--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, January 8th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm just south of the Pacific Palisades where the fires are burning right now. And I'm right on the evacuation route where people are trying to get out of this region.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner: [Voice from Los Angeles] My colleague Emily Baumgartner is in Los Angeles, where a fast-moving wildfire is tearing through the Pacific Palisades, destroying homes and forcing at least 30,000 people to evacuate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The area is a wealthy neighborhood along the coast, full of windy, dead-end roads. And people trying to flee have been caught in stalled traffic.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner: These cars are packed with their children, their pets sitting on their laps. I saw several people just sort of running across the street toward their cars, stuffing possessions into the trunks, stuffing food and water into the trunks, just trying to get out of this area as quickly as they can.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The fire has shocked officials with its speed and its spread. It's been fed by powerful winds that grew stronger overnight and are expected to continue through this morning.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner: The only sounds that we can hear out here on the scene are just these rushes of wind. It is absolutely screaming loud when the wind comes through. And the sound of palm fronds that are crashing down from the palm trees is so loud. It sounds like an explosion.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And these sounds, the sounds of the wind and the effects of the wind, are really what sort of epitomizes this particular fire. Because the wind is the reason that no one really knows where this is going to go next and what makes it so unpredictable and so frightening for so many residents.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner: All night, alerts have been going out to residents in neighboring areas that may soon be in the fire's path. Just after midnight, the city of Malibu said everyone there should be prepared to leave. A city council member sent a message saying, quote, The Palisades fire is a monster.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, on the opposite side of Los Angeles County in the east, a separate wildfire, this one just above Pasadena is also burning out of control forcing evacuations there. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost power in the region. As of early this morning no deaths have been reported but officials have warned that the full impact of the fires won't be clear until they're contained.
--:-- Donald Trump: I'm just telling you, this will be the golden age of America. This is the golden age of America. We're going to have a great country again.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At Mar-a-Lago yesterday, Donald Trump held a rambling hour-long press conference that included conspiracy theories and a long list of grievances.
--:-- Donald Trump: They want in your washing machine to have very little water coming out of the washing machine. He veered from complaints about water pressure in household appliances. And you know, you can talk about windmills. They litter our country. To a vague promise to ban new wind energy projects.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America. But his most striking comments were his threats to add territory to the United States.
--:-- Donald Trump: Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time. He repeated a plan to push Denmark to sell Greenland, saying that Chinese and Russian ships have been appearing around the Polar Island.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He doubled down on his statements calling for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state. And he also made the case for the U.S. taking back control of the Panama Canal, which the U.S. handed over to Panama in the 70s.
--:-- Donald Trump: Trump claimed that China is currently running the canal, which is not true.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?
--:-- Donald Trump: No. When pressed by reporters, Trump refused to rule out taking Greenland and the Panama Canal by force. I'm not going to commit to that now. It might be that you'll have to do something.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's not clear if Trump intends to follow through on these threats or if it's just a negotiating tactic. After the press conference, world leaders pushed back forcefully.
--:-- [Cut to a different location]
--:-- Mark Zuckerberg: Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today, because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, announced yesterday that the company is ending its fact-checking program that monitors posts on its social media platforms.
--:-- Mark Zuckerberg: What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it's gone too far.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Zuckerberg's announcement seems to be the latest example of his company aligning itself with the incoming Trump administration.
--:-- Mark Zuckerberg: Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people. And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The end of the fact-checking program will affect what billions of people see online. And misinformation researchers called the policy change deeply concerning, saying it could open the floodgates for hateful content, misleading posts, and conspiracy theories.
--:-- Mark Zuckerberg: Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that it will be a trade-off. He said more, quote, bad stuff will be out there unchecked. But he said fewer people's posts and accounts will be taken down unnecessarily.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Going forward, Zuckerberg said they'll turn to the same approach to handling false posts that Elon Musk adopted when he bought Twitter.
--:-- [Cut to a different location]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, I leaving on a jet plane I don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go.
--:-- Peter Yarrow: Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary has died. He was 86 years old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yarrow got into music after taking a college class on American folk stories that inspired him to start singing and playing the guitar.
--:-- Peter Yarrow: Around 1960, he was introduced to Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stuckey, and the trio went on to bring the crunchy folk music scene into the American mainstream.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The group was known for its progressive politics. To help express and song what this great meeting is all about, I give you now Peter, Paul, and Mary.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They performed at the March on Washington, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.
--:-- Peter Yarrow: They also recorded one of the most iconic children's songs of the era, written by Yerro. Pop the magic dragon. He always insisted that Puff the Magic Dragon had nothing to do with smoking marijuana, but people heard what they wanted to hear, and the song floated up to the top of the Billboard charts and even spawned an animated TV show.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Eventually, Peter, Paul, and Mary moved towards solo projects, in part because Yarrow pleaded guilty to making sexual advances towards a teenager. He served three months in prison before being pardoned by President Carter.
--:-- Peter Yarrow: But the case continued to hang over his career, and a performance of his was canceled in 2019 during the height of the Me Too movement, after there were protests.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Mary Travers died in 2009, so Stuky, Paul, is now the only surviving member of the folk trio.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a look at the rise and fall of Justin Trudeau. That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
