Prepared for the Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Editorial Note: The DHS Daily Briefing is a collection of news articles related to Department’s mission. The inclusion of particular stories is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the political viewpoints or affiliations included in news coverage.

The Washington Post [1/10/2025 3:49 PM, Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, and Marianne LeVine, 40736K, Negative] reports that the Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for nearly 1 million immigrants living in the United States, announcing the move days before the start of a possible deportation campaign by the incoming Trump administration. Immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan who have a form of provisional residency known as temporary protected status, or TPS, will be eligible to renew their work permits for 18 months, the maximum allowed under the law, the Department of Homeland Security said. Lawmakers and immigrant advocates had been urging the department to extend the protected designation for these nationalities and others under a 1990 law that shields immigrants from being deported to countries engulfed in conflict or natural disasters. Angela Kelley, a former Biden official who is now an adviser to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the extension was “right over home plate” because it met DHS’s legal requirement to assess conditions in beneficiaries’ home nations. “These countries merit it,” Kelley said, “and these people are already here.” The New York Times [1/10/2025 4:05 PM, Hamed Aleaziz and Miriam Jordan, 161405K, Neutral] reports that the extension of Temporary Protected Status, as the program is called, allows the immigrants to remain in the country with work permits and a shield from deportation for another 18 months from the expiration of their current protection in the spring. Late last year, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken recommended the protections be extended in a series of letters. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have designated the protection for citizens of countries that are in upheaval and deemed unsafe to return to. President Biden has expanded who could receive the status, as war erupted in Ukraine and instability gripped countries like Venezuela and Haiti. “These designations are rooted in careful review and interagency collaboration to ensure those affected by environmental disasters and instability are given the protections they need while continuing to contribute meaningfully to our communities,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said in a statement. Politico [1/10/2025 5:52 PM, Myah Ward, Negative] reports that the Trump administration is expected to scale back the policy as the incoming president looks to enact tougher immigration rules and forge ahead with mass deportations. While TPS designations can be revoked by the DHS secretary — as long as the government provides a 60-day notice — President Joe Biden’s move to extend protections could delay Trump’s attempts to end them. Axios [1/10/2025 2:07 PM, April Rubin, 16349K, Neutral] report that about 1,900 Sudanese nationals can re-enroll on the basis of ongoing armed conflict and human rights abuses. About 103,700 Ukrainian beneficiaries can re-enroll due to Russia’s war on Ukraine, which the DHS called a "humanitarian crisis." About 232,000 Salvadorian beneficiaries can re-enroll for TPS because of an extension for geological and weather events. The protection was previously set to end on March 10, a couple months after Trump took office. The end date is now Sept. 9, 2026.

Reported similarly:
Bloomberg [1/10/2025 1:08 PM, Alicia Caldwell, 21617K, Neutral]
The Hill [1/10/2025 5:38 PM, Rafael Bernal, 16346K, Neutral]
NPR [1/10/2025 4:28 PM, Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, 35747K, Negative] Audio: HERE
AP [1/10/2025 3:35 PM, Gisela Salomon, 4368K, Positive]
Reuters [1/10/2025 4:21 PM, Ted Hesson, 48128K, Neutral]
CBS News [1/10/2025 2:33 PM, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, 52225K, Negative]
Newsweek [1/10/2025 5:41 PM, Dan Gooding, Jason Lemon, 56005K, Neutral]
Newsweek [1/10/2025 1:34 PM, Rachel Dobkin, 56005K, Negative]
FOX News [1/10/2025 3:01 PM, Adam Shaw, 49889K, Negative]
USA Today [1/10/2025 3:39 PM, Lauren Villagran, 89965K, Negative]
Miami Herald [1/10/2025 1:17 PM, Michael Wilner, 6595K, Neutral]
Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 1:16 PM, Anna Giaritelli, 2365K, Negative]

Reuters [1/10/2025 9:33 AM, David Shepardson, 48128K, Negative] reports that the United States announced on Friday it was admitting Romania into its visa waiver program, allowing visa-free travel by Romanian citizens for up to 90 days starting around March 31. Romania had met the stringent security requirements to join the program, including entering into partnerships with U.S. law enforcement to share information on terrorism and serious crimes, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department said in a statement. Romania is the 43rd country to join the program -- and the fourth added under President Joe Biden after Croatia, Israel and Qatar. The program has led to a boost in tourists from the countries that are added because it makes it easier to come to the United States. Reuters first reported in October 2021 that Romania was among several candidates under consideration to be added. To participate in the program, a country must meet counterterrorism, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, document security, and border management requirements. The DHS will conduct a comprehensive assessment of Romania’s continued designation on U.S. national security and law enforcement interests at least once every two years. The requirements include having a rate of nonimmigrant visa refusals below 3%, issuing secure travel documents, and working closely with U.S. law enforcement and counterterrorism authorities. U.S. citizens can already travel to Romania and stay for up to 90 days for tourism or business purposes without a visa.

The Hill [1/10/2025 3:51 PM, Rafael Bernal, 16346K, Neutral] reports the Biden administration repatriated more than 500 Chinese nationals in the last year, laying the groundwork for systematic deportations across the Pacific Ocean. On Friday, a large-scale deportation flight landed in China, the fifth such flight chartered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since June, when the high-volume flights restarted after a lull that began in 2018. “The Chinese nationals removed this week to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) add to the hundreds who have been removed for not having a legal basis to remain in the U.S. This is the fourth such removal flight that we have arranged with officials from the PRC,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. From October 2021 to September 2022, DHS officials encountered 2,176 Chinese nationals at the southwest border. In fiscal 2023, that number jumped to 24,314 and in fiscal 2024, officials registered 38,246 such encounters. According to DHS officials, the largest obstacles to streamlined flights to China were bureaucratic difficulties in obtaining identification and travel papers for removable Chinese nationals. Under Mayorkas, DHS officials and their Chinese counterparts hashed out agreements to speed up issuance of travel documents with the goal of setting up a standard operating procedure, both for the charter flights and the possibility of deportations on commercial flights.

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 6:16 PM, Naomi Lim, 2365K, Negative] reports the White House is reserving judgment regarding whether President Joe Biden would sign the Republican-proposed Laken Riley Act into law. The White House may not have to adopt a position related to the bill, with Republicans more likely to hold it so Trump can put his signature on it. The Laken Riley Act would reform federal law to require the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take custody of people in the country illegally and detain them over theft-related crimes, with an ICE analysis projecting the cost of additional beds and personnel would be about $3 billion.

AP [1/10/2025 5:03 PM, Lisa Mascaro, Neutral] reports President-elect Donald Trump is preparing more than 100 executive orders starting Day One of the new White House, in what amounts to a shock-and-awe campaign on border security, deportations and a rush of other policy priorities. Trump told Republican senators about the onslaught ahead during a private meeting on Capitol Hill. Many of the actions are expected to launch on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, when he takes office. Trump top adviser Stephen Miller outlined for the GOP senators the border security and immigration enforcement measures that are likely to launch soonest. Allies of the president-elect have been preparing a stack of executive orders that Trump could sign quickly on a wide range of topics – from the U.S.-Mexico border clampdown to energy development to federal Schedule F workforce rules, school gender policies and vaccine mandates, among other day-one promises made during his campaign.

The Hill [1/10/2025 8:20 AM, Ashleigh Fields, 16346K, Negative] reports President-elect Trump is vowing to provide the public with transparency on the recent uptick in mystery drone sightings, suggesting information would be available "about one day" into his second term. "I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration," Trump told a room of Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort Thursday evening. "Because I think it’s ridiculous that they are not telling you about what is going on with the drones.” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) also noted frustrations with the lack of clarity from the federal government on the frequent drone flyovers. "We are home to the largest naval base in the world and Quantico and we house a lot of the seal teams and have a huge national security infrastructure," Youngkin told reporters. "And now, for two years running, we have had drone incursion over secure airspace, and we still don’t know why," he said. "I think that’s absolutely unacceptable.” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) also highlighted drone activity over the state’s nuclear reactors, which he argued could open the potential for espionage and terrorism. "We brought that to the attention of the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and we’ve been asking the FAA to give these states the ability to mitigate these drones and it’s sitting on some bureaucrats desk and that’s real," Landry said Thursday. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) also shared his disappointment with the lack of knowledge about the origins of the unmanned aircraft as well. The back-and-forth comes after reports of drone sightings in New York and New Jersey skyrocketed late last year. The White House and Defense Department officials have offered little information but said there is no reason to believe they pose a threat to national security or are being operated by foreign entities. Officials have suggested that the sightings include a combination of "lawful" drones, other aircraft and stars. Trump responded to the sightings, calling for the drones to be shot down and arguing that the Biden administration just wanted to keep the public "in suspense.” "Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country. Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so!" he wrote on Truth Social in mid-December. "Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, [shoot] them down!!!". Shooting down the aircraft, however, could pose a safety risk, according to experts.

Reported similarly:
Newsweek [1/10/2025 7:49 AM, Ewan Palmer, 56005K, Negative]

New York Times [1/11/2025 3:00 AM, Jeffery C. Mays, 161405K, Neutral]
the Hall Street shelter in Brooklyn, which drew numerous complaints, is among several that will soon close in New York. New York City officials plan to eliminate 10,000 beds for migrants, including closing one of the largest shelters in Brooklyn that had housed up to 4,000 people and drew quality-of-life and crime complaints from the nearby residential neighborhood. The shelter closures, announced Friday, come as the number of migrants arriving in New York City has continued to decrease and the number of asylum seekers being housed by the city is at the lowest level in 18 months. The city has seen the arrival of 229,000 migrants since the spring of 2022. But it is now housing just 51,000 migrants, down from a high of more than 69,000 last January. New York City plans to close at least 46 migrant shelters by June, according to city officials, a move that they project will save billions of dollars. Late last year, the city announced that it would close the sprawling tent shelter that houses thousands of migrants on Randall’s Island, as well as another tent complex that housed families on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. The latest round of closures included three large humanitarian emergency response and relief centers — the Hall Street shelter in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn; and the Watson and Stewart Hotels in Manhattan — as well as the Brooklyn Vybe Hotel in Flatbush. But even with the decline in migrant arrivals, the closures meant that the city would need to find someplace else to house the thousands of people who had been living in the tent complexes. So the city announced on Friday that it planned to open a new shelter on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx that will house 2,200 single adult male migrants who were being housed at emergency tent shelters on Randall’s Island and at other shelters that are closing. “We will continue to do everything we can to help migrants become self-sufficient, while finding more opportunities to save taxpayer money and turn the page on this unprecedented humanitarian crisis,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.

Washington Post [1/10/2025 6:00 AM, Faiz Siddiqui, 40736K, Neutral] reports Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy. In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency" tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, the people said. At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity, with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington, two of the people said. DOGE aims to have a staff of close to 100 people in place by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, they said. While much about DOGE remains unclear — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be "drastic" cuts to federal spending and regulations. Even as the scale of their project grows, Musk and Ramaswamy are encountering a slew of obstacles, including reluctance among congressional Republicans to approve deep budget cuts and a skeptical career civil service.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 8:06 PM, Greg Hilburn, 57114K, Neutral] reports drones have been spotted flying over a nuclear power plant in Louisiana, but their origin remains a mystery to state and local authorities. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry brought up concerns about the drones while sitting next to President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., during a dinner that included other Republican governors Thursday night. "While we were dealing with a terrorist attack in New Orleans, we had drones being flown over our nuclear reactors in Louisiana," Landry said after a reporter asked about mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey. "We’ve been asking the FAA to give these states the ability to mitigate these drones.” The drones were seen flying over or near Entergy’s River Bend nuclear power plant in West Feliciana Parish. "Of course we’re concerned," West Feliciana Parish President Kenny Havard said Friday in an interview with USA Today Network. "There have definitely been confirmed drones flying over the nuclear power plant on several occasions.” Havard said he and Sheriff Brian Spillman have been in direct contact with federal and state authorities about the drones, which he believes to be as big as 5 feet in diameter. Havard said he lives within 500 feet of Entergy’s training center and less than a mile from the nuclear reactors at the plant. "Somebody needs to find out what the hell this is," Havard said. "I live across the street from the nuclear plant, and I told my wife that I heard something one night that sounded like drones. "We’re relying on the feds, but we don’t have much information. I’m hoping (Trump) will provide more information when he’s (inaugurated).” Havard said Landry has been "all in cooperating with us to try to figure this thing out and what to do.” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill weighed in Friday on whether she believes state or local officials have the authority to act if the drones are deemed a threat. "Federal law does not prohibit public safety officials from taking action that they deem appropriate to address the threat,"Murrill said. "The fact that it may be aviation related activity does not impact this authority. What’s most important is that the threat is eliminated. I’ll continue to provide assistance as needed to Sheriff Spillman and public officials in our state on this issue.”

ABC News [1/10/2025 4:27 PM, Julia Jacobo, 33392K, Neutral] reports as of Friday morning, the Palisades Fire, the largest of five major fires burning in the Los Angeles area, had burned through more than 20,000 acres in the Pacific Palisades -- located about 20 miles from Downtown Los Angeles -- and was just 6% contained as firefighters struggle to control the embers being blown by high Santa Ana winds. The Palisades fire is currently the third-most destructive in California history, according to state data. Southern California has experienced extremes between excess precipitation to drought conditions in the past two years. The Pacific Palisades was a tinderbox waiting to happen, the experts said. The Washington Post [1/10/2025 5:26 PM, Janice Kai Chen, Dylan Moriarty and Kevin Schaul, 40736K, Negative] reports the two wildfires raging across Southern California are expected to be the most destructive in Los Angeles County’s history. The Palisades Fire alone is estimated to have destroyed 5,316 structures as of Thursday afternoon, according to an aerial survey by Cal Fire. The destruction far eclipses that of the damage wrought by the 2018 Woolsey Fire in the hills of Malibu, which destroyed just over 1,000 structures, Cal Fire data shows. And the Eaton Fire has already destroyed an estimated 5,000 structures, according to a Cal Fire status report. Firefighters have struggled to contain both wildfires as fierce Santa Ana winds fan the flames.

Reuters [1/10/2025 2:23 PM, Staff, 48128K, Neutral] reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Friday declared a public health emergency for California to address the health impacts of the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles County. The wildfires have devastated Los Angeles neighborhoods on the east and west sides of the sprawling metropolis and have so far killed 10 people and destroyed nearly 10,000 structures, with those figures expected to grow. The declaration gives the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) health care providers and suppliers greater flexibility in meeting emergency health needs of people enrolled under Medicare and Medicaid insurance plans, said the HHS. HHS said its Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) is prepared to deploy responders, along with medical equipment and supplies if requested by the state. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden declared the fires a major disaster and said the U.S. government would reimburse 100% of the recovery for the next six months, and on Friday reiterated his pledge to provide California with the resources it needs to fight the blazes and rebuild.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 7:29 PM, Peter Aitken, 56005K, Negative] reports Mexico is sending firefighters across the southern border to help California battle the devastating wildfires that remain largely unchecked around Los Angeles, California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed on Friday. Six wildfires are now burning around Los Angeles, with the most recent one starting on Friday morning local time. The first fires ignited on Tuesday afternoon as potent Santa Ana winds walloped Southern California and escalated the spreading of the already potent blazes. At least 11 people have died—five from the Pacific Palisades fire and six from the Eaton fire, both of which now rank among the most destructive blazes in California history, at third- and fourth-most, respectively. Social media posts on Friday morning started circulating videos that purported to show Mexican volunteer firefighters crossing the border to assist Los Angeles with tamping down on the half dozen fires surrounding the city. Newsom’s office in response to a Newsweek request for comment said it could not speak specifically to the social media video, but instead pointed to a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in which the governor confirmed Mexico was sending aid. The firefighters will arrive in California on Saturday, following an order from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to assist the state. As many as 90 firefighters will cross the border to assist the efforts of 10,000 personnel on the ground already. The video circulating on social media, therefore, appears to be footage of firefighters from a previous incident, which Newsweek could not specify.

Reported similarly:
Telemundo Washington DC [1/10/2025 11:50 PM, Staff, 46K, Neutral]

Washington Post [1/10/2025 4:38 PM, Scott Dance, 40736K, Negative] reports the fire in the hills above the Pacific Palisades was a monster from the start, spanning the size of 150 football fields within half an hour and an area larger than Manhattan a day after that. It would take four days before firefighters could establish even a short line of containment around it. And yet, well before the Palisades Fire ignited Tuesday morning, preparations had begun for aggressive firefighting. But they could do nothing to stop the flames. Some frightened and angry Angelenos have criticized the firefighting response after reports that overtaxed fire hydrants ran dry and homes stood burning with seemingly few firefighters in sight. Mayor Karen Bass (D) responded Thursday with a pledge to evaluate what may have gone wrong once the fire crisis ends, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday called for an independent investigation into the water shortages. But it’s not clear how soon any failures may come to light: Though winds were easing Friday, dangerous Santa Ana gusts are forecast to pick up again early next week. The consequences already stand as the costliest series of blazes in U.S. history. Four days into the harrowing episode, neither the Palisades Fire nor the massive Eaton Fire — which together have killed at least 11 people, officials have said, and destroyed thousands of structures across 34,000 acres — was more than 10 percent contained. City leaders, fire officials and firefighting experts describe this as a disaster no amount of additional firefighting or stores of water could have prevented. The combination of a historic windstorm and a fast-developing drought during what is normally California’s rainy season produced fire weather so extreme, it stoked what LAFD Fire Chief Kristin Crowley called “one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles.”

New York Times [1/10/2025 5:31 AM, Erin Mendell, 161405K, Negative] reports the devastating wildfires have raised concerns about the safety of the water supply in some places. Here’s a list of the warnings and instructions for residents. The devastating Southern California wildfires have raised worries about the safety of the water supply in several communities, whether because of diminished water pressure or the possibility of contamination by fire debris. Here are some of the water advisories and instructions for residents: •Altadena: The Lincoln Avenue Water Company told customers not to use tap water and not to try to treat water themselves. Instead, they should use bottled water for drinking, brushing teeth, cooking and bathing. Las Flores Water Company and the Rubio Cañon Land and Water Association issued similar advisories to their customers. •Malibu: The Los Angeles County Waterworks District No. 29 told customers to use only bottled or boiled tap water for drinking. The advisory covers customers in the neighborhoods of Sunset Mesa, Big Rock and Carbon Mesa. Areas of Topanga Canyon more than a mile from the beach are not included. •Pacific Palisades: The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power issued a boil water notice on Wednesday and said it would be in effect for at least 48 hours while testing was carried out to determine whether the water was safe to drink and cook with. The advisory covers customers in Pacific Palisades and adjacent communities north of San Vicente Boulevard. •Pasadena: The city northeast of downtown Los Angeles issued an alert not to drink tap water in certain parts of Pasadena Water and Power’s service area. People should use bottled water for drinking, preparing food and washing dishes, it said, and it posted a map of affected areas. •Near Angeles National Forest: Kinneloa Irrigation District, which serves customers mostly living in hillside and canyon areas north of Altadena, told customers not to use tap water for drinking or cooking, not to boil or otherwise try to treat water themselves and to use bottled water instead. It urged customers to limit their use of hot water and to use water in ventilated areas. •San Fernando Valley: Residents returning home after evacuation orders were lifted for the Hurst fire should not drink tap water until the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power says it is safe, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Reported similarly:
NPR [1/11/2025 5:45 AM, Pien Huang, 35747K, Negative]

New York Times [1/10/2025 8:48 PM, Rachel Nostrant, 161405K, Negative] reports Gov. Gavin Newsom of California ordered an inquiry into a loss of water pressure after it was revealed that a reservoir was offline when the fires started. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California ordered an inquiry into the county’s water management after reports emerged that a critical reservoir was offline when the fires started and that firefighters were left with sputtering — and then dry — hydrants as they battled blazes ripping through Los Angeles. At least 11 people have died and more than 13,000 structures have been destroyed in the fires, according to preliminary numbers from state and local officials. While there is no way to know yet for sure, Mr. Newsom said that the lack of water “likely impaired” efforts to protect homes and evacuation routes. “We need answers to how that happened,” he said in a letter dated Jan. 10 to the heads of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Los Angeles County Public Works. A spokeswoman for the Department of Water and Power confirmed on Friday that the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which helps supply water in Pacific Palisades, was offline for scheduled maintenance when the Palisades fire ignited on Tuesday. The reservoir can hold millions of gallons of water that, if available, could have helped in those first crucial hours fighting the fire. The Palisades fire has burned more than 5,000 structures, according to Cal Fire, and was at 8 percent contained as of Friday afternoon. In his request, Mr. Newsom asked the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to review its procedures and share its findings with state water and firefighting officials, who will conduct the investigation. Requests for comment from the Department of Water and Power and Los Angeles County Public Works were not returned. Water for Pacific Palisades is fed by a pipeline that flows by gravity from the larger Stone Canyon Reservoir, said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. That water line also fills the Santa Ynez Reservoir. Water is pumped into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons. Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants. Officials said the storage tanks and the pumping systems that feed them could not keep pace with the demand as the fire raced from one neighborhood to another. Fire hydrants are not designed to supply enough water to fight large or simultaneous wildfires, Mr. Newsom said, but their quick depletion still likely impeded firefighting efforts. An operational reservoir would have been at least initially helpful to more fully feed the water system in the area, Mr. Adams said.

Reported similarly:
Los Angeles Times [1/10/2025 5:02 PM, Ian James and Matt Hamilton, 17996K, Negative]
Politico [1/10/2025 4:47 PM, Alex Nieves, Negative]
Bloomberg [1/10/2025 5:01 PM, Eliyahu Kamisher, 21617K, Negative]

CBS Austin [1/10/2025 11:08 PM, Caitlyn Frolo, 581K, Negative] reports Los Angeles’ water chief reportedly knew about an empty reservoir and broken fire hydrants months before the deadly wildfires now spreading across the city that have left some communities in ashes. The Daily Mail reports the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones was hired by Mayor Karen Bass on a $750,000 salary in May. Now, LA Fire Department insiders are blaming Quiñones for a nearby reservoir disconnection and broken fire hydrants, the outlet reports, claiming this has led to firefighters running out of water. Quiñones reportedly oversaw the emptying of the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Pacific Palisades area during bushfire season, sources told the outlet. The reservoir was designed to hold 117 million gallons of water, but was taken offline recently to fix a tear in the cover, the LA Times reported Friday. Former DWP general manager Martin Adams told the Times that having the reservoir would have helped fight the Palisades Fire. An LAFD source told The Daily Mail that DWP officials said "Had it not been closed they probably would have been okay and had enough water for the fire." During a press conference amid the fires this week, Quiñones said fire crews ran out of water due to "low pressure in the system," because they were using water faster than it was being replenished. The source, a former LAFD senior official told the Mail lack of water was a "common" problem, with a failure by DWP to fix fire hydrants. A current LAFD member told the outlet some fire hydrants were not working in the Palisades area during the fires this week. California Governor Gavin Newsom is demanding an independent investigation into Los Angeles’ power and water departments after firefighters say many hydrants ran out of water. He is also looking into the reported reservoir closure.

CNN [1/10/2025 5:35 PM, Majlie de Puy Kamp, Curt Devine, Casey Tolan, Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken, Rob Kuznia, Scott Glover, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Audrey Ash and Nelli Black, 22417K, Neutral] reports even as flames in Southern California continued to carve a destructive path on Friday and fire officials sought to assess the damage and determine how the fires began, a larger question loomed: Could this level of devastation somehow have been minimized, or is this simply the new normal in an era of climate-related calamities? A CNN review of government reports and interviews with more than a dozen experts suggests the ultimate answer is a mix of both.

San Francisco Chronicle [1/10/2025 5:01 PM, Jill Tucker, Matthias Gafni, Connor Letourneau, 4368K, Negative] reports as firefighters continued to battle several destructive and deadly wildfires across the Los Angeles region Friday, officials and residents started to look at the grueling days, months and years ahead to rebuild a sense of normalcy out of an apocalyptic landscape. As of Friday afternoon, 10 people had been confirmed dead, with officials predicting the death toll would rise, and thousands of homes, restaurants, stores, churches, schools and cars had been reduced to ash and unidentifiable remains of people’s lives. The danger had not passed as dry Santa Ana winds were expected to continue in the coming days, conditions that could take a tiny spark and turn it into an unstoppable freight train of fire moving across wide swaths of rain-deprived land. Two of the fires, Palisades and Eaton, are already the third and fourth most destructive wildfires in California history — and they were still burning Friday with limited containment. Officials said Friday morning that about 153,000 residents were under evacuation orders, with around 57,830 structures at risk. More than 9,000 structures, an estimate based on aerial surveys that included some large vehicles, had been destroyed. Nearly 40,000 acres had burned since Tuesday morning, when the first fire sparked in Pacific Palisades. Nearly 5,000 firefighters were battling the Palisades, the Eaton and the Hurst fires, with more dispatched to the Kenneth Fire, which started Thursday in West Hills, and the Lidia Fire, which ignited Wednesday in Acton. More than 600 California National Guardsmen were also dispatched to the region to help with traffic management and to maintain order, with 200 military police focused on security.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [1/10/2025 3:52 PM, Matt Mcknight and Fred Greaves, 48128K, Neutral]

The Hill [1/10/2025 8:57 AM, Ashleigh Fields, 16346K, Negative] reports the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said they apprehended a suspect on Thursday accused of sparking the Kenneth Fire. LAPD Senior Lead Officer Charles Dinse noted that the fire began Thursday at around 3 p.m. in the West Hills neighborhood. It is being investigated as a crime. "What we know right now is that incident occurred, started here," Dinse said in an interview with NewsNation’s Brian Entin. "And about 20 minutes, 30 minutes later, a suspect was detained over in Woodland Hills area by citizens.” He added that investigators are currently unaware of the individual’s motive for starting the fire that has spread across 900 miles in the Golden State. Citizens helped detain the suspect. Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman, in a separate interview with NewsNation, said the penalty could be as high as a homicide charge, which could result in life in prison. "Justice will be swift," Hochman told NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield on Thursday. " It will be firm, and the maximum punishment will be sought.” "Our goal is to send this warning. Whether it’s looting, these internet scams, robbery or future arsons," he continued, adding that "the day and age of a DA’s office standing on the sidelines is over. We want to bring justice, and we will.” Their comments come as wildfires continue to ravage the region. Officials have issued evacuation orders for 180,000 people and said at least 10 have been killed as a result of the blazes. More than 35,000 acres have been burnt in recent days.

Reported similarly:
CBS Los Angeles [1/10/2025 7:16 PM, Julie Sharp, 52225K, Negative]

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 5:44 AM, Staff, 2365K, Negative] reports police officers detained a man with a blowtorch on Thursday accused of trying to start fires in a Los Angeles community. Citizens initially apprehended the suspect in the area before the LAPD took him into custody. Law enforcement officials received a call at 4:22 p.m. on Thursday notifying them of the suspected arsonist. A person claimed that a man was purposely trying to start a fire in Woodland Hills, according to the Los Angeles Times. Witnesses said a man was carrying a large blow torch while riding a bicycle and trying to set garbage cans and discarded Christmas trees on fire, a Los Angeles Fox affiliate reported. Concerned residents saw the person and pursued him, eventually confronting him and holding him down while waiting for police to arrive. "We were sitting in the backyard and suddenly, we hear a car come to a screeching halt, and the guy is running out saying, ‘Stop! Drop what you’re holding! Neighbors, he’s trying to start a fire! Call 911!’" Renata Grinshpun told KTLA. "He was very, like, ‘I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I’m not putting this down. I’m doing this,’" said another witness. "And very focused on moving forward with the blow torch. And we’re like, ‘We can’t be doing that right now.’". "We really banded together as a group," said Grinshpun. "A few gentlemen surrounded him and got him on his knees. They got some zip ties, a rope, and we were able to do a citizens’ arrest." The incident occurred approximately five miles from the start of the Kenneth Fire in Los Angeles, the most recent fire to start in Southern California. That fire reportedly started at 3:34 p.m. on Thursday and has burned over 960 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Initially, the LAPD could not determine whether the apprehended suspect was involved with the Kenneth Fire. He was not officially charged with anything when he was apprehended, according to multiple reports. However, NewsNation later reported that the Kenneth Fire was now being investigated as arson. Sean Dinse, from the Topanga Division of the LAPD, confirmed to the network that a suspect was in custody.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 7:03 AM, Sophie Clark, 56005K, Neutral] reports military police from the California National Guard have been deployed to support anti-looting operations in response to the California wildfires, according to reports. Osint Defender, an online open-source intelligence group, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Military police with the California National Guard arrived at Ontario International Airport earlier tonight, where they will begin assisting law enforcement on Friday with search-and-recovery as well as looting enforcement in the area of northern Los Angeles impacted by the Eaton fire.” The ongoing wildfires across Los Angeles County, the most populated county in America, have forced at least 180,000 people to leave their homes. The Eaton fire in Altadena/Pasadena is still burning with zero percent containment, meaning evacuation orders are mandatory, with people having to leave their homes and many possessions behind. A number of people have already been arrested for looting during the wildfire evacuations. On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna announced the arrest of two looters who had been caught allegedly trying to steal from a home in Los Angeles. Their identities and details of their alleged crimes have not yet been released. Some Los Angeles residents have also expressed concerns about leaving their homes over fears of looting. Allison Agsten, a LA resident, told local news station KTLA: "We just started seeing all these cars pull up, doors open, groups of men running up our street, going up to the doors of these houses.” Madisen Keavy, a reporter for KCAL, also said: "Our cameras saw three men on scooters immediately turn around when they saw police.” The California National guard arrived in Los Angeles at around 10pm on Thursday to serve alongside law enforcement. As well as combatting looting, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is also investigating a suspect for allegedly starting one of the fires raging in the city. The suspect is a homeless man in his 30s, according to Fox LA’s Elex Michaelson. The suspect was initially detained "by citizens" in the Woodland Hills neighborhood not long after the Kenneth fire started on Thursday, officer Charles Dinsel told NewsNation. Newsweek has contacted the LAPD for comment.

Reported similarly:
Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 6:15 AM, Joe Sommerlad, 57114K, Negative]

Reuters [1/10/2025 8:32 AM, Staff, 48128K, Negative] reports firefighters reported some progress fighting the wildfires that have charred hillsides, homes and streets in Los Angeles County, but the strong winds that fanned the flames were expected to pick up again on Friday, worsening conditions. The fires, engulfing iconic Los Angeles neighbourhoods and tearing through the Hollywood Hills, have so far killed 10 people and destroyed nearly 10,000 structures. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said late on Thursday he expected the death toll to grow. "It looks like an atomic bomb dropped in these areas. I don’t expect good news, and we’re not looking forward to those numbers," Luna told a press conference. Some Pacific Palisades residents ventured back to areas where a wall of fire had already swept through. Brick chimneys loomed over charred waste and burnt-out vehicles. "We are alive. That’s all that matters," private security guard Bilal Tukhi said while standing watch outside his employer’s damaged home, saying the scene reminded him of his native, war-torn Afghanistan. As of early Friday, five fires were still burning. The Palisades Fire between Santa Monica and Malibu on the city’s western flank and the Eaton Fire in the east near Pasadena already rank as the most destructive in Los Angeles history. They have consumed more than 34,000 acres (13,750 hectares) - or some 53 square miles - and turned entire neighborhoods to ash. The Palisades Fire is now 6% controlled, while the Eaton Fire still blazed out of control, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The skies buzzed with aircraft dropping water and fire retardant on the flaming hills. One rapidly growing blaze that broke out on Thursday near Calabasas, one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S. and home to numerous celebrities and gated communities, was 35% under control by early Friday, fire officials said. The so-called Kenneth Fire had expanded to 960 acres (388 hectares) in a matter of hours. The Hurst Fire was 37% contained, while the Lidia Fire, the smallest of the five, was 75% contained. Winds dropped on Thursday from the gusts of up to 100 miles per hour (160 kph) seen earlier in the week, allowing crucial support from the air for firefighters on the ground. But officials said winds intensified again overnight, and red flag conditions were expected until Friday afternoon.

CBS Los Angeles [1/10/2025 2:56 PM, Chelsea Hylton, 52225K, Negative] reports that some residents in Los Angeles County received a wireless emergency evacuation alert on Friday, but county officials confirmed it was an "erroneous" message. In a social media post, LA County officials said they were aware of the messages and apologized for the disruption. "We are working with FEMA to investigate the issue, and for the most current status of evacuation orders and warnings please review the map of evacuations on Alertla.org," officials wrote. At a news conference Friday morning, Director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management Kevin McGowan addressed the error and said there is a level of frustration and fear surrounding the alerts being sent to residents. "First of all I want to clarify this is not human-driven. There is no one sitting at a desk right now initiating emergency alerts. I want to restate that, right now as these alerts are being issued they are not being activated or initiated by a person," McGowan said. He added that it is important for residents to keep their alert notifications. He said people should not disable them.

San Francisco Chronicle [1/10/2025 9:41 AM, Annie Vainshtein, Aidin Vaziri, and Maliya Ellis, 4368K, Negative] reports that for a fourth day straight, several wildfires are burning in Los Angeles and the National Weather Service has extended a red flag warning until Friday evening. Several additional Santa Ana wind events are predicted through Tuesday, possibly longer. At least 150,000 residents are under evacuation orders. The death toll stands at 10 and officials say they expect it to rise. The two largest blazes — the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire — have become the most destructive in Los Angeles County’s history, according to Cal Fire. The Eaton Fire is 3% contained and has burned nearly 14,000 acres and damaged or destroyed at least 7,000 structures (including vehicles) in and around Altadena. The Palisades Fire is 8% contained and has burned more than 21,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 5,300 structures (including vehicles); the Hurst Fire is 70% contained and has burned 771 acres in and around Sylmar. People who applied for FEMA assistance and were immediately denied were rejected because of a “glitch,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at a press conference Friday afternoon. Barger said FEMA officials had identified a system issue that caused applicants with insurance to be declined. “Do not feel that that denial is real,” Barger said. “They want you to reapply because you are not being denied.” According to FEMA’s website, people affected by the wildfires can apply for disaster assistance regardless of their insurance status, though insured applicants are required to file an insurance claim first.

New York Times [1/10/2025 6:15 PM, Ivan Penn, 161405K, Negative] reports power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires in the Los Angeles area were on when those blazes started on Tuesday, which energy experts said was concerning because electrical equipment has often ignited infernos during periods of high wind in California and elsewhere. It is not clear what ignited the fires ravaging Southern California, and investigators will likely take months to come to any firm conclusions. But the fact that utility lines stayed on during unusually dry and very windy conditions suggests they could have played at least some role in spreading the fires, energy industry experts said. One of the most concerning details to emerge since the fires began is that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the country, does not have a program in place to pre-emptively shut off power in urban areas when fire risk is elevated.

FOX News [1/10/2025 2:12 PM, Michael Ruiz, 49889K, Negative] reports that federal authorities and California police are investigating after someone flew a drone into the wing of a firefighting aircraft as it carried water to battle the raging wildfires across Los Angeles – causing a "fist-sized hole" and knocking it out of service for days at a crucial time. It happened as the plane, the Quebec 1 Super Scooper that flew down from Canada to help, was working to contain the Palisades Fire, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson told Fox News Digital. It was one of only two Super Scooper aircraft in use in Southern California at the time. Around 1 p.m. Thursday, a civilian drone flew into its wing, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott. "The pilots were unaware that they hit the drone," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said in a press conference on Friday. "It wasn’t until they landed at Van Nuys airport that the maintenance staff noticed that there was a fist-sized hole in the leading edge of the wing, inboard of the landing light.” The FAA is investigating, and a spokesperson told Fox News Digital that interfering with firefighters is a federal crime punishable by up to a year in prison and a $75,000 fine.

Reported similarly:
Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 2:42 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2365K, Negative]

New York Times [1/10/2025 7:43 AM, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ravi Mattu, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Weiser, 161405K, Neutral] reports that the ferocious wildfires that have burned throughout the Los Angeles area continued to rage overnight, consuming an area twice the size of Manhattan. Forecasters expected “critical red flag” conditions to continue on Friday before the hurricane-force winds that have fueled the blazes subside in the afternoon. The devastation has more people asking one hard question: Has this part of California become uninsurable? The latest: At least 10 people have died and roughly 180,000 have been forced to evacuate, as firefighters take on six major blazes and remain on high alert for others. Thousands of homes and businesses, including whole neighborhoods in affluent communities such as Pacific Palisades and Malibu, have burned to the ground. AccuWeather, the private forecaster, tripled its estimates of the fires’ total economic damage and losses to as much as $150 billion. “We are absolutely not out of this extreme weather event,” Kristin Crowley, the Los Angeles fire chief, said last night. Even for a region accustomed to destructive natural calamities, this one seems seared in the collective conscience. The Pacific Palisades area has been described as “a ghost town.” Across the region, the afflicted include everyday Angelenos and Hollywood celebrities. “We think these could be among the most expensive wildfires in U.S. history,” Scott Heleniak, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note on Thursday, estimating that insured losses could top $20 billion. The previous record was the 2018 Camp fire in Northern California, where losses hit $12.5 billion. One group that appears to have been spared so far: holders of catastrophe bonds, which have largely held their value even as local insurance losses mount. With climate disasters on the rise, insurers have increasingly sold these instruments to investors to manage risk. Insurers, homeowners and businesses aren’t so lucky. Even before this winter’s wildfire season arrived, officials in the region had warned that the California FAIR plan, a state-run insurer of last resort that has increasingly become a main source of coverage for residents, was “one bad fire season away from complete insolvency.” The FAIR plan’s exposure soared by 61 percent year-on-year to $458 billion by the end of September, according to RBC’s Heleniak. Driving that is the flight of insurers from the California market: Between 2020 through 2022 — during which more than 23,000 wildfires raged across the state, according to data from state officials — private insurers dropped coverage for 2.8 million home insurance customers, Heleniak wrote. One problem for insurers and Californians: Unlike hurricanes, wildfires are harder to model, ratcheting up the risk. (That said, losses from hurricanes tend to outstrip those of wildfires, analysts note.) California is hardly alone. Climate-related extreme weather events, including hurricanes and tornadoes, are pushing up premiums around the country and insurers are still losing money in many states. As Dave Jones, a former insurance commissioner of California, told Time: “We are marching steadily towards an uninsurable future in this country.”

Reported similarly:
Reuters [1/11/2025 6:13 AM, Joe Brock and Chad Terhune, 48128K, Negative]

New York Times [1/11/2025 5:01 AM, Thomas Fuller, Alexandra Berzon, Kellen Browning and Shawn Hubler, 161405K, Negative] reports the alert came in blaring, hot-pink, all-caps: Be prepared for a “LIFE THREATENING & DESTRUCTIVE WINDSTORM!!!” The notice on Monday was one in a series of warnings issued by the National Weather Service about the powerful Santa Ana winds that were about to blow through Southern California, which hadn’t seen serious rain in months. Officials in Los Angeles, a city that is accustomed to treacherous fire conditions, turned to a well-worn playbook. The city predeployed nine trucks in vulnerable areas and called in 90 extra firefighters. The county fire department moved 30 extra engines into the field and called up 100 off-duty firefighters. The U.S. Forest Service brought in trucks and support units, as well as bulldozers, helicopters and planes. But by Tuesday afternoon, five hours after a fire ignited high in a canyon in the oceanside Pacific Palisades neighborhood, it was clear their preparations would not be enough. As furious wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour tore through the city and propelled showers of embers that ignited entire neighborhoods, Anthony Marrone, the chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, stood at a command post on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Blasted by dust and dirt kicked up by the relentless wind, he snapped a picture with his phone of smoke obscuring the sun and looked out at a panorama of flames, smoke and debris. The fire, he thought to himself, looked unstoppable. It was moving “like a funnel, like a speedway,” he said. “I knew that if we had one start, we probably weren’t going to be able to contain it.” The conflagrations that killed at least 11 people and destroyed thousands of homes have raised questions about whether the dozens of federal, state, county and city fire departments involved in this week’s fire response deployed enough resources — and the extent to which modern firefighting tools are effective against the megafires that have become increasingly common in California over the past decade.

New York Times [1/10/2025 5:44 PM, Christopher Flavelle, 161405K, Neutral] reports that this week’s fires around Los Angeles present a puzzle: Why is California, the state best equipped to deal with wildfires, seemingly unable to prevent blazes from consuming entire chunks of the country’s second-largest city? California’s building code for wildfires is among the most protective in the nation. Its local fire departments are backed up by CalFire, the state fire agency, which has a $4 billion budget and some of the best trained firefighters in the world. The state’s huge tax base generates effectively unlimited resources for wildfire protection. And California has mandatory statewide requirements that homeowners in risky areas create “defensible space” around their property — rules that other Western states would like to apply but can’t because it would anger conservative voters. Yet the events of this week demonstrate the limits of those efforts, raising uncomfortable questions about whether any part of the United States — even the wealthiest, best prepared and most experienced — can truly adapt to wildfires made worse by a hotter climate. “Climate change, and climate events, are causing us to butt up against that limit,” said Joshua Saks, the adaptation program director for Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. “The risk will always grow, and at some point outpace what you’ve done.”

USA Today [1/10/2025 1:40 PM, Janet Wilson, Tom Vanden Brook, and Sarah D. Wire, 89965K, Neutral] reports that as greater Los Angeles burns and California endures what may be its most costly disaster ever, President-elect Donald Trump has unleashed a volley of criticism of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump demanded Newsom, a Democrat, resign late Wednesday as the fires raged and multiplied, posting on Truth Social, "One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum [sic] should resign. This is all his fault!!!". President Joe Biden did not directly address Trump’s comments at a White House briefing Thursday afternoon as he announced the federal government will cover for 180 days the entire cost of wildfire response measures necessary to protect lives, including debris removal, shelter and first responder salaries. "We’re going to make sure you get every resource you need," Biden said. At the end of the briefing, a reporter asked Biden whether he believed California would get the assistance it needs from the incoming administration. "I’m not in a position to answer that question," he said. "I pray to God they will."

Newsweek [1/10/2025 7:10 AM, James Bickerton, 56005K, Neutral] reports the 2024-5 California state budget, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in June 2024, slashed funding for wildfire and forest resilience by $101 million as part of a series of cutbacks. Newsweek contacted Governor Newsom’s office for comment via email on Friday outside of regular office hours. Since Tuesday Los Angeles has been battling a series of devastating wildfires that have left at least ten people dead and demolished over 10,000 properties across the city. Prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump, have blamed Newsom for the disaster with the president-elect commenting "it’s all his fault," and urging the governor to resign on his Truth Social website. Newsom has been widely tipped as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. An analysis of California’s 2024 Budget Bill, which covers its budget for the 2024-5 fiscal year, by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office concluded it slashed $101 million from seven "wildfire and forest resilience" programs. The California Analyst’s Office is an impartial body that analyses the economic impact of proposed laws and is overseen by the state legislature’s Legislative Budget Committee. Cuts included a reduction of $5 million in spending on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) fuel reduction teams, including funds used to pay for vegetation management work by the California National Guard. This left the total available for this scheme at $129 million. An additional $4 million was removed from a forest legacy program aimed at encouraging good management practices from landowners whilst $28 million was slashed from funds provided to multiple state conservancies to increase wildfire resilience. Another $8 million was taken from monitoring and research spending, which had largely been given to CAL FIRE and California universities, whilst $3 million was removed from funding for an interagency forest data hub. A home hardening pilot scheme designed to make homes more resilient to wildfires had its funding cut by $12 million. However despite the recent reductions the overall amount included in CAL FIRE’s standard wildfire protection budget surged from around $1.1 billion in 2014 to $3 billion in 2023, with Politico noting there was a "sharp uptick under Newsom.”

Reported similarly:
FOX News [1/10/2025 9:01 PM, Alexandra Koch, 49889K, Negative]

CBS News [1/10/2025 9:54 AM, Scott MacFarlane, 52225K, Negative] reports that an Indiana man who fled the United States to avoid serving a nine-month prison sentence for storming the U.S. Capitol was arrested in Canada this week on the fourth anniversary of the mob’s attack. Antony Vo was arrested "without incident" in Whistler, British Columbia, on Monday, said Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson Rebecca Purdy. Vo remained in custody on Thursday, according to an immigration lawyer who represents him. Over 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. Vo is among more than 700 Jan. 6 defendants to be sentenced to imprisonment. But he defied a court order to report to prison last year. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., sentenced Vo in April and ordered him to report to prison on June 14. Vo hasn’t kept a low profile since he absconded. On social media, he frequently posts about his case and promotes conspiracy theories about Jan. 6. He has given several interviews to reporters, saying he expects to be pardoned by President-elect Donald Trump later this month. Vo has also used social media to taunt and criticize the judge who sentenced him, claiming he was "wrongfully convicted by a kangaroo court.” Vo had also posted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, 2021, on his social media account. Vo has said he was pursuing a political asylum claim in Canada with help from a Saskatchewan-based immigration attorney. A jury trial for Annie Vo is scheduled to start on March 10.

Wall Street Journal [1/11/2025 2:21 AM, Jennifer Calfas, Gareth Vipers, Sara Randazzo and Rolfe Winkler, Neutral] reports firefighters battling devastating wildfires around Los Angeles hope a reprieve from powerful winds this weekend could help them contain this historic disaster that has so far scorched more than 35,000 acres and killed at least 11 people. President Biden told reporters Friday the death toll will likely increase. “Whether it’s significantly or not, we don’t know yet,” Biden said. “There are still a lot of people who are unaccounted for. We don’t know where they are.” The dayslong battle against at least five wildfires burning across the area has Los Angeles residents on edge. New fires seem to spark daily, prompting additional evacuation orders and worries more homes could be lost. As of Friday night, the Pacific Palisades fire had spanned over 21,000 acres and was only 8% contained. It was moving north, spurring a new mandatory evacuation order in the hills around Encino. The evacuation zone also widened to the east, bordering Interstate 405, an area that includes the Getty Museum. “It’s been fast-moving and can change on a dime,” said Jesus Ruiz, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Fire, speaking about the Palisades fire. Television footage showed helicopters dropping water on the fire every few minutes Friday night as they attempted to slow its advance. At least 10,000 homes, businesses and other structures have been destroyed. More than 150,000 residents have been forced to leave their homes, and 166,000 others are under evacuation warnings. The two largest fires—one that burned through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, and another that devastated Altadena and Pasadena—are considered among the five most destructive wildfires in state history, according to preliminary data from the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. Jim Prabhu, a fire captain with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said the Palisades fire was unlike any blaze he had seen. “It was incredible the rate of spread, how quickly homes ignited,” he said Friday. “Once one house ignited, the next door home would get ignited, then the whole neighborhood. We had to write off whole blocks of communities—there was nothing you could do.” Forecasters said dangerous conditions, with winds reaching 40 miles an hour in some areas, would subside slightly this weekend. Firefighters view the weekend as their best shot to make progress containing the blazes, with conditions ripe for extreme fire spread forecast to return Monday. “It really is a race against time for fire crews to get things under control before the strong, hot winds pick up again,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Hurley.

Washington Post [1/11/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 40736K, Neutral] reports lawmakers might not realize it, but this week they did something illuminating: They demonstrated that bipartisan majorities in Congress — including practically all Republicans — support legislation that contradicts President-elect Donald Trump’s notion that all undocumented immigrants should be deported. They would prefer that he focus on those who commit crimes. Members of the new Republican majority no doubt would object to this framing, but the effect of the first bill taken up by this Congress — the Laken Riley Act, which passed the House — is unmistakable. It would require the federal government to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for theft or burglary. In other words, it would force the incoming Trump administration to focus immigration enforcement resources and detention space on criminal offenders living unlawfully in the United States. This would be a useful bill — if it weren’t for its many flaws: It would threaten due process by mandating the detention of immigrants merely on the suspicion that they committed crimes, and would take away the Department of Homeland Security’s discretion on whom to pursue. It would grant state attorneys general extraordinary power to sue the federal government if they disagreed with its immigration policies. Nevertheless, the legislation flew through the House with 48 Democratic votes, and a handful of Senate Democrats already have announced their support. The bill’s bipartisan appeal has a simple explanation: the commonsense principle that when undocumented immigrants commit serious crimes — such as violent or property crimes — they ought to be removed from the country. Laken Riley, was a nursing student at the University of Georgia who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant while jogging on campus in February. The immigrant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, had been charged with shoplifting the previous year and had a warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court in December 2023. The case drew understandable outrage as a failure of immigration enforcement. Though it’s true that removing people such as Mr. Ibarra can be difficult, as they are often hard to track down and many foreign governments make it difficult to return them to their home countries, an aggressive effort to do so is a valid, essential use of the DHS’s limited resources.

New York Times [1/10/2025 5:00 AM, Staff, 161405K, Neutral] reports the federal government’s ability to regulate immigration, a basic function of any nation, is broken. Over the past four years, some eight million people settled in the United States, and most of them did so unlawfully. Instead of an immigration policy calibrated to the needs of the country, both Americans and immigrants are being let down by a set of outdated laws inconsistently enforced by underfunded agencies. Chaos has been a predictable result. Donald Trump won a second term as president on the promise that he would turn back the clock, restoring order by returning immigrants whence they came. The president-elect has vowed to deport all immigrants who do not have legal permission to be in the United States, and some who do. He also has described plans to curtail both illegal and legal immigration. The United States undoubtedly needs to establish control over immigration, and we describe below the necessary changes. But mass deportations, or reductions in future immigration, are not in National Interest. Immigrants are America’s rocket fuel, powering our nation’s unsurpassed economic and cultural achievements. The famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty mischaracterizes those who leave their home countries behind. They are not the tired and the poor; they are people possessed of the determination, skill and resources to seek a better life. Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 142 immigrants to the United States. Nearly half of the companies in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children. Blue jeans, Tesla, basketball, “God Bless America” — all the work of immigrants.

Bloomberg [1/10/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 21617K, Neutral] reports a vitriolic debate has engulfed what’s typically an arcane corner of immigration policy: the H-1B visa for college-educated foreigners. Proponents say the visa is an essential but insufficient pipeline of global talent for hard-to-fill jobs — jobs that have long been part of the lifeblood of the American economy. Critics say visa holders are stealing jobs from American workers and driving down wages. The profanities both sides have lobbed across social media obscure their agreement that the H-1B program isn’t working as well as it should. Created in 1990, the H-1B is an employer-sponsored visa that authorizes foreigners with “highly specialized knowledge” to work in the US for up to six years. Tech companies and IT consultancies rank among the top recipients. Every year, a government lottery awards 65,000 slots to applicants with an undergraduate degree and another 20,000 to those with advanced degrees (universities and nonprofits are exempt from these caps). The private-sector allocation is typically filled within days. That companies need to hire the best candidates to remain competitive should be uncontroversial. Ideally, the US system would reliably provide such workers, but too often it fails to. Employers, especially in tech, say domestic workers lack the skills to meet their demands and complain the restrictive cap is hampering innovation in critical sectors, from artificial intelligence to bioweaponry. If the H-1B visa could solve those problems, it’d be worth expanding liberally.

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 2:58 PM, Emma Fuentes, 2365K, Negative] reports that in opposing President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, there is a notion going around that, actually, an immigrant influx is the way to bring the United States back to prosperity. The New York Times has editorialized as much — but misses that the family is at the center of most immigrant communities. The outlet has the idea that, one, deportation is plain wrong, and two, immigration is the last hope for our fertility crisis. Certainly, immigrants have the family aspect down more than the average American family: Intergenerational housing, cultural networks, multifamily communities, and other family-oriented traditions make the case for them. Sociologist Brad Wilcox notes in his book Get Married that Asian Americans have the most stable families, largely because of an Eastern "family-first orientation." However, the New York Times editorial fails to emphasize as much, let alone mention it. The perspective in the piece on the "basic imperative" that "America needs more people" reduces the population premise to people-infusion and job-filling.

NBC News [1/10/2025 4:05 PM, Gabe Gutierrez and Olympia Sonnier, 50804K, Neutral] reports Donald Trump’s administration would shut down the Darien Gap, the dangerous Panamanian jungle hundreds of thousands of migrants cross each year on their way north, incoming border czar Tom Homan said Thursday in a one-on-one interview at the U.S. southern border. Homan, acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration and a former ICE agent himself, also acknowledged that Trump’s mass deportation plan would include “collateral arrests” — undocumented immigrants without criminal records who are discovered as ICE agents search for their targets. Homan warned that workplace roundups would ramp up again soon after Trump takes office. A crucial question remains about how the administration will pay for these ambitious plans.

FOX News [1/11/2025 4:00 AM, Alec Schemmel, 49889K, Neutral] reports school districts, universities and state-level education leaders around the country are preparing their schools for the incoming Trump administration, including efforts to protect illegal immigrant children. Many school districts are focusing on efforts to bolster protections for migrant students and families. These include mandatory teacher training on what to do if immigration officials arrive at their schools and new rules that bar them from showing up in the first place. Other districts are readying measures to guarantee funding in case President-elect Trump cuts it. "We will not allow any law enforcement entity to take any type of immigration action against our students or their families within our care," Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Monday at a press conference. Carvalho has committed to using all legal options available to protect illegal immigrants attending school in the district, according to local reports. Shortly after Trump’s election victory in November, the district’s governing board passed a resolution prohibiting district employees from voluntarily complying with immigration authorities, including sharing information about a student’s immigration status. Part of the resolution includes teacher training instructing educators on the proper ways to respond to law enforcement. "Get ready to deal with misinformation. Get ready to deal with any action from Washington, and be prepared," LAUSD board member Monica Garcia said. Several districts are offering training for immigrant students and families as well. In Washington, the Edmonds School District planned a "Know Your Rights Session" led by officials from the local Mexican consulate for immigrant members of its community. The event was later canceled due to backlash, but an official flyer for the event said the Mexican consulate would be on hand to share with community members "how to prepare for immigration raids and your individual rights when approached, detained or incarcerated by police or immigration agents."

CBS Austin [1/10/2025 5:13 PM, Jackson Walker, 581K, Negative] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on Wednesday announced the agency arrested a convicted child molester immediately upon his release from a Rhode Island facility. Jorge Armando Jacinto had served 14 years in the adult correctional institution in Cranston, Rhode Island, according to ICE. He was first arrested in February 2011 and convicted by the Providence/Bristol County Superior Court of nine child molestation offenses. Jacinto was sentenced to 40 years in prison, but the court suspended 20 years of that sentence, ICE said. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston officials arrested Jacinto upon his release on Dec. 15 and issued him a notice to appear before a Department of Justice immigration judge. The agency says the man violated provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Jacinto remains in ICE custody as he awaits a hearing, according to the agency.

FOX News [1/10/2025 8:00 AM, Staff, 49889K, Negative] reports a Mexican illegal immigrant, who was previously deported from the United States five times, has been arrested after allegedly attempting to kidnap a teenage Alabama girl in a store parking lot around 5:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, according to officials. Yordy Centeno Melchor, 31, is charged with second-degree attempted kidnapping and he is being held on a $100,000 bond in connection with the incident. "It seems as if, when he got in the parking lot, he sort of coaxed the girl, who was trying to move a buggy," Elmore County Sheriff Bill Franklin told Fox News Digital. "And she was in that area or near his vehicle. But he coaxed her into coming over to the vehicle. She’s a young girl. She’s 17 years old." Another man nearby apparently saw the girl "in distress" and confronted Melchor, at which point he allegedly fled the scene, and the sheriff’s office issued a be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) alert for the area. The sheriff’s office later obtained a search warrant for the suspect’s phone, and in his "notes" section he had detailed "what he was going to do," Franklin said. "He was going to give her $200, and I won’t get into the intricacies of that, but he was obviously trying to coax her to get in the car," the sheriff explained. Officials aren’t sure exactly when Melchor wrote the note, but the victim told authorities he showed it to her – possibly as a way to communicate with the girl that he was going to offer her money. An employee at the store in Holtsville where the incident happened shared video footage from the parking lot with authorities, who were able to find a license plate number for the suspect. Days later, in a county 30 miles north of Elmore, officials stopped a vehicle matching the one at the crime scene and ran its plates, which matched the suspect vehicle. The driver, Melchor, also matched the suspect’s description. "We’re going to cooperate with ICE. We’re always going to cooperate with ICE." Officials were later able to positively identify the suspect and his prior deportations. They are still working to determine what led Melchor to be deported five separate times.

CBS Miami [1/10/2025 4:24 PM, Sergio Candido, 52225K, Neutral] reports Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz clarified her office’s stance on immigration Friday, emphasizing that while the MDSO will not inquire about detainees’ residency status, it will support federal authorities in local operations that could involve deportations. MDSO does not have the authority to deport individuals. While MDSO cannot enforce federal immigration laws independently, they may cooperate with ICE or other federal agencies when requested, such as sharing information or transferring custody of individuals with immigration detainers, according to ICE’s website. In an interview with CBS News Miami on Tuesday, Cordero-Stutz said that her deputies would not act as immigration enforcement agents, even as President-elect Donald Trump has pledged large-scale deportations as a top priority upon his return to the White House. While urging victims of crime to come forward, Cordero-Stutz clarified that her office would comply with federal law in specific cases.

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 10:37 AM, Jim Talamonti, 2365K, Negative] reports that two Chicago aldermen have proposed eliminating sanctuary-city protections for foreign nationals convicted of or arrested for certain crimes. Aldermen Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares say their proposed amendment to the Welcoming City Ordinance would allow the city to work with federal immigration officers. Lopez said the measure would only apply when an individual has been arrested for or convicted of gang crimes, drug crimes, prostitution-related activities such as human trafficking, or sex crimes involving minors. "The goal of this amendment to our Welcoming City Ordinance is to keep people safe: to keep our citizens safe and to keep the undocumented, who are just following the law and awaiting their time until they can legalize their status, safe by removing those individuals who are here choosing, with emphasis on ‘choosing,’ to engage in certain, specific, illegal activities here in the city of Chicago," Lopez told The Center Square. Alderwoman Julia Ramirez said she is strongly opposed to the amendment, citing the potential for the Chicago Police Department to collaborate with federal immigration officials. "In particular, it would involve CPD to coordinate with ICE, which is quite contradictory of the reason for having a sanctuary city," Ramirez told The Center Square.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 11:03 PM, Kasey Chronis, 57114K, Neutral] reports that, ten days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, Mayor Brandon Johnson is reaffirming Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance. On Friday evening, Johnson issued guidelines to local agencies on how to handle visits from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. This comes as Tom Homan, the incoming border czar, has promised mass deportation in cities like Chicago, and as the City Council is expected to take up a key vote on the issue in the coming days. If ICE agents visit a city property, Mayor Johnson is now urging the city’s sister-agencies to follow newly-issued protocol. The guidelines include but are not limited to: "Contact your agency or department’s designated attorney or general counsel for further guidance; do not consent to ICE entering any private or ‘sensitive’ City location" and "the highest ranking official or designated supervisor should demand that ICE produce a judicial warrant authorizing ICE to search the premises.” "I am surprised, actually, that the mayor is going through this extraordinary effort to try and stop what Ald. Tabares and I want to do, which is to remove the small number of individuals who choose to commit crimes in the City of Chicago," said Ald. Ray Lopez (15th Ward). "The narrative out there by the mayor and his allies is that we’re trying to remove everyone—that’s simply not the case.” The guidelines—sent by the mayor’s office at 5:15 p.m. Friday—come as city councilmembers are faced with a highly-anticipated vote next week.

NBC News [1/10/2025 2:14 PM, Fredlyn Pierre Louis, 50804K, Neutral] reports that Haitians who are in the U.S. legally under temporary programs say they are concerned about their ability to remain in the country as President-elect Donald Trump plans to end the programs and carry out mass deportations on Day One of his administration. Warrens Dolcine, 23, was a political science and international relations student at the Université d’État d’Haïti, when gang violence began to spread through Port-au-Prince, the capital, and the surrounding area, putting her and her mother in constant peril. After a tumultuous escape, Dolcine and her mother came to the United States under the Biden administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program, which currently creates a legal pathway for temporary visas for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Eligible individuals are granted permission to stay in the country for up to two years, allowing them also work. Applicants must meet specific criteria, including passing security screenings, and are required to have a U.S.-based sponsor. The program, known as the CHNV, aims to address the growing refugee crises in countries like Haiti. By the end of August 2024, about half a million people from the four countries came to the U.S. under Humanitarian Parole during the Biden administration and 210,000 were Haitian, according to the National Foundation for American Policy.

New York Times [1/10/2025 2:54 PM, Hamed Aleaziz, 161405K, Negative] reports illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have slowed significantly as President Biden prepares to leave office and as President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to crack down on immigration, is days away from retaking power. More than 46,000 people crossed the border illegally in November, the lowest number during the Biden administration. Though overall crossings ticked up slightly in December, the daily averages were the lowest since summer 2020, according to a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly. January is on track to have even fewer monthly crossings, the official said, adding that government officials were also ramping up deportations after an executive order further restricted asylum this summer.

Border Report [1/10/2025 7:20 PM, Staff, 153K, Positive] reports a bipartisan political organization has suggested several reforms to U.S. immigration and border security policies to reduce illegal crossings on the Southwest border, and to stop migration from its source. FWD.us this week published the 44-page report, "A Better Way Forward," in anticipation of the incoming Trump administration. The white paper is written by Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who says repeated failures by current immigration policies cause cyclical security challenges at the border. "By the time someone makes the choice to migrate irregularly to the United States, the government has already missed multiple opportunities to help them avoid a dangerous and life-threatening journey. To take advantage of these opportunities, the U.S. needs a new legal regime that does not merely react once people have reached the border, but instead addresses the forces and processes that draw people to the border in the first place," said Flores, vice president of immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us. Suggestions include a targeted and strategic foreign policy response to reduce irregular cross-border movement. Key is the U.S. taking the lead to lower the number of migrants trekking north to the border. Expanding access to humanitarian and labor pathways closer to countries of origin where migrants come from. This includes providing jobs and humanitarian protections in the region. Creating new legal pathways to the United States and incentivizing use of these pathways. Modernizing border security infrastructure and asylum processing. This includes receiving asylum-seekers through an orderly appointment process and protecting border communities from security threats. Reforming the U.S. asylum system to include fast and fair adjudication. This includes clearing the 3.7 million backlogged immigration cases. Creating a federal resettlement process for asylum-seekers who are allowed into the United States and matching them with a community that has the resources to support them without creating displaced American workers.

Miami Herald [1/10/2025 5:02 PM, David Goodhue, 6595K, Negative] reports two men from The Bahamas face cocaine-smuggling charges after U.S. Customs agents stopped their boat off Pompano Beach last week and found almost 190 kilograms of cocaine stowed on board, according to federal prosecutors. And — according to the criminal complaint filed against Alfred Lynton Laing and Runo Traveeno Laing — they had been on the feds’ radar since a drug bust by the Drug Enforcement Administration during the summer. Around 11 a.m. Saturday, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations received word a suspicious vessel was on its way to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, the complaint states. Once through the floor, agents found 188 individually wrapped packages weighing a kilogram each of cocaine, the complaint states. They also found six cellphones and two laptop computers, the complaint states. Both Laings are scheduled to be arraigned on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and possession with intent to distribute cocaine on Jan. 21, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 8:36 PM, Delaney Otto, 57114K, Positive] reports November and December saw a higher-than-usual number of vehicle inclusions near the Pembina border, said David Marcus of the U.S. Border Patrol Grand Forks Sector. Numbers from the first few months of the 2025 fiscal year also show a slight increase in land encounters with illegal border crossings. Vehicle incursions are when groups of people illegally drive across the border and, oftentimes, have to abandon the vehicle after it gets stuck in the snow, Marcus said. "And then they get out, they have to walk and we’re able to find them," he said. "A citizen calls them in or a deputy will find them and they’ll call us and then we’ll go out and see what’s going on.” From a period that started in November and ended midway through December, there were nine vehicle incursions, mostly in Pembina — a high number for that amount of time for any station, Marcus said. Pembina is by far the most active, with 80% of the illegal traffic coming through that area because of it being along the interstate. Human smugglers like locations that provide easy egress. "You have I-29 right there," Marcus said. "They can get off the interstate real quick onto a side highway, pick up the people they’re supposed to pick up and then be back on the interstate in a matter of minutes. I-29 connects Winnipeg all the way down to Fargo, and then in Fargo, you can hop on 94 and then (access the) interior to the United States.” Fiscal year 2025, which began in October 2024 and will end in September, is seeing a slightly more active start than previous years in the Grand Forks Sector. October and November saw 59 encounters, while the same time frame from 2024 saw 41, and 37 in 2023. Overall, fiscal year 2023 counted a total of 300 encounters, followed by 259 in 2024.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 6:45 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Negative] reports U.S. Border Patrol apprehended a former mercenary on Saturday after he unlawfully crossed the Rio Grande near Roma in Texas. According to Border Report, Timur Praliev, who previously served with Russia’s notorious Wagner Group, crossed the Rio Grande on foot, carrying two passports, $4,000 and a drone. Newsweek has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for further comment via email outside of normal office hours. Border security was a core component of President-elect Donald Trump’s election campaign. Trump has pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. Praliev was a member of the Wagner Group, which has been a critical component in Russia’s war against Ukraine, providing weapons and soldiers to the front, many of whom are former convicts pardoned in exchange for fighting in Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury Department classifies the Wagner Group, which was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a criminal organization. When questioned by agents, Praliev claimed to be "a citizen and national of Kazakhstan," according to the criminal complaint filed against him. Praliev was discovered with a Russian passport, a Kazakh passport, $4,000, and 60,000 pesos. Border Patrol agents discovered a drone inside his backpack. It remains unclear at this stage what Praliev specifically did for the Wagner Group or why he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border carrying a drone. The Congressional Research Service reported that Wagner "has played a key role in Russia’s war in Ukraine and operates in multiple countries, particularly across Africa.” Border Patrol charged Praliev with illegally entering the U.S., a federal misdemeanor, to which he pleaded guilty. Praliev appeared before a judge at the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday. Federal prosecutor McColgan requested a 15-day sentence, expressing concern for community safety upon the defendant’s release because of his ties to a group linked to political violence. U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker questioned whether Praliev’s connection to the Wagner Group warranted the length of his sentence for illegally crossing the border. He also stated that, instead of being released, Praliev would remain in federal custody following the completion of his sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda McColgan said on Tuesday morning: "The defendant was also in possession of a drone in his backpack when he crossed into the United States and he admitted, when interviewed, to being a member of the Wagner Group.” U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker, addressing Praliev said: "They just did a pit stop here to lay a record. So that if there’s a second conviction for illegal entry, they can seek stronger punishment. "I think the government is concerned of why you’re here to begin with. I don’t know, necessarily, why you’re here to begin with.

Border Report [1/10/2025 6:31 PM, Luisa Barrios, 153K, Neutral] reports Border Patrol officials said a man-made tunnel that leads from Juarez to El Paso was discovered. Law enforcement in Juarez is searching the drainage tunnels on Friday, Jan. 10, for migrants who allegedly tried to enter the U.S. illegally through the river at Gate 28, officials from Juarez said. Officials from Juarez said rescue personnel, police, firefighters, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Border Patrol are at the scene.

KTSM [1/10/2025 5:04 PM, Jocelyn Flores, Negative] reports U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso seized 41.6 pounds of cocaine and arrested a U.S. citizen in an alleged smuggling attempt on Thursday, Jan. 9 at the Paso Del Norte port of entry. According to the CBP, the seizure was made at 6 a.m. on Jan. 9 when a 21-year-old male U.S. citizen was attempting to cross from Mexico in a vehicle. The CBP only identified the man by gender and age. Officers performed an X-ray scan on the vehicle and found "anomalies," the CBP said. A physical exam was then done on the vehicle and officers discovered 10 cocaine-filled bundles hidden in multiple compartments, the CBP said. Officers arrested the man and he was turned over to the Texas Department of Public Safety to face charges associated with the failed smuggling attempt, the CBP said.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 9:48 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Negative] reports that immigration raids by the United States Border Patrol (USBP) in Kern County, California, are "sowing chaos" in vulnerable communities, according to California Senate Majority leader Lena Gonzalez. She was responding to a series of raids in the Bakersfield area this week, reported by ABC News, which Border Patrol says are targeted, but which migrant representatives say are intimidating and based on random racial profiling, sparking fears among immigrants in the state. But Bakersfield Mayor, Karen Goh, told Newsweek the operations were cartel-related, led by the El Centro Border Patrol, as part of a "targeted effort to combat narcotics trafficking and human trafficking.” Newsweek has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment via email. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to implement the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history, leading migrant communities to fear that tougher immigration enforcement will become increasingly common under his administration, signaling a potential nationwide shift in how authorities may behave under the incoming government.

Telemundo20.com [1/10/2025 4:23 PM, Staff, 34K, Neutral] reports a Border Patrol chief posted images on social media of arrests of undocumented migrants during operations in Kern County and announced that these will be expanded to Fresno and Sacramento. He added that Operation Return to Sender is targeting criminal immigrants. Residents have reported sightings of federal agency vehicles in other counties, including Fresno.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 12:50 PM, Jose Franco, 57114K, Negative] reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement Friday morning providing more details over its ongoing operation in the Bakersfield area this week the agency calls "Operation Return to Sender." Throughout the week, 17 News requested interviews with the agency over its operation in the Bakersfield area but was provided a statement stating its operation took place over three days and led to 78 arrests. U.S. CBP said it would not provide further statements. The agency said it arrested people unlawfully in the U.S. from Central, South America and China. According to the statement, Border Patrol had 60 agents in the area focusing on alleged drug and human traffickers. Agents were on patrol in marked and unmarked vehicles, officials said. CBP highlighted agents arrested people previously convicted of crimes including sex offenses, drug possession, child abuse, spousal abuse and DUI. Agents seized marijuana and methamphetamine during the operation, the statement said. Border Patrol officials said it is "no stranger" to operating in the Central Valley and its work may send agents all the way to the California-Oregon state line. Border Patrol Agents with the El Centro Sector Border Patrol conducted an operation in and around the Bakersfield area in Kern County.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 5:49 PM, Anna Ashcraft, 57114K, Positive] reports a man is in federal custody after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers found over 100 pounds of meth hidden in a pickup truck that was trying to enter into the United States from Mexico. On Jan. 5 at 9:05 p.m., a 46-year-old man attempted to enter the United States from Mexico in a pickup truck at the Calexico West Port of Entry, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports. CBP officers conducted an initial inspection prior to letting the driver cross into the U.S., but then referred the driver and vehicle to a secondary inspection where a CBP K-9 unit alerted officers to the rear driver’s side of the vehicle. According to CBP, officers then used imaging technology that notified them of several irregularities in the front passenger and rear seats, leading officers to find 11 packages of methamphetamine wrapped in foil that were found underneath the floor of the vehicle, under the rear seat’s factory compartment, and in the fenders of the truck. In total, CBP says officers seized 152.20 pounds of methamphetamine and the vehicle. CBP Officers at the Calexico West Port of Entry discover methamphetamine concealed under the rear seats of a pickup truck (Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection). "This interception underscores the officers’ continued diligence and commitment to national security," said Roque Caza, Area Port Director of Calexico. "I am extremely proud of our officers’ exceptional ability to remain steadfast and vigilant while carrying out our mission and keeping our communities safe.” The driver, who has not yet been identified by authorities, was turned over to the custody of Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation.

Dallas Morning News [1/10/2025 12:45 PM, Uwa Ede-Osifo, 3419K, Negative] reports that a plastic bag of marijuana tucked into a creamy jar of Jif, two small (alive) snakes found in a pouch and a roughly five-inch knife hidden inside a laptop were among the Transportation Security Administration’s ten most unusual confiscations of 2024. But, leading the list at number 1 and 2 — although not necessarily accolades to hang on the wall — were checkpoint discoveries from Texas travelers. TSA officials found a replica improvised explosive device, otherwise known as a homemade bomb, at the El Paso International Airport last year. In another confiscation at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport, a gun was found in a baby stroller. "To avoid going viral IRL, don’t bring your pew-pew, crutches with "ice" or anything not nice to the airport because a lot of people are going to have questions," the official page captioned a Wednesday video post compiling the eclectic catches. The mention of crutches referred to an instance last year where methamphetamine was found in the walking aid. "Stop bringing sharp-slashy thingies to the airport… no, but seriously, cut it out," the page continued.

The AP [1/10/2025 6:40 PM, Kate Brumback and Travis Loller, Neutral] reports a powerful winter storm that dumped heavy snow and glazed roads with ice across much of Texas and Oklahoma lumbered eastward into southern U.S. states Friday, making for dicey travel and a rare snow day for many students. Arkansas and North Carolina mobilized their National Guards for tasks such as helping stranded motorists, as governors across multiple states declared states of emergency. School was canceled for millions of children across a wide tract of southern states from Texas to Georgia and as far east as South Carolina. USA Today [1/10/2025 9:34 AM, Anthony Robledo and Gabe Hauari, 89965K, Negative] Video: HERE that, while Southern California continues to grapple with several devastating wildfires, a massive winter storm is set to bring heavy snow and ice for around 50 million people across the U.S. South. The winter storm is forecast to spread across parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas on Friday through Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. Six to 10 feet of snow is expected from eastern Oklahoma through the Mid-South and the southern Appalachians. Snow will turn into sleet and freezing rain along parts of the Southeast, as well as northeast Texas and southern Arkansas, the service reported. Forecasters warn that icy conditions, between a tenth up to a quarter inch of ice, will make travel dangerous for many. Power outages and downed branches are also a concern. At least 50 million people were under a winter storm warning as of Thursday as the storm spreads along the Gulf Coast Friday, according to the weather service. The storm should weaken by Saturday, bringing lighter snow between 1 and 3 inches to parts of the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley before exiting off the Carolinas. The weather service in Atlanta warned that freezing rain can cause damage along and north of the Interstate 20 corridor through Friday. This comes after a colossal storm produced severe winter weather to much of the country, including northeastern Kansas into north-central Missouri, that saw snowfall around 15 inches. California wildfires:Where are wildfires around Los Angeles? See maps of blazes that could get worse. The map below shows the probability that an area could receive more than 4 inches of snow. Use the slider at the top left to toggle by day. Forecast snowfall totals for the Atlanta area have come down due to higher confidence in a transition to a wintry mix or freezing rain during the day Friday, according to the NWS. Far north Georgia is still looking like it will receive the most snow, with 2-3 inches forecast with locally higher amounts up to 4-5 inches, according to the weather service. Snow is expected to move into Middle Tennessee Friday morning, with the heaviest snow during the late morning and afternoon hours, according to the weather service. Nashville and the surrounding areas are expected to see 4-6 inches of snow, with areas just west of Nashville, such as Waverly, possibly seeing between 6-8 inches, the NWS said.

Reported similarly:
NPR [1/10/2025 3:46 PM, Nate Perez, 35747K, Negative]

MeriTalk [1/10/2025 1:42 PM, John Curran, 31K, Neutral] reports that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Jan. 8 that it has finished work on a series of language templates that local public safety officials can use to greatly expand their ability to deliver wireless emergency alerts in a variety of languages spoken in the United States. Currently, the agency said, most mobile devices in the U.S. only support emergency alerts that are transmitted in English and Spanish language. The language templates being provided by the FCC make it easier for public safety officials to send alerts in American Sign Language, and in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the U.S. in addition to English and Spanish. Those are: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. The Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system was created by Congress through the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act in 2008, and became operational in 2012. Since then, the WEA system has been used more than 84,000 times to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children, and similar situations. Wireless service providers participate in WEA on a voluntary basis. The FCC said this week that "public safety officials will have the option to use these customizable multilingual template alerts in order to better warn their communities and save lives." The new templates cover the 18 most commonly issued and time-sensitive alerts, including alerts for hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 57114K, Negative] reports that, as wildfires rage in California, President-elect Donald Trump is looking to Florida to run the key agency tasked with responding to disasters — and one that is frequently a target of his ire. Trump’s team is eyeing Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to two people familiar with the president-elect’s transition. "That’s their leading candidate," one of the people, granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans, told POLITICO. This person added that Trump had not yet interviewed Guthrie. Guthrie, who would be the latest in a long line of Floridians tapped for major administration jobs, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Guthrie’s pick isn’t official, and a Trump transition spokesperson said they "don’t speculate or get ahead of President Trump on personnel or policy announcements.” The position is a crucial one: In addition to the fires in Los Angeles County, which will consume tens of billions of dollars in federal disaster aid, western North Carolina is still recovering from Hurricane Helene — the devastating storm that struck during the fall and claimed more than 200 lives. FEMA is also a second-tier agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security that presidents rarely stock this early. Trump’s incoming FEMA director will have their hands full. Trump has for years interfered with the agency, most recently on Wednesday, when he suggested in a Truth Social post that President Joe Biden is leaving him "NO MONEY IN FEMA," though $27 billion still remains in the disaster relief fund — an amount that could be eclipsed by California’s need. But there was also the time in 2019 when he suggested at a FEMA briefing that Hurricane Dorian was likely to hit Alabama, redrawing its path with a Sharpie. Last October, he criticized FEMA recovery efforts in western North Carolina and wrongly suggested the agency spent all of its money on illegal immigrants.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 7:47 AM, Staff, 57114K, Neutral] reports the Disaster Recovery Center serving Mercer County remained closed Thursday because of continued inclement weather, but the FEMA center was expected to reopen Friday if weather permits. The Mercer County disaster recovery center is located at the Maple View Church of Christ on 194 Robins Rest Road next door to the Mercer Mall. Hours the center could be open Friday were to be determined based on the weather. As of Thursday, it was scheduled to be open Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is closed on Sundays. Survivors do not have to visit a DRC to register with FEMA. People can call 800-621-FEMA (3362). The toll-free telephone line operates seven days a week. People using a relay service, such as video relay service (VRS), captioned telephone service or others, should give FEMA theirr number for that service. People can also register online at DisasterAssistance.gov or through the FEMA App on your phone. More than $1.1 million in FEMA assistance has been disbursed to date for Mercer County residents working to recover from the flooding and wind damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene last September. The following amounts have been distributed in the following categories: - Serious Needs Assistance $185,570 - Displacement Assisance $232,190 - Clean and Sanitize Assistance $5,700 The deadline to register for FEMA assistance is Feb. 7 Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

FOX News [1/11/2025 4:00 AM, Audrey Conklin, Brooke Singman, 49889K, Neutral] reports residents of Western North Carolina are confused about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role in helping locals with disaster recovery after Hurricane Helene. Locals are especially confused as FEMA plans to end temporary housing assistance for about 2,000 North Carolina residents on Saturday — during a snowstorm, when temperatures across the Appalachian Mountain region are expected to be below 20 degrees. The housing program was initially supposed to end on Friday, but FEMA pushed the deadline back to Saturday. "I’m actually talking to several people that are losing the FEMA vouchers," Ryan McClymonds, founder of volunteer group Operation Boots on the Ground in WNC and Eastern Tennessee, told Fox News Digital on Friday. "They’re terrified that they’re going to have nowhere to stay for their families after today. But we did find out last night pretty late … that FEMA is extending it a whole whopping 24 hours." FEMA told Fox News Digital that its Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program is providing hotel rooms to thousands of Hurricane Helene survivors in WNC. On Jan. 3, FEMA began notifying some families checked into hotel or motel rooms that they are no longer eligible for the program due to one of the following reasons: an inspection indicated their home is now habitable, they declined an inspection or FEMA has been unable to contact them to update their housing needs. About 3,600 households will remain eligible to continue staying in hotel or motel rooms sponsored by FEMA past Saturday — up from the 2,100 eligible households reported by local news outlet WLOS on Thursday. Approximately 2,000 households will still be expected to move out of their hotel rooms on Saturday. Continued eligibility is determined on a case-by-case basis. When eligibility ends, FEMA notifies survivors approximately seven days prior to their checkout date. The agency is also closing disaster recovery centers in the area until Monday — "due to winter weather." "This is unfair and arguably criminal," said Karoline Leavitt, Trump spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary.

NBC News [1/10/2025 2:43 PM, Nicole Acevedo, 50804K, Neutral] reports that Luma Energy, the company in charge of Puerto Rico’s power transmission and distribution system, said on Friday that the islandwide blackout on New Year’s Eve was due to the failure in an underground cable that had long been out of order. Juan Rodríguez, vice president of capital projects at Luma Energy, said that the cable is so old the company that manufactured it closed its doors 25 years ago, Puerto Rican national newspaper El Nuevo Día reported. He added that they are still investigating how exactly that cable triggered the blackout. Half of Puerto Rico remained in the dark on New Year’s Day, drawing frustration and ire from residents as it coincided with a new increase in the price of electricity attributed to rising fuel costs. Puerto Ricans, who already pay twice as much for electricity as those in the U.S. mainland, are now paying more for unreliable service provided by an antiquated and patched-up electrical grid. The grid has not been permanently rebuilt since Hurricane Maria decimated it in 2017. It remains flimsy and prone to breakdowns as outdated fossil fuel plants continue working way past their lifespan to power the grid, and distribution cables fail to transmit electricity. These have caused power outages to become longer and more recurrent.

AP [1/10/2025 4:44 PM, Dánica Coto, 47097K, Neutral] reports that U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm warned Friday in Puerto Rico that the U.S. territory needs more power generation as it struggles to recover from a recent massive blackout. It was Granholm’s last official visit to the island as many worry what kind of resources and funding Puerto Rico’s crumbling power grid might receive under President-elect Donald Trump, who chose a fossil fuels executive as his energy secretary. Granholm noted that 232 outages have hit Puerto Rico since Hurricane Fiona pummeled the island in September 2022 because of insufficient generation. She said that only about half of installed generation capacity is online even as the U.S. Department of Energy has invested millions of dollars in solar projects across the island, generating more than 1,200 megawatts of new renewable capacity. While Granholm was considered an ally by former Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, the island’s newly sworn in governor, Jenniffer González, snubbed the federal energy secretary and was not present during Friday’s press conference. On Wednesday, González, who backs Trump, said Granholm would be visiting Puerto Rico "for her picture tour, so we are asking her, in black and white, that in addition to her photo tour, that she address the root problems. I am not going to fall for the photo game."

The Hill [1/10/2025 2:32 PM, Judy Kurtz, 16346K, Positive] reports that the Secret Service is officially ending its safeguarding of former President Carter, who the agency says has the distinction of being its longest-serving protectee. The federal law enforcement agency ceased protection for Carter as of Friday, the Secret Service said. "It was an honor and a privilege to serve former President Jimmy Carter," the Secret Service said in a statement to ITK. Carter died last month at age 100. The Secret Service protected Carter for more than 48 years after he first became a presidential candidate in the 1976 White House race. Carter had "a lasting impression on everyone at the Secret Service but especially his detail who were inspired by his public service, compassion and incredible dedication to humanity," Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement first reported by NBC News. Secret Service agents were seen walking alongside a hearse earlier this week carrying Carter’s casket ahead of funeral services for the 39th president Thursday in Washington. The former president was buried in Plains, Ga., next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

Reported similarly:
USA Today [1/10/2025 4:59 PM, Josh Meyer, Positive]

WDEL 101.7FM [1/10/2025 4:15 PM, Staff, 168K, Negative] reports one man has been arrested and another is still at-large following a State Police investigation into the use of counterfeit cash in Claymont. Someone listed a vehicle for sale on Facebook, and a transaction was arranged for Wednesday afternoon. Two men drove off after paying for the car, but the owner discovered that he was paid with $400 in counterfeit bills. The car, meanwhile, crashed near I-495 and Governor Printz Boulevard. Troopers said the driver, 34-year-old Kendell Dickerson of Wilmington, was arrested when he returned to the vehicle. But the passenger, 24-year-old Cornell Boatwright, fled on foot. Police were still looking for him.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 1:16 PM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Negative] reports that Kentucky Congressman James Comer has claimed that a Republican-led investigation into the cocaine reportedly found inside the White House was thwarted after the Secret Service allegedly destroyed the evidence. "I had to abandon the probe I led into the cocaine found at the Biden White House because the Secret Service destroyed the little plastic bag that contained the cocaine a few days after it was discovered," Comer said in his new book, All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes that Made the Biden Family Rich. "And the tapes in the White House—amazingly—did not show the particular location of the discovery," writes Comer. Newsweek has contacted the Secret Service, the White House and Congressman Comer for further comment via email. The official investigation into the cocaine discovered in a White House vestibule concluded that a lack of surveillance footage made it impossible to identify a suspect among the hundreds who passed through the area. Compounding the issue, the alleged destruction of evidence by the Secret Service has further diminished any remaining chances of resolving the case, raising questions about transparency and accountability in the inquiry.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 8:54 AM, Kristina Webb, 57114K, Negative] reports that a man who Palm Beach Police said drove a stolen vehicle to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in November is now poised to face charges. That comes less than a month after the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office said it would not file any charges against 53-year-old Farbod Dolat of Sarasota, who was arrested Nov. 14 near Mar-a-Lago. With sufficient information received from police, the charges of vehicle theft and operating a motor vehicle without a license can move forward, a State Attorney’s Office spokesperson said this week. In a Dec. 18 filing in Palm Beach County court, Assistant State Attorney Michael G. Kridos said that while there was probable cause to make the arrest, "the evidence cannot prove all legally required elements of the crime alleged and is insufficient to support a criminal prosecution.” In new documents filed Jan. 3, Dolat is now scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Jan. 23. Police had said in an arrest report that Dolat on Nov. 14 pulled up to Mar-a-Lago that day and asked to speak to Trump — while Dolat was behind the wheel of a stolen SUV. Since the July incident, the U.S. Secret Service said it increased security around Trump, his properties and all of the people the agency protects. Following the Secret Service’s foiling of an apparent assassination attempt at Trump’s suburban West Palm Beach golf club in September, security grew even tighter around Mar-a-Lago.

WFLA [1/10/2025 3:56 PM, Sierra Rains, Positive] reports more than a dozen people were rescued from a boat that was found disabled in the Atlantic Ocean near Florida, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Officials said a cruise ship passing by spotted the disabled boat on Thursday, Jan. 9 and notified the Coast Guard. The boat was around 36 miles northeast of Boca Raton. The Coast Guard said 15 people were on the boat at the time. All passengers were returned safely to the Bahamas with no injuries reported. No further information was provided.

Yahoo! News [1/11/2025 4:02 AM, Brendan Wiesner, 57114K, Neutral] reports ice is starting to creep over the surfaces of the Great Lakes, and the U.S. Coast Guard has officially launched Operation Taconite for the 2024-25 winter season. U.S. Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes announced the start of the annual ice breaking efforts on Jan. 6. Operation Taconite is the Coast Guard’s largest domestic ice breaking operation, with efforts taking place on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, the St. Marys River, the Straits of Mackinac and Georgian Bay. "One of the missions of the U.S. Coast Guard is to facilitate interstate and international commerce. We are there as stewards of the waterways, so we need to make sure the free flow of people and goods can occur throughout the year," said U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Philip Gurtler. Ice breaking involves the use of specially designed ships that can ram through ice and clear passages for other vessels. "There’s actually a couple of different ways that you can do ice breaking," said Gurtler. "What we’ll actually try to do is less pushing through the ice, but actually get on top of the ice and then use the weight of the vessel to break it up and maneuver through it.” Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes is designating several cutter ships to the annual effort. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw is assigned to manage the ice breaking needs of western Lake Superior, specifically the twin ports of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mobile Bay is assigned to Green Bay, and U.S. Coast Guard Cutters Katmai Bay and Neah Bay will manage the St. Marys River and the Straits of Mackinac.

CNN [1/10/2025 6:00 AM, Sean Lyngaas, 22417K, Negative] reports Chinese hackers breached the US government office that reviews foreign investments for national security risks, three US officials familiar with the matter told CNN. The theft, which has not previously been reported, underscores Beijing’s keen interest in spying on a US government office that has broad powers to block Chinese investment in the US as tensions between the world’s two superpowers remain high. The breach was part of a broader incursion by the hackers into the Treasury Department’s unclassified system. The office targeted by the hackers, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), in December gained greater authority to scrutinize real estate sales near US military bases. US lawmakers and national security officials have grown increasingly worried that the Chinese government or its proxies could use land acquisitions to spy on those bases. It’s just one in a string of alleged Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns that have rattled the US government in the last year and that will challenge the incoming Trump administration. A separate Chinese hacking group burrowed deep into US telecom networks to spy on the phone communications of senior US political figures, including President-elect Donald Trump, CNN previously reported. US officials are scrambling to assess any fallout to national security from the hack of unclassified information, which Treasury disclosed to lawmakers last week. The hackers also targeted Treasury’s sanctions office, which just last week sanctioned a Chinese company for its alleged role in cyberattacks, two of the US officials told CNN.

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 5:25 AM, Jamie McIntyre, 2365K, Neutral] reports that, late last year, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had some curious advice for people about texting on their smartphones.Sending texts between an iPhone and an Android device could no longer be considered private, and to be safe, the agencies warned, messages should be shared only over encrypted apps, such as Apple iMessage, Google Messages, WhatsApp, or Signal. The fact that law enforcement agencies that for years have complained their pursuit of criminals is "negatively impacted by device and software encryption" were now advocating the use of end-to-end encryption for routine texts provided a jarring indication of just how deep Chinese hackers had penetrated the U.S. telecom network, including major carriers Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. It was also an indication of how China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence service, after spending years and millions of dollars, was able to assemble a team of highly trained and well-resourced hackers able to exploit the vulnerabilities of America’s antiquated telecommunications infrastructure to poke around undetected for more than two years. Microsoft discovered the massive hacking operation in the fall and dubbed it "Salt Typhoon," typhoon being the "family name" Microsoft assigns to cyber threats from China. An earlier discovery in 2023 dubbed Volt Typhoon involved botnets that amounted to "cyber bombs" that surreptitiously embedded malicious software in vulnerable small business and small office routers that would lie in wait to cripple America’s water treatment plants, electrical grid, oil and gas pipelines, and transportation systems. Salt Typhoon allowed the Chinese to monitor virtually every phone call, listen in at will, read unencrypted test messages, and geolocate mobile phone users. The hackers were able to target senior government officials including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and, even more disturbingly, to figure out who the U.S. government was wiretapping under legal warrants, including suspected Chinese spies, which could tell Beijing which of its spies were compromised and needed to be replaced. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), a former telecom venture capitalist, called it the "worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far.” "I’m still astonished that more folks’ heads aren’t exploding around Salt Typhoon, where the Chinese are into our telecom networks on a cyberattack and candidly have the ability to listen to every one of us on a real-time basis," Warner said at a Senate hearing last month. China has been hacking the United States for years — just last month Chinese hackers remotely accessed several Treasury Department computers after obtaining a digital key to third-party software — but the level of sophistication has increased. The reason this latest hack took so long to discover is that Chinese hackers are getting much better at covering their tracks.

Reuters [1/10/2025 5:46 PM, A.J. Vicens, 48128K, Neutral] reports President Joe Biden is calling for tighter cybersecurity standards for federal agencies and contractors in a new executive order due to be published in the coming days, pushing reforms designed to address repeated Chinese-linked cyber operations and cybercriminal operations, according to a draft of the order seen by Reuters. The order is set to land in the waning days of Biden’s presidency, during which several high-profile, Chinese-linked hacks occurred, according to the U.S. government and cybersecurity research groups. The alleged activity targeted critical infrastructure, government emails, major telecom firms and, most recently, the U.S. Treasury Department. Beijing has rejected the allegations. Biden’s proposal calls for tougher standards for secure software development, the ability to verify that those standards have been met, and a process for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to evaluate the process, according to the draft. Vendors will have to provide secure software development documentation to be evaluated and validated by CISA through the agency’s software attestation program. Attestations that "fail validation" could be referred to the attorney general for “action as appropriate,” according to the draft. The order also mandates the development of guidelines to securely manage access tokens and cryptographic keys used by cloud providers.

NBC News [1/10/2025 3:27 PM, Kevin Collier, 50804K, Neutral] reports one of the largest companies that tracks Americans’ location through smartphone data has been hacked by Russian cybercriminals in exchange for ransom, according to two cybersecurity researchers, a person who has posted a massive trove of allegedly hacked files and a notice the company sent to the Norwegian government. The incident would be one of the largest known breaches of a handful of controversial U.S. companies that sell individuals’ location data, a gold mine for advertisers as it can be used to extensively map a person’s life, usually without their knowledge. The company, Gravy Analytics, and its subsidiary, Venntel, were accused last month by the Federal Trade Commission of illegally collecting and selling Americans’ location data without their knowledge or obtaining proper legal consent. Some of the people Gravy tracked were monitored going into sensitive locations like government buildings, health clinics and places of worship, the FTC said.

CyberScoop [1/11/2025 12:00 PM, Matt Bracken, Neutral] reports three Russian nationals were indicted this week for their roles in managing a pair of cryptocurrency mixing services, operations that were funded in part by money gained through ransomware attacks. The indictment from a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia alleges that Roman Vitalyevich Ostapenko, 55, Alexander Evgenievich Oleynik, 44, and Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov, 32, were the men behind Blender.io and Sinbad.io, fee-based services that allowed users to send cryptocurrency to specific recipients while masking the source of the funds. The Department of Justice said in a press release announcing the indictments that Blender.io and Sinbad.io were favored by criminals attempting to distance themselves from the source of their “criminally derived funds.” The DOJ said the Russian nationals used those services as “safe havens” for laundering ransomware proceeds, crypto thefts and other ill-gotten gains. “By allegedly operating these mixers, the defendants made it easier for state-sponsored hacking groups and other cybercriminals to profit from offenses that jeopardized both public safety and national security,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brent S. Wible, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The indictment and arrests announced [Tuesday], which follow the earlier takedown of the defendants’ criminal infrastructure, yet again demonstrate the value of our international partnerships in countering the global threat from cybercrime.” Blender.io, which was operational from 2018 to 2022, touted its “No Logs Policy” and the deletion of any traces of transactions in an advertisement posted on a well-trafficked internet forum. The ad assured potential users that “there are no personal details asked for” and “as far as blender.io goes they don’t know who you are.” When the site shut down, Sinbad.io popped up in its place a few months later, operating in the same manner until the FBI’s Atlanta field office, Netherlands’ Financial Intelligence and Investigative Service and Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation took down the service in November 2023. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control previously sanctioned both Blender.io and Sinbad.io. Ostapenko faces one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, while Oleynik and Tarasov were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Each defendant faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for money laundering conspiracy and five years for each count of unlicensed money transmitting business. Ostapenko and Oleynik were arrested Dec. 1, 2024, while Tarasov is still at large.

Yahoo! News [1/10/2025 6:07 AM, Shahid Meighan, 57114K, Neutral] reports students in Westerville City Schools are among victims of a global data breach that saw their personal student information hacked, the school district announced Thursday night in an email to parents. And at least several other central Ohio school districts also use PowerSchool, a software platform that allows districts to manage and store information about class assignments, attendance and more, which reported it was hacked through its PowerSource community-focused customer portal on Dec. 28. The California-based company, whose website says it serves 60 million students at 18,000 school districts and organizations, told its customers that a large amount of student, family and educator data was dowloaded by the hacker, who demanded money to delete the stolen data. PowerSchool paid the money and the data was deleted, but the company is working with the FBI’s cybsersecurity operation. On Wednesday, PowerSchool began holding webinars with affected school districts to explain what happened when access was gained through compromised credentials and what information may have been hacked. Not all of PowerSchool’s customers were affected the same way, so school districts affected are expected to notify their staffs, students and parents. In its email to parents, Westerville City school district said that PowerSchool is still working to identify the scope of the breach, but said that it has been contained. Only data on PowerSchool was breached, and Westerville City school district accounts on other platforms such as Google were not accessed, the district said. The district also noted that they do not store the Social Security numbers of students in PowerSchool.

USA Today [1/10/2025 11:08 PM, Michael Loria, 89965K, Negative] reports a federal judge put a plea deal on ice that would have enabled the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks to avoid the death penalty and bring closure to families who have sought justice for over two decades. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his top al-Qaeda lieutenants were set to admit to planning the terrorist attacks in exchange for life in prison this month. The plea deal would have effectively ended over 20 years of wrangling and closed the book on one of America’s most infamous legal chapters. Families of those who lost loved ones in the attacks, reporters and others had all flown on a special charter flight from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to hear the trio admit guilt in person at a military court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they’ve languished for years. Instead, on Thursday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered an administrative stay on the case. The stay gives the court more time to review the issue before deciding if the deals can proceed. It’s unclear how long the review will take. It comes a day after attorneys for Mohammed, often called KSM, and lieutenants Mustafa al Hawsawi and Walid Bin Attash had told a judge that their clients were fully prepared to plead guilty. "That was really remarkable to see he’s willing to do that," said Elizabeth Miller of Mohammed’s commitment to plead guilty this week. Miller lost her father, Douglas Miller, a firefighter in 9/11. "It was just unfortunate that it’s not legally binding and then we had the stay, so it’s back to total pause."

New York Times [1/10/2025 4:40 PM, Eve Sampson, 161405K, Neutral] reports the Islamic State lauded the man who killed 14 people when he rammed a truck into a busy New Orleans street early on New Year’s Day, with the group claiming in a digital newsletter dated Thursday that its online propaganda had inspired the attack. The group said the attacker who ran over pedestrians walking on Bourbon Street was “influenced by the discourse and messaging of the Islamic State.” but its message stopped short of claiming responsibility. The authorities have denied that Mr. Jabbar had active connections to the terrorist group, but the F.B.I. said he was “100 percent inspired by ISIS.” It is unclear what online content Mr. Jabbar may have consumed before the attack, but ISIS produces weekly newsletters as part of a sophisticated media operation that keeps its far-flung factions connected. Experts say this latest claim is unusual for the group.

Washington Examiner [1/10/2025 10:14 AM, Nolan McKendry, 2365K, Neutral] reports that the New Orleans City Council has approved a resolution to investigate the procurement, design, and implementation of street barrier systems on Bourbon Street. The investigation aims to scrutinize the functionality and accountability of both the previously installed Heald HT2 Matador system and the newly acquired RCS8040 S10 removable bollard system. The investigation will encompass a wide range of materials, including engineering reports, safety evaluations, emails, funding sources, maintenance documents and records related to the installation and operation of the barriers. The council is particularly interested in understanding the systems’ impact on public safety and the decision-making process behind their procurement. In an amendment to the resolution, council members emphasized the need for confidentiality during the investigation, citing concerns about security risks and the integrity of the process. Documents gathered will be exempt from public disclosure until the investigation is concluded or the council authorizes their release. Council President Helena Moreno explained that premature disclosure of sensitive information could lead to misinterpretations and public confusion, especially given the potential implications for homeland security and terrorism prevention.

NBC News [1/10/2025 2:40 PM, Daniella Silva, 50804K, Neutral] reports that the New Orleans Police Department on Friday released body camera footage of the shootout between three officers and the attacker who rammed his truck into pedestrians on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing 14 people. The roughly 10 seconds of footage shows two officers with their guns drawn in front of the open driver’s side door of a white pickup truck. A voice can be heard yelling "put your hands up" before shooting erupts and officers and some pedestrians run away from the vehicle. The police department also released a slower version of the same video, as well as a still image showing what appears to be a muzzle flash from the attacker’s weapon. It was the first time details of the shootout, including the names of the officers who killed the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, were released. Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick identified the officers who fired on the attacker as Sgt. Nigel Daggs and Officers Christian Beyer and Jacobie Jordan. She called them "national heroes" and said they "clearly" acted within the law and department policy during the shooting. The bodycam footage is from the camera of another officer, who does not appear to have fired his weapon. "It’s clear the officers were well within policy," she said at a news conference Friday morning. "So we have no concerns about that."

CNN [1/10/2025 2:17 PM, John Fritze, Tierney Sneed, and Clare Duffy, 22417K, Neutral] reports that a majority of the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a controversial ban on TikTok over concerns about its ties to China, with justices lobbing pointed questions at lawyers for the social media app and a group of its content creators. During more than two hours of oral arguments, many of the justices appeared to view the sell-or-ban law approved by Congress in April not as one that primarily implicates the First Amendment but rather as an effort to regulate the potential foreign control of an app used by 170 million Americans. The law, which would restrict the app’s operations in the United States if its Chinese-based parent company ByteDance did not divest from the platform, is set to take effect on January 19 unless the high court steps in to block it temporarily. A decision on that question – the ban’s implementation date – could come quickly, long before the justices resolve any underlying questions about speech protections. Two presidents – Donald Trump and Joe Biden – have both raised concerns in the past about both content manipulation on the platform and its data collection practices. TikTok argued those concerns were speculative and resisted any suggestion that the Chinese government had a role in picking the cat videos, recipes and news that millions of Americans view on the app.

Reported similarly:
Roll Call [1/10/2025 2:41 PM, Michael Macagnone, 440K, Neutral]

New York Times [1/10/2025 9:51 AM, David E. Sanger, 161405K, Negative] reports that for five years now, American officials have insisted that TikTok poses a grave national security threat — even if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, lay out the evidence. But as the case comes before the Supreme Court on Friday, pitting the government’s powers to protect the country against perceived threats against users who claim their First Amendment rights would be impinged by an effective ban on the app in the country, the environment of cyberthreats has changed dramatically. The Biden administration has accused China’s main intelligence services of burrowing deep inside the American utility grid and, more recently, into the complex networks run by nine of the country’s telecommunications firms. The first operation, they contend, is designed to give Chinese authorities the capability to turn off electric power or water pipelines in case of a military confrontation over Taiwan. And the second operation, called Salt Typhoon, has enabled Chinese intelligence agents to listen in on some phone calls and even get inside the government’s system for conducting surveillance of suspected spies. Neither of those operations involved the TikTok app. But the fear inside the National Security Agency and the U.S. military, among others, is that the app itself could give a new pathway to sophisticated Chinese cyber-actors — which is why the app is banned from government phones.

Newsweek [1/10/2025 1:34 PM, Andrew Stanton, 56005K, Neutral] reports that President-elect Donald Trump loomed over the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing into whether justices should block a law that would ban the platform if its parent company does not divest its ownership by January 19. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case may determine whether TikTok will continue to operate in the U.S. after the ban goes into effect. Proponents of the ban point to concerns about whether the Chinese Communist Party could use the platform to undermine U.S. national security, but opponents have raised First Amendment arguments about why the ban would be unconstitutional. A ban would disrupt the creator economy for many influencers who have built a following and stream of income from the platform. Trump came up at multiple points during arguments, with lawyers representing TikTok and its content creators saying he could be instrumental in determining the platform’s future. "As I understand it, we go dark. Essentially the platform shuts down, unless there’s a divestiture or unless President Trump exercises his authority to extend it. But he can’t do that on January 19. On January 19, we still have President Biden. And on January 19, as I understand it, we shut down," said Noel Francisco, the lawyer representing TikTok.

NBC News [1/10/2025 8:10 PM, Dan De Luce, 50804K, Neutral] reports a split has emerged among U.S. intelligence agencies over whether a foreign adversary may have been responsible for unexplained "Havana syndrome" injuries to American diplomats and intelligence officers stationed overseas. A U.S. intelligence assessment released Friday revealed that two of seven spy agencies now say a foreign actor may have developed or deployed a weapon that caused the mysterious health incidents. Officials declined to reveal which intelligence services had shifted their view of the injuries, which first emerged in Havana, Cuba. Five of seven intelligence agencies or departments echoed findings from 2023 and concluded that it was "very unlikely" that a foreign actor caused the medical symptoms that include vertigo, hearing loss, intense headaches, pain in the ears and blurred vision. Their conclusions were based in part on "sensitive intelligence reporting continuing to point away from foreign involvement," according to the assessment. The intelligence reporting included information that foreign adversaries were surprised by the incidents or made clear in internal communications that they were not behind them, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters in a teleconference. But two agencies said a foreign power may be responsible. One said there was a "roughly even chance" that a novel weapon or a prototype device had been used to harm a small number of the U.S. government personnel who reported the unusual medical symptoms. And the other unnamed intelligence agency concluded there was a "roughly even chance" that a foreign actor had developed a weapon that could have harmed them. The view of the two intelligence agencies was based on intelligence reporting indicating that "foreign actors are making progress in scientific research and weapons development," the report said.

Reported similarly:
Wall Street Journal [1/11/2025 3:52 PM, Michael R. Gordon and Dustin Volz, Neutral]
AP [1/10/2025 4:12 PM, David Klepper, 12036K, Neutral]
Miami Herald [1/10/2025 11:56 AM, Michael Wilner and Nora Gamez Torres, 6595K, Neutral]

Bloomberg [1/10/2025 7:22 AM, Brian Platt, 1450K, Neutral] reports Canada is drawing up plans for extensive tariffs against US products if Donald Trump follows through on his threat to put 25% levies on Canadian goods, according to people familiar with the matter. The Canadian government’s draft plans for trade retaliation go well beyond the narrow list of US-made items on which it placed counter-tariffs during a 2018 dispute, according to government officials. Back then, Canada chose to attack certain products, such as Kentucky-made bourbon whiskey, that are exported to Canada from Republican strongholds in the US. The trade spat ended after the US, Mexico and Canada came to terms on a revised regional trade deal. This time, many of those same products would be hit again by Canadian counter-measures, along with items such as orange juice from Florida, where Trump and some Republican officials are based. But Trudeau’s government is also preparing to go much further if necessary, said the officials, speaking on condition they not be identified. One list being circulated internally includes nearly every product the US exports to Canada, said one government official, with the general aim of going "dollar for dollar" on tariffs. A second official said that in the worst-case scenario — Trump puts tariffs on all Canadian exports to the US — it may not be feasible to fully match the value. But the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is examining all options for making it painful on US exporters, the official said.

The Hill [1/10/2025 1:17 PM, Laura Kelly and Rafael Bernal, 16346K, Neutral] reports that the Biden administration announced a slew of new sanctions against allies of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in opposition to his claim of election victory, calling his Friday inauguration "illegitimate" and a "desperate attempt to seize power." Maduro was sworn in as president of Venezuela on Friday by National Assembly leader Jorge Rodríguez, expanding the rift between the country’s de-facto government and foreign powers who explicitly question its legitimacy. The U.S. is increasing its rewards for justice to $25 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest or conviction and that of his minister of interior, Diosdado Cabello. A $15 million reward is also being offered related to Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, part of criminal narco trafficking indictments announced in March 2020. The U.S. is also sanctioning eight Venezuelan officials leading key economic and security agencies; blacklisting high-level military and police officials involved in repression and human rights abuses against democratic actors; and imposing visa restrictions on "Maduro-aligned individuals" identified as undermining the electoral process or acts of repression in Venezuela. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuela, allowing approximately 600,000 Venezuelan nationals to live and work in the United States at least until Oct. 2, 2026. The DHS on Friday also announced TPS extensions for El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine.

New York Times [1/10/2025 4:14 PM, Julie Turkewitz, 161405K, Negative] reports that the Biden administration said on Friday that it was offering $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, after he assumed a third term in office despite evidence suggesting that he lost Venezuela’s recent election. The announcement was a retaliatory measure by Washington, which does not recognize Mr. Maduro as the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr. Maduro has presented no evidence that he won a July election, while his opponent Edmundo González has presented thousands of publicly available vote tallies that he says indicate he easily won the most votes. The United States has said that Mr. González is the president-elect of Venezuela and has urged Mr. Maduro to step aside. The Biden administration also announced that it was extending protections for roughly 600,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the United States with temporary protected status. The measure allows those who apply to stay for an extra 18 months. John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the decision to raise the bounty on Mr. Maduro was part of “a concerted message of solidarity with the Venezuelan people,” meant “to further elevate international efforts to maintain pressure on Mr. Maduro and his representatives.”

Newsweek [1/10/2025 7:57 AM, Hugh Cameron, 56005K, Neutral] reports Ukraine’s latest drone raid has hit targets across Russia that Kyiv says were the locations of covert military facilities. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for comment. Facilities contributing to Russia’s military efforts have long been key targets of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks. Following the relaxation of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weaponry, the attacks have extended in range, and Kyiv has targeted facilities such as drone manufacturing plants that contribute to aerial assaults on Ukraine. The latest large-scale attack has hit at least three industrial facilities. If, as Ukraine claims, these sites operate as covert support hubs for the Russian military, the attack could have substantial consequences for Moscow’s war effort. Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that during an overnight attack, it intercepted and destroyed a total of 40 Ukrainian drones over Rostov, Kursk, Voronezh, Bryansk, Krasnodar, Belgorod and the Sea of Azov. Andriy Kovalenko, the chief of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram that the attack targeted "camouflaged military facilities.” Independent news channel Astra reported that the drone raid caused fires to break out at an industrial zone in the town of Gatchina in the Leningrad region, which houses several factories. State-owned outlet Tass reported that one fire had engulfed an acetone production facility. The Russian Emergencies Ministry later reported that the fire had been extinguished. Astra, citing local authorities, said explosions caused the toxic chemical to spill out of the factory but that no casualties had been reported. Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar said on Telegram that a fire had erupted at an unspecified industrial facility spanning 2,000 square meters as a result of a "massive enemy air attack." It was later extinguished, he added. Astra reported that a motor transport company, located near the site of the fire, could have been Ukraine’s target.

New York Times [1/11/2025 3:24 AM, Aaron Boxerman, 740K, Neutral] reports Hamza Ziyadne, 23, was abducted in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel alongside his siblings and father, whose body was also recovered this week. The Israeli military said on Friday that Hamza Ziyadne, an Arab citizen of Israel held hostage in Gaza, had been killed in the Palestinian enclave, as efforts by mediators to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas to free hostages have seen little success. More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, prompted the war in Gaza, around 98 hostages remain in Gaza. About 36 of those are presumed dead by the Israeli authorities. The confirmation of Mr. Ziyadne’s death comes a day after family and friends buried his father, Youssef Ziyadne, 53, who was also taken hostage. The Israeli military said their bodies been found together in a tunnel under the southern Gaza city of Rafah alongside their dead captors. It was not clear when they were found or how the Ziyadnes died. Before they were discovered, neither hostage had been designated as presumed dead by Israeli officials, who have sought to use intelligence to assess the condition of the remaining hostages. That was likely to further escalate fears among the families of the remaining captives in Gaza that their relatives might have already suffered the same fate. Some hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, while Israel has said that others were executed by their captors. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on Wednesday -- after Youssef Ziyadne’s death was confirmed -- that the military was still investigating.

New York Times [1/11/2025 3:24 AM, Aaron Boxerman and Ismaeel Naar, 740K, Neutral] reports Israeli warplanes bombed ports and a power plant in Yemeni territory controlled by the Houthis on Friday, the Israeli military said, in the latest attempt to force the Iranian-backed militant group to stop firing at Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea. Israel has escalated its strikes on the Houthis in recent weeks in response to repeated attacks by the Yemeni militia, which has been launching missiles and drones against Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The United States and Britain have also struck Yemen repeatedly in an effort to secure international waterways from Houthi attacks, including new American strikes on Wednesday. But it was far from clear whether Israel and its allies could successfully compel the Houthis to end their attacks on Israel and on ships through a bombing campaign. Months of Israeli and American airstrikes have failed to deter the well-equipped militia from conducting attacks. The Israeli military said it had bombed the Hezyaz power station near Sana, the Houthi-controlled capital, and the Red Sea ports of Hudaydah and Ras Isa. The power station is not far from where thousands of Yemenis had gathered in a weekly rally in solidarity with Palestinians, and Ras Isa is Yemen’s main oil export terminal. Experts have warned that attacking ports like Hudaydah, a major conduit for essential supplies in northern Yemen, could further worsen what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Rocked by civil war for more than a decade, millions of people in Yemen face the threat of malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

New York Times [1/11/2025 3:24 AM, Keith Bradsher, 740K, Neutral]
R. Nicholas Burns, the top U.S. diplomat in Beijing, says the Biden administration is making a final push to urge China to reconsider its tilt toward Russia, Iran and North Korea. The United States ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last push to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine. Mr. Burns, in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, asserted that nearly 400 Chinese companies have supplied Russia with so-called dual use products, those with both military and commercial applications. He also said China has supplied 90 percent of the microelectronics used in the Russian war effort. With less than two weeks remaining before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Mr. Burns is raising the administration’s concerns about Russia, as well as China’s alignment with Iran and North Korea, with Chinese ministers in a series of meetings this week and early next week. He leaves the country this coming Tuesday. More broadly, Mr. Burns said that China’s policies toward Russia, Iran and North Korea were inconsistent with Beijing’s desire to play a leading role in international initiatives of global order, like the World Trade Organization and the Paris agreement on climate change. ‘‘Their actions are disruptive because they’re aligning themselves with the most unreliable agents of disorder in the international system,’’ he said. ‘‘So the Chinese can’t have it both ways; they’ve got to make a decision here.’

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