You're listening to KFI AM six forty Wake Up Call with me Amy King on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
K f I at kost HD two Los Angeles and Orange.
County, and.
You haste Amy.
Okay, it is five o'clock, straight up, good morning.
It's Wednesday, February twenty sixth.
Spring training underway at Camelback Stadium or something like that, right, Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona. Yeah, the Boys in Blue didn't have a good day yesterday. They lost to the Mariners eleven to five. Spring training doesn't count, so well. You know, it's a month tomorrow that the Dodgers have their home opener, March twenty seventh, Opening Day at Dodger Stating.
Very cool.
They're also going to Tokyo to Tokyo series is this year March fifteen, sixteen.
That's going to be pretty sweet.
Well, they got to take show Hay home, that's true.
Yep.
Panyamamoto, yep.
And there's another one too, another Japanese player, isn't there.
Yeah, he's the second baseman.
He's good.
I can't remember his name.
All right, we'll know as soon as the season starts, right, Okay, here's what's ahead on wake up call. The EPA says it is ninety nine percent done removing hazardous materials from properties damaged and destroyed in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires. Once phase one is complete, phase two to remove debris can get underway. Local officials push to get the EPA to get the first phase of clean up done in thirty days instead of months as originally estimated.
The family of Eric and Lyle Menendez Menendez will continue their efforts to get the men released from prison. They're holding a press conference today to release what they say are key facts in the case. La County DA Nathan Hoffman announced last week that he is not recommending the brothers be re sentenced for murdering their parents in Beverly Hills in nineteen eighty nine. Nearly sixty thousand UC health workers are walking off the job today.
They'll be on strike for two days at UCLA, U SEE, Irvine and all other UC campuses and medical facilities in the state. President Trump's sitting down with his full cabinet for the first time. Will it be a big love fest? ABC's Karen Travers is going to tell us in just a couple of minutes. Apple's making a huge investment in AI in the US. ABC's Mike Dbusky's going to tell us also about our favorite virtual assistant who's getting a makeover.
That's coming up at five point twenty.
Also, Amy's on it today as we head toward the oscars, I'm on a movie that.
I'll just say is brutal. Yeah, that's a hint.
Okay, let's get started with some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. United Firefighters of La say criticism of former fire chief Kristin Crowley for not using one thousand firefighters the day the wildfire started in La County is misleading. Mayor Bass cited that as one of the reasons she fired Crowley last week, but union president Freddie Escobar told kfi's John Cobalt yesterday, the La Fire Department doesn't have a thousand spots for firefighters.
Our budget was cut. We have one hundred engines trucked ambulances in our maintenance yards to get repaired, and we don't have the mechanics to fit them because the budget was cut.
Escobar says when they did a recall, they had more firefighters waiting to be assigned to duties but nowhere to put them. More than seventeen hundred artists and arts workers around LA are getting millions in fire relief funding.
The fourteen point three million dollars in immediate help is being provided to individuals who lost home, studios, archives, and more and the devastating Palisades and Eaton wildfires. Officials for the La Arts Community Fire Relief Fund say the vast majority of those receiving support are being funded at their requested amounts, which is around ten thousand dollars. Among the recipients, seventy eight percent of the submissions reportedly were impacted in Altadena,
twenty two percent were impacted in Pacific Palisades. Andrew Caravella KFI news.
City Hall's gotten behind a plan to get Hollywood back to work.
The city Council voted to endorse Governor Newsom's proposal to increase state tax credits for movie and TV productions to seven hundred fifty million dollars each year. City council Woman Nythia Rahman says LA is where the best movie professionals are, but the city is losing work to places with better incentives.
The crews here are unparalleled and we need to bring production back.
The governor's plan would more than double the current tax credit in the state. Film LA says twenty twenty four production levels were the second slowest ever, behind only the COVID year of twenty twenty. Michael Monks KFI News.
Let's say good morning now to Karen Travers at the White House. Lots going on at the White House. Trump has held another press briefing in the Oval Office, and during that availability, he was asked whether Elon Musk speaks for the presidents and what did he say?
Yeah, yeah, you know. And it was an interesting question because there have obviously been conflicting, contradictory messages, confusing messages coming from Elon Musk's social media emails that have gone out to federal workers directions from cabinet secretaries and department heads, and federal workers are confused about what exactly they're supposed
to do. Do you respond to this email saying you put your five bullet points in of what you did last week, or else you could get fired because some departments are saying you don't have to respond. Some are saying it's voluntary and you won't get fired. Others are saying no, you absolutely have to do this, So it's confusing. And yesterday the President was asked if Musk was speaking for him when Musk says you'll be terminated, and the President said, everybody speaks for me, I'm the one. I'll
take responsibility. You know, the old statement the buck stops here. That was almost more confusing then saying everybody speaks for me, but I'll take responsibility doesn't exactly.
Clear this up.
And also the press secretary for the White House had just hours before that said it's up to cabinet secretaries to determine how their agencies and departments should respond to this. That the president is deferring to cabinet secretaries to give guidance relative to their specific workforces.
Well, it sounds like it's still confusing. Were they're going so fast and furious. I think they haven't exactly figured out procedure yet.
Yeah, I mean maybe, but like they did this before. They've had one term before, so I think, you know, and they've also were very well planning for potentially being back in the White House.
So you know, I don't know how.
Much black you give when you're running out the country, but there have certainly been a lot of confusing, conflicting messages. And you know when we've asked questions about this to the White House Press Secretary or other senior advisors, you know, they really push back and it says, this shouldn't be confusing. Asking people to give five bullet points about what they did last week shouldn't be confusing. But that's not the confusing part. I mean, I think anybody could take ten
minutes and say here's what I did last week. It's the if I don't do this because my department head has told me it's voluntary. But Elon Musk is tweeting if you don't respond, you're fired. Like, who am I supposed to listen to here? That's the confusing part.
Well, hopefully they'll clear it up, but it didn't get any clearer yesterday because I was listening for some bital clarification. Yeah, you mentioned the cabinet and the president holding his first cabinet meeting today.
Now that everybody's in place, what can we expect.
Yeah, the President's going to have that cabinet meeting later this morning, and Elon Musk will be there. He's not a cabinet secretary. But he will be there for the cabinet meeting with the same secretaries that he took by surprise with that directive for the federal work in the email about what you did last week, you know, and because some of the cabinet secretaries push back telling their workforces don't respond or it's voluntary, we'll see what plays out in the photo op where the cameras or.
In the room.
Maybe it's nothing, but there will be reporters there. There will be some opportunity to ask the questions about this. It's also just notable that somebody with such outside influence right now in the efforts of the administration, who is not a Senate confirmed cabinet secretary, will have such a prominent likely place at the cabinet meeting today.
Have other people who are not cabinet members been part of cabinet meetings before?
Yeah, it happened before. I mean I was at one during the first Trump administration where I remember Jared Kushner, who's son in law, senior advisor, doing a PowerPoint presentation. So you know, it's not uncommon for other senior advisors to be involved. This is just very different given the significant role he is playing right now in so many aspects of their agenda.
Yeah, and Karen didn't Jill Biden sit in on cabinet meetings too, She did one, she was one.
She didn't sit in on cabinet meetings. She appeared at one to talk about some of the policy issues she had done because that was likely to be the last cabinet meeting of the Biden administration.
How often do presidents hold cabinet meetings? Is it a pretty regularly scheduled thing or uncommon?
You know, it kind of depends on the administration. I would say every couple months is the regular cadence, Not every month. It's not that common. I mean, it takes a lot to get all these people together when you think about how much work they're doing back at their department.
Yeah, and everybody's confirmed now, right, there's no holdouts or are there still some pending.
There's still a couple of people that are left, still a handful because of numbers issues in the House. At least Staphonic is not confirmed. I think she is cabinet level, But I think for the most part, everybody else is in now that we got Commerce and the FBI.
All right, ABC's Karen travers at the White House. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
All right, let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI two twenty four our newsroom. The House has passed a framework budget resolution. The Republican supported bill passed by a thin majority last night.
The eyes were two hundred and seventeen, the nays are two hundred and fifteen, majority voting, and the affirmative the current resolution is adopted.
The bill includes at least four and a half trillion dollars in tax cuts over ten years and at least two trillion in cuts to mandatory spending. Lawmakers now have to draft the details of the bill and merge it with the Senates package. The Republican budget plan is a
crucial step in advancing President Trump's legislative agenda. I think they call that the one big beautiful bill in the Trump In the TRUMPA administration, federal judges have dealt President Trump some legal setbacks KFI, as Brian Shook says, one of them temporarily blocks the administration from ending the country's refugee resettlement program.
Then the Trump administration was ordered once again to release foreign aid funds it ows to government contractors and nonprofit groups.
He says a judge in Washington, d C indefinitely blocked the administration from freezing federal loans and grants as well. Florida Republican representative by Brin Donalds has announced he's running for governor of Florida in twenty twenty six. Governor Ronda Santis can't run again because of term limits. Donald's is supported by President Trump. Israel is confirmed it has carried
out several airstrikes near Siria's capital city. Israel's defense minister said the air force is now attacking strongly in southern Syria. The new Syrian government is demanding Israel withdraw all of its forces from its country. Officials in Ukraine say they've agreed to the framework of a deal that would give the US access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals.
After weeks of an intense pressure campaign by President Trump on President Zelensky, calling the Ukrainian leader a dictator and starting peace talks with Russia without Ukraine, and appears Zelensky is ready to make a major economic deal.
ABC's Rachel Scott. Zelensky plans to visit at Washington d C on Friday. Health officials in Texas say there are now more than one hundred and twenty measle cases linked to an outbreak in the state. Thirty four new cases have been counted since Friday. An emergency medicine physician, doctor Stephanie Widmer, says that raises concerns about the potential life threatening illness.
Getting vaccinated is one way to prevent infection with measles, So individuals who are not vaccinated are at risk, and we're really seeing that here with this outbreak, just as.
Most cases are in children who are not vaccinated or whose vaccination status isn't known. Pope Francis remains in critical condition, but a statement from the Vatican says he's been sitting upright and getting therapy for double pneumonia.
It says that he's had no acute respiratory episodes like the one we had been reporting on on Saturday, and also as hemodynamics continue to be stable, and that refers to as blood pressure, as heart rate, other vital signs.
ABC's Marcus More says a CT scan was done on the pope last night ATTIC and says it hopes to have more information on that today. Lawmakers in Utah sent a bill to the governor to ban fluoride in public water systems. It does not allow cities or communities to decide whether to add it themselves. Fluoride is added to water to help strengthen teeth, but a few months ago a federal judge order the EPA to regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to
kids intellectual development. I think we had fluoride in our water.
I think we do. Yeah.
Certainly improved kids' teeth, that's for sure.
The La County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved increases in how much fire debris can be dumped at the Lancaster Landfill and the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills. The board also agreed to temporarily remove dumping restrictions at the Calabasis Landfill, allowing it to also accept fire debris.
Public health officials have announced anyone.
At LAX Terminal B between one and four pm on February nineteenth could be at risk of getting measles. An infant from Orange County who arrived at the International Terminal on a Korean air flight has a confirmed case after exposure. Unvaccinated people can develop measles between seven and twenty one days of exposure. Crews have started work near the future Rancho station of the twelve billion dollar bullet train project
that will connect Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas. The train will make the two hundred and eighteen mile run to Vegas in two hours, with stops in Hisperia, Apple Valley and Las Vegas. Construction is set to finish by twenty twenty eight, depending on the price.
I would take that train, right, yeah, I mean think about it.
You instead of going to the airport, so easy, the flights shorter, but then you have to park at the airport, and you have to check in and get there an hour early and all of that stuff.
I'm excited about.
Round and drink and yeah.
Yeah, this way just a big party train.
At six oh five, it's handle on the news. A deputy is one of eighteen indicted in a drug smuggling operation at the La County Jail. Bill's going to have more information on that for you. Let's say good morning to ABC's Mike Debuski, sitting in for Rich Dmiro this week. Mike Apple's making a big investment in AI in the US.
Yeah, that's right, this five hundred billion dollar investment that they announced earlier this week, this is going to go into a couple different buckets. So there's going to be a new server factory in Texas, just outside of Houston that's going to build these AI specific servers that are designed to basically support their next generation of artificial intelligence technology.
That's one bucket of spending. Another bucket is going to go to hiring a lot of new people at Apple, about twenty thousand, they say over the course of the next four years. Those people are going to be focused on research and development, silicon investing, and of course artificial intelligence.
Okay, Mike, I have a question for you about these servers, because everybody's saying that, oh, the AI gobbles up so much power and all of that stuff.
So what is a server?
I mean, is it like a giant warehouse with a bunch of computers in it?
What does it look like?
Yeah, that's a great question, and it's going to be a question that people are talking about a lot going forward, because you're right, these AI systems, as they become more prominent, as they get added to more and more technologies that we use, they take up a lot of energy. They require a lot of computing power, and people might not know this, but when you run a program on your laptop or you open an app on your phone, oftentimes it's not that device that's doing the computing.
It's just not powerful enough.
So it offloads some of that work to what's called a data center, which is as you described, basically just a big building full of computer servers, right, computers that
are dedicated to supporting these technologies. And these data centers are all across the country, all around the world, and they've been building them more frequently given that these technologies that we've been sort of focused on in recent years, everything from the metaverse to cryptocurrencies to now generative artificial intelligence,
require these huge outlays of computing power. So what this factory that Apple is building in Texas is designed to do is to build the servers that go into those data centers. So it's very behind the scenes. It's not like a computer that you or I would ever really encounter, but it is going to be very very important for these systems to run more smoothly, run more quickly.
Okay, and why is Apple doing this investment in the US now?
Does it have anything to do with Trump tariffs.
It certainly does, in fact overtly so. So last week we saw Apple CEO Tim Cook meet with President Trump at the White House to discuss recent tariffs. Earlier this month, the Trump administration imposed a ten percent tariff on all goods made in China that includes things like the iPhone,
the iPad, and the Mac, obviously hugely valuable products for Apple. Now, coming out of that meeting, the President said that Apple will be moving manufacturing to the US ask quote because they don't want to pay the tariffs, and then lo and behold. This week there's a half a trillion dollar investment announced from Apple. So this is as much a
political move as it is a technological move. There's a lens through which you can view this as Apple hedging its bets on the future of artificial intelligence, kind of shoring up the tech infrastructure that's going to undergird that
future technology. And there's a political lens saying, Hey, Apple, I want to extend this olive branch to the Trump administration saying hey, we're not quite moving iPhone production to the United States, but we are spending here and can we maybe get a break on some of the tariffs. I think that's kind of what Apple has in mind. Whether that will actually come to pass in reality, I think that remains to be seen.
And we will be watching for that.
And real quick before you go, Amazon's holding an event because somebody's getting a makeover.
Yes, Alexa, and apologies to everyone in California who'se Alexa devices. I just activated there. But this is there is They're very popular voice assistant baked into smart speakers and an app, and there's there's web you know, sort of integrations as well. But this is a voice assistant that, despite its name recognition, has kind of fallen behind other competitors in the voice
assistant space, namely Google Assistant. And Amazon is planning to unveil an all new version of Alexa later today here in New York City, and they say that it's going to be competitive again with an infusion of artificial intelligence. This is another AI story, the same way that we talk to you know, Alexa. Now it's kind of stilted, right, you have to use these sort of very specific words and phrases. It's kind of awkward given that large language
models are designed to replicate human speech. The idea is that your Alexa will be a lot easier to talk to. You can just talk to it like we're talking right now, in natural language. That's the promise. Whether that actually works in reality, you know, we'll we'll have to wait and see.
I certainly hope that they're is a live demonstration component to this event later today that we can look at to see if it actually does work in the real world, because something that we have to talk about every time we bring up generative AI does have a tendency to go wrong. It makes things up, it gets things wrong, and that means Amazon is taking on a pretty big risk by baking it into one of their most recognizable technologies.
We'll be asking, Alexa, are you lying to us now?
Alexa, what are you talking about?
Yeah, and again, apologies for the name.
ABC's Mike Debuski, thanks so much for the information.
Appreciate it, of course, Amy ticcare all right.
Man from Bell Gardens has disappeared in the San Gabriel Mountains. Kfi's Mark Mayfield says the guy was last seen two weeks ago.
More than a week later, his vehicle was found crashed about two hundred feet down a steep hillside in an area about five miles west of Mount Baldy. The vehicle was found after several inches of rain had prounded the area.
He says authorities reported not finding any blood in the car and said it didn't look like the man had been thrown from the vehicle. Three American tourists have been found added a luxury resort in Belize. ABC's Matt Rivers says security video shows the women in their twenties returning from a tour Thursday night.
Please are now saying that they are retracing this group's steps, seeing where they went, what they ate, all while waiting for autopsy results.
So lease say they're testing the room for carbon monoxide and that they found alcohol and gummies in the women's room. A Southwest Airlines flight landing in Chicago had to pull up at the last second to avoid hitting a business jet that was crossing its path on the runway. ABC's ran On Alley says air traffic control had told the smaller plane yesterday to hold short of the runway.
Reportedly issuing the warning nine times.
It's unclear why the pilot did not follow those instructions.
The Southwest plane eventually landed safely. Wow scary Federal judge has ordered the Trump administration a second time to release frozen foreign aid funds. Trump ordered the usaid funds frozen shortly after he took office. Lawyers for aid groups say they can't access the money in spite of a judge's ordered to do so earlier this month. The judge gave the Trump administration till midnight tonight to release those funds. President Trump has a proposed new immigration policy.
Saying the US will sell gold cards for five million dollars to wealthy foreigners who want to live here.
ABC Smarry Bruce's.
The gold card would replace the current EB five visa or Immigrant Investor program, which was created by Congress in the early nineties makes people eligible to apply for a green card if they invest a certain amount in the US and create at least ten permanent, full time jobs.
By goodbye the Little Riding.
The Altadena Little League is going to play this season with a little help from their friends. Players lost their home field at Farnsworth Park to the wildfires. Park was destroyed, so the West Pasadena Little League is opening its field to Altadena to play its games there. Several of the players lost their homes in the fire in Altadena last month.
I love that. That's great.
It's once again safe to drink the water in about two thousand homes and businesses in Pacific Palisades. La mare Baths says, DWP crews have flushed the system and are still testing the water. Some areas are still under do not drink notices. DWP officials say they're working to restore service to all The FAA says it's investigating what caused an Asiana Airline's flight headed to San Francisco to do
what's called a go around. The FAA says the plane from Seoul was warned by the tower on Sunday afternoon that it was too low on final approach, so it had to go around. It landed safely about fifteen minutes later. The poppies aren't expected to be very spectacular this spring. California State Park's officials say below average rainfall this winter means that the poppy bloom may not be that great. January was the ninth driest in California since nineteen eighty five,
at six oh five. It's handle on the news Apple as you just heard Mike Deubuski's say, kind of trying to make nice with the Trump administration to avoid tariffs. But someone might want to talk to Apple programmers about that, because it's dictation feature apparently has been typing out racist when people say the word Trump.
Will Cole Schreiber no laughing at that.
Damie's on it, Damie's Damie's on it, Damie's on it.
What am I on?
I'm on the stream movies, documentaries, TV series and right now I'm on movies because we are heading up to Hollywood's biggest night, of course, the Oscars, uh this Sunday. So I've been kind of cramming as many movies in as I could to share with you.
Uh.
And this week I'm on The Brutalist stars.
Adrian Brody, Nominated Stars, Full of City, Jones, stars guy named Guy Pierce, and uh, I was like, what is this movie about? What is a Brutalist? And I was like, is this a brutal man?
What?
And I didn't know until I looked it up this morning, even after watching all three hours of the movie. So it's Adrian Brodie plays a man who comes to the US from Hungary following World War Two. The outline for the movie says that he's a holocaust Survivor. You don't get that in the movie. I don't think it ever
really says that. You know that he's Jewish, you know that he's coming from Hungary, you know that there's discrimination against Jewish people as he comes to America, that kind of thing, But I don't know where the Holocaust survivor came through. He wants to rebuild his life, obviously comes for the American dream. He stays with a relative that falls apart. Not exactly sure what the heck.
Went on there.
It was weird and uncomfortable, the relationship between him and his relative and the I think it was his cousin's wife. So then he can't stay with them anymore. So then he's kind of on the streets and he's hungry, and he's working crappy jobs. And then suddenly he meets this wealthy guy played by Guy Pearce and discovers that Adrian Brodie's character is actually an architect, and a really good one and a kind of famous one from Hungary. And so then the story takes a turn as he starts
architecting againting architecting. Yeah, so the movie is kind of long, meandering. There are things that are insinuated but not explained. There are storyline, storylines that seem to appear out of nowhere for no reason, and some of them don't go anywhere, and others do.
And then I didn't love this movie, and it was three hours long.
It was.
I will say that it was beautiful. I mean, like some of the some of the scenes, a cinematography beautiful. And I think Adrian Brody is is great. He's a great actor. It seems like it's all the other Adrian and Brody characters though he kind of it seems to me like he plays the same character. But and if you want to see in the movie, it's still in theaters. But again, it's over three hours, one hundred and eighty
eight minutes. And it's not like it's an Oppenheimer that it's this amazing, amazing epic movie.
It was.
I just I don't know. I didn't get it. Why the name. It's not the person is the brutalist. It's about what he does.
Brutalist apparently means raw concrete and the use of unadorned concrete services, so that's surfaces.
So that's why they call it the brutalist. Quite literally what it is.
I was on it.
I didn't love it.
I think if you watch it on the stream, which is you still have to rent it right now, maybe wait until it's not gonna cost you twenty dollars. Like I said, parts of it are beautiful, but it was not my favorite movie by any stretch. Okay, time to get in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney donnah.
Birthday, Courtney, Happy Birthday, Bay Birthday, Happy Birthday, Courtney.
I love it. I'm nineteen again, aren't we all, Courtney, aren't we all? But it's so nice to be able to be allowed to drive for the first time. I don't think anybody's buying this, Courtney. Oh, trying to make myself feel better about all of it.
Well, happy birthday. We're sorry you have to work, but we're glad that you get to spend a little bit of time with us today.
So else, I love being with you.
Let's talk about spring break, because we're talking about business money and it's going to cost a lot if you want to go anywhere this spring break.
Well, first of all, I have to play this before because this is going to get us in the spirit of everything. Okay, exactly, But unfortunately it's never been more expensive to go on spring break this year. The average trip from March twelfth to the twenty first. They came up saying, all right, this is the peak time that schools are off. It's expected to cost more than eighty
three hundred dollars. That's double the period in twenty nineteen, same period in twenty nineteen, and twenty six percent more than.
It did last year. That's twenty six percent.
Yep, that's going to travel insurance company square Mouth.
Okay, so everything's up.
Yeah, hotels have been on the rise since twenty nineteen.
There's still no sign of that stopping.
Domestic flights for spring break trips are now averaging two hundred and eighty bucks. That's about four percent higher than last year.
I just flew last weekend, and yeah, it was not inexpensive by any stretch. No, not at all.
And you have to look at different hacks in order to try to make it a little less expensive. You can go at a different time, obviously earlier is supposed to be a little bit better, or wait a bit to April. But another thing you could do is leave on Saturday and return home midweek, and that could shave about one hundred dollars off your ticket.
Okay, good good tips as you try to get away from it all for a little bit. Anything exciting happening on Wall Street today that we should be looking at.
Yes, everybody's looking at in Vidia today. They're going to be focused on their earnings after the closing bell. Now, the quarterly report card from the leader in artificial intelligence chips. It's definitely become the big event for Wall Street every quarter when they come out with this information. That's a knockoff go for my water because I'm so excited talking about Nvidia, but the promise of AI that powered the
rally that we saw last year in the markets. But these results may be the most critical yet for them because we just had Chinese startup deep Sea. They came out saying, okay, well we need less computing power than a lot of the American rivals.
So what does this mean for the future of Nvidia.
Everybody's going to be looking at that, and that could change the direction and the trajectory of the markets. Right now, we are looking at a higher open s and P futures. They're up about half a percent down, futures rising one hundred points.
All right, Birthday girl, Bloomberg's Courtney Donaho, thanks so much getting your business again tomorrow. Yes, I'll be filled with cake all right, Thanks so much, Courtney. The La County Board of Supervisors has approved rental protections for renters and small businesses affected by the wildfires. The protections cover people who've signed up for relief programs and benefits and have lost at least ten percent of their monthly income. The
House has narrowly passed a budget resolution. The vote was two seventeen two fifteen, with Kentucky's Thomas Massey the only Republican voting against it. Now they have to put the House bill and the Senate bill together to present a bill to the President to sign. Star Wars fans are going to get to see one of the franchise movies in theaters again this spring. Star Wars Revenge of the Sith returns to theaters April twenty fifth to mark its
twentieth anniversary. It'll be in theaters for just one week.
Let's say good morning to ABC's Steven portnoy So.
Stephen, Yesterday we talked about the judge allowing the White House to continue blocking the ap from participating in press pools at least for now, but now there are changes to the way the White House is going to decide which reporters will be in the press pool.
This takes it to a whole other level.
And it's interesting because I sat in that court hearing on Monday where the judge turned to the government lawyer and said, why do you folks deal with the White
House correspond Association at all? And I guess, I don't know if that planted a seed or was it trigger or whatever, but you know, fast forward less than twenty four hours later, and the White House yesterday announced that it would no longer maintain the relationship with the WHCA, where the Press Court chooses among itself who is representing the broader press corps to go into these tight spaces such as the Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, the Cabinet
Room today to document the presidens meetings and activities and ask him questions. The Cabinet meeting today is an important one because it's the first one at this current term and Elon Musk.
Is going to be in the room.
Where will he be seated, Will he have a seat at the table or will it be off to the side. Will he be addressing the Cabinet secretary's giving them direction. All of these things will I suppose we'll see, But the way we'll see it is through the lenses of cameras that are now being.
Selected by the government. And that's the trouble here, I think.
I mean as a former president of the WHCA myself, I served from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, I can give you some sense of this, and that is that the pool is a weird amalgamation of a variety of different outlets. By my rough back of the envelope calculation, there are more than sixty outlets that cover the White House that take part in pool rotations. In the print pool, the radio pool, the television network pool, there's a foreign pool that I wonder whether they'll continue
to have access now. And all of it is in service to a variety of different audiences. And the WHCA has tried over the decades to expand its membership ranks to involve new and emerging outlets. For example, of the thirty newspaper and online outlets that take part in our regular print rotation, there are emerging outlets such as The Daily Caller, the Grio, Huff, Post, which today has been excluded from coverage, and more traditional outlets like the Los
Angeles Times. They have a slot in our pool, but you have to wonder whether they're going to be able to keep it. We don't know the answer. But today outlets such as the Associated Press, Reuters and Huffington Post, which would have been in the pool have been excluded.
Hmmm. In AP and Reuters.
That's interesting because traditionally the wires are seen as historic and first among equals. So you have AP Reuters in Bloomberg, which is admitted to everything. They spend the money and they have the resources to cover every event the president has, and so they are allowed to cover everything. But now the White House as well, only one wire reporter and it'll only be today Bloomberg, which means that Reuter's will sit alongside on the bench alongside.
The AP today.
Okay, so the White House Press Secretary announced during her first briefing that they were going to start letting different organizations in and that kind of stuff that they were kind of planning to do this.
Well, I look, the White House has under Donald Trump, sought to add additional reporters to the pool.
We don't have an objection to that principally.
I mean, look, you might argue it's not fair because well, these people are favored, and what about everybody else who's disfavored.
And that's why the WHCAA is an elected body.
Remember I was the president the association because I put myself forward to my colleagues and I won an election. Yeah, and with that, you have the responsibility to be fair and judicious as you make tough decisions. You're always going to wind up disappointing somebody in the press court among your constituency.
But you have to make sure.
I always believe, and I know that my colleagues who currently serve on the board have it in mind that the public interest is paramount. And again, the public is what we're focused on here, not the individual rights of reporters, although of course we can't discount that, But we have to focus on what our objective is, and that's to help the American people and the people of the free world understand what's happening, to represent them in our questions,
you know. And the idea here is the government should not be able to make these decisions because when it does, this door swings both ways.
Folks, Well, and eliminates the free press thing.
Well, certainly the independence of a free press.
I mean, I understand the idea that this White House believes that it's a privilege to stand before the Resolute Desk to be invited in. Well, I take that for what it is, which is inviting in a group of reporters to conduct news gathering, which is a First Amendment activity. And once you do that, the government should not be in the business of picking and choosing winners and losers, excluding outlets today they've already done it.
Before I let you go. Can anyone challenge this?
I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, one of the issues that came up in the court on Monday was why does the White House have to deal with the WHCA at all? But it doesn't discount the idea that you're still talking about admitting in a group of reporters, and when the government is choosing it. There are Fifth Amendment implications about due process. What was the process used to decide?
Right?
Was it arbitrary? If it was arbitrary, is that actionable? I don't know. That's going to be up to lawyers. I'm not one. I play an uptight reporter on the radio.
No, you're a fabulous reporter on the radio.
In fact, you're so fabulous that you're going to be joining Bill Handle at seven o'clock to talk more about this ABC.
I'm total. He plays a lawyer on the radio.
He does, he does.
So much great information. As always, Thank you, ABC. Stephen Portnoy, you're back. All right, Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. Governor Newsom says the EPA has finished Phase one of the hazardous debris cleanup from the fires in LA in record time. He says has taken less than thirty days to clear hazardous materials for more than nine thousand properties
in two fire zones. Newsom says ninety nine percent of affected properties have now been assessed, cleaned up, or deferred to Phase two for safety reasons. News brought to you by Simper Solaris State Farm estimates it'll pay so vene point six billion dollars to cover fire insurance claims in the LA area, but.
The company, which is California's largest home insure says reinsurance will lower its actual losses to about six hundred twelve million dollars. State Farm says following last month's Palisades and Eaten fires, it has paid one point seventy five billion dollars.
Kfi's Daniel Martindale says that's for nearly ninety five hundred claims filed in La County. State Farm says most of the losses will be absorbed by its parent company. A ninety seven year old woman who lost her home in Pacific Palisades has been honored by the La County Board of Supervisors. Lavinia Jenkins was one of the area's first black homeowners. SOUPS recognized her yesterday for her work as
a teacher and mentor. Jenkins says, even though she lost her home of nearly sixty years, she will rise like a phoenix. Love that spirit. This is KFI and kost HD two Los Angeles, Orange County Southland weather from KFI some morning clouds and fog mainly near the coastal air otherwise sonny, with highs in the mid seventies at the beaches, seventies to mid eighties for Metro LA and Inland O c. Eighties to low nineties for the valleys and Inland Empire,
seventies in the Antelope Valley about the same Tomorrow. Cooling way down on Friday, with highs in the sixties to about seventy continued cool through the weekend. It's fifty and Fullerton fifty five. San Clemente fifty three in Pasadena, forty in Lancaster. We lead local live from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
I'm Amy King. This has been your wake up call.
If you missed any of wake Up Call, you can listen anytime on the iHeart Radio app. You've been listening to wake Up Call with me Amy King. You can always hear wake Up Call five to six am Monday through Friday on KFI Am six forty and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.