• The Los Angeles area is battling massive fires. At least five people have died, and more than 2,000 structures have either been damaged or destroyed so far. Tens of thousands of people remain under evacuation orders, including parts of the region that aren’t usually at immediate risk for fire damage. Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’s Fire Network, breaks down how the fires were able to spread so fast.
• Later in the show, Bob Corn-Revere, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, talks about the group’s defense of Iowa pollster Ann Selzer in a suit brought by President-elect Donald Trump.
• And in headlines: World leaders pushed back against Trump’s threats to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court for permission to release part of the special counsel’s report on Jan. 6, and Las Vegas police said the man who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck on New Years Day used AI to plan his attack.

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TRANSCRIPT

Josie Duffy Rice: It’s Thursday, January 9th. I’m Josie Duffy Rice in for Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day, the show that’s thinking of all the firefighters and incarcerated people battling the fires in southern California. [music break] On today’s show, Biden says he could have won the 2024 election. And world leaders respond to Trump’s threats to purchase and maybe conquer their lands. Let’s get to it. So a lot of you probably know that Crooked is based in Los Angeles. I am in Atlanta, but most of the staff lives in or around L.A. And right now, multiple major fires there have forced tens of thousands of people, including some Crooked staff, to evacuate their homes. One of those fires, the Pacific Palisades Fire, is already the most destructive in the city of Los Angeles’s history. Local station KTLA was on the ground. 

[clip of unnamed KTLA reporter] This is Pacific Palisades. And um you know, we’re finally actually seeing what was burning overnight. And it you know, the term the word war zone is such a cliche, but this does look like an area that has been bombed. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Further east, the Eaton Fire has killed at least five people. And in all, at least 2000 structures have been destroyed or damaged. These fires have been fueled by hurricane force winds. While strong winds are typical this time of year. These have been extreme, reaching 100mph. And usually by now, Southern California has seen enough rain to mitigate the risks that those winds pose. But that did not happen this year. During a press conference on Wednesday, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said that the fires have overwhelmed responders. 

[clip of LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone] All 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster. There are not enough firefighters in L.A. County to address four separate fires of this magnitude. 

Josie Duffy Rice: While fighting the fires on Tuesday night, firefighters said little to no water came out of the fire hydrants. Clouds of smoke made the air across the city dangerous to breathe on Wednesday, with the air quality index topping 300 in some places. For context, normal is less than 50. At a joint press conference with California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Biden, who happened to be in town, said that the federal government is ready to do anything and everything to help. 

[clip of President Joe Biden] I’ve directed D.O.D. Department of Defense to rapidly provide additional firefighting personnel and capabilities. I’ve also California National Guard is adding two minds of our air firefighting systems units, and two more are being readied for the National Guard and the Nevada National Guard. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Meanwhile, strong winds are supposed to keep pummeling the area for the next few days. To talk about what’s going on in California. I spoke with Lenya Quinn-Davidson. She’s the director of the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network. Lenya, welcome to What a Day. 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Thanks for having me. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So California has been seeing these kind of major fire events for a while now, but this one seems I mean, different and scarier and bigger. It’s threatening huge parts of um a metro area like Los Angeles. Um. Can you put the severity of the current fires into context for us? 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that, you know, the major factor with these fires and it’s interesting, my husband actually works in fire modeling and we were looking at some of the weather predictions and some of the warnings that were coming out and the confluence of this wind event with the fact that things are so dry in January is really kind of the unique feature of this set of fires. Right? I mean, the fact that we would be having this wind event that hasn’t happened for more than a decade, and then layered on top of the fact that we’ve had almost no precipitation in Southern California. So I think it’s a really unique set of conditions that is basically setting us up for the worst outcomes. 

Josie Duffy Rice: The L.A. County fire chief said that the departments weren’t really prepared for this kind of widespread disaster, that there weren’t enough people to handle the fires. How does a fire like this spread so fast that they overwhelm a county as big as L.A.? 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Well, I mean, really, it goes to that that wind factor. You know when we think about fire behavior, there are just a few factors that really dictate how fires are going to burn. And wind is one of them and fuels is one of them. So with the fuels being so dry, um the vegetation being so cured, you know the fact that we’ve had, I think somewhere between 5 to 25% of average rainfall for this time of year and then having, you know, we were seeing 100 mile an hour winds, um there’s not much that firefighters can do in that situation except try to keep people safe. Um. So I can see how that could totally overwhelm the system. Even if you had, you know, ten times the work force, it’s still the conditions are untenable, really, aside from just evacuating people and keeping people safe. 

Josie Duffy Rice: We were talking earlier about my extended family living in East L.A. and this being shocking for them. Why are those areas even at risk right now? I think typically we think of those areas as not being that big of a risk for fire. And and that that assumption has kind of been dispelled at this point. 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Well, I think one of the the things that we’ve seen in recent years and that we’ll continue to see um is, you know, fires burning into urban areas. And that can happen for a number of reasons. I mean, in this case, like I’ve been saying, the kind of the confluence of weather and fuels conditions, but homes are also fuels. And so we you know, in fire, we talk about fuels. That’s what’s available to burn. And if we have the right conditions, homes are really available fuels, they are dry, often they’re attached, they’re densely arranged. And so when fires start happening in those urban areas, they can actually move pretty quickly, especially under extreme wind. So that’s why it’s so important for us, even if we live in urban areas of California, to really be thinking about fire and thinking about preparing for it, making our homes more resilient to it. There are a lot of things that we can do, and I think we often, you know, get a little bit lost thinking about climate change. And it’s all so overwhelming and there’s not much we can do, but really we can’t. There are a lot of proactive things people should be working on, not to mention being ready to evacuate and and really being tuned in to, you know, those resources that are available to you so you can be safe in these kinds of conditions. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Well, I was going to ask you, what can be done to prevent something like this? Is there anything that can be done? And it sounds like you’re saying there are ways to mitigate the harm. Can you talk to us about what some of those are? 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, just like you, I was texting with some cousins who are in Los Angeles and I said, what’s your evacuation plan? And one of my cousins who lives in the hills above Burbank said, we don’t have a plan. We’ve never really thought about this before, you know. And so one some of the resources that I gave to her were, for one, to make sure that you’re signed up for alert systems. Also, there’s a whole concept called home hardening, and that is about making your home more resilient to fire. So there are some micro actions that you can do. You don’t have to necessarily replace the roof or replace all the siding or, you know, rebuild your house. But you can do really small things like cover your vent screens or remove material that’s up against your house. If you think about the way that homes burn. I really recommend envisioning a shower of live embers landing on your house because that’s really how a lot of homes burn is. You know, the fire is burning in one place, but the wind is pushing those embers much farther than the fire. So picture that landing on your house and what would catch on fire. Um. Often embers can go into the vents in your attic and start a fire that way. They can go through an open window. So if you’re evacuating, close your windows, cover your pet doors. You know, all of those little points of entry are really they’re they can be critical. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So you mentioned climate change. And often when something like this happens, we talk about it as a confluence of events, that just, you know, once in a lifetime event. Right. But how does this tie in to climate change? 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: We’re definitely seeing, you know, increased patterns of weather like this and drought extended drought. Um. And again, it’s when these things intersect that we can have these big fires. So I think what we all need to do is learn to better live with fire. How can we rebuild our communities to, you know, be situated better for fire? Um. How can we build actual buildings so that they can be more resistant to fire? Fire is not going away. So, yeah, definitely the whole gist of the program that I lead is really around helping communities and people adapt to and live with fire in California. And also, um you know, watch out for that smoke because I think one of the things that we think that you know that we maybe don’t realize when cities are burning, these urban fires, that the smoke is much more toxic and a lot of things are burning that you don’t want to breathe. So this is a great time to pull out masks, um you know, to stay indoors if you can and just to really be careful about that. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Thank you so much for joining us. 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Josie Duffy Rice: That was Leyna Quinn-Davidson. She is the director of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network. We will get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Josie Duffy Rice: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Rasmus Jarlov] Nobody in Greenland wants this. Nobody in Denmark wants it. And it’s definitely and absolutely not going to happen. 

Josie Duffy Rice: World leaders, including the chairman of Denmark’s defense committee, Rasmus Jarlov are pushing back against President elect Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal. In a press conference on Tuesday, Trump refused to rule out the use of military force to pursue this agenda. Other members of the Danish parliament also rejected Trump’s batshit threats of imperialism. Lawmaker Aaja Chemnitz told CNN she thinks it’s another, quote, “Trump stunt.” 

[clip of Aaja Chemnitz] Greenland is not for sale. Greenland will never be for sale. And therefore, I think it’s important to be more respectful when it comes to a collaboration with a near ally. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Panama’s foreign minister also chimed in saying, quote, “The sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable.” After Trump made repeated threats about buying the waterway. Even Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, responded to Trump’s suggestion that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. Sheinbaum said Wednesday North America should be renamed Mexican America, which is basically the best joke you can have in reply to such a ridiculous statement by our upcoming President. Will we see Jack Smith’s reports or won’t we? In a filing on Wednesday, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to allow them to release part of special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on two investigations into Donald Trump. Both investigations resulted in felony charges against Trump, and the DOJ told the court that Attorney General Merrick Garland hopes to release the section about Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election before Trump takes office. But the department said Garland will not publish the section about Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. And that’s because on Tuesday, District Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw and eventually dismissed the documents charges against Trump, temporarily blocked the report’s release. She made that decision after a request from Trump’s co-defendants in the documents case. But since the DOJ says it doesn’t plan on publishing the section about the documents case, it argued the report about January 6th should be released. The DOJ asked the appeals court to vacate Cannon’s injunction. We will see who wins the battle. Las Vegas police say the man who blew up a Tesla cybertruck outside of the Trump Hotel on New Year’s Day used A.I. to plan his attack. During a press conference on Tuesday, Las Vegas police said the suspect had asked ChatGPT about firearms, how to build explosives and where to buy fireworks. Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department called it a game changer. 

[clip of Sheriff Kevin McMahill] We knew that AI was going to change the game at some point or another in really all of our lives. And certainly I think this is the first incidence that I’m aware of on U.S. soil where ChatGPT is utilized to help an individual build a particular device. 

Josie Duffy Rice: McMahill did not elaborate on the answers the suspect received from ChatGPT. In a statement, ChatGPT’s developer, OpenAI said it’s working with law enforcement in the investigation and that its products are designed to, quote, “refuse harmful instructions and minimize harmful content.” USA Today released an exclusive interview with President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Biden sat down with Susan Page, chief of the paper’s Washington bureau, to look back at his legacy as commander in chief before President elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. Biden shared with Page that he thinks he could have beaten Trump if he stayed in the race for reelection. But when asked if he could have made it through another four years in office at his old age, Biden told Page quote, “I don’t know. Who the hell knows?” That’s honest. I love that. Biden also defended his economic policy. The president has been under intense scrutiny for inflation in recent years, but Biden shared that even Trump complimented him on his economic policy when they met privately last year, saying, quote, “He thought I was leaving with a good record.” Page also asked Biden about his son, Hunter, who he pardoned last month. She asked Biden if he was worried about the implications of such a controversial move for future presidents, and Biden said no and that he stood by his decision. Biden is expected to grant more pardons on January 20th, his final day as president. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. Remember that poll last year that predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris would win Iowa? It’s the poll that showed Harris ahead of President elect Trump by three points in the state right before Election Day. Well, that poll was wrong. Trump won Iowa just like he did in 2016 and 2020. And in December, we told you that Trump sued the analyst who conducted that poll, Ann Seltzer. He also sued the Des Moines Register, the newspaper that published Seltzer’s poll and its parent company, Gannett. Trump is accusing Seltzer and the Register of Consumer Fraud as a form of election interference. And he claims that all the news coverage of Seltzer’s poll was geared toward helping Democrats win. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE for short announced on Tuesday that it will defend Seltzer against Trump. The organization put out a statement about their decision to take the case saying, quote, “Donald Trump is abusing the legal system to punish speech he dislikes,” even though this case is aimed at Seltzer directly, this is clearly part of Trump’s larger effort to crack down on media outlets, journalists, and now pollsters for unflattering coverage of him. So for more on the lawsuit against Seltzer and its broader implications, I spoke with Bob Corn-Revere. He’s the attorney representing Seltzer in this case. Bob, welcome to What a Day. 

Bob Corn-Revere: Thank you, Josie. I’m happy to be here. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So can you break down the case Trump is making here? How can the president elect sue a pollster for making a bad prediction as to who wins an election? 

Bob Corn-Revere: Well, that’s our question, too. Uh. [laugh] He’s suing, strangely, under an Iowa law against fraudulent commercial transactions, which suggests that you can create a claim for false news. It’s puzzling to us for a couple of reasons, and that is the law simply doesn’t apply to reporting on the news or to creating news in the case of providing a public poll. The law applies to things like turning back the odometer on a car for a fraudulent commercial transaction or something like that. There’s the question of whether or not a candidate for office has standing to raise the claim. That is, was this law designed to protect political candidates? And the answer is no. It was designed to protect consumers who buy fraudulently advertised merchandise. That’s where the First Amendment issues, I think, are front and center. Going back to the founding of the country and shortly after the Constitution was adopted um during the presidency of John Adams, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which prohibited false news reports that were critical of of the government or of the president. And that is broadly remembered as a huge mistake and in basic conflict with our most fundamental First Amendment values. When President Thomas Jefferson took office after after Adams, he commuted the sentences of all of the newspaper editors that had been convicted under the Sedition Act and had their fines remitted. So the concept of prosecuting false news reports is deeply unconstitutional. 

Josie Duffy Rice: This suit was filed shortly after ABC News settled a defamation case brought by Trump for $15 million. And the president elect has kind of promised to sue more media outlets and journalists who haven’t been favorable to him, essentially. Um and this case in some ways seems to be making good on that promise, right? It’s a way of trying to silence critics or even polls he doesn’t like. But on the other hand, it’s not a defamation claim and he has to use this other law in an attempt to make this work. So what do you think that this means in terms of coverage of the president in this in his second term? 

Bob Corn-Revere: I think we can say that this is a tactic that he has relied upon in the past. He has been quoted as saying that he can sue people for tactical reasons, and then you know he may have to spend a couple of bucks on lawyers, but the other side has to uh has to spend more. We may well see other similar cases emerge. And I think to answer your other question about what does this mean for the future? I think the answer to that question depends on the willingness of those who were sued, like the Des Moines Register and like our client Ann Selzer to fight back and to stand on their legal rights and in particular on the First Amendment. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Let’s imagine an universe, right, where the court rules in Trump’s favor. What would the implications be for free speech if that were to happen? 

Bob Corn-Revere: It means that anyone, any politician that dislikes a news story or dislikes a poll which is conducted on them can sue both the newspaper and the person who generated that poll, anyone who makes a bad prediction about an upcoming election can be the subject of a suit like that, and it can be done in a punitive way, and that is to simply go after those news sources you dislike. And so it can impose a dramatic, chilling effect on the ability both to have opinions about politics, but also to report the news. Politicians or anyone really could sue over news they don’t like. Even the threat of a lawsuit imposes penalties where you bring frivolous cases. The case itself is the punishment forcing people to respond to fishing expeditions in the hope you might find some basis for a claim is um punishment in itself. And so it would have a tremendous chilling effect on the press. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Bob, thank you so much for joining us. 

Bob Corn-Revere: Thank you. Very happy to be. 

Josie Duffy Rice: That was my conversation with Bob Corn-Revere, attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. [music break] Before we go. Currently, catastrophic wildfires are raging in Los Angeles. To support disaster relief efforts. VoteSaveAmerica action and Crooked ideas have set up a fundraiser to help on the ground groups, including World Central Kitchen, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and more. With wildfires forcing over 70,000 people to evacuate and thick smoke blanketing the metro area, these groups are providing critical aid to those who need it most. You can make a donation today at VoteSaveAmerica.com/relief. That’s VoteSaveAmerica.com/relief. We’ll also put the link in the show notes. [music break] That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Do not file frivolous lawsuits and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about the history of Greenland like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. So check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Josie Duffy Rice and it is time to regulate ChatGPT.[music break]

Jane Coaston: What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. [music break]

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