While LA Burns, Trump Fuels The Disinformation Fire
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It's Friday, January 10th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that is proudly based in the beautiful city of Los Angeles, California. And dang it, that's the way it's staying. On today's show, it's Trump sentencing day, and a new report says that the death toll in Gaza has been gravely underreported. Let's get into it. The Palisades and Eton fires that began on Tuesday have become some of the most destructive and likely most expensive wildfires in American history.

As of our recording time on Thursday evening, more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed between the two, and the fires are still raging. And because of the Santa Ana winds, fires have ignited in other parts of Los Angeles County, including dense places in and around the city, like Burbank and Hollywood, where our studio is located and where I live.

All together, tens of thousands of people have been under evacuation orders as fires have hit nearly 30,000 acres of land. And like anyone would in the midst of a giant, terrifying crisis in which you can see flames jutting out just a few miles away from where your house is, I spent a lot of yesterday checking news online. Which was a mistake. Because alongside some legitimate information, I saw a lot of bullshit. Well, blame and bullshit. Like,

Like that the fires were caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion policies because this would have never happened if more white cis men were involved or something. Or that, as Trump said on Truth Social, this is all Governor Gavin Newsom's fault for not opening a pipeline from Northern California into Southern California that doesn't exist. Or a viral claim that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass transferred millions of dollars reserved for fighting fires to either unhoused people, if you're right-wing, or to the LAPD, if you're left-wing. Neither are true.

At a time when good information is so critical to whether people like me stay in our actual homes or pack our go bags and get out of the city, there is not nearly enough actual information and way too much, well, bullshit.

So to debunk some of these claims and talk about the politics of these fires, I spoke with Scott Waldman. He's a White House reporter focused on climate change at Politico's E&E News. We'll link to his reporting in our show notes. Scott, welcome to Waterday. Thanks for having me. Now, as someone who is currently in West Hollywood, in Los Angeles, it would be so helpful if you could just debunk some of the claims we've been hearing from the right.

Let's start with this claim that Trump keeps making, that Governor Newsom is keeping water from flowing from Northern California into Southern California. What is he talking about? Well, that's not true. And he's talking about something he's sort of harped on for years, which is basically blocking a river from flowing to the sea from the Sacramento Delta there to protect this fish called the smelt. It's an endangered species there.

But that mostly would benefit agriculture interests further north. That would have nothing to do with the reservoirs needed to, you know, fuel the water supply that's being used to fight these fires right now. And what about the idea that FEMA is out of money? Trump also keeps saying that Biden is leaving him no money in FEMA.

FEMA is fully funded until the end of the fiscal year, which for the government is September 30th. Now, there could be challenges to that if we have a really bad hurricane season. But of course, that doesn't start until the summer. So that's quite a while away. But for right now, FEMA is fully funded and ready to handle this crisis.

the consequences of these fires. If there's additional money needed, Congress can step in and appropriate money for the long-term recovery. So it's not true that Biden is leaving Trump essentially an empty treasure chest of FEMA funding.

Why do you think these kinds of disasters have become ripe for politicized conspiracy theorizing? I mean, it seems like literally, you know, I left my home last night to get away from the smoke from a fire that was further north. And as I am doing that, as I'm in the car on my way out, I am seeing on my phone people basically blaming this on people.

DEI or saying that people are setting fires, or then you see kind of left-leaning conspiracy theorists being like, oh, this is because they took all the money from the firefighters and gave it to the cops. Like,

Nobody's giving me any actual information and everybody's just making shit up. Why? This is like the age we live in. This is increasing with social media, obviously. And Trump is, like he is with a lot of things, just an accelerant on this fire. I would use that phrase. It's okay. But Trump has fanned these flames going back to Hurricane Helene and the way it impacted North Carolina in particular. It's a very easy way to attack your political opponents. It's

After any sort of natural disaster, there's always angry people who feel, you know, short shrift, like they've been sort of ripped off by the government or not fully protected or not helped in the right way by the government. So it's an easy way to attack political opponents and blame them for what's happening. But of course, the truth is way more nuanced here. We'll see, the fires are still ongoing, you know, how much blame the politicians in the

in California deserve for this. But for right now, we don't know exactly what they could have done in terms of water resources because this is a climate-fueled fire. This is something that some of the first responders here have said, "There's nothing you can really do about it. It's so intense. It's moving so fast thanks to the Santa Ana winds. And it whipped up so quickly in so many different spots

that there's really, you have to almost stand back in some areas and let it burn rather than try to get in there and fight it because you just end up wasting water essentially and your limited resources fighting against something that can't even be controlled at some points. Biden did say that the federal government will cover 100% of the cost of the fires for 180 days, but Trump will oversee the distribution of that aid. Could he reverse that order? And what happens if he were to deny California disaster relief as he's threatened to do

because he hates Gavin Newsom? Well, he already has done it in his first term. He's delayed aid. He didn't actually totally withhold it. But I reported earlier this summer, two Trump White House aides told me this on the record, that Trump was delaying aid for a different wildfire back in 2018 around Orange County and only changed his mind after he saw voter registration data. So he's promising to do this again to Newsom with sort of this

excuse about these water rights, but really it's a way for him to punish his political enemies. You know, he views California as a Democrat-controlled state, and he seems willing to use the federal government to go after it.

But could he reverse Biden's order about covering the cost for 180 days or condition it on lawmakers here doing what he wants with regard to, say, migrant detention? He could. Absolutely. And there's you know, what mechanism is there to block him? Congress. Well, if he doesn't have the votes there to go against him, he might he could still block it. I think it's it's worth noting, too, though, that members of Congress and the Senate and the House are

Both know, you know, you might have some of the most conservative members like Senator Rick Scott from Florida. He knows that if you politicize aid and response aid, that what's going to happen to Florida, which needs aid every year after hurricane season. So I think lawmakers, even though they may make a lot of noise right now, they may be more hesitant.

to jump into the fray and actually try to cut off aid to California. They may make a lot of noise right now, but we'll see if there's a vote that comes down to appropriating more aid if it's needed. We'll see how they act in that time.

Now, we don't know the full scale of the damage because right now you can't really go to some of the places that have been hardest hit. But it's fair to say it's going to be huge and it's going to be very, very, very expensive. And it's just the latest in the series of catastrophic natural disasters that have hit the country. What kind of strain does this put on our infrastructure and federal and state dollars?

It puts tremendous strain. And again, this is the cost of climate change, which really, you know, a lot of politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike tend to talk about climate change like it's something we have to prepare for that's happening in the future. You right now have climate change on your front doorstep, quite literally. Some people have lost their homes. You know, a friend texted me to say that his elderly parents' home burned down and they had to flee, you know, with only the clothes on their back because they lived in L.A. They're climate refugees.

Now this is happening. You know, it's like we're all filming this or we're watching videos of this, of other people filming themselves fleeing these kind of scenes. And then all of a sudden those videos eventually will be us taking them of our own homes or our own, our family's homes.

So we need to prepare for the infrastructure now. It's already way past due to handle this. You know, this also includes inland flooding that puts a lot of pressure on pipes and stuff like that in every city. So there's a lot that needs to be done here. And, you know, a lot of politicians don't want to get involved in it because it's not sexy to spend money on infrastructure.

Well, if we could make it sexy, what are the constructive conversations we need to be having right now? Because it's not about is this climate change? Is it not climate change? It's about like, what do we do? What should we be doing? How should we be preparing? How should we be talking about vegetation and brush? How should we be talking about building regulations? How should we be talking about how this got here? Because you can't really do anything about 100 mile per hour winds, but it seems like there's a lot we could be doing.

Yeah, just look at LA. It's not totally wrong. It's certainly not wrong to say that better forest management would help the area. Now, that doesn't mean going and logging everywhere, but there's been plenty of studies on this that shows forest management is part of this. So...

Control burns, things like that are a way to cut down on that risk. When we talk about other infrastructure threats from climate change, look at like the East Coast of the United States where sea level is hitting much harder. You look at somewhere like Norfolk, Virginia, where we have our naval fleet. You know, there's nuclear subs going in and out of there. Well, if you'd like those to be threatened, you know,

then don't do anything about it when it comes to these ever increasingly worse storms. But certainly building higher sea walls to protect Norfolk and to protect their naval installation there is one way to get conservatives on board with some of these ideas. There's also a lot of waste where if you don't prepare for something today, you spend five times on it in the future. And unfortunately, the future is not 100 years away. The future could be 5, 10 years away. It could be

tomorrow in some of these cases as people in LA are finding out the hard way. Scott, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Scott Waldman. He's a White House reporter focused on climate change at Politico's E&E News. We'll link to his reporting in our show notes. We'll 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.

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It sounds like billionaire Elon Musk is admitting that Doge is all bark and no bite. Because on Wednesday, the tech CEO said his goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget might actually be hard to do.

Musk initially promised a massive cut when President-elect Donald Trump tapped him to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short, and tackle government spending. But in a live-streamed interview on Twitter, the social media platform Musk owns, the billionaire admitted that he and his co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, are now shooting for just $1 trillion in budget cuts. If we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and kind of free up the economy to, you know,

have additional growth such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, then there will be no inflation. So that I think would be an epic outcome. Epic? Come on, dude. You're like 55. Come on. Experts have said that Musk's initial goal to cut $2 trillion in federal spending is nowhere near realistic. Never mind that Doge won't have any power over the national budget anyway, because remember, it's a non-governmental entity.

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war-torn enclave has surpassed 46,000 people. Officials say that more than half of the dead are women and children.

Israel and Hamas are reportedly moving closer to a ceasefire deal that would bring an end to the war that has spanned 15 months. The proposal that's currently on the table includes a fighting pause for six to eight weeks while Israel releases Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages. The deal would also require Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, aid that has been blocked from the region for months. But Hamas officials say they aren't sure which of the Israeli hostages are still alive amid the heavy fighting in the region.

The Israeli military said it found one hostage dead earlier this week in southern Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that both sides are, quote, very close to an agreement. Blinken and his fellow diplomats hope to reach a deal before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office. A federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration's Title IX rules that expanded protections for LGBTQ plus students. U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves ruled Thursday the protections overstepped the president's authority.

Reeves said the legislation was, quote, fatally tainted with legal shortcomings. 26 Republican states had already paused the protections after a slew of legal challenges. Donald Trump also previously vowed to end the rules on, quote, day one.

Title IX is a 1972 law that prohibits discrimination based on sex and education. The protections last year were expanded to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. But as civil rights activists called it a step forward, conservatives were angered, arguing the rules could be misused to protect trans athletes and girls' sports, because that would be terrible to them.

The clock is ticking as the countdown to TikTok's possible ban in the U.S. gets closer. The Supreme Court is weighing arguments Friday over whether to delay or overturn the federal law that would force TikTok to be removed from U.S. app stores by January 19th, unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, cuts ties with the app. The legislation was passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by President Biden in April.

The Biden administration argued, quote, no one could seriously dispute that China's control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security. But Trump, who previously supported a TikTok ban, seems to have changed his tune. In a filing last month, Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the deadline so he can reach a, quote, negotiated resolution to save the app. ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing, denies it's a national security risk.

TikTok CEO Shou Xu addressed those concerns before Congress in 2023 and said that 60% of the company is owned by global investors. ByteDance has five board members. Three of them are American. Now, TikTok itself is not available in mainland China. ByteDance argues the law violates the free speech of the 170 million Americans it claims use TikTok every month. TikTok says it will shut down the site in the U.S. by the January 19th deadline unless the Supreme Court rules in its favor.

And last but not least, after many attempts to postpone, President-elect Donald Trump is set to be sentenced in his hush money case. It comes after a divided Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Trump's last-ditch request to block the proceedings in a 5-4 decision.

In May, a jury of his peers found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money paid to a porn actress during the 2016 election. Justice Juan Rashan, who presided over the trial, has previously said he doesn't plan on sentencing Trump to jail time. But the sentencing will enshrine Trump as the first former president or president-elect with a criminal conviction. And that's the news. ♪

One more thing. Meet North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs. She's a Democrat who won her bid for re-election back in November. She defeated her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, by a slim margin, less than 1,000 votes. The state's election board was set to certify her win today, but the entire process has been postponed because Griffin has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he lost because of mass voter fraud. Sound familiar?

Griffin claims that 60,000 ballots in the race must be thrown out without providing any real evidence. The matter was supposed to be decided in federal court, but a Trump-appointed federal judge sent the case to North Carolina Supreme Court. You know, the one that Riggs is currently serving on. The high court's conservative supermajority voted to block officials from certifying Riggs' win while they consider Griffin's claims. The state's elections board has asked the federal appeals court to send the case back to federal court.

If the federal appeals court sides with Griffin, the state's Supreme Court could take Riggs off the court, and the decision could open the door for any elected official or political candidate to challenge the results of an election they lost. So our losers rule the day, I guess. So to talk about the broader implications of this case, I called up Justice Riggs herself. Here's our conversation.

Justice Riggs, welcome to What A Day. Thank you for having me. What evidence does your opponent, Republican Jefferson Griffin, have to contest 60,000 votes, including your parents? How is he trying to justify this campaign to get you off the court? So,

So he is using data that would suggest that these voters' voter registration file, so in a big electronic database, doesn't have their social security number or their driver's license number.

One, we know that's not true for some of them. You can imagine big databases not always perfect in the outputs. But also, you know, my dad registered to vote with his military ID. He served his country for 30 years. Military IDs don't have driver's licenses or Social Security numbers on them. So, yeah.

Ultimately, we believe that this is an issue of there are questions of federal law that need to be resolved and promptly, and it should be a federal court that resolves them. Have we ever seen anything like this before? A state Supreme Court considering whether a member of that court should be a member of that court based on what sounds like completely unverified accusations of voter fraud?

Not to my knowledge, but I think the important thing to remember is that these voters did everything that was asked for them. They didn't fail in any way, shape or form. They followed the rules that were in effect at the time of the election. And my opponent is trying to retroactively change the rules so he can engineer his preferred outcome.

We need this issue to end. This election was well run and its results confirm what we all knew. North Carolina is a purple state. Trump won this state. I kept my seat. There was a mix of Democrats and Republicans who won. North Carolina voters are ballot splitters. And there is just no reason for this to persist. And in fact,

Calling into question the legitimacy of elections when you don't like the outcome is incredibly damaging to our democracy and certainly to the independence of the judiciary. You filed a motion asking the appeals court to issue a decision by February 11th when the state Supreme Court's term is set to begin. If your request is denied, how long could this legal battle be drawn out?

The truth is, I don't know the answer to that. My opponent has called into question my service right now on the court. I sign orders every single day. I am doing the job. And starting on February 11th, we'll be sitting for two weeks of oral arguments. The potential disruption for the normal functioning of our judiciary is...

Huge. What I know is this. I am a constitutional officer. I put my hand on a Bible and swore to uphold our state and federal constitutions. I consider it part of the oath I took to make sure that our elections results are respected and that the people who are elected are serving justice.

in that role. That's what voters want me to keep serving in this role. This isn't about me. This is about the voters' will. I was a civil rights attorney for a long time before I joined the bench. I've represented folks who have been disenfranchised. And I know that North Carolina has been used as testing grounds before for different tools to undermine voting strength of marginalized groups, of

of voters writ large. And I worry for the health and functioning of our democracy across the country based on what happens here in this race. Justice Riggs, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much. That was my conversation with North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs.

Before we go, to support disaster relief efforts, Vote Save America 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 180,000 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 slash relief. That's votesaveamerica.com slash R-E-L-I-E-F. We'll also put a link in the show notes. That's all for today. I want to thank the spectacular Josie Duffy Rice for filling in for me yesterday. She's an icon. She's a legend. And she is the moment. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, make sure you know where your important documents are, and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just about how to prepare for disasters, because buddy, disasters do not care where you live or how you vote or how cute your house is like me. What a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston and stay safe, Angelenos.

Waterday is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka.

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