This is Gary and Shannon, and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. There's a lot going on on this Friday, on this fallback Friday.
One thing that's not going on actually and is encouraging is the briefings have stopped. And when the briefings stop and related to the fire, you sense that there is at least for the moment, some control around this fire and the series of fires.
Yeah, you're talking about the eight am briefing that we've had every single morning from La County Fire, cal Fire and all of the local officials. That didn't happen this morning. Good news, Palisades Fire up to thirty one percent containment, Eaten fire sixty five percent containment with no new growth.
The follow up from yesterday on the fire we will have And one of the cool things that happened is when we got off the air yesterday, I got a call on the hotline from a retired LAFD guy who really laid out the super Scooper question of why.
We don't actually buy one as opposed to lease.
And what their actual value is in certain situations fighting a fire and what their actual value isn't in certain, So we're going to get into that. In fact, he's going to join us. That'll happen the next hour. But in any case, we will address a lot of the fire issues as the show goes on. But we can turn our attention a bit today to Washington. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a lot going on. Number one, you have probably heard it, but we're going to talk about it anyway because it's that important. The Supreme Court upholding that TikTok ban unless somebody buys it before Sunday, likely, I'm unlikely going to happen. President Biden already said he's not going to enforced it. This is his last day in office. Trump has said that he wants to put a stop to this, put a hold on it, and we're going to talk more about that.
Well, I think the reality is, and I've said it before, I said it from the beginning, TikTok's going nowhere. What's happening. You're already seeing it, Biden saying, And we're not going to force it. Trump's administration well enforced either. They may transfer it over to one of these richie riches who is now around the Trump Orbit and in Washington, but we'll see you in any case. John Decker is in Washington to give us a sense of what's going on in Washington on this TikTok band and more.
Hi, John, Hey, how.
Are you doing? Both of you doing today?
We are much better today. It's been an eventful week, as you're aware, Gil, I know, bring us up to speed on what your take is and what you're hearing it in Washington about TikTok and beyond.
Well, I said in the more than two hours of oral arguments last Friday in the Supreme Court, and the decision by the Supreme Court, which is unanimous, does not surprise me at all. The Supreme Court ruling unanimously that this TikTok ban can essentially go into effect on Sunday.
They bought into the argument put forward by the government by the Solicitor General of the national security concerns that TikTok, which was owned by a Chinese company by Dance, poses, and those national security concerns, as expressed by the Solicitor General are that China could potentially collect the data from the one hundred and seventy million Americans to use TikTok the Supreme Court rejecting the First Amendment arguments that were being made by the social media company.
So what's next though, Because Sunday comes around, the band goes into effect. Biden says he's not going to enforce it. Trump the same thing.
What does it all mean, Well, the duty of a president is to enforce our laws, and that is a constitutional mandate. The president and the president elect cannot simply use an executive order to do away with this law.
It was signed by President Biden last April. If President Trump, once he's born in on Monday, wants to do something about this TikTok law, then his only source and solution to this is to go back to the one hundred nineteenth Congress, this Congress and say I want you to undo the law that you've passed overwhelmingly in the last Congress, and it passed in the Senate seventy nine to eighteen. So that's the option that's really on the table for
President Trump once he's sworn into office. If he wants to keep TikTok as an app, an ongoing social media option for people who wish to use it.
That's a big mountain to climb. I should mention.
John Decker is the only lawyer who's in that White House press course, and we're talking with John now about the law. He knows it very very well, So John, I'm hearing. Yeah, but Biden's kind of saying not going to enforce it. Trump people, this again sort of just the buzz is, we won't enforce it either. It seems everybody wants it. There's a lot of popular support for it. What about that you pass a law and then there's sort of this memo of understanding that it's not going to be enforced.
It's very strange. After all, President Biden last April signed this law. He was one of those advocates that said that TikTok is a national security concern to the US And after all of that a year later to say I'm not going to enforce it, it's very odd to me. You know, perhaps he just wants to essentially kick the ball down to the next administration and have them deal
with this issue. But it passed overwhelmingly in the House, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, signed by President Biden, and indeed it is a problem that Donald Trump will now have to take on. And a reminder with Donald Trump was president, he actually signed an executive order to ban TikTok in the US that was struck down by the federal courts. He's now had a change of heart as it relates to TikTok. In fact, the CEO of TikTok will be attending his auguration on Monday. So there are
a lot of unknowns. But as the law stands and upheld by the Supreme Court, TikTok, unless it's sold by that Sunday deadline will not be available for download on any of the apps that you use to download these social media applications.
We know that Congress, though the new Congress, of course as of Monday, will have a different makeup than the last. The Republican mandate is what I'm referring to. Thoughts on that as it.
Relates to the vote, Well, that's right, but there's a lot of arms that you need to twist to reverse the decision made by the one hundred and eighteenth Congress.
Seventy nine to eighteen was the vote in that last Congress, which means you had a significant number of Republicans joining with Democrats. And look, the dynamics are different now than they were in the last Congress. Perhaps with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate, you get a different outcome to try to reverse this law that passed last year.
Yeah, but as you say, boy that those numbers are pretty damning, I don't know that you can you can reverse that. But nonetheless, I mean, obviously it seems as though the incoming administration is on the page that the public is on, which is in general wanting TikTok to to continue. So, uh, this is a, I guess, a developing story. But thanks John Decker, and appreciate very much your legal perspective as well.
Thanks Mark, Thanks marlay.
Well.
Washington is rocking and rolling. This isn't you know? This is a substantial, substantial development.
Yeah, and it's freezing as well. And there are yeah, reports now that the inauguration is going to be moved indoors because of the freezing temps expected one of the coldest on record come Monday. So we're going to talk about that.
Yeah, it's interesting. I told you I grew up in Washington, d C.
So I know a lot of people who are in government and at very high levels. Actually, I mean I was, you know, I was a kid I was just but I would the kids I was going to school with, like there, you know, dad was vice president and the other dad was Secretary of Commerce and this kind of thing. So they're going to these inaugurations, right, and all I'd hear about is that it's so cold you just want it to be over. And so in a way, it
is cold in Washington in January. I mean, this is not like, well, if the weather's good, it's a beautiful thing. My point is moving it inside is not only smart, it should be policy. It should always be inside in my judgment.
Yeah, I mean, and this is one of the coldest. I mean to your point, but this forecast for Monday is the coldest in forty years.
Yeah. I mentioned Jimmy Carter, you know, was there. He was in the teens for Carter. I think a windshow was in the team. So it was probably around twenty degrees anyway, So major news out of the Middle East, right, myla. We were waiting for this moment, and.
Yeah it was. It was supposed to happen yesterday the vote it got delayed, and then that vote officially happened early Friday local time. So it's been some hours and now that ceasefire agreement is in effect after that quote last minute crisis. So this is a three phase deal that was cut and the first phase goes into effect Sunday, just a couple of days from now, of course, and this means the release of believe about thirty three hostages that includes a few Americans as well. That's phase one.
It also includes as I was reading, it's hostages that have lived and hostages that have died during this entire time. So what then is It's followed then by as I understand it, phased agreements, that is to say, releases that will follow, particularly on the release of Palestinian prisoners on the Israeli side, right.
Yeah, about twelve hundred to fifteen hundred Palestinians will be released in exchange for the hostage release.
And there's always kind of an asymmetry between the number of Palestinian prisoners who are released and hostage.
It just happened when.
Israeli soldiers are captured, they trade eleven hundred Palestinian prisoners for the release of one Israeli soldier type thing. So again the imbalance here. It's not a one to one release, but this really I think most importantly, apart from that brings an end to the fighting in Gaza. And it's an extraordinary thing that this has gone on as long as it has. It's been a horrifying humanitarian crisis during all of these many months.
Yeah, you know, of course they're calling this a fragile and extremely complex agreement, even hamas getting the hostages safely to a handover point will present significant security challenges. So we'll see how it all starts to play out as of Sunday. But of course this is something that's been
in the works. We've heard over the last fifteen months since October the seventh, of course, that there were so many times we got close to a deal, they've reached a deal, and then of course that just fell apart. So we finally have accomplished this. We'll wait and see what happens come Sunday.
And it's you know, a contentious thing in Israel. I mean, there was never this agreement in Israel that.
On a.
Net Yaho is a very very troubled figure politically in Israel, and there's a tremendous amount of distrust of Net Yahou and anger toward Net Yahoo. And there's also i'd suggest because of this hostage crisis, support for Netan Yahoo that he wasn't getting before October seventh.
And you know, the Trump administration is taking a lot of credit for this for saying not long ago, you know, they'll be held to pay if the hostages aren't released before I become president again. And the White House even confirming that Trumps did help in this final negotiation in Doha.
Well, I thought one of the encouraging things, and maybe it's you know, one of the last encouraging things in the sense that there is a kind of a group effort that is claimed as a group effort, was that both sides, Trump people and Biden people helped broker this deal. So they did it together, and they were ready to recognize that it took both sides them together to get the deal done. I mean, this, for example, is a contrast to the Reagan administration. You remember that Reagan and
this is demonstrably true. You can google what I'm about to tell you. The Reagan administration actually back channeled with the Iranian hostage deal such that the Iranian hostages were not released. During the Jimmy Carter administration, the release of the hostages was held up until Reagan was inaugurated. It was it's horrifying to think about it. Frankly, I thought it was. You know, when you look back at that
bit of history, it's incredible. You want to get these hostages, said, are American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists, and the Reagan people engineered a deal so that they would be remain hostages until Jimmy Carter was out of office and Reagan was in office.
So that's not what happened here, Okay.
What happened here was both sides brokeer this deal, and the deal is actually beginning prior to Trump getting in office, prior by a day or whatever it is.
But it's still I think.
It stands in stark contrast to that example that I just gave you from American history.
So off the top, we were talking about the phases one, two, and three. Learning a little bit more about that. So Phase one, as mentioned, will last about six weeks. That features a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli troops, swap of hostages and prisoners as we discussed, and an influx of humanitarian aid reportedly into Gaza. US hostages held in Gaza will be released in that first phase the second though the second and third phases are less developed. That's why
we don't have a lot of information. We haven't said a lot about that. Those details will be decided during the first phase, so those details for phase two and three have yet to be worked out.
That's what we know.
And the important thing is the vote in Israel, which had been bumped by a day, as Marla was saying, it has now been held and that deal is underway. Again, these are fragile arrangements. We hope this cease fire holds and this deal continues. So building back La and southern California after this unprecedented loss. You've done a lot of reporting on this and I think talking to public officials.
Yeah. So first and four of us we had La the City Council Willmen Tracy Park, she represents the eleventh district on the La City Council. She joined me last night on the Fox eleven News at six o'clock. And this, of course comes on the same day that there was some frustration of the repopulation people being able to come back to their homes in evacuated zones, and earlier in the day yesterday, the sheriff was saying it's going to be at least a week for the majority of people.
But then there were some evacuation orders lifted and some people, as Amy King has been reporting, more than ten thousand have been allowed to go back to their homes and the Palisades Fire alone, and then some yesterday got to go back home and the Eaten Fire. Now, mind you, a lot of these people, especially in the Eating Fire, they don't have power, so they just got to go check their house out, and then they left for the night, so they're still out of their homes. Tracy park with
me last night at six. I asked her, are you happy with the pacing of all this? And here's what she Are you satisfied with the pace?
No, I'm not, Sam, And I'm also not satisfied with the level of communication or the details so that we can manage expectations around the timing and the process for this. These are decisions that are being made by the Unified Command, which is led by CalFire in partnership with the Utilities and DWP. I have been pushing hard to try to make this happen as soon as possible, but those, unfortunately, are decisions that are not made by the Council office.
Okay, so she's not happy with it, basically saying, my hands are tied. This isn't a council decision. This is a CalFire Utilities decision. Meanwhile, we did talk about rebuilding and redevelopment, and this is pretty shocking to me. She talks about how long it could be before that process can even begin.
In addition to the orders from the Governor and the executive directive from the Mayor, on Tuesday this week, I introduced to a package of legislation more than two dozen motions that le foundation for recovery and rebuilding in the Pacific Palisades. We are going to do everything that we can to bring services on site, to consolidate processes, and to make this as efficient as possible. But I also want to manage some expectations here. Everything in the Palisades
has been destroyed. All of the underground infrastructure, gas lines, water lines are all broken, power lines above ground are all down. Just clearing the toxic ash and debris and rubble is likely to take nine months or a year. So we are a ways out until actual building begins. But we are already bringing the resources to get that done.
This is so right on what she said, and it's so lost in all of it.
I think you've got to clear just the cleanup could take almost a year.
And you think about all the hazardous materials that are coming from the cleanup as well. So it's and then only then can the rebuilding actually begin and the permitting process. We know that the governor has issued executive orders to speed all of that up, and that is great, but in the meantime, it's going to take We're going to be in twenty twenty six before rebuilding can even begin.
You know, these plumbing fixtures, when they're melted and they're gone. Apparently the build back on that alone is immense. I mean, we've just talked about the cleanup being immense, but building back what she spoke of the infrastructure, the electric the plumbing, it's incredible. So water quality can be impacted, and you
know the campfire in Paradise, California, the Mali fires. When an entire neighborhood is lost in a fire, the water system is compromised often, and I'm reading more and more about the fact that civil engineers and those who come with great and academic training in this area say you've got to be really careful because toxic byproducts can be part of that water build back if you're not careful. In other words, you can really, if you're not careful,
affect the reliability of drinking water. So these are all things that it's not just building back the structure, it's the infrastructure associated with it that really has to be focused.
To me, Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with that. And then of course there's all the talk about building back smarter, more fireproof, if you will, fireproofing, but even fire officials say that fire proofing entirely is not possible. You know, it is possible to design a building that won't easily easily ignite, But then again, when you are dealing with home heart, when you're dealing with these extreme situations like what we just dealt with, those protections can only do so much.
Right, These are supercharged flames, and if they're setting a blaze long enough, entire area, even even concrete and glass is going to go. And we talked to a couple of people just in the this week who have lost homes and structures in Malibu, and they'd had those building materials exactly exactly so we know that, so this is a monumental task ahead, but it will continue. And it's a question of and there are you know, there are
a couple of things. Will take a quick break and then I just will button it out with There are a couple of things that municipalities, cities and cooperative agreements between the public and those entities are doing to make things fast tracked and to help with rebuilding and building materials I'm talking about. We'll just touch on that a little bit when we come back. Also in the next hour.
I just want to mention again we had the question about the Super Scoopers and how much they are and whether it's worth it, and I got that call yesterday right when we got off the air, and Steve Kraeker is brilliant and he will just set us straight on exactly the value of these Super Scoopers and why we lease instead of buy.
It's always fun.
On Friday on the Gary and Shannon Show, Mark and Marla's sitting in.
They'll be back on Monday.
We're just talking about the rebuild effort in La after these devastating fires. I mean, it's a monumental task. We mentioned the cleanup alone could take a year or more. I mean a year might be an optimistic.
Yes, So Councilwoman Tracy Park, who represents part of the Pacific Palisades for the La City Council, she was with me last night and said estimated nine months to a year for the debris to be removed, but then there are estimates that it could take years. A lot of that because of the topography of the land as well as the sheer amount of toxic materials that need to be collected. So we're looking at probably a very very long timeline before rebuilding can begin.
But you're gonna have to and you're gonna have to find, you know, demic changes that are going to have to go into place in terms of building materials. And you know, we were saying before the break that these fire resistant materials they won't, you know, bullet proof your house in effect from fire, but they will help. And obviously I think the build well the structures that are rebuilt will have to honor that. And they can also be incentivized.
You know, you can economically incentivize using these fire resistant materials so that the state and a lot of these communities can I'm talking about essentially local institutions can offer incentives if you'll use these fire resistant materials in the build back.
And then how about this. I heard from a real estate agent who covers the Pacific Palisades and he sent me what he calls the first listing of a home since the fires went on the MLS yesterday. This is a home that burned down. I'm looking at the square footage. I'm trying to find that information. But the lot itself, after burning down, is now listed for nine hundred and ninety thousand dollars, so for a million bucks. First home
went on sale in the Palisades. Of course, you can buy the land, you got to rebuild.
Well, that's the point.
It's not a home yet, it's just a piece of land, but it's a piece of land and a very valuable place in Los Angeles. And the question becomes how long will it take for the Palisades to build back?
I don't know.
I mean, I think that's one of those questions that is ongoing.
And then there's the other issue of go fundmes and the conflict with getting a GoFundMe and FEMA. So our reporter Gena Silvia last night did this story that I think it's really important to stress. And that is all the crowd sourcing, all the crowdfunding that we're seeing for people. You know, it's great, but guess what when seeking assistance after the wildfires, you have to ensure that GoFundMe and FEMA funds are used for different purposes to avoid legal issues.
In other words, FEMA assistance is intended for uninsured or underinsured losses and cannot duplicate benefits from other sources like insurance or go fundme. We knew that about insurance, but we did not know that necessarily about GoFundMe. So if you're using a GoFundMe and then you apply for FEMA, the funds must be for different purposes. You need to specify this clearly, otherwise FEMA will deny you coverage.
Okay, so let me help here, because I think if you are going to do a go fund me, and it's smart to do so, I think the needs are profound, you need to probably mention or specify that you're going to cover immediate expenses so.
Not to rebuild. So don't exactly don't use phrases like help us rebuild.
Right exactly, So the minute you say help us rebuild. FEMA is not going to come near you with their support financially.
Yeah, and then how about this. We talked to an attorney and if you you know, unknowingly do this and you collect funds from FEMA, guess what the A FEMA can demand repayment and may file criminal charges for defrauding the government. I mean that's worst case scenario.
But oh, the government will get their money back. They'll get their money back.
So it could backfire.
That is a super important detail and it's one that I wasn't aware of. But I look at these FEMA stipulations and they're very specific. So if you are involved in some kind of GoFundMe, please be careful because I'd hate to see that happen where the government says, sorry, we can't help now because you have talked about these funds going toward the build back.
You know. Bob Eucker died yesterday. Such a loss at.
Ninety years old, brilliant Milwaukee brewer, and his hometown of Milwaukee mourns his passing. But he became a larger than life figure right because he became well a comedian and a comic actor who was in mister Belvitere.
You know, he is the first.
Major league Yeah, major league, my favorite, just a bit outside.
And he was a talk show favorite. Here he is. Opening day must bring back a let.
Letter letter h for for a guy like myself who was one of the all time greats.
I guess opening days are.
I can remember I think my first opening day. They had told me we were playing a night game, and I found out we'd played that afternoon.
So I kind of got some bad infro there.
I kind of missed that Opening Day to me was going out to the bullpen early and stocking it with sandwiches and candy bars, and because I knew that's where I was going to be the rest of the day and probably the rest of the year, you know.
And there's nothing the great Bob Buker, And you know, he took his baseball very seriously. He was a play by play guy and just a beloved member of the baseball community and a pillar of baseball in a Wisconsin as well. And apparently, when the Brewers clinched the National League Central title in twenty twenty four, Pat Murphy, the manager, threw an arm around Uker in the locker room, pulled him in tight as players uncorked champagne and they showered him in champagne.
It was really and they all chanted. Yuk yuk yuke.
Bob Uker passes away mister baseball at ninety.
It's The Gary and Shannon Show.
Mark and Marl is sitting in on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app