--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, January 17th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Look, it's not exactly surprising that in a negotiation that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end. We're tying up that loose end as we speak. I've been on the phone.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The last-minute disputes that threatened to hold up the ceasefire deal in Gaza seem to have been hammered out. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he's confident the truce will go into effect on Sunday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So now there's an opportunity, finally, to move forward. The disagreements between Israel and Hamas had centered on who will control certain border zones and which Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged for hostages.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: With that now settled, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his cabinet to meet today for a vote, and the agreement is expected to pass. Netanyahu himself, though, is facing backlash.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Several members of his far-right government have objected to the deal. His hardline national security minister said it's effectively a surrender to Hamas. Last night, he threatened to leave the prime minister's coalition if the ceasefire goes through.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That could ultimately force Netanyahu out of power. Meanwhile, until the ceasefire kicks in, the fighting in Gaza is continuing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Israel's carried out a number of strikes since the deal was announced. Gaza's health ministry said at least 81 people have been killed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This morning at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling about the fate of TikTok in the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The court fast-tracked hearings earlier this month about a law that bans the app if its Chinese parent company doesn't sell it off by this Sunday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The court seems likely to uphold the law, which was a bipartisan effort by lawmakers who were worried the app is a national security threat and could be used to spy on Americans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But now, with just 48 hours to go, some lawmakers have had a change of heart. And there's a scramble on Capitol Hill to save the app, which is used by 170 million Americans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In no way should we have TikTok go dark on Sunday. It would be catastrophic for just so many small businesses, so many creators, so many communities that have been...
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Democratic senators held a press conference to defend TikTok yesterday and urged President Biden to use his authority to push back the deadline.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If Biden doesn't act, Donald Trump might when he takes office. The Times has learned he's considering an executive order that would block any enforcement of the ban.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Trump has even invited the CEO of TikTok to his inauguration ceremony on Monday, offering him a spot up on the stage as he's sworn in.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm just saying this out loud. I'm getting more and more pissed. How the hell do I not know what my area even looks like.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There was my office. There were all my collectibles. There was my wife's wedding dress.
--:-- Kellen Browning: I've been speaking with residents of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and they've described being in this sort of post-disaster purgatory.
--:-- Kellen Browning: Officials are urging patience as they work to clear debris and toxic ash and use cadaver dogs to search for human remains.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But with no clear timeline for reopening the hardest-hit areas, some residents say they feel like they can't start putting their lives back together.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've seen photos on the news of the devastation, but they really have no idea what it looks like in their neighborhoods.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're hoping to get photos of their homes, maybe important documents, insurance information, birth certificates or passports, key medications.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So they've been lining up these checkpoints to get into these evacuated areas every morning, sometimes waiting for hours in a car only to be turned away by law enforcement officials.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some residents have been pleading with members of the National Guard to let them in.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A few have managed to sneak past barricades. And some are even turning to me and other journalists who can get into evacuated zones.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Asking us to send them photos of their homes and ensure that their properties are all right.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When I had a chance and I was in the area, I did that, taking photos or videos and having to tell them sometimes that their homes are no longer there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In one of his final acts in office, President Biden announced this morning that he's commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people who are serving long prison terms for drug offenses.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The commutations are for inmates who received harsher sentences than they would now under current guidelines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The moves are intended to address long-standing racial disparities in the criminal justice system, where Black Americans in particular have been given long sentences for nonviolent crimes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Biden said, quote, this action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: The Panama Canal has provided a path for ships between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans for more than a century.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: But a decade ago, Panama widened the canal to allow bigger cargo ships and bigger oil tankers to pass through.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: And the ecological effects of that have just started to become clear in recent years.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: Even before the canal unexpectedly became a geopolitical flashpoint this month, when Trump raised the possibility of taking control of it by force, the canal was at the center of a different kind of uncertainty, an ecological one.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: I recently traveled to the sprawling lake that's basically the middle section of the canal, and I got a firsthand look at how the ecosystem there is changing.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: I spent time with fishermen who know the lake better than anyone, and they talked about how they've seen their own catches decline.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: The species they rely on, peacock bass and tilapia, have become really scarce. They're harder to find, they're not living where they used to, and scientists in Panama have also seen in just a few years since the canal has expanded just a ton of species that weren't there before.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: And so what it's showing them is that all these newcomers are really displacing the fish that were there for decades and that fishermen and others have come to rely on.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: The big concern among scientists now is that some of these fish could start crossing all the way from one ocean to the other.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: The oceans themselves have been quite separate for three million years. It could mean predators are suddenly able to ravage new populations in a new ocean that they haven't been part of before.
--:-- Raymond Zhang: It would be a mixing of ecosystems that hasn't really happened in modern times.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally. Hello! I was wondering if I might trouble you for a cup of strong black coffee, and in the process engage you with an anecdote of no small amusement.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: David Lynch, the creator of eerie cult films and the TV series Twin Peaks, has died at 78 years old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His avant-garde, off-kilter aesthetic was so distinct, his name became an adjective. To be Lynchian is to be dreamlike with an unsettling mix of the surreal and the mundane.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His films just looked and sounded different, which was clear even from his first major feature, Eraserhead, in the 1970s.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Audiences and critics were continually split over whether his work was brilliant or just plain weird.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Even his most celebrated movies, like Mulholland Drive, had people loving and hating them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In his career, Lynch never went full Hollywood. He never made a conventional box office hit.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Though he was asked at one point to direct an early Star Wars film. That really could have sent things in a different direction.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how one undocumented immigrant is preparing for Trump's return to power and the mass deportations that he's promised.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in The New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Matt Sermon, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
