It’s Wednesday, January 7. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The Bondi Beach victims want answers. Jed Rubenfeld on why Nick Reiner’s insanity plea just might work. Martin Gurri on whether Cuba’s autocratic government could fall next. And much more.
But first: The Los Angeles fires, one year later.
One year ago tonight, my family and I jumped in our car and fled the smoky wilds of Pasadena. We were a few miles south of the Eaton Canyon fire—one of the two major fires out of 14 that descended on the greater Los Angeles area last January. The winds were picking up. No one knew what was coming next.
We were very lucky, of course. We know plenty of people who were not. When I trekked up to our house a few days later, the neighborhood was coated in ash, and it was quiet and eerie. Everyone was masked—once again. It felt sad. Altadena, just up the road, was still burning. Our daughter’s school was gone. So were the homes of some of our kids’ classmates. And then there were the dead.
Angelenos spent the next several months regrouping: suctioning hazardous materials, soil testing, rebuilding, reimagining their homes. It wasn’t the same place anymore.
Today at The Free Press, we recall the chaos and devastation of the fires, and we explore the ways they changed life in LA and beyond.
First, we hear from someone who wasn’t as fortunate as my family and I. The house Meghan Daum had been renting—a house that, as she puts it, “happened to contain the sum total of my life’s possessions”—burned to the ground in the fires. In the year since, Meghan has been haunted by one question: Why didn’t she take more of her things with her? She became obsessed with replacing everything that was gone until, halfway through the year, her compulsions flipped. Read Meghan’s essay on what happened when she lost everything she owned:
Next, Jack Burke reports on what happened in Altadena after the fires. The town received a lot less coverage than the Palisades at the time, but it was hit hard. Read Jack’s dispatch on the people doing what they can to rebuild:
And finally, I profile Rick Caruso, the Los Angeles property developer who emerged as a leading critic of Mayor Karen Bass in the wake of the fires, and who everyone expects to announce a run for office very soon. The only question, really, is whether he has his sights on City Hall—or the governor’s mansion. My piece isn’t about the fires directly, but a test of how much they might have changed the politics of Los Angeles—and California. Read it here:
—Peter Savodnik
Nick Reiner is scheduled to be arraigned today on murder charges for the killing of his parents Rob and Michele. Many expect him to plead insanity. But how does the law define insanity? And how likely is a successful insanity defense for Reiner? Jed Rubenfeld breaks it down in his latest column.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said hours after this weekend’s operation in Venezuela. But later that weekend, Trump said he thinks Cuba is “just going to fall” on its own. Free Press columnist Martin Gurri, who was born in Cuba, asks whether the regime is really that fragile, and why the fall of Maduro is such a disaster for the island’s Communist regime.
For more on how Maduro’s fall will impact Cuba, listen to a special edition of Conversations with Coleman. Coleman’s guest is Gelet Martínez Fragela, a Cuban activist and journalist who reports on how authoritarianism hollowed out her once prosperous country—and what comes next. Listen to their conversation wherever you get your podcasts, or by clicking the play button below.
By grabbing Nicolás Maduro in his own capital, the U.S. has set a dangerous precedent—and one that Russia and China are going to use to justify their own bad behavior. That’s a popular argument in the wake of the U.S. raid on Saturday and, according to Eli Lake, it’s completely wrong. Read his latest column on why the operation in Venezuela won’t embolden America’s allies.
After Bondi
Three weeks after the deadliest terrorist attack in Australian history, Jews across the country are still reeling. As the victims’ families pick up the pieces, some have been left wondering how Bondi Beach could have been turned into a killing field.
That’s why Sheina Gutnick, whose father was tragically killed in the attack, is calling for a royal commission—Australia’s highest form of governmental inquiry—to investigate the unchecked rise of antisemitism in the country that she said created the conditions for the attack. Read her harrowing account of grief, her reckoning with a country she once felt proud to live in, and her quest for accountability.
Also reflecting on the Bondi attack is Arsen Ostrovsky. He was struck in the head by a bullet during the attack—a bullet that, according to doctors, came within just millimeters of killing him. Today, he writes about what that near-death experience taught him.
Venezuela will “be turning over” between “30 and 50 MILLION” barrels of oil to the U.S., Trump announced in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday evening. “That money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” he said.
The White House says Trump and his advisers are discussing how to acquire Greenland, including the potential use of the U.S. military. Major European leaders have pushed back against the suggestion. “Greenland belongs to its people,” they said in a joint statement.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump’s global tariffs for the first time on Friday. “We have a big Supreme Court case,” Trump told House Republicans Tuesday. “I hope they do what’s good for our country. I hope they do the right thing. The president has to be able to wheel and deal with tariffs.”
California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa died suddenly on Tuesday, the same day that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation took effect, weakening an already shaky GOP majority in the house. At present, Speaker Mike Johnson can afford only two dissenting votes on party-line issues, assuming all Republican representatives are present.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t sweating California’s proposed billionaire tax, he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. The proposition, a onetime 5 percent tax on the assets of those with a net worth above $1 billion, has drawn the ire of a crop of ultra-wealthy Golden State residents. Huang disagreed: “We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes, I guess, they would like to apply, so be it,” he said.
Hilton has dropped the Minneapolis hotel that canceled the bookings of ICE agents earlier this week, according to the hotel operator. A Hampton Inn hotel, which is a Hilton brand, allegedly refused to put up ICE agents for the night, according to a social media post from the Department of Homeland Security.
The Swiss bar that erupted into a deadly blaze, killing 40 people on New Year’s Eve, had missed six years of safety checks, according to Reuters. Prosecutors allege the fire was likely an accident, triggered by sparkling candles that caused a foam material used for soundproofing to catch fire on the ceiling of the bar’s basement.
LA fires: Democrats way of promoting urban renewal.
Nick Reiner: He should not have been allowed to walk freely in civil society. Who murders his parents, a child with daddy issues or one severely, mentally disturbed?
Bondi: Perhaps Australia’s leaders are equivocating or like Western leaders in the late 1930’s are in reality JewHaters.
Cornell: A proving ground for future Bondis’
Minnesota: They’re trying to emulate the Confederacy via states rights/nullification. It appears to be perverse.
Has everyone forgotten the August 2023 Fires in Lahaina, Maui Hawaii? They were in August 2023, 2.25 years of experience in rebuilding is finally showing some signs of progress compared to LA.
The issues for the locals and reconstruction efforts in Lahaina are likely a good guide to the issues and delays in progress in LA. I would expect the same issues in permitting and reconstruction, plus insurance red tape and a lack of materials and skilled workers are similar for both communities.
Perhaps someone at the Free Press can compare the progress and time frames of both fires. We might be able to learn some things that have worked in either place that the other can use.