AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST

California governor says Pacific Palisades wildfire has destroyed many structures as winds kick up

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A wildfire whipped up by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity residences Tuesday, burning homes and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, some of whom abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was in Southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by President Joe Biden, made a detour to the canyon to see “firsthand the impact of these swirling winds and the embers,” and he said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed.”

Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said about 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures were under threat.

And the worst could be yet to come. The blaze began around 10:30 a.m., shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the National Weather service warned could be “life threatening” and the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade. The exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported, officials said.

The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

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Trump refuses to rule out use of military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, as he declared U.S. control of both to be vital to American national security.

Speaking to reporters less than two weeks before he takes office on Jan. 20 and as a delegation of aides and advisers that includes Donald Trump Jr. is in Greenland, Trump left open the use of the American military to secure both territories. Trump’s intention marks a rejection of decades of U.S. policy that has prioritized self-determination over territorial expansion.

“I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said, when asked if he would rule out the use of the military. “It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.” He added, “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”

Greenland, home to a large U.S. military base, is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO. Trump cast doubts on the legitimacy of Denmark’s claim to Greenland.

The Panama Canal has been solely controlled by the eponymous country for more than 25 years. The U.S. returned the Panama Canal Zone to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership in controlling the strategic waterway in 1999.

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Judge temporarily blocks release of special counsel report on Trump cases as court fight simmers

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on investigations into Donald Trump as an appeals court weighs a challenge to the disclosure of a much-anticipated document just days before the president-elect reclaims office.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon may represent a short-lived victory for Trump, but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of the Trump-appointed jurist taking action in the Republican’s favor. The halt followed an emergency request Monday by defense lawyers to block the release of a report that they said would be one-sided and prejudicial.

Trump responded to Cannon’s order by complaining anew at a news conference about Smith’s investigation and saying, “It’ll be a fake report just like it was a fake investigation.”

It was unclear what the Justice Department, which has its own regulations governing special counsels and the reports they are expected to produce when they conclude their own, intended to do following Cannon’s order.

The two-volume report is expected to describe charging decisions made in separate investigations by Smith into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

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The polar vortex brings its bitter cold to the Southern US

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The plunging polar vortex brought subfreezing temperatures Tuesday to some of the southernmost points of the U.S., threatening to dump snow on parts of Texas and Oklahoma in coming days and contributing to a power outage in Virginia’s capital that made the water unsafe to drink.

The arctic blast that descended on much of the U.S. east of the Rockies over the weekend has caused hundreds of car accidents, thousands of flight cancellations and delays, and led communities to set up warming shelters, including one at a roller rink and another in the Providence, Rhode Island City Council chambers.

As the cold front moved southward, it prompted a cold weather advisory for the Gulf Coast and pushed the low temperature in El Paso, along Texas’ border with Mexico, to 31 degrees (minus 0.5 Celsius), with an expected wind chill factor ranging from 0 to 15 degrees (minus 18 to minus 9 Celsius) early Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

Road crews in the Kansas City area, which received about 11 inches (28 centimeters) of snow in recent days, have struggled to keep up with clearing streets and highways.

“I don’t know what super powers some think snow removal teams have but 2 days of straight snow & ice isn’t going to disappear overnight,” the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, wrote Monday on Facebook.

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Jimmy Carter eulogized by Kamala Harris, congressional leaders at US Capitol

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation’s capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returned to Washington for three days of state funeral rites starting Tuesday.

Carter’s remains, which had been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, left the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 departed Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. A motorcade carried the casket into Washington for a final journey to the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects.

In Georgia, eight military pallbearers held Carter’s casket as cannons fired on the tarmac nearby. They carried it to a vehicle that lifted it to the passenger compartment of the aircraft, the iconic blue and white Boeing 747 variant that is known as Air Force One when the sitting president is on board. Carter never traveled as president on the jet, which first flew as Air Force One in 1990 with President George H.W. Bush.

The scene repeated outside Washington. The former president’s casket was removed from the plane, cannons fired and a military band played. A hearse emblazoned with the seal of the president joined a motorcade that steered toward Washington.

A bipartisan delegation of members of Congress were led into the Capitol Rotunda by Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Democrats who represent Carter’s home state. Vice President Kamala Harris, members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet and three of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices — John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan — also were present.

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Man who exploded Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI, police say

The highly decorated soldier who exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI including ChatGPT to help plan the attack, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.

Nearly a week after 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger fatally shot himself, officials said according to writings, he didn’t intend to kill anyone else.

An investigation of Livelsberger’s searches through ChatGPT indicate he was looking for information on explosive targets, the speed at which certain rounds of ammunition would travel and whether fireworks were legal in Arizona.

Kevin McMahill, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, called the use of generative AI a “game-changer” and said the department was sharing information with other law enforcement agencies.

“This is the first incident that I’m aware of on U.S. soil where ChatGPT is utilized to help an individual build a particular device,” he said. “It’s a concerning moment.”

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US Justice Department accuses six major landlords of scheming to keep rents high

DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is suing several large landlords for allegedly coordinating to keep Americans’ rents high by using both an algorithm to help set rents and privately sharing sensitive information with their competitors to boost profits.

The lawsuit arrives as U.S. renters continue to struggle under a merciless housing market, with incomes failing to keep up with rent increases. The latest figures show that half of American renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities in 2022, an all-time high.

That means exhausting, day-to-day decisions between medications, groceries, school supplies and rent. It means eviction notices and protracted court cases in which children face the highest eviction rates, with 1.5 million evicted each year, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

While the housing crisis has been assigned several causes, including a slump in homes built over the last decade, the Justice Department’s lawsuit claims major landlords are playing a part.

The department, along with 10 states including North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado and California, is accusing six landlords that collectively operate more than 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia of scheming to avoid lowering rents.

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Immigration is a higher priority for Americans than it was a year ago, an AP-NORC poll shows

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans say immigration should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2025, as the country heads toward a new Republican administration in which President-elect Donald Trump has promised the mass deportations of migrants and an end to birthright citizenship.

About half of U.S. adults named immigration and border topics in an open-ended question that asked respondents to share up to five issues they want the government to work on this year, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from about one-third who mentioned the topic as a government priority in an AP-NORC poll conducted the previous year.

The issue of immigration has risen in salience across the board — among Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and adults both young and old. But Republicans, in particular, have converged around this issue in recent years. About 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or a U.S.-Mexico border wall should be a top focus, up from 45% just two years ago.

This means that Trump will return to the White House with his base, and much of the country, interested in his signature issue. That’s a marked contrast to when he left Washington four years ago with his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, offering a more welcoming posture toward migrants.

But even with the widespread uptick in concern about immigration, that issue is still overshadowed by economic worries. About three-quarters of Americans want the government to focus on addressing broad economic concerns, similar to the past few years. There’s a range of economic issues Americans want addressed — about 3 in 10 referenced general economic issues, a similar share pointed to inflation, and roughly 1 in 10 mentioned either unemployment or taxes.

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Tibet earthquake kills at least 126 people and leaves many trapped

BEIJING (AP) — A strong earthquake shook a high-altitude region of western China and areas of Nepal on Tuesday, damaging hundreds of houses, littering streets with rubble and killing at least 126 people in Tibet. Many others were trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the remote region.

Rescue workers climbed mounds of broken bricks, some using ladders in heavily damaged villages, as they searched for survivors. Videos posted by China’s Ministry of Emergency Management showed two people being carried on stretchers by workers treading over the debris from collapsed homes.

At least 188 people were injured in Tibet on the Chinese side of the border, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

More than 1,000 homes were damaged in the barren and sparsely populated region, state broadcaster CCTV reported. In video posted by the broadcaster, building debris littered streets and crushed cars.

People in northeastern Nepal strongly felt the earthquake, but there were no initial reports of injuries or damage, according to the country’s National Emergency Operation Center. The area around Mount Everest, about 75 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the epicenter, was empty in the depth of winter when even some residents move away to escape the cold.

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Meta eliminates fact-checking in latest bow to Trump

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced changes to content moderation on Facebook and Instagram long sought by conservatives. Incoming President Donald Trump said the new approach was “probably” due to threats he made against the technology mogul.

The move to replace third-party fact-checking with user-written “community notes” similar to those on Trump backer Elon Musk’s social platform X is the latest example of a media company moving to accommodate the incoming administration. It comes on the four-year anniversary of Zuckerberg banning Trump from his platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Zuckerberg has been a target of Trump and his allies since he donated $400 million to help local officials run the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic. Those donations became part of a false narrative that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, although there has never been any evidence of widespread fraud or problems that would have changed that result. Nonetheless, Republican-controlled states have banned future donations to local elections offices and Trump himself threatened to imprison Zuckerberg in a book published in September, during the peak of the presidential campaign.

Zuckerberg released a video Tuesday using some of the language that conservatives have long used to criticize his platforms, saying it was time to prioritize “free expression” and that fact-checkers had become “politically biased.” Zuckerberg said he is moving Meta’s content moderation team from California, a blue state, to red state Texas, and lifting restrictions on some immigration and gender discussions. Meta had no immediate comment on how many people might be relocated.

At a press conference hours later, Trump praised the changes.

The Associated Press