--:-- Megan Spisha: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Monday, December 9th.
--:-- Megan Spisha: We're here in a massive, massive traffic jam as thousands of Syrians who fled the country during the civil war are now making their way back to Syria for the first time for some in more than a decade.
--:-- Megan Spisha: My colleague Christina Goldbaum has been reporting from near the Syria-Lebanon border on the stunning downfall of the Syrian regime.
--:-- Megan Spisha: In a lightning-fast offensive, rebel groups overtook the capital city of Damascus yesterday. And they forced President Bashar al-Assad, whose family had long ruled Syria with an iron fist, to flee the country.
--:-- Megan Spisha: We're seeing people cheering and honking their car horns. A lot of people are blasting songs that were cheering on the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
--:-- Megan Spisha: You know, others are either on top of their cars or hanging out of car windows, waving flags of the Syrian opposition or holding their fingers up in a V, signifying victory.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Footage from inside Damascus showed families wandering through the abandoned presidential palace, taking artwork and chairs and posing for selfies.
--:-- Megan Spisha: It's a remarkable turn in a brutal civil war that was sparked by the Arab Spring in 2011.
--:-- Megan Spisha: More than 500,000 people have been killed in the conflict. And millions more were forced from their homes.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Now, the question hanging over Syria is, what happens next?
--:-- Megan Spisha: The head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, that's the rebel group that led the offensive, told me that there's a big focus on preserving the government infrastructure and institutions.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Times reporter Raja Abdul Rahim has also been covering the collapse of the Syrian regime.
--:-- Megan Spisha: It actually a message that he has continued to give in his public statements to rebel fighters throughout the offensive telling them not to destroy public property and public institutions and to preserve them.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And he said that these would come under the oversight of the current prime minister until there was some kind of transition.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And so there's definitely a focus at this point of continuity.
--:-- Megan Spisha: But what remains to be seen is what the changes will be.
--:-- Megan Spisha: As of Sunday, Assad and his family have been granted political asylum in Russia, a longtime ally.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And experts warn that if the rebels aren't able to stabilize what's left of the government in Syria, there could be a chaotic power struggle between the tangle of countries and groups with interests there.
--:-- Megan Spisha: In the last 36 hours, the Turkish military fired on Kurdish forces in the north of Syria, the U.S. carried out airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State camps, and Israeli ground forces took control of a handful of military posts that had been abandoned by Syrian troops.
--:-- Megan Spisha: I understand that on day one, you're going to be signing a flurry of executive orders.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Can you give me just, what are the top ones people should know about?
--:-- Megan Spisha: A lot of it will have to do with economics. A lot's going to have to do with energy. A lot's going to have to do with having to do with the border.
--:-- Megan Spisha: In his first broadcast TV interview since the presidential election, Donald Trump previewed an aggressive opening to his second term in office.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Speaking to NBC's Meet the Press, he vowed to try and end birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And Trump doubled down on his plans for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, saying that effort would also round up people with the right to be in the country.
--:-- Megan Spisha: People, the estimated four million families in America who have mixed immigration status.
--:-- Megan Spisha: So I'm talking about parents who might be here illegally, but the kids are here legally.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Your border, Czar Tom Homan, said they can be deported together.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Is that the plan?
--:-- Megan Spisha: Well that way you keep the well I don't want to be breaking up families
--:-- Megan Spisha: So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back
--:-- Megan Spisha: In the interview the president also said that on his first day in office he would pardon the hundreds of people charged with participating in the January 6th riot
--:-- Megan Spisha: And Trump said that members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated that attack, including Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson, should face criminal charges.
--:-- Megan Spisha: In a statement responding to the comments, Cheney said there would be no legal basis to pursue charges and that Trump was continuing his, quote, assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.
--:-- Megan Spisha: In South Korea, President Yoon Suk-yeol has survived an impeachment vote as the fallout from his short-lived declaration of martial law continues.
--:-- Megan Spisha: On Saturday, lawmakers tried to impeach Yoon in the same assembly hall where a chaotic scene played out last week, when hundreds of soldiers had tried to seize the building on his orders.
--:-- Megan Spisha: But members of his political party boycotted the impeachment proceedings, with nearly all of them walking out before the vote.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Yoon's political and legal troubles aren't over yet, though.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Officials are now investigating whether his martial law order amounted to leading an insurrection.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And today, the country's justice ministry barred him from leaving South Korea.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Meanwhile, protests against Yoon in the country's capital over the weekend were the largest yet.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And many demonstrators say they plan to keep pushing for his ouster.
--:-- Megan Spisha: The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that, starting next week, it will begin testing the nation's milk supply for the bird flu virus known as H5N1.
--:-- Megan Spisha: The move comes nearly a year after the virus first began circulating through dairy cattle in the U.S.
--:-- Megan Spisha: It's been detected in 15 states, but until now testing has been voluntary leaving federal officials in the dark about exactly how far the virus may have spread.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And experts say that widespread testing is long overdue
--:-- Megan Spisha: Pasteurized milk is safe from the virus, and there have been no known cases of illness from drinking raw milk.
--:-- Megan Spisha: But dozens of farm workers who handle cattle have become infected.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Some may have gotten sick after getting contaminated milk in their eyes.
--:-- Megan Spisha: While the virus doesn't transfer easily among humans, scientists say every untreated infection raises the possibility that it could get better at spreading.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And finally.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Hi, my name's Emma. I've come all the way from London with my best friend Sophie so that we could see the last night. Taylor just means everything to me.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Her lyrics, her ethos, her music.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And we've even been out for Taylor Swift tattoos today.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Last night, tens of thousands of Swifties descended on downtown Vancouver for the final night of Taylor Swift's marathon tour.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Welcome to the Eras Tour!
--:-- Megan Spisha: After almost two years and 149 sold-out shows, it was the end of the Eras.
--:-- Megan Spisha: And the Times has learned just how lucrative the global phenomenon was.
--:-- Megan Spisha: The tickets alone brought in nearly $2.1 billion, double the ticket sales of any other concert tour in history.
--:-- Megan Spisha: That doesn't even include resale tickets or the mountains of merch that her fans scooped up.
--:-- Megan Spisha: For Swift, it's the end of a five-continent whirlwind that she spent months training for.
--:-- Megan Spisha: It included a cardio workout that some devoted fans even tried to match, singing her entire set list of about 40 songs while running on a treadmill.
--:-- Megan Spisha: Those are the headlines today on The Daily.
--:-- Megan Spisha: A deeper look at how Syria's president lost his grip on power.
--:-- Megan Spisha: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Megan Spisha: I'm Megan Spicia.
--:-- Megan Spisha: The headlines will be back tomorrow with Tracy Mumford.
