SOCAL IN CRISIS

Raging wildfires in the Los Angeles area are forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes. What could be the costliest fire in U.S. history foreshadows our perilous, uncertain future in the age of climate change.

• The skies over L.A. have been tinted red and blanketed in smoke since yesterday as multiple out-of-control wildfires spread throughout the hills. More than 1,000 buildings have been damaged, more than 70,000 people have been told to evacuate, and two people have died. Even Hollywood stars have fled their homes, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore, and Eugene Levy. Literally none of the blaze has been contained, officials said this afternoon. This could become the costliest wildfire in the history of California, or even the United States, according to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

• Wildfires aren’t unusual in Southern California this time of year. But climate change is making them worse, experts believe. Hotter temperatures bring drought, which dries out plants and creates more fuel for the fire. When you add extremely powerful winds to the mix — which are simply bad luck — fires can grow massive, burn very hot and spread rapidly. In California, developers have built multi-million dollar homes into areas that are historically prone to fire. The cost of those homes and the materials to rebuild them — and the sheer number of people living in the danger zone — keep driving up the cost of these “billion-dollar disasters.”

• Parts of California have experienced both extremely dry conditions and, alternatively, more rain than usual , which turns out to be a dangerous combo. “It’s not just that drier conditions are perpetually more likely in a warming climate,” Swain said. “It is that this oscillation back and forth between [wet and dry] states is something that is particularly consequential for wildfire risk in Southern California.”

How will President-elect Donald Trump, who calls climate change a “scam,” handle this crisis, which looks likely to get worse on his watch? Get ready for finger-pointing, misinformation, partisanship and shit-posting.

• Trump, naturally, seized the opportunity to insult one of his least-favorite California politicians, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). “Gavin Newscum and his Los Angeles crew have contained exactly ZERO percent of the fire,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Earlier, he blamed President Joe Biden: “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!”  (I mean, if dumb social media posts were buckets of water, Trump would have put this fire out by now…)

• Where Trump leads, MAGAworld follows. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said this crisis is really about — wait for it — immigration. “Don’t forget, [FEMA] diverted well over a billion, almost $2 billion, to illegal alien care and not emergency management care,” Biggs told Newsmax, re-upping a blatant lie that has been debunked.

• Californians have good reason to worry about Trump’s dangerous irresponsibility.  During his first administration, Trump reportedly withheld disaster relief assistance to parts of California that didn’t vote for him. He blamed California for the fires, claiming the state failed to rake its forest floors. “I said, ‘you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests’ — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable,” Trump said. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s nominee to run FEMA’s parent agency, doubts climate science. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, has also been labeled a climate change skeptic.

If you’re in the LA area — where many of our readers and most of our Crooked colleagues are based — listen to public safety officials. Take a look at these guides on evacuating safely and driving in high winds, and here’s a helpful app for wildfire alerts. Stay safe!

READY PLAYER MUSK

Does Elon Musk sleep? The hyperactive centibillionaire conspiracy theorist and self-styled “first buddy” sure has a lot on his plate. Whispering political wishes in Trump’s ear. Launching a new line of Tesla robotaxis. Boosting the far-right across Europe. Scheming to colonize Mars. Trying to become a trillionaire. 

And, somehow, he manages to spend a metric shit-ton of time playing video games.

Musk claims to have secured a spot as one of the world’s top players of “Diablo IV,” a popular game that involves making elixirs and slaying demons in a dark fantasy realm. If true, it may be his most significant achievement, due to the sheer amount of time it takes to reach that level, gamers told the Wall Street Journal.

“So many life lessons to be learned from speedrunning video games on max difficulty,” Musk wrote on X in November, along with a clip of himself defeating the game’s most difficult level in under two minutes.

It takes dozens of hours to reach that level, not to mention that in October, the game reset players’ levels and added the final stage — meaning that it took Musk 45 days at most to complete the whole thing. One devoted Diablo player described his dedication as “insane.”

“It’s like sitting all day, every day, at your computer playing,” the gamer told the outlet.

Musk has a track record of multitasking, once filming himself gaming while also taking a call to discuss a Starship rocket test record launch with an employee from SpaceX, the space exploration company he owns. He also tweeted about 13,000 times from last January through July, according to the WSJ — about 61 times per day.

It makes you wonder, yet again: What is up with this guy? Is it… uh, drugs? Does his documented use of LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine play into this? Did he pull some kind of weird billionaire supervillain scheme, and make an AI clone of himself, or something? Is he just… lying?

Meanwhile, we’re all living with the dire consequences of this dude’s inability to chill: He has turned Twitter into a cesspit of misinformation and extremism, he promotes fringe right-wing politicians hither and yon, he helped elect Trump, and he nearly shut down  the U.S. government in December. Musk, and the rest of us, would surely all be better off if he started taking naps.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Someone at Fox News fed Donald Trump questions in advance shortly before an Iowa town hall with the network last year, according to a new book by Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt. For Trump’s team, “this was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started.”

Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court today to block his criminal sentencing in his hush money case, currently scheduled for Friday. They want the sentencing delayed until issues about Trump’s claim of presidential immunity are figured out. By default, that appeal will go to liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who could make a decision alone or bring it to the full court for consideration.

President Joe Biden said he could’ve beat Trump in the presidential election, but isn’t sure if he could’ve completed four more years in office. “So far, so good,” Biden told USA Today, referencing his health and stamina. Well, sort of…. if you discount a lot that went down last fall, Mr. President….

Germany and France locked arms against Trump’s threat to take Greenland by force. “There is obviously no question that the European Union would let other nations of the world attack its sovereign borders,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said. Officials in Denmark, which controls Greenland, said the territory might become independent  — but never part of the U.S.

Former Rep. George Santos asked a federal judge to delay his fraud sentencing so that he can make more episodes of his “Pants on Fire” podcast to help pay off over half a million dollars in fines that he owes. Prosecutors objected, saying it’s “extremely speculative” that he would make enough money to pay off the fines and calling the podcast’s title a “tone-deaf and unrepentant reference to the crimes he committed.” Santos also claims to have less than $1,000 in liquid assets, despite making $400,000 from Cameo appearances since he left Congress and $400,000 from a documentary

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