to enhance the Hungarian accents of stars Felicity Jones and Adrienne Brody.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This has raised new questions around how to fairly evaluate an actor's performance when they're up for an award if their performance was enhanced somehow with AI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, this weekend, the Super Bowl matchup will be set.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Philadelphia Eagles play the Cinderella Washington Commanders, who were quite the underdogs heading into the season but made a historic playoff run.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we'll see a battle of two of the league's top quarterbacks, Josh Allen versus Patrick Mahomes, as the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs add another chapter to their historic rivalry.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll be the fourth time over five seasons they have played in the postseason, and every time so far, the Chiefs have sent the Bills packing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll see what happens this time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can follow all of that NFL action in my sports in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the app, don't go anywhere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: My full interview with Joshua Kaplan from ProPublica about America's militia movement is coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
