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Blazes Ravage L.A. County, 10 Killed, 10,000 Structures Destroyed; Trump Gets No Jail Time Or Penalties For Hush Money Conviction; Supreme Court Hears Arguments On TikTok Ban. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired January 10, 2025 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:42]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington. Thanks so much for joining me today on CNN NEWSROOM. Let's get right to the news.

Four major fires continue to burn through Los Angeles, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. At least ten people now confirmed dead, 10,000 properties destroyed, imagine how many homes, approximately 153,000 people are still under evacuation orders. Officials are urging residents not to disable their alerts after countywide evacuation warnings were accidentally sent to millions.

The fires are so large, an astronaut took this photo from the international space station, visible from space. It's so big. The multiple fires this week have now scorched more than 36,000 acres. As you see there, entire neighborhoods wiped from the map.

There has been a setback for firefighters as one of those two super scooper planes, as you see there was taken out of commission for emergency repairs after a drone, which, by the way, was flying in restricted airspace hit the plane. Not a good idea.

Gustavo Valdes is in Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods for us.

And, Gustavo, I wonder if you could describe to people who aren't there just the extent of the devastation. I think people will see the aerial pictures. They'll see some of the drive by shots. But it strikes me its hard to comprehend.

GUSTAVO VALDES, CNN EN ESPANOL CORRESPONDENT: It is very hard. Jim and I have been to many natural disasters. Sometimes a tornado where you see the houses just disappear, but you know, the wind picked it up.

Here, the situation is different and seemingly vast, more bigger scale than a tornado or even a hurricane in some cases. An example is this car we've been trying to figure out the brand of this vehicle that is completely charred. Not even the engine survived the intensity of the fire. It's everything on the ground. The rims are completely melted.

Now, talking about the residences, this is seemingly the entrance of one of the houses here in Pacific Palisades. As you can see how the metal survived, pretty much. But everything else is gone.

And this is one house. If you see through the lens all the way to the end of the block, you can see all these houses. I'm counting about maybe five in a row, completely gone. And this is something that repeats over and over and over in this region where we are, behind me, on this side.

Now, incredibly, if you just look across the street, that White House, it doesn't even seem to have smoke damage, maybe a little bit, but it has survived. So that's part of the mystery.

But for most people who are watching home, that left when the first alerts were issued, this is what they're going to come back when they come back. Yesterday, we spoke with the gentleman who came here. He had seen what happened on TV, and he saw his house, his neighbors house, everything. The whole block was gone.

And one thing that has struck me so far, Jim, is how people who have been able to come and see what happened, you would expect them to completely break down. And I don't think that has fully settled on them because they seem to say, okay, the material things are gone, we are okay. But then they start talking about what they lost and it's not the big house. They said that they knew the alerts, the evacuation orders were coming. They kind of prepare for them, but they did not take enough of the personal stuff, stuff that is somewhere in the ashes underneath this rubble. And that is never going to be recovered.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. It's a -- it's a question. What would you take with you if you could only carry it in your arms, right? It's an impossible and difficult challenge to be faced with.

Well, Gustavo, thanks for bringing us the scene, bringing us the scene from there.

Well, just like houses like that, that Gustavo showed us, we are hearing countless stories of people returning home to nothing but ash and rubble.

CNN's Kyung Lah spoke to some of those people about how they're facing that difficult, that painful reality.

[15:05:02]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YVETTE ANDERSON, HOME DESTROYED IN EATON FIRE: My kitchen table, my living room table right there. My stove and everything.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Finally able to return home in Altadena, Yvette Anderson is finding an entire life's possessions gone.

ANDERSON: There's nothing. There's nothing left. I literally just have the clothes on my back. There's nothing.

LAH: Her story repeated for miles across this middle class community in northeast Los Angeles to the Palisades.

CHIEF KRISTIN CROWLEY, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT: It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles.

LAH: For a third straight day, firefighters across the region face out of control infernos. But signs of hope in the battle, water drops from the air as winds weaken.

CROWLEY: Today, we expect winds to subside somewhat, which will allow fire crews to increase containment lines. However, I want to be very clear here as well, we are still under red flag warning with extreme fire behavior possibilities.

LAH: And wide ranging. Five wildfires continue to blaze across the county.

MAYOR KAREN BASS (D), LOS ANGELES: We continue to confront a big one level firestorm.

LAH: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is pushing back on critics who claim budget cuts to the fire department last June affected firefighting resources.

BASS: There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.

LAH: The Palisades Fire has grown to more than 17,000 acres and is zero percent contained.

CHRIS GROEL, WORKPLACE DESTROYED IN PALISADES FIRE: It's been, you know, heartbreaking, pretty loss for words.

LAH: Where once thriving neighborhoods graced the hills, apocalyptic scenes have replaced them.

GROEL: Something this big and this fast that, you know, kind of just wiped out the whole town was something that I personally and I think a lot of people from around here never saw coming.

LAH: Nearly 180,000 are under evacuation orders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The time to get out of the house. Where the car keys?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mom?

LAH: Harrowing tales of escape from the Palisades to Rustic Canyon, where this now viral video --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's get out of here. We tried, we tried, bro.

LAH: -- captured the moments when Tanner Charles and his friend Orly Israel made their escape from Israel's burning home.

ORLY ISRAEL, HOME DESTROYED IN PALISADES FIRE: You know, I feel like we fought a losing battle, but we fought it. And I'm glad we made it out alive.

SHERIFF ROBERT LUNA, LOS ANGELES COUNTY: Right now, frankly, we don't know yet. We eventually will.

LAH: But worry is growing across the region. At least five deaths have been confirmed, but officials stress those numbers may rise.

LUNA: At one point, well be able to do a more thorough search of these impacted areas. Some of them look like a bomb was dropped in them, where we will be able to bring in canines and other things to help us, hopefully not discover too many fatalities. That's our prayer. But this is a crisis and we don't know what to expect.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH (on camera): Here in Altadena, you can see just a row of destroyed houses just on this one block. Each one of these plots with the various chimneys, each one was a home. And these are three bedroom homes on this block. This is Robert Lara's home that has now been completely leveled. This is a 14,000-acre fire, 4,000 structures burned. But for families like this one and the families you just met, they now have to figure out the hard part of where to go next.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Altadena, California.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, and when they can rebuild, will they be able to rebuild? Are they insured? So many questions.

Well, another story we've been following closely today, months after a jury of his fellow New Yorkers found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, Donald Trump is now officially a felon. Judge Juan Merchan sentenced the president-elect earlier today to an unconditional discharge in the New York hush money case, meaning he will not face any jail time or probation. Yet another end of a long legal trial with no criminal consequences, no jail time, no fines, no legal penalty at all.

Judge Merchan acknowledged the unprecedented nature of this case, saying, quote, never before has the court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances. He made clear that today's ruling was the only lawful sentence that would not interfere with the office of the presidency.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JUDGE JUAN MERCHAN, ACTING JUSTICE, NEW YORK SUPREME COURT: It is the legal protections afforded to the Office of the President of the United States that are extraordinary, not the occupant of the office. Ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections. It is the Office of the President that bestows those far reaching protections to the office holder, and it was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

[15:10:05]

SCIUTTO: Well, now that he has been sentenced to nothing, Trump can begin a formal appeal of his conviction to a higher court in New York.

Joining me now to discuss the president-elect's sentencing. CNN legal analysts Elie Honig and Jennifer Rodgers.

Great to have you both on.

And, Elie, I wonder if I could begin with you. There's this case, but of course, there were four separate indictments here. In a little over a week, he's going to be president. And of all those indictments, none of them went anywhere, right? I mean, he was convicted, but there was no penalty.

How did he pull this off? And ultimately, big picture, did the legal system fail to hold him to account?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, isn't it remarkable, Jim? If you think back to august 2023, Donald Trump by that point had been indicted in four cases separate jurisdictions, each one standing alone, two federal, two state, including this New York cash money case.

If I had told you then that a year and a half in the future, the only punishment that Donald Trump would face on any of those cases would be one unconditional discharge, and he'd be reelected president of the United States. I wouldn't have believed it. How did it happen?

I mean, there are libraries to be written about that, but if I had to summarize that, I would say a combination of political fortunes getting reelected president in part by leveraging these cases to his benefit, I think prosecutors took too long and at times misstepped and I think some of these prosecutions, the hush money case being number one on that list, were ill-advised and never should have been brought in the first place.

So it's a complex combination of factors. Donald Trump was a 1 in 1,000,000 chance to get through it as he has, and that 1 in 1,000,000 chance is hit.

SCIUTTO: Jennifer, big picture before we get to more of the specifics of what happens next in this case, given these prosecutorial failures, if you want to call them that or just the results of these, given the Supreme Courts broad immunity decision and the repeated impeachment failures, right, particularly for January 6th, what are the legal checks? What legal checks remain on President-elect Trump as he returns to office?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah. Good question, Jim. I mean, on paper, there still is the check of impeachment. Of course, the problem is, in reality, if you're looking at needing to have two thirds of the Senate for a conviction, you really don't have that as a check in our current system, you're never going to get to two thirds. It doesn't seem.

So, the answer is, you know, we used to really rely on norms more than the actual checks of the criminal justice system and impeachment. We used to rely on presidents and other high ranking officials to guardrail their own behavior or on their colleagues, right, their party, like in the case of Nixon, who resigned due to pressure from his own party. Those norms have been destroyed in the Trump era.

So, you know, I don't want to be a downer, but, you know, the problem is, without the norms being followed by the president and with impeachment off the table and now with the criminal justice system largely off the table, at least for conduct that can be deemed official acts, there really aren't a lot of checks.

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

I wonder, Elie, did Judge Merchan get this right? Because he, in effect, said that, listen, you know, the jury verdict stands. So as a citizen, you're still a felon, but you're about to be president. And the office of the president offers these protections, and therefore, I can't sentence you in effect. I mean, did he get the reality right legally?

HONIG: I think he did. I think Judge Merchan did a really impressive job here of taking the law and the realities of politics and the realities of the presidency and crafting essentially the only real sentence that he realistically could.

There's no way he could have sentenced to prison. There's no real way he could have the commander in chief be subject to probation. And also by announcing in advance, as Judge Merchan did a week ago today, he said, I want you in for sentencing on January 10th, and my intention is to sentence you to unconditional discharge. And you can do it by Zoom.

Only by doing that, I think, was Judge Merchan able to get the Supreme Court to sign off on letting him even do the sentencing, because in the opinion last night, where the court said by a 5 to 4 narrowest possible margin, go ahead with the sentencing, the reason they said it was okay, the five in the majority is there's no what we call irreparable harm because Judge Merchan has already told us he's not sentenced to prison or a fine or probation, and he's going to not even make you leave your house. You can do this by Zoom.

So I think Judge Merchan did a nice job of anticipating the Supreme Court there, getting the sentence in, getting it done with, and at least putting an official stamp on this stage of the proceedings.

SCIUTTO: So, Jennifer, Trump will undoubtedly appeal this -- this sentencing to the higher court in New York. What does that process look like timing wise?

RODGERS: Well, its pretty slow, Jim. I mean, appeals courts take even longer than regular courts. SCIUTTO: We might have lost. She froze up. I can pick up what

happens. Pick up, pick up my supervisor.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: Jennifer, you might just want to begin that thought again because we lost you midstream. Oh, she's frozen again. Okay.

You complete the thought.

HONIG: My former supervisor.

So appeals courts do take a long time. Six, eight, ten months from start to finish. Donald Trump will have to start in the New York state appeals court. The middle layer of the cake. If he loses there, he can then go up to the top court in New York, which is called the court of appeals. Whenever he's done with his state level appeals, he can then ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.

And if you look at last night's ruling, if I was Trump, he lost that ruling, but it's probably good news for his larger prospects, because you've already got four justices. It's not exactly the same issue, but have shown some real interest in his immunity argument. And I think if all he can do is swing over one or both of Robert's and Barrett, he's going to win on his appeal.

SCIUTTO: Jennifer, now that you're back, I wonder on that point, I thought, and of course, I'm not the lawyer in this trio here. You guys are. But I thought the Supreme Court couldn't touch state cases.

RODGERS: Yeah, well, that's not exactly true. It depends on whether they're federal interests here. And in the case of a president who is saying that the state can't interfere with his presidential duties, right? His performance of presidential duties, the federal constitution always trumps state constitutions. So that's why the federal government and the federal Supreme Court has an interest here, especially when it comes to something like presidential immunity, which they just spoke on this summer.

The parameters of what that immunity looks like are ultimately up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide, which is why I think we all expect this case ultimately on the merits, to come back there.

SCIUTTO: There you have it. Well, well talk about it again when it gets there.

Jennifer Rodgers, Elie Honig, thanks so much to both of you.

Still ahead, the clock is ticking on TikTok. The Supreme Court hearing today on whether the law forcing a sale or if a sale doesn't happen, a ban of the social media app can go forward. What we learned from listening to those oral arguments when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:20:16] SCIUTTO: The future of TikTok here in the U.S. is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. Justices today heard arguments on a bipartisan law passed earlier this year by wide margins that mandate -- mandates TikTok separate from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a ban in U.S. app stores. The arguments pit free speech concerns against national security.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

NOEL FRANCISCO, ATTORNEY FOR TIKTOK: The government's real target, rather, is the speech itself. Its fear that Americans, even if fully informed, could be persuaded by Chinese misinformation. That, however, is a decision that the First Amendment leaves to the people.

ELIZABETH PRELOGAR, U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: The important thing to recognize is that the act leaves all of that speech unrestricted once TikTok is freed from foreign adversary control. The First Amendment does not bar Congress from taking that critical and targeted step to protect our nation's security.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The Supreme Court now has just nine days to issue a decision before that law takes effect on January 19th, and at least listening to those oral arguments seemed inclined, perhaps, to allow the law to stand.

Joining me now to discuss, Tim Bernard. He's a tech policy analyst. And writer Glenn Gerstell, he's a former general counsel at the NSA, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

First, Tim, if I could begin with you listening to those arguments, and I know there's an element of tea leaf reading here because the questions don't necessarily imply the final decision.

But who do you think ended those arguments with the upper hand?

TIM BERNARD, TECH POLICY ANALYST & WRITER: As you say, there's a lot of prediction there. There were certainly some very tough questions for TikTok, but also some for the government. And I did detect some sympathy with the TikTok creators, who are the other petitioner.

But I think we just have to remember this is a very big deal for free expression in the U.S. There's millions and millions, around 170 million TikTok users who are going to be impacted, and they have a right to speak, to hear whatever they want, including Chinese propaganda if they want. And this could be one of the most influential free speech decisions in the history of United States.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. I mean, listen, we're showing some of those TikTok videos here, and I think most people, when they hear TikTok, they think this, oh, how to do your hair, how to cook a dish or how to do a dance, right.

But the U.S. intelligence community, as you well know, Glenn has found that as Tim was saying, China uses this to influence American minds and influence U.S. elections, including the most recent one. It pits national security against First Amendment rights.

Which of those two principles wins out -- principles wins out? And could you sense the court leaning either way on emphasizing one or the other?

GLENN GERSTELL, SENIOR ADVISER, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: So this is indeed a tough question because it pits two really important issues. One is protecting our national security, and two is the freedom of speech as embodied in the First Amendment. There have been a long series of court cases that touch this, but none that directly deals with these two interests in the context of a social media platform. So this is completely unprecedented.

I mean, to be fair to TikTok, they have -- they -- it's -- they've made the point that the government hasn't said that the Chinese government is directly influencing TikTok, but it has the potential to do so. And it's that potential that is of concern to national security officials.

By the same time, we haven't ever had a situation where the government is, in effect, not directly, but in effect, taking away a social media platform used by 170 million people. So this is a really big issue.

Just very quickly, I think if we step back for a second, this leads to two really important points. One is that were going to be wrestling with this question of the risks and rewards of Chinese technology for years. This is just one aspect of it. And the second very quickly is that, we really don't have a good sense of how we want to regulate social media. This is an example of how the First Amendment is intersecting with this case, and we're all over it.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, it's a good point. Listen, you mentioned other technology. Remember the focus on Huawei, right, who builds the sort of the guts of the Internet and concerns about Chinese ability to backdoor through there? That's already been an issue.

So, Tim, to that point, I mean, the fact is there's a lot of disinformation that is spread on U.S.-owned platforms. X, for one, Facebook for another. Facebook just announced, oh, we're not going to do fact checking anymore. Does that raise a broader question here that it is not just TikTok that is a conduit for disinformation to American users?

BERNARD: I do agree with you there. One of the big questions that really they didn't discuss at all is how would China actually use some manipulation of the algorithm to influence people? We don't really know how any of that that works. If China had absolute access to the platform, would they actually be able to successfully do it? They -- as you said, the platforms here are not trying to spread misinformation, but it happens, right? They're just trying to maximize what users look at.

If they were trying to spread misinformation, would they actually succeed? Would they just turn off the users? We really don't know.

And, you know, the government, the courts have this traditional deference to Congress and the administration on anything they call a national security risk. I mean, but, you know, it's pretty debatable. And I think it'd be very interesting if any of the Supreme Court opinions, maybe not the majority, but who knows, probe the limits of that deference, especially with the incoming Trump administration. I think back to the last Trump term, at the very beginning, we had the travel ban, which is also abusively on national security grounds.

And the Supreme Court is starting to think about how do we -- how do we evaluate if national security justification is being used appropriately? I think that would be very interesting.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, on the travel ban, they ultimately sided with Trump on that, right, and gave the executive branch wide authority to make such judgments, let me ask you this, Glenn, because, you know, to Chinas motives here, what does it say that TikTok, owned by this Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has said it would rather be shut down than sold?

Does that give you any concern? Does it reveal something about China's interest in the platform? Why would a company say that? We'd rather, if we're not owned by China, we're done.

GERSTELL: The reality, as TikTok has said from their point of view, is that they need the algorithm and the engineering expertise supplied by its parent company, ByteDance, which I might add is partly owned by U.S. investors as well. And TikTok has said, look, the reality, the simple commercial reality is that we cannot operate if we are not owned and allowed to use the algorithm that is subject to Chinese export controls. TikTok would be meaningless without it. We couldn't supply the content, other countries couldn't -- couldn't access U.S. content and its simply not going to work. That's probably the commercial reality.

I might also add, Jim, just quickly, that, we don't know for sure that the court is going to make a decision right now. They have nine days in which to do so before the statute comes into effect. This is a really complicated, difficult issue, as we saw by the fact that both sides got tough questions from the nine justices.

So it's entirely possible that the court might, and I just emphasize, might issue some kind of stay or injunction and say, lets just wait a while until we come up with an opinion or perhaps kick the case back down to the district court. The significance of which is that would give President Trump and the new Congress a chance to take another look at this if they wanted to.

SCIUTTO: Fair point. A lot of potential different outcomes here, Tim Bernard, Glenn Gerstell, thanks so much to both of you.

BERNARD: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next, the figure just alarming 10,000 structures destroyed, thousands of them homes. We'll be live in Altadena, California, where some people are returning home now to find everything was lost. And by the way, the fires are still burning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:32:28]

SCIUTTO: Of course, we continue to follow the fires in California. They've just devastated Los Angeles. Death toll now stands at least 10 people. The true toll, frankly, won't be known for days. They've got so much searching to do, 150,000 people are still under evacuation orders.

The number of properties destroyed that includes homes now stands at 10,000. Climate experts are estimating this could be the costliest wildfire in U.S. history.

CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Altadena, one of the really hardest hit areas.

And, Stephanie, when I saw the picture behind you during the break of where you're standing, it just showed the randomness of this all. One house survives, another house disappears.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Completely. And that's, you know, exactly what I want to show you. We could go block after block after block, Jim, and it's devastation after devastation after devastation. And, you know, I know you've been out to see some of these disasters, too.

And sometimes there is something random just like this. This house has some damage here on the side, right. You can see there's a paint peeling. These bushes are the delineation though, because right on the other side you take a look and this house is completely gone. Just demolish. It's gutted actually.

The house next to it also gone. In fact, every other house down this block is gone.

Over on this side behind us, it's also gone. It's just -- I've never seen this scale of destruction. Sometimes you see, like one block or two homes on a block. This level of destruction, I would be surprised if it is not the most destructive set of wildfires in California's history, because normally when we cover these fires, they are burning partially out in the wildland. Not the case here.

This is you know, these are this is suburbia. Same thing with the Palisades Fire. So what is really going to have to happen here. And I can see some of the fixed wing aircraft that are coming through here because they're coming through to drop water, because this is the Eaton Fire.

And it was probably too far for you to see it. But this is the Eaton Fire, and its not burning down here now, but its burning up in the foothills, up in the hills, the mountainside behind. So they're going and dropping water.

If you see this helicopter, I don't know if you can see it. It's a yellow helicopter, but it's going its a snorkel on it. It goes, gets water and it drops it on the fire. So that's what they're doing here. That's the great news because for the first day, two days of this fire, they weren't able to use aircraft because it was just so windy with those hurricane force winds.

[15:35:05]

So this is a big helper. And that's why we've seen the containment levels start to fall into place now. But still you're talking about 14,000 acres here, 20,000 acres in Palisades. But when you take a look at that and how densely populated it is, it's unbelievable there and it's unbelievable here.

I've been to both fires. You just don't see the scale of devastation and the losses are going to continue to go up. And sadly, they're expecting the loss of life to also go up as well, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. Can I ask you about that, Stephanie? Because I know these are the -- no one knows at this point, but is there a list of missing people at this point that might give an indication as to how many might have lost their lives?

ELAM: No, we don't have any idea yet. We know what -- people were looking for people and they're trying to find them, or if they know someone stayed behind. And so then they've gone to find them.

As people are getting back into these zones, checking on their loved ones, that's how it's happening. It's different than, say, like in a hurricane, you know, like they leave a mark on the house. It's a different idea.

But we don't know. There's so much we don't know. We don't know if any of these fires were started because of arson.

But what we do know is that those hurricane force winds, combined with the super dry brush and the fact that we haven't had any discernible rain in months here in L.A. and now that we're back in drought, is an awful, awful combination.

And so think about it. The last two winters we had here were pretty wet. So that allows brush to grow back up. And then over the last year it just dried out. And then you add in those winds, that's just pure kindling that can just blow fire anywhere up into cars, into trees, into homes.

And that -- that is what's happening here. So it's going to be a really an exercise for people with climate change to realize how they can harden their houses. And for some people, deciding whether or not they want to stay here and rebuild, it's some very tough decisions ahead for these people.

SCIUTTO: Very hard questions. Well, Stephanie Elam, thanks so much for joining us. And please send our best to all the people suffering there.

ELAM: Yeah.

SCIUTTO: I want to want to go now to CNN's Chad Myers for the latest on the forecast for the next few days.

Chad, you've been watching those wind speeds closely. When we first spoke a few days ago, they were hurricane force. They've slowly come down. Where do they stand today?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Much better. Single digits in some spots, not so much up to the north. The mountains are still in the 20 to 30 mile per hour range, but around the fires themselves, were down between five, seven and nine miles per hour.

What's different today, Jim, is that the winds are shifting directions at times, kind of putting the firefighters on their back foot going, whoa, we thought the fire was going that way. Now, it's coming this way. We have a job to do. We have to get our crews out of there because we thought it was going, but it's not.

So we talk about containment to talk about the Hurst fire at 37 percent. That's a really good number. Eaton Fire where she was, where Stephanie is only 3 percent. That's because the size of the ring of the fire itself, and also Palisades, only 8 percent.

When you're talking miles around a fire takes a lot of containment to get to 8 percent. It takes a mile of containment. Containment means that the fire has no chance of crossing that line ever again, ever again. So we don't want to lose containment. So they really they're very, very cautious about when they say, yes, it's contained at this point on this line.

And when you have shifting winds, that's also another problem with containment, too.

So we're going to watch those numbers grow slowly. So here's your wind right now, nine seven, 12 miles per hour. But blowing from a different direction than yesterday, blowing back where that actually was.

That some good news, if you can already be back there and have that area contained, then you can contain the south side. If you have wind coming in from an opposite direction, but then you've got firefighters, you have to move crews. You have a lot of work to do to get more containment.

But here's the problem. Here's Sunday. This is what it looks like Malibu, 44 miles per hour. This is the next surge that we're going to see on Sunday. There will be another one Tuesday and another one on Wednesday. So yes, there are still going to be surges and the chance of rain. Absolutely nothing.

Look at the orange here, the darkest orange. This is where it is severe drought. And then moderate drought there. Look at where the fires are in the severe drought. Exactly as where we'd expect.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, that's so telling, right? And that comes to my next question. 2024 was the hottest year on record. The first time we should know bigger picture temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times, which is long been a mark folks concerned about. But I look at that map there, the worst fires in a drought area. The

droughts we know made worse by climate change. Is that a fair connection?

MYERS: Absolutely. It's also a fair connection that we had such a monstrous winter rainy season last year. I was -- I was five miles from where Stephanie was covering the flash flood of last winter.

[15:40:00]

SCIUTTO: Wow.

MYERS: And we're using the same producers that I use. Then what we were talking about how much water was coming out of the hills. The water was going down through the Hollywood Hills, down through the streets and mud flowing through the streets in the same area that it just stopped raining in March.

All of that that was growing, obviously stopped growing. It died, it dried out, and now it's burning. So, yeah, that swing, that back and forth swing is very indicative of what we expect a warming climate to do, 1.6 though, Jim, for 2024, 1.6, we want to keep it to 1.5. We didn't even come close.

Look at all these red areas here that have the warmest year on record. Not even cool areas here across parts of the south Pacific. Very little. So yes, 2023 was a very warm year. But then, all of a sudden here, we're going to go to 2023. This is the pink line. It ended right here in December. Then we moved that line back over here to January and 2024.

Look how far 2024 was above 2023 for so many months. Then it kind of cooled off a little bit because La Nina is coming, but it didn't cool off enough to make it not the warmest year on record.

Everywhere that you see the bright dark red here, that's the warmest place it's ever been. And we're seeing an awful lot of it in the oceans.

Guess what happened in the oceans this year, Jim? Rapidly intensifying hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, depending on the ocean that are all the same thing. They're just different names because different oceans.

SCIUTTO: And they arise from the same root cause.

Well, Chad Myers, good to have you. Thanks so much.

MYERS: Good to see you.

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back with much more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a third term today, despite independent observers, including the U.N. and the Carter Center, saying the last -- last year's election was not democratic.

[15:45:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICOLAS MADURO, VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I was not put here by the U.S. government or by any pro-imperialist government of the Latin American right. I'm here because I come from the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Colombia announced it would not recognize the results of the election, and hours later, Venezuela closed its land border and suspended flights to its neighbor.

Stefano Pozzebon joins us now from Colombia.

So, Stefano, the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, accused Maduro of consolidating a coup d'etat. She, of course, was held briefly yesterday. What does the opposition do now?

STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, Jim. Well, Maria Corina Machado, she released a video statement just in the last hour, like you said, accusing Maduro of consuming a coup d'etat, but also saying that this is the last step, that Maduro, with this going ahead with this inauguration, despite the international outcry, has essentially signed the conclusion of what she calls is her regime.

Now, Maria Corina is in hiding in Caracas, and no person took to the streets today to protest. Despite quite a good numbers yesterday that we saw in Caracas. And instead Maduro has been nonstop on television and receiving pledges of allegiance by the national parliament, the armed forces, the police and the members of the ruling socialist party.

So the difference of optics speaks loudly. Maria Corina is nowhere to be seen. She was able to release this video statement very late on schedule. She was due to speak earlier today in the morning and as you can imagine, most of the opposition supporters now feel deception. They feel they feel frustrated that after more than ten years, Maduro is still there and now looks to cement his -- his rule on his power in Venezuela for six more years.

And that's why more and more eyes are turning to the international community, to the other countries who could perhaps put in even further pressure on Maduro. Today, the White House, for example, increased reward for Maduro's arrest to $25 million.

SCIUTTO: So there will, of course, be a new U.S. president in just a little over a week. What is expected to happen from where you're sitting when Trump takes office? How is he -- how are Venezuelans expecting Trump to handle the situation?

POZZEBON: Yes, exactly. Well, Jim, Trump during his first term was behind a strategy that used to call the maximum pressure against Nicolas Maduro. It was maybe laid out by the Bolton type of people. So not as popular as they are now with the Trump coalition, but still, Trump was a strong advocate of Maduro's removal from power and took a very hawkish stance on Maduro.

And he's appointed secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has been very close to the opposition in Venezuela for years and knows Maria Corina Machado really well in person. And that's why many people are looking at the United States at the next U.S. president, who will take office in ten days or so now to increase that pressure.

Yesterday, Trump did talk about Venezuela on his -- he made a post on his truth social page calling Maria Corina Machado and the candidate Edmundo Gonzalez freedom fighter who should not be harmed by the by the Maduro forces and advocating for a free Venezuela.

Whether that will translate into executive action and even stronger action against Venezuela remains to be seen. But, of course, the Venezuelan opposition is hoping for that, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Stefano Pozzebon, thanks so much for joining.

POZZEBON: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, turning now to the Israel-Hamas war, the rush to secure a hostage release and ceasefire deal before the U.S. presidential inauguration seemed to have stalled and the talks deadlocked once again. That news today as the Israeli military reveals it has identified the remains of another hostage recovered in Gaza. The 23 year old was found dead in a tunnel in the Rafah area, this according to the IDF. His father's remains were recovered in Rafah as well days earlier, both of them kidnapped together during the terror attack on October 7th, now, well, a year and a half ago, almost.

Jeremy Diamond is in Tel Aviv with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, earlier this week, the Israeli military recovered two bodies from a tunnel in the area of Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza strip. On Wednesday, they said that one of those bodies was that of Yousef al-Ziyadnah, who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th. The Israeli military, now confirming that the second body that was recovered from that tunnel was that of Hamza al-Ziyadnah, Yousef's, 23-year-old son.

Both of them are part of the Muslim Bedouin community that lives here in Israel, and they were taken hostage on October 7th from Kibbutz Hulit, right near the Gaza Strip, where they were both working on a dairy farm.

[15:50:02]

Two other members of the al-Ziyadnah family had been released during the ceasefire deal in late November of 2023. They had also been taken hostage on October 7th. That means that 98 hostages are now still being held inside of Gaza, 94 of whom were taken captive on October 7th. That includes both the living and the deceased hostages, who are still being held by Hamas as bargaining chips.

What we have seen in the meantime is that these start and stop negotiations in Doha, Qatar, appear to be leading to progress at times, but other moments it seems as if they are backtracking once again. This has kind of been the pace of these start and stop negotiations. But now, a Hamas official is telling CNN that Israel is introducing some new conditions in these negotiations, claiming that Israel is demanding to hold on to a one kilometer strip of territory along Gaza's eastern and northern borders that they previously had not demanded.

Israeli officials have yet to respond to that new claim being made by Hamas. But meanwhile, President Biden earlier this week blaming Hamas for the fact that there is not yet a deal, saying that they are getting in the way, but nonetheless insisting that real progress is being made.

We know that both Biden administration officials, as well as incoming Trump administration officials, are pushing to see if a deal can be done by January 20th, when president-elect Trump will be inaugurated as the next president of the United States.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian official and another diplomat briefed on the talks, they are both making clear that there has yet to be an actual breakthrough in these negotiations that could make such a deal possible before January 20th. They say that there is still a lot of work to do.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: So many false starts in those negotiations.

Well, coming up, the story of how a man saved a stray dog from the rubble brought on by those devastating fires burning through Los Angeles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: We have found some small signs of hope, and we want to end on one of those from these fires in California. While the flames are taking a toll, a massive toll on so many, including animals, kindness abounds despite the destruction. CNN captured the moment a man rescued an injured stray dog from the wildfire rubble.

Samantha Lindell has the story.

[15:55:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAMANTHA LINDELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rick Miller was checking in on a friend's house in Altadena, California, when he noticed an injured stray dog across the street. He decided to see if he could help. RICK MILLER, CALIFORNIA RESIDENT: Dogs caring for each other. I'm

like, everyone needs help right now. Sorry for or crying, but its really emotional seeing like my friends lose their houses and people losing their animals. And so you try to help each other out.

LINDELL: Miller says the wildfires have taken a toll on everyone, and the least he could do is try to give back.

MILLER: Yeah, you've seen like, all your friends and family, like losing their houses and, you know, just trying to help them out. Like, our house was, you know, fortunately, my house was saved. But our friend is right across the street. Their house is gone.

But that's why you just want to help. Help your friends out. Help your families out. Help -- help the animals out.

LINDELL: Miller said he ultimately decided to bring the dog to the Pasadena Humane Society in hopes of giving the animal a better future. The Pasadena Humane Society confirmed they received the stray dog and was treated for burns and exposure to smoke.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Well, one little green shoot there in the midst of all of that suffering.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.

"QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" is up next.