The National Weather Service plans to issue a red flag warning of critical fire weather conditionsincluding gusty winds and low relative humidity, effective Saturday evening through Sunday afternoon, for Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the agency's LA office stated Saturday morning.
The big picture: Historic California wildfires have severely impacted these areas, and the NWS expects offshore Santa Ana winds to pick back up, with another strong offshore event occurring early next week and no rain in sight.
Wildfires have seared more than 30,000 acres in Los Angeles County this week, leaving at least 11 people dead, per an update Friday from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner.
Threat level: With no rain in the forecast, these winds will challenge firefighters battling the ongoing blazes and any new fire starts.
Parts of Southern California are experiencing their driest start to the winter "rainy season" on record, after two wet winters encouraged plant growth that has led to ample dry vegetation for fires to burn.
What they're saying: "With continued dry conditions, Red Flag Warnings are likely. While a brief reprieve from the winds are expected Sunday Night, they will form again Monday through Wednesday, with a peak around Tuesday of gusts between 40 and 60 mph," the NWS said.
"With humidities plummeting to 5 to 15 percent, there is a high risk for Red Flag Warnings."
Why it matters: Meta did this with a methodical striptease over nine days, capturing massive public and MAGA attention.
"This is speaking Trump's love language," a transition source told us.
Zuckerberg had been considering some of the moves for years. Almost all had been in the works for months. But sources tell us Meta deliberately packaged them all up for detonation over nine days to maximize the pop for Trump.
"It's hard to break through in this media environment," said a source familiar with the strategy. "It sends a signal."
Announce your philosophical change on Fox News, hoping Trump is watching. In this case, he was. "Meta, Facebook, I think they've come a long way," Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference, adding of Kaplan's appearance on the "Fox and Friends" curvy couch: "The man was very impressive."
Between the lines: Love it or hate it, the strategy seemed to work brilliantly. Trump praised Meta. Rogan hailed Zuck.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has aggressively investigated Big Tech, said he hopes other companies "follow the lead of X and Meta in upholding freedom of speech online."
Behind the scenes: After visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, Zuckerberg decided to relax Meta's speech policies and "asked a small team to carry out his goals within weeks," The New York Times reported.
Knowing the change would be contentious, Zuckerberg "assembled a team of no more than a dozen close advisers and lieutenants, including Joel Kaplan ... Kevin Martin, the head of U.S. policy; and David Ginsberg, the head of communications. Mr. Zuckerberg insisted on no leaks," The Times added.
Zuckerberg was back at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, a day after taping with Rogan in Austin.
The big picture: Every company in America is watching. We can expect some to copy Zuckerberg — after Elon Musk showed the way.
Shifts this fast are rare. And rarely isolated.
What we're watching: Backlash — internal and external — is already brewing.
Training materials for Meta's new speech policies list examples of permissible attacks against various identity groups.
Roy Austin Jr., who built and led a small civil rights team inside Meta beginning in 2021, announced Friday he was leaving the company.
Biden criticized Zuckerberg's fact-checking reversal as "shameful" at a new conference Friday.
The bottom line: Alex Bruesewitz — CEO of X Strategies LLC, and trusted adviser to the Trump campaign on alternative media — told us companies are either "a. Finally recognizing that 'wokeness' is a cancer, or b. Strategically adapting to the political climate and pandering to Republicans now that we are in power."
"Only time will tell which is the true motivation," Bruesewitz said. "Regardless, MAGA is winning and will continue to win!"
President-elect Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel on Saturday to push for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, Israeli officials said.
Why it matters: Witkoff's traveled to Israel from Qatar as part of a last-minute effort by Trump to press all parties involved in the negotiations to conclude the deal before Jan. 20.
Trump has threatened there would be "hell to pay in the Middle East" if Hamas didn't release the hostages by the time he is inaugurated.
Behind the scenes: A senior Israeli official said Witkoff delivered a message to the prime minister of Qatar in their meeting in Doha on Friday that Trump wants to see a deal within days.
Witkoff is expected to deliver the same message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they meet later on Saturday.
Witkoff declined to comment.
Driving the news: Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediation are still ongoing in Doha.
President Biden's top Middle East adviser Brett McGurk is in Doha and is involved in the negotiations. U.S. officials say McGurk and Witkoff are coordinating their efforts.
About 98 hostages are still held by Hamas in Gaza, among them seven Americans. Roughly half of the hostages are believed to be still alive, according to Israeli intelligence, including three Americans.
If an agreement is reached, the first phase could include the release of 33 hostages — some who are still alive and some who are dead.
The first phase is also expected to include a ceasefire in Gaza for a period of between six and seven weeks and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including those who murdered Israelis.
State of play: White House spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that progress has been made in the negotiations and that a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal is possible before Jan. 20.
"But more compromises are needed," Kirby said.
Israeli officials said on Saturday that there has been progress in the talks over the last 24 hours.
They said Netanyahu has to decide whether to send the directors of the Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies to Doha to join the talks and try to close the deal.
What they're saying: CIA director Bill Burns told NPR in an interview publish on Friday that the hostages are held "in hellish conditions in tunnels and Gaza civilians are also in hellish conditions and suffering terribly."
"So there's every reason for political leaders to recognize that enough is enough. That perfect is rarely on the menu in the Middle East and it's time to make a deal," he said.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a challenge to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurers cover certain recommended preventive services at no cost.
Why it matters: Eliminating the requirement could limit access to services like cancer screenings, preventive medications for heart disease, behavioral health counseling and HIV drugs known as PrEP.
The timing of the high court review puts the legal defense of the ACA mandate in the hands of the incoming Trump administration.
Zoom in: The case takes up whether the coverage requirement, based on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is invalid because the panel lacked authority since its members weren't Senate-confirmed.
Two Christian-owned companies and several individuals sued the federal government on religious freedom grounds in 2020 over the requirement that their employer-sponsored insurance cover no-cost preventive medicines for HIV.
A federal judge in Texas in 2022 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs andblocked the government from requiring insurers to provide free coverage of recommended services.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed with some of the arguments but overturned the nationwide injunction, only blocking the requirement for the companies and individuals who brought the case.
The Biden administration and the challengers each asked the Supreme Court to review that mixed ruling. The administration argued it called into question insurers' legal duty to cover task force recommendations without cost-sharing.
Allowing employers to exclude PrEP over religious objections could open the door to objections over other covered services, including vaccines, KFF has noted.
They say it's hard to turn a battleship around, but Mark Zuckerberg just about-faced his globe-spanning, $1.5 trillion-value, 3 billion-user company — transforming Meta from a bastion of Silicon Valley's socially progressive neoliberalism into a full-on MAGA hive.
Why it matters: After Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump and Trumpism, Silicon Valley is holding its breath to see whether a whole row of tech dominoes is about to fall in the same direction.
Some early signs of wobble:
Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have all lined up to give $1 million each to the Trump inauguration. (Apple's donation came personally from CEO Tim Cook.)
State of play: So far, while Meta's competitors have ritualistically expressed their willingness to work with the new administration, none of them has gone as far as Zuckerberg in donning the corporate equivalent of a MAGA hat.
Publicly traded companies with billions of customers generally try not to alienate any large bloc of the public. Becoming closely aligned with either side of the U.S.'s red/blue divide risks limiting a business's market reach.
Until now, Elon Musk has been the striking exception to this rule. Zuckerberg makes two — and his moves open the door wider for anyone else who wants to emulate them.
As he said in a three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan Friday, "Because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me."
None of the other members of tech's trillion-dollar club can move with the same speed or independence, even if they wanted to.
Case in point: Apple has always aimed, and often managed, to transcend mere politics and inhabit a separate dimension making "great products that people love."
Cook worked with Trump last time around, winning "Tim Apple" as a sobriquet but also occasionally speaking out about the importance of protecting immigrant workers and LGBTQ rights.
Google and Microsoft — both with immigrant, non-white CEOs — also offered some pushback on those issues during Trump's first administration as well.
Tech leaders united to oppose Trump's ban on transgender troops and, in a variety of combinations, took on some of his immigration policies.
This time around, these firms are quietly signaling they want to cooperate with the new Trump team on issues — like competition with China — where they see common ground.
All these companies were the target of a federal antitrust full-court press in the Biden era, and each is wondering whether they can get a reprieve from the new team in D.C.
Every tech giant also wants to expand the use of skilled-worker visas, and that has already led to friction with the immigrant-hostile MAGA movement.
During the first Trump term, an activist young tech work force occasionally took to the barricades to protest government policies and pressure reforms from their employers.
But multiple rounds of layoffs and a messy pandemic recovery have left workers feeling more insecure.
While Zuckerberg's new policies have sparked internal debate and dissent at Meta, the CEO may welcome an exodus of dissenters as a sort of voluntary lay-off.
In a Threads post, he described users who might quit Meta's platforms in protest as "virtue-signaling."
What we're watching: Witheach fresh controversy the new administration touches off, tech CEOs will have to navigate a maze involving Trump's demands for loyalty, employees' emotions and wishes, and their own strategies.
If Zuckerberg's experiment of committing a whole megacompany to taking overt sides in America's vast culture war pays off, others could follow.
The bottom line: Trump used to say that Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison." But the incoming president's relationships with business leaders are strictly transactional, and Meta's CEO is probably resting a lot easier now.
Risk experts believe the insured losses from the Los Angeles wildfires will easily top $20 billion, but in some ways that's only the start of the crisis California now faces.
Why it matters: Anything above $12.5 billion would pass 2018's Camp Fire to become the biggest insured wildfire loss ever, per data from insurance brokers Aon. Economic losses will be substantially higher, perhaps tens of billions of dollars more.
Stunning stat: At the high end of the range, the L.A. fires would be near the list of the 10 costliest natural disasters in global history by inflation-adjusted insured loss, per data from the Insurance Information Institute.
The big picture: The loss number in and of itself is staggering, but only tells a small portion of the story.
Thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses have been lost, and tough decisions about if and how to rebuild will take years, even as climate change makes this sort of disaster more likely.
California's insurance market was already struggling as carriers fled the state's many risks. As a result the state insurer of last resort, FAIR Plan, has ballooned to an unsustainable size.
Systematic reforms designed to expand coverage and let insurers re-price risk are just now coming online, but may be too little, too late, given the scope of losses at play.
What they're saying: "A $20 billion to $30 billion, insured loss event is now on the table," says Jon Schneyer, research director at analytics firm CoreLogic.
Risk assessment firm Verisk said late Thursday the insured property at risk in just the Palisades area is at least $15 billion — not a loss estimate, but a clear sense of what's at stake.
Zoom in: "It's going to be a challenge to the affordability and availability of insurance," says Sridhar Manyem, senior director of industry research at insurance ratings agency A.M. Best.
Ironically, homeowners' insurance premiums in big California cities are much lower than the rest of the country on a cost-per-$1,000-of-coverage basis, per an Oct. 2024 ICE Mortgage Monitor report.
But if the houses are more expensive, the premium ends up being higher anyway — and in the Pacific Palisades, the median house is worth $3.5 million.
"That is a demographically well-off area. When their only alternative is to get the FAIR Plan, you have to wonder what happens to people who don't have the same resources," says Michelle Meyers, an insurance litigator with Singleton Schreiber in Sacramento.
What's next: The immediate question will be what happens to FAIR Plan, which is not built to handle billions of dollars of simultaneous losses.
It's a last resort, but an increasingly important last resort after so many insurers left the state. The state's reforms were designed to keep more from leaving, but the risk may overwhelm those reforms.
"I don't have a lot of faith that a good amount of what's in the sustainable insurance plan really incentivizes carriers to really want to write in the state," says Lindsey Frase, managing director at reinsurance brokers Howden Re. "I suspect there may need to be an intervening step where there is some support form the state government to weather this storm."
What to watch: Experts say the L.A. fires will also reopen conversations about mitigation — because while insurance may be a first line of recovery, steps like clearing brush and hardening roofs are still the first line of defense.
"If you can prevent that first home from picking up an ember and catching fire, it's like a natural fire break," CoreLogic's Schneyer says.
The bottom line: The fires are still burning, but the end of their impact isn't days away — it's years or more down the road.
Denmark sent private messages in recent days to President-elect Trump's team expressing willingness to discuss boosting security in Greenland or increasing the U.S. military presence on the island, two sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios.
Why it matters: Trump's refusal to rule out military force to take control of Greenland was effectively a threat to invade a longstanding NATO ally. Those comments caught Copenhagen and many other European capitals off guard.
The big picture: Greenland (pop. 56,000) is largely autonomous, but Denmark maintains responsibility for defense.
Trump has repeatedly declared that controlling Greenland — the world's largest island — is necessary for U.S. national security vis-a-vis Russia and China. His son Don Jr. visited Greenland this week bearing MAGA hats.
Climate change is opening up the Arctic for competition between superpowers, and could also make it easier to tap Greenland's mineral riches.
Between the lines: The Danish government wants to convince Trump, including through the messages passed to his advisers this week, that his security concerns can be addressed without claiming Greenland for the U.S.
One European diplomat told Axios that Denmark is widely seen as one of the closest allies of the U.S. within the EU, and no one could have imagined it would be the first country with which Trump would pick a fight.
Driving the news: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Múte Egede met on Friday in Copenhagen to discuss the situation.
In a press conference after the meeting Frederiksen said she asked for a meeting with Trump. Egede said he is also ready to talk to the president-elect.
"Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic," Egede, an advocate for independence, said at the press conference.
Behind the scenes: The sources said the Danish government wants to avoid a public clash with the new U.S. administration, and asked members of the Trump team for clarification regarding what exactly the president-elect meant in his comments earlier this week.
In the messages passed to the Trump team, the Danish government made clear Greenland was not for sale but expressed readiness to discuss any other U.S. request regarding the island, the sources said.
The U.S. already has a military base on Greenland and an agreement with Denmark dating to 1951 on defending the island, under which an increase of U.S. forces could easily be discussed.
Danish officials have already said they are looking into further measures to increase investment in military infrastructure and capabilities in Greenland, in consultation with the Greenlandic government.
Zoom out: Greenland played a key role in NATO and U.S. defenses during the Cold War as part of an early warning system to detect Soviet submarines, or potentially missiles.
But if Trump's real concern is security, there's no reason the U.S. couldn't simply increase its military presence and capabilities in Greenland under its alliance with Denmark, contends Malte Humpert, a founder and senior fellow at the Arctic Institute.
What to watch: Secretary of State Blinken downplayed Trump's comments and said there's no point wasting time on them. "It is not a good idea and it is not going to happen," Blinken said.
But Trump's continued comments about this issue, and his son's visit, mean Danish and Greenlandic officials can't rule out the possibility that Trump is quite serious.
The bottom line: The main question is whether Trump would be content to cut a deal with Denmark and declare victory, or whether his true mission is to become the first president in 80 years to gain new territory for the U.S.
People are saying "I do" later in life — and now, more say they'll never tie the knot.
The big picture: The median age of those getting married for the first time was nearly 30 in 2023, up two years from 2010, according to census data.
Compare that to 1950, when the median age was around 22, per the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.
State of play: D.C., New York and California residents are the oldest at their first marriage, at around 31, while Utah, Idaho and West Virginia residents are the youngest, at around 27, recent data shows.
Stephen Miller, President-elect Trump's deputy chief of staff, is asserting himself as the key player in the White House's plan to pass Trump's sweeping agenda through Congress.
Why it matters: Trump trusts Miller implicitly, as does incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, with whom Miller worked hand-in-glove on the campaign.
Miller has become instrumental as Senate GOP leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) haggle over how to pass MAGA priorities, fast.
Miller also gets Congress: While he initially called for a two-bill approach to immigration and tax reform, he has not publicly voiced his preference since Trump indicated he wants one "big beautiful bill."
But Miller's allies inside Trumpland, not to mention senators and lawmakers, know that his top priority is immigration.
"Senators know that he's not just speaking faithfully to what the Trump Team wants, but he's offering counsel on how to enact the policies that we care about," said Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Also in the meeting were Wiles, incoming deputy chief of staff James Blair and James Braid, Trump's incoming director of the Office of Legislative Affairs.
While Miller talks policy, Braid — who previously served as Vice President-elect Vance's deputy staff chief in the Senate — and Blair will be taking over the process of getting the legislation passed.
Between the lines: Miller is one of the few Trump II officials who served in Trump I, and he served all four years, which was a rarity.
He has frontline experience in the Senate, where he served as a top adviser to former Sen. Jeff Sessions.
"It seems very clear that if you want to get a piece of legislation done, you got to work with Stephen Miller," a top adviser to a GOP senator told Axios.
What we're hearing: Miller's allies — and even his enemies on the left — say that he derives much of his power from his deep understanding of immigration and the border.
"No one knows more than Stephen on this," one Trump adviser told Axios.
"Stephen is the Swiss Army knife for Trump: He does the policy, the politics and the media," a Trump insider told Axios.
Miller is previewing his tactical plans to stem illegal immigration: "We are going to use the Defense Department to secure the border of our country," he told Newsmax.
Miller did not respond to a request for comment.
Insiders say Miller, 39, has improved his bedside manner from Trump's first term, when he rubbed some staffers and Hill leaders the wrong way.
"In the past, he would just bull rush to get his way and he didn't care what enemies he made," said a third Trump adviser.
"Now he works the sh--t out of everybody. ... Yeah, he has the ear of the president, but now he gets allies so that he can just have surround sound."
The intrigue: Senators frequently discuss what they have heard from Miller on reconciliation strategy — more than any other Trump team member, a senior Hill aide told Axios.
Miller is also discussing Trump's tax and foreign policy with lawmakers.
Zoom out: With inauguration 10 days away, House and Senate Republicans are locked in a staring contest over a tactical question that has consumed Congress: one or two bills.
Trump seems content to let them fight it out. The House and Senate are basically pursuing two parallel tracks, racing for a finish line neither side can define.
The bottom line: Miller is seen by many as not just Trump's man on the Hill, but one of the most influential figures in Washington.
"Stephen right now looks like he'll be the most powerful unelected man in the White House," said another Trump adviser, who added that "Susie Wiles is the most powerful Trump appointee, and Stephen knows that and she's happy to let him do his thing."
The Justice Department in a report released Friday concluded "no avenue for prosecution exists" for the crimes carried out during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the deadliest series of murders in U.S. history.
The event is widely regarded as the worst race massacre in U.S. history.
The DOJ noted in its report — which corroborates survivor testimonies and existing research — that its conclusion was "despite the gravity of the department's findings." It was also the federal government's first comprehensive acknowledgment of the massacre.
The report confirms that the massacre was not just mob violence but a coordinated military-style attack that involved systematic arson, looting, and killings carried out by white residents, some of whom were deputized by the Tulsa police.
What they're saying: Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division called the massacre "a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community."
"Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa," she said.
"This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation's past."
Zoom out: The DOJ report says prosecution is no longer feasible because the youngest potential defendants would now be over 115 years old and relevant statutes of limitations "expired decades ago," leaving no legal avenue for federal charges.
The DOJ report found:
Coordinated Attack: The DOJ found that — depending on how you define participation — up to 10,000 white residents of Tulsa devastated Greenwood.
Government Complicity: Local law enforcement disarmed Black residents, detained survivors in camps, and participated in arson and murder. Tulsa hindered recovery by imposing restrictive fire codes, rejecting aid, and resisting rebuilding efforts.
Legal Failures: The DOJ acknowledged that civil rights laws could have allowed hate crime prosecutions, but in 1921, no such protections existed and federal laws were unenforced, leaving survivors and descendants without justice.
Between the lines: While the report recognizes its historical significance and documents the trauma and loss suffered by Greenwood's residents, Rev. William Barber of the Repairers of the Breach expressed frustration at the limitations imposed by expired laws.
"Isn't it a tragedy that we have a statute of limitations on the murdering of an entire community?"
"If the Justice Department says the statute of limitations is a law, then there ought to be a campaign for new legislation that says, when the government has participated in political murder, this country will not allow a statute of limitation to prevent justice."
The bottom line: Barber stressed the need to reframe such events in historical narratives, because we "can't let these stories be told incorrectly."
"The Justice Department's findings must be built upon, and this moment must stir action, even if the results take time. Sometimes what you do in one moment has an impact in another."
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg criticized the Biden administration for pushing for censorship around COVID-19 vaccines, the media for hounding Facebook to clamp down on misinformation after the 2016 election, and his own company for complying in an appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.
Why it matters: Zuckerberg's three-hour interview with Rogan gives a clear window into his thinking during a remarkable week in which Meta loosened its content moderation policies and shut down its DEI programs.
Driving the news: The Meta CEO said a turning point for his approach to censorship came after Biden publicly said social media companies were "killing people" by allowing Covid misinformation to spread, and politicians started coming after the company from all angles.
Zuckerberg told Rogan, who was a prominent sceptic of the COVID-19 vaccine, that the Biden administration would "call up the guys on our team and yell at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true."
Zuckerberg said that Biden officials wanted Meta to take down a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV, with a joke at the expense of people who were vaccinated. Zuckerberg said his company drew the line at removing "humor and satire."
But he also said his company had gone too far in complying with such requests, and acknowledged that he and others at the company wrongly bought into the idea — which he said the traditional media had been pushing — that misinformation spreading on social media swung the 2016 election to Donald Trump.
What he's saying: Zuckerberg said his own company's fact-checking process was "something out of 1984," and led to a broad belief that the fact-checkers his own company employed "were too biased."
"It really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it's just, okay, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program."
He said he was "worried" from the beginning about "becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world." Zuckerberg praised X's "community notes" program as superior to Facebook's model.
He later suggested that social media creators are replacing the government and traditional media as arbiters of truth, becoming "a new kind of cultural elite that people look up to."
The flipside: Under Meta's newly relaxed moderation policies, women can be compared to household objects, ethnic groups can be called "filth," users can call for the exclusion of gay people from certain professions and people can refer to a transgender or non-binary person as an "it," Axios' Ina Fried reports.
That policy change unleashed outrage within the company, even before Zuckerberg announced Meta would also be ending DEI programs, as Axios scooped.
Zoom in: In justifying the content moderation re-think, Zuckerberg told Rogan that Facebook's policies would not have allowed someone to post that women should not be allowed in combat roles in the military — even though Trump's pick to run the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, has publicly called for such a change.
"If it's okay to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media," Zuckerberg said.
Top Biden economistsshared a lesson for the Trump administration and beyond on Friday: Whenever the next crisis arrives, the government should not hold back in its response efforts.
Why it matters: The Biden pandemic bill has been criticized for its size and the role it might have played in the inflation crisis that contributed to the administration's election loss. Still, White House economists warn that doing too little in future crises could be an economic disaster.
What they're saying: The warning comes in the final Biden-era Economic Report of the President — issued by the Council of Economic Advisers — that was released on Friday.
"There are risks to robust fiscal action—including rising prices—but a strong fiscal response can deliver durable growth, and the risk of underreacting to a large global shock is material," the economists wrote.
The big picture: The report acknowledges that many pandemic fears that might have inspired the 2021 American Rescue Plan did not bear out.
"With full information about the future, policymakers may have allocated fiscal support differently," they noted.
The intrigue: "The emergence of inflation does not negate the wisdom of a strong fiscal response," the economists noted. The 2020s inflation shock was global, suggesting U.S. fiscal support was not totally responsible for higher prices, they said.
"Inflation harms businesses and families across the income distribution, but the prospect of future inflation must be balanced against labor market pain amid a large, negative shock."
The Fed is "well-positioned to respond to demand-driven inflation when it arises," they added.
The bottom line: Inflation stuck around far longer than most policymakers anticipated and weighed heavily on consumers.
Still, America had the strongest economic recovery of all rich nations — a lesson that Biden economists want lawmakers to remember.
The Supreme Court seemed inclined Friday to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S.
Why it matters: One of the most popular social media apps in the country may disappear next week.
State of play: The court heard oral arguments Friday over the new law that requires TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok or shut it down in the U.S by Jan. 19. The law passed last year with broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden.
TikTok and a group of its users challenged the law, saying it violates their First Amendment rights.
Congress said the law was necessary because ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese government, and that its ability to harvest vast amounts of personal information from American users is therefore a national security threat.
Zoom in: Most of the justices homed in Friday on one central point: The law would allow TikTok to keep operating if it used an algorithm other than ByteDance's. And ByteDance, as a Chinese company, doesn't have First Amendment rights.
"The law doesn't say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to divest," Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.
"The law is only targeted at this foreign corporation that doesn't have First Amendment rights. Whatever effect it has, it has," Justice Elena Kagan said.
"Congress doesn't care what's on TikTok," Chief Justice John Roberts said. "Congress is fine with the expression."
"It doesn't' say, 'TikTok, you can't speak,'" Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.
All of those statements came during the justices' tough questioning of Noel Francisco, the lawyer representing TikTok.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the law on behalf of the federal government, also faced tough questions.
Several justices seemed wary about one of the law's stated justifications — that the Chinese government could manipulate which content TikTok users see. That rationale does seem to have some First Amendment implications, they suggested.
Some justices also questioned whether there might be a less restrictive way to make sure Americans know about China's potential influence over TikTok.
What's next: The court will likely rule quickly — given the looming Jan. 19 deadline.
The wildfires that have killed 10 people and razed about 10,000 structures this week continued to rage across Los Angeles County on Friday.
The big picture: The fires are already among the most destructive recorded in the state.
Although firefighters have made some progress, the high winds that helped fuel the blazes will remain high through Friday and are expected to pick back up early next week.
The latest: A mandatory curfew has been issued for thePalisades and Eaton fire areas and all mandatory evacuation zones, Los Aangeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a press conference Friday.
The curfew — from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. — is intended to boost public safety and discourage looting and burglaries.
About 153,000 residents remain under evacuation orders Friday, Luna said.
Kevin McGowan, director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, apologized for an erroneous evacuation alert that was sent to some residents Thursday.
"There is an extreme amount of frustration, anger, fear, with regards to the erroneous messages ... I can't express enough how sorry I am for this experience," McGowan said.
State of play: The fires have burned through nearly 36,000 acres already, per CalFire.
The Palisades Fire has spread across over 20,438 acres in the area between Malibu and Santa Monica and was 8% contained as of Friday morning.
The Kenneth Fire, which erupted Thursday in the Calabasas and Hidden Hills areas, stood at 1,000 acres and 35% containment Friday.
The Hurst Fire, which has burned 771 acres in the San Fernando Valley, was 37% contained. The Lidia Fire, spread across 395 acres in a rural, mountainous area near Acton, was 75% contained.
The Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills was 100% contained Thursday. Other fires in Pacoima, Hollywood and Studio City have been extinguished, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at the press conference Friday.
The big picture: President Biden announced Thursday the federal government will cover 100% of California's disaster assistance costs for the wildfires.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that the state was activating additional National Guard troops to assist in firefighting efforts.
Sheriff Luna confirmed Friday that the California National Guard had been deployed to the Eaton Fire area Thursday and that more National Guard members were expected in the next "12-24 hours."
Zoom out: The blazes have been propelled by dry conditions and high winds, hitting after many parts of Southern California had no meaningful rainfall for more than eight months.
Why it matters: A robust December employment report suggests the labor market is heating up — or at least not meaningfully cooling — as 2025 begins.
Catch up quick: The jobless rate fell, employers added to their payrolls, a larger share of the adult population was working, and wages rose at a healthy pace last month.
That makes the outlook for further Fed interest rate cuts more remote. Another cut later this month now looks to be off the table, and market odds of a rate cut in March fell sharply Friday morning.
With a solid labor market, officials can move more gingerly as price pressures look stickier.
What they're saying: "I have more confidence that the job market is not deteriorating," Goolsbee tells Axios. "There is a statistical pattern that when unemployment goes up, it tends to keep going up. I have more comfort now that we did stabilize and this time is quite different than previous business cycles."
By the numbers: The U.S. economy added 256,000 jobs last month — the most since March 2024 and about 100,000 (!) more than economists had expected.
That partly reflects a bounce back from hurricane-induced payrolls weakness in the fall, but the strength is echoed in other data.
The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% from 4.2%. (Remember the recession jitters that followed the jobless rate jump last summer? That looks increasingly more like a head fake.)
The share of employed prime-age workers (those aged between 25 and 54) ticked up, rising 0.1% to 80.5% and recovering some of the losses since September.
Average hourly earnings, a measure of wage growth, rose 0.3% in December and have increased by 3.9% over the previous 12 months.
The big picture: The final data point for 2024 came in hot, nearly matching the job gains that kicked off the year. Still, relative to 2023, the labor market has slowed a bit.
The economy added an average of 186,000 jobs per month last year, down from the 251,000 in 2023.
The intrigue: Bond markets sold off on the news, driving an upturn in yields amid diminished prospects for Fed rate cuts.
The yield on the U.S. 10-year government bond rose to 4.78% on Friday morning, the highest level since late 2023. That rate was 3.62% in mid-September when the Fed commenced its rate-cutting campaign.
The Fed started its rate-cutting cycle with an eye on the labor market that, at the time, looked wobbly.
Fears about the job market have since receded. Now there is a closer eye on inflation that has already ceased cooling, with risks that President-elect Trump's trade and immigration policies might reignite it.
"I think the most material thing is this question of, do you think the economy is overheating, or do you think we're in a stabilizing range with inflation getting back to target?" Goolsbee says.
The Fed has cut rates by a full percentage point since September and Goolsbee says he still thinks "we have some to go."
The bottom line: Trump will inherit a labor market that has thrived under the weight of high inflation and high interest rates.
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Axios VisualsThe U.S. economy added 256,000 jobs in the final month of 2024, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, the Labor Department said on Friday.
The U.S. economy added 256,000 jobs in the final month of 2024, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Why it matters: Hiring unexpectedly roared in December, capping a year of resilient labor market conditions that defied naysayers and kept the economy humming.
The report is being watched closely by Federal Reserve officials. Friday's strong figures will likely support expectations that the central bank might hold interest rates steady later this month, as the labor market shows few signs of slowing down.
By the numbers: The number is well above the roughly 155,000 jobs economists anticipated were added last month.
In terms of revisions, the government said there were 212,000 payrolls in November — 15,000 fewer jobs than initially forecast.
Meanwhile, jobs growth in October was revised slightly higher by 7,000 jobs to 43,000 payrolls.
What to watch: Jobs growth has held up, without the much-feared surge in layoffs, raising prospects that the economy can achieve a soft landing.
But it's no guarantee that will continue. Inflation progress has stalled out, prompting many Fed officials to roll back how much the central bank anticipates lowering rates this year.
President-elect Trump said late Thursday that a meeting is in the works with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.
Why it matters: Trump said on the campaign trail that he would swiftly end the nearly three-year-old war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office.
Driving the news: Putin"wants to meet, and we are setting it up," Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago Thursday.
"We have to get that war over with. That's a bloody mess," he added.
Between the lines: Trump gave no timeline for the potential meeting.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday that the Kremlin had not yet received an official request for contact, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
However, Putin is prepared to meet with Trump without any conditions, Peskov added.
The big picture: Despite Trump's ambitious campaign promises, unnamed European officials told the Financial Times that Trump's team has now pushed the timeline for ending the conflict to "several months."
According to the officials, Trump has not yet decided how to end the war and that aid to Ukraine is likely to continue after Trump's inauguration, the Financial Times reported Friday.
Why it matters: Trump is the first former (and returning) president convicted of a felony. The expected sentence of unconditional discharge — also recommended by prosecutors — means the conviction remains on his legal record.
The sentencing, which Trump fought to delay or block altogether, comes just 10 days before his inauguration and White House return.
The nation's high court on Thursday dashed a last-ditch bid by Trump's legal team to stop the proceeding.
Judge Juan Merchanhad already indicated that Trump wouldn't face jail time, after winning the 2024 election.
Driving the news: Trump, appearing remotely from Florida, said during the hearing that "this has been a very terrible experience," CNN reported.
He described the case as a "political witch hunt" and a "setback" for New York and the state court system.
"The fact is I'm totally innocent. I did nothing wrong," Trump said.
Merchan remarked by noting that "this has been a truly extraordinary case."
In his statement to the court, Merchan discussed the limits of the protections of the presidency. He said "they do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way. One power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict."
What they're saying: Trump celebrated the unconditional discharge sentence in a Truth Social post shortly after the hearing Friday, saying it proved "this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED."
While the sentencing hearing had been a "despicable charade," his legal team would now press forward with an appeal, he added.
Catch up quick: Merchan wrote in a filing earlier this month that "unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality" and allow Trump to pursue his appellate options.
A court may impose a sentence of unconditional discharge when it believes "no proper purpose would be served by imposing any condition upon the defendant's release," under New York law.
This would mean that Trump would face no jail time, probation or fines, but would nevertheless serve as a mark on his permanent record.
Merchan noted that prosecutors no longer viewed jail time "as a practicable recommendation" given Trump's election victory.
Flashback: A New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records last May.
He was charged in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels over an alleged sexual encounter. Trump has repeatedly denied the affair.
Since then, Trump's team has repeatedlytried to have his case thrown out under the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling that presidents have immunity for "official acts."
Since his election win, two federal cases against him have been dropped.
His Georgia election interference case was cast into further limbo after the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis late last month. She is appealing the decision.
AI technology is advancing rapidly and if you're not already using it at work, brace yourself.
Why it matters: That was Sam Altman's message, buried in a blog post.
"We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents 'join the workforce' and materially change the output of companies," writes the OpenAI founder.
State of play: The possibility of using AI agents to do work instead of expensive humans has some companies super excited. It's making many workers super anxious.
Distinct from an AI chatbot, an AI agent can work autonomously. You tell it what to do, and the agent goes off and does it in the real world. In other words, it could theoretically fully replace a human.
For example, a scientist could use a bot to conduct research and possibly even design an experiment.
But an AI agent, when prompted, can act as a research assistant. It can not only do the research and design an experiment, the agent can conduct it and compile the results. (In a recent paper, scientists at AMD and Johns Hopkins University described how they successfully had an agent do just that.)
Zoom out: Altman, of course, has a big interest in a future where AI plays a bigger role at work. And it's not clear yet what happens to U.S. workplaces in 2025.
But the idea of AI agents in our workplaces is hardly just an AI entrepreneur's fantasy, researchers and experts say.
Zoom in: Some companies are already experimenting with AI agents in limited pilot programs to conduct drug discovery, for project management, or to design marketing campaigns.
The big picture: The key question is what happens to people's jobs? Most experts agree that agents will change the nature of work over the coming years — particularly for those who work at a desk in front of a computer.
That could mean an agent starts doing some of your work. "In an ideal world, this is a multiplier of effort where I delegate the worst parts of my job to AI," says Ethan Mollick, a management professor at Wharton who studies AI.
Altman has said something similar. He doesn't think about "what percent of jobs AI will do, but what percent of tasks will it do," he said on Lex Fridman's podcast last year. AI will let people do their jobs, "at a higher level of abstraction."
AI has made workers more efficient, but there's still a lot more work to do. "The one thing I'm not worried about is that we're running out of work," GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke tells Axios.
Yes, but: While humans will still absolutely be needed to supervise the AI's work, agents will start replacing humans over the next two years, says Anton Korinek, an economics professor at the University of Virginia and a visiting scholar at Brookings.
"Any job that can be done solely in front of a computer will be amenable to AI agents within the next 24 months," Korinek says in an email, assuring this reporter that he was not himself an AI. (He also agreed he could be replaced by one.)
"From my conversations with business leaders, the majority of large companies employing white-collar workers are looking into what they can automate with AI."
Between the lines: Humans are moving more slowly than the technology. Companies have to figure out how to adjust operations to accommodate AI workers, says Lareina Yee, a senior partner at McKinsey and an AI expert.
And that can be a costly endeavor. The biggest challenge to moving AI agents into the workplace isn't the tech, it's the people, she says. "This is not a technology strategy moment, it's a business strategy moment."
Map showing surface air temperature anomalies in 2024 compared to 1991-2020 average. Image: Copernicus Climate Change Service
Zoom in: Last year was the hottest seen in instrument record-keeping but also much longer before that.
In fact, as with 2023, the year was very likely the hottest in at least 125,000 years.
Some daily global average temperatures, as measured using increasingly precise computer model data, exceeded 2°C above preindustrial levels — flirting with another temperature target in the Paris climate agreement.
According to Copernicus, an agency of the European Commission, each year in the last decade has been one of the 10 hottest on record.
Global average surface temperatures in 2024 were about 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, Copernicus found, and about 0.12°C (.22°F) above 2023's record high.
Data from U.S. centers, such as NOAA and NASA, show similar results. The World Meteorological Organization, a U.N. agency, also found that the global average surface temperature in 2024 exceeded 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
Berkeley Earth, an independent temperature monitoring group that also released its 2024 data Friday, noted in a report that the record-breaking warmth of the past two years "demonstrates a clear deviation from the long-term warming trend, suggesting that warming rates have increased, at least in the short term."
Yes, but: The Paris Agreement's most stringent temperature target of holding warming to 1.5°C compared with pre-industrial levels refers to a long-term, 20-to-30-year average, rather than a single year or two.
Still, 2024 shows the world is already exceeding the barrier that diplomats set at the Paris climate summit in 2015, and in fact the average of 2023 and 2024 falls above the 1.5°C threshold, Copernicus said.
Studies show that if warming exceeds 1.5°C relative to preindustrial levels, the odds of potentially catastrophic impacts, such as the shutting of key ocean currents and melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, would increase considerably.
Regarding exceeding the 1.5°C marker, Copernicus' news release stated: "Global temperatures are rising beyond what modern humans have ever experienced."
Reality check: While global leaders are still committed to the 1.5-degree goal, it is partly because of a lack of consensus of what a new target should be.
Most climate scientists don't think the current threshold is feasible.
Berkeley Earth bluntly states as much in its report: "The Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C will not be met, and the long-term average referenced by this target will exceed this threshold in the next five-to-10 years, conservatively."
What they're saying: "Humanity is in charge of its own destiny but how we respond to the climate challenge should be based on evidence," Carlo Buontempo, the Copernicus Climate Change Service's director, said in a statement.
"Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases the impacts on our lives, economies and our planet," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in a separate statement.
Between the lines: One of the most impactful records seen during 2024 was unusually high amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere, at about 5% above the 1991-2020 average, beating previous highs.
Extreme heat and high humidity is a deadly combination, and record large swaths of the globe saw "strong" to "extreme heat stress," per Copernicus' data.
The high water vapor content in the atmosphere also helped contribute to extreme precipitation events and to rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones such as hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The intrigue: Climate scientists are still investigating why 2024, which didn't feature 2023's planet-warming El Niño event on top of human-caused climate change, vaulted above the previous year on the list of hottest years.
Multiple studies have been published on this topic, and the possibility that the climate has shifted into a new phase of more rapid warming for reasons that are not yet completely clear is unnervingly still on the table.
What's next: Along with NOAA's and NASA's climate reports on Friday will come a new report on trends in ocean heat content.
All of it is likely to show evidence of a planet heating faster and to record levels.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details and comments from WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
