--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, January 10th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. The largest fires burning in Los Angeles remain out of control this morning. They've burned more than 29,000 acres, about twice the size of Manhattan.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And a new fire burst out last night north of the city, burning another 1,000 acres in just a few hours. Officials now put the death toll from all the fires at 10, but have warned that the situation is still too chaotic to know for sure.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There are still active fires. There are gas leaks. It is dangerous. When it is safe, we will go in there with the appropriate resources and make sure that we get an accurate count.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The L.A. County Sheriff said yesterday he was hesitant to even give a preliminary number. And the obvious question is, do you think it's going to grow? I am praying it doesn't, but based on the devastation, that is clear.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It looks like a bomb, an atomic bomb dropped in these areas. I don't expect good news, and we're not looking forward to those numbers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So far, few details about those who died have been released, but several seem to have been trying to fend off the flames themselves. One victim in Alcidina was found in his front yard, still holding a garden hose.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The winds that have been fueling the flames are supposed to peak today, but the National Weather Service has warned they could sweep back over the weekend and possibly next week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As the fires continue to burn, the scale of the destruction has the potential to make the housing crisis in the region even worse. Southern California was already facing a severe shortage of housing, and now hundreds and potentially thousands of homes have been destroyed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Mansions in Pacific Palisades, but also whole subdivisions of townhouses and bungalows in the suburbs. Rebuilding any of that could take years. In the meantime, people who lost their homes will enter the rental market en masse.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's almost guaranteed to drive up prices. The rising costs could have a domino effect displacing people who weren't even near the fires.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After months of trying to fight it, Donald Trump will appear in court remotely this morning to be sentenced in the Manhattan hush money case.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He tried to get the Supreme Court to step in, claiming that being sentenced will disrupt his ability to serve as president. But that last-ditch effort failed yesterday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In their 5-4 decision, the justices declined to push off the sentencing, noting that Trump's not expected to receive any jail time. He's not expected to even get probation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The justices also noted that Trump can still formally appeal his felony convictions after he's sentenced. This is a long way from finished, and I respect the court's opinion.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think it was actually a very good opinion for us. Yesterday, Trump downplayed the justices' decision to deny his request and vowed he will keep fighting the case.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So we'll see how it all works out. I think it's going to work out well.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, TikTok will appear in front of the Supreme Court today in what is its last chance to stay in the United States.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Sapna Maheshwari is covering another major case in front of the Supreme Court, a hearing today that will determine the future of TikTok.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House says the app is a national security risk, since it could let its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, gather data from millions of Americans and control what they see online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last year, Congress passed a law saying ByteDance has to sell off the app by January 19th or it will be banned in the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: With that deadline now just over a week away, today's hearing is TikTok's final opportunity to make its case.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So TikTok is arguing that this law is infringing on the free speech rights of Americans and the company itself.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're saying that the government can't just wholesale shut down an app that 170 million Americans use on a monthly basis. And they're also saying that it can't be sold.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The company has argued that China would block the export of its algorithm, the technology that fuels its recommendations, so the kind of TikTokiness of the app itself, why you see the videos you see.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And so in the company's view, the law is a ban, not an option to sell. And they say that that's unconstitutional.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Sapna says that legal experts she's spoken with think the Supreme Court is likely to reject TikTok's arguments.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Come January 19th, that wouldn't mean TikTok would immediately disappear off of Americans' phones. Instead, companies like Apple and Google would have to stop offering TikTok in their app stores.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They couldn't push any updates either, which would eventually make the app unusable.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But Sapna says there are still a few wildcards at play. One of them is that Trump has signaled that he would like to save the app.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The problem is for him that he's stymied in the options here. To come into office on the 20th means that he's entering the government a day after the law is supposed to go into effect.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The law can also only be repealed by an act of Congress, which takes time. There's also some thinking that perhaps the Trump administration wouldn't enforce this law, but that would involve a lot of risk-taking by companies that continue to carry the TikTok app.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So Apple and Google would have to really trust that the Trump administration is not going to change its mind about enforcing this law and actively choose to violate it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A federal judge in Kentucky has struck down the Biden administration's attempts to expand protections for transgender students.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The case centers around Title IX, the 1970s law that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating based on sex.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last year, the administration moved to update the law to prohibit schools and staff members from rejecting a student's gender identity.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Many Republican-led states immediately objected, filing legal challenges, and the judge yesterday ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The judge also said the proposed changes violated the First Amendment rights of teachers by requiring them to use students' preferred pronouns.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Conservative lawmakers hailed the decision as a major victory while legal groups focused on civil rights said the decision broke with a year's precedent of broadening how Title IX is applied.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally. You might have seen a housefly, maybe even a superfly, but I bet you ain't never seen a donkey fly.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The donkey that served as a model for Donkey and Shrek has died. Perry, a Jerusalem miniature donkey, was 30 years old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He lived at a pasture near a public park in Palo Alto, California. In 1999, a supervising animator at DreamWorks came looking for a donkey to observe.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He wanted to see how they moved. He brought a whole team of animators, and they shot reference video of Perry.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Two years later, Shrek came out, with Eddie Murphy as the fast-talking, sassy sidekick Donkey.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Perry's handlers say that his personality was sweeter and gentler than that, although he could occasionally try and take a bite out of your sweatshirt.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As Shrek became a smash hit in a billion-dollar franchise, Perry lived out his days at the park, though the costs of caring for an aging donkey started to add up.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At one point, a group of law students from Stanford, which was right up the road, who were worried about those costs, even wrote letters to DreamWorks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They say they never heard back. But volunteers chipped in to fundraise to cover medical expenses.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Perry's handlers say that his stardom helped raise enough funds to care for him and his fellow donkeys at the park.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That'll do, donkey. That'll do.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a roundtable on this week's biggest political news, from Trump's plan for Greenland to Biden's last policy pushes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in The New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Robert Jemison, 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, Adam Rasgon, Paula Schumann, and Chris Wood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
