--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, January 3rd. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We live in very serious times. We cannot afford any palace drama here. We have got to get the Congress started. So there's no time to waste. We have to stay unified.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At noon today on Capitol Hill, the House will convene to elect a speaker. But there are already signs that it could be a contentious vote. The current speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, is the leading candidate, and he's been struggling to keep his party united behind him.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Despite an endorsement this week from President-elect Donald Trump, several far-right lawmakers are upset with Johnson for compromising on a spending bill last month that narrowly avoided a government shutdown.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And because the GOP holds such a razor-thin majority in the House, Johnson can effectively only afford to lose one Republican vote, which already seems guaranteed to happen.
--:-- [Audio clip of a politician speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson. And you can take that to the bank.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Republican Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky has already said pretty emphatically that he won't back Johnson.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And if Johnson fails to win a majority, the voting could devolve into chaos, like it did in 2023 when it took four days and 15 rounds of voting for Kevin McCarthy to get elected Speaker.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Without a Speaker, the House can't consider any legislation, swear in new members, or certify the results of the presidential election, which it's supposed to do on Monday.
--:-- [Audio clip of a news report]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The FBI says it's found no definitive link between the New Year's attack in New Orleans and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, but cautioned that it's still too early to be completely sure.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Las Vegas, officials identified the driver of the truck, which went up in flames in front of the Trump International Hotel, as an Army Master Sergeant from Colorado who'd been on leave from active duty.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Authorities say he shot himself before the vehicle exploded. Any motive is still unknown.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in New Orleans investigators say it now appears the driver who plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street killing 14 did act alone Shamsa Dinbahar Jabbar a U Army veteran who died in a shootout with police after the attack was, quote, 100% inspired by ISIS, according to the FBI, though didn't say if he had any direct contact with the group.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The FBI also said that in videos posted to Facebook before the attack, Jabbar revealed he'd originally planned to harm his family and friends, but didn't think that would get the kind of media coverage that he was looking for.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, more details are coming to light about the victims of the attack. Matthew Tenadorio was 25 years old and worked at the Superdome in New Orleans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His father told WGNO News they'd just had a family dinner on New Year's Eve before his son went out with his friends.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You know, I'll see something that reminds me of him and I'll break down. I know that's going to happen probably for the rest of my life.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Reggie Hunter was a 37-year-old father of two. He and his cousin had decided to make a quick trip from Baton Rouge to celebrate the New Year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His cousin was injured in the attack but survived.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Nicole Perez was 27 years old, the four-year-old son. She'd just been promoted to manager at the deli where she worked.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The owner also spoke to WGNO. She was a great mother. She was allowed to bring her son into the office when he didn't have school. And so she was helping him learn to read.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For more about the attack in New Orleans and those who were killed, listen to today's episode of The Daily.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Biden is planning to block a Japanese firm from taking over the century-old American company U.S. Steel.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The $14 billion deal has been a political flashpoint since it was first proposed by Nippon Steel over a year ago.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: U.S. Steel has been struggling and said the takeover is the best way to keep the company going and its 20,000 workers employed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the United Steelworkers Union quickly came out against the deal, and a federal committee has warned it could cut into America's steel production, a potential national security issue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The fact that U.S. Steel is based in Pennsylvania a key battleground state, intensified the political debate over the last year over whether the deal should happen.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Donald Trump called for the company to remain in American hands and eventually so did Biden. He now seems poised to make that official as soon as today.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Blocking the deal would be a departure from the U.S.'s long history of welcoming foreign investment.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It could potentially cause other foreign businesses to rethink trying to acquire American companies, wary of stepping into a similar political minefield.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In South Korea, the country's political crisis descended into a tense standoff at the presidential residence today.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Investigators tried to take President Yoon Suk-yul in for questioning on insurrection charges.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Lawmakers voted to impeach him last month after he briefly declared martial law.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But when police arrived to get Yoon, they ran into a wall of his supporters, as well as presidential bodyguards, and eventually had to withdraw.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, protesters on the other side, who want to see President Ewan arrested, have marched to the residents too and said they're planning to camp out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There's live coverage at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For two decades, there's been a heated debate playing out about what's known as net neutrality.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's the principle that internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon should have to treat all internet traffic equally and not slow or block access like to content from their competitors.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those providers have opposed these net neutrality rules, calling them regulatory overreach.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, big tech companies like Netflix and Google, along with some consumer advocates, have fought hard for them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And it's turned into a head spinning back and forth.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Obama administration put net neutrality rules in place. Trump rolled them back. Biden reinstated them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But yesterday, a federal appeals court dealt the rules a final blow, ruling that regulators don't have the authority to impose net neutrality.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: By overturning this regulation, consumers will now be vulnerable to the potential of a broadband provider deciding how fast your content is downloaded or uploaded, what kind of content gets to you sooner, if there's potentially even extra charges for content.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are all the concerns that led to the creation of these rules in the first place.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Cecilia Kahn covers tech policy for The Times.
--:-- Cecilia Kahn: Consumer advocates and a lot of the public interest groups that have been advocating for net neutrality for years say that simply having the rules is what deterred these companies from slowing down content and deciding what you get to see.
--:-- Cecilia Kahn: So they're afraid that the course decision Thursday will have a real impact on what consumers are able to see and what they experience online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, in a rural village in Kenya earlier this week, residents heard a loud boom.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They looked up and saw a large circular object falling from the sky. It looked like a huge steering wheel, glowing red.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Moments later, the eight-foot-wide metal circle crashed into some brush.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It is a part of a space object, which is in form of a ring, a metallic ring, Possibly from a rocket separation stage.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Authorities from the Kenya Space Agency say it was a half-ton piece of space junk.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now they're trying to figure out exactly where it came from.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After decades of space exploration and dozens of new rocket launches every year, there's a growing amount of debris in space.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One estimate says there are about 4,000 tons of space junk floating around Earth.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The objects usually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere or land in the ocean, but not always.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last year, a small piece of debris from the International Space Station fell through the roof of a home in Florida.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Pieces of metal from a SpaceX capsule have been found on a Canadian farm.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Regulators are trying to deal with the issue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Two years ago, the U.S. government handed down its first ever fine over space debris.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The TV provider Dish had to pay $150,000 for not moving its dead satellite away from Earth into a higher orbit.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But one expert told the Times that efforts to manage space junk are not keeping up with the growing number of objects in space.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said humans can't treat space as a place, quote, where we can just dump stuff.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We'll be back on Monday.
