We knew that 2025 was going to be a year of significant change because of the election of a convicted felon to the presidency, but history sometimes takes a winding path and that’s where we are now, as we prepare for Congressional hearings next week on Cabinet appointees and the inauguration of Trump on January 20th, where, on his first day in office, Trump has promised at least 100 presidential orders as well as the deportation of an untold number of “illegal immigrants” who have lives, families, and homes in The Land of the Free.
While parts of this country were paralyzed this past week by terrible snowstorms, both fire and wind have devastated significant sections of the Greater Los Angeles (LA) area, which has quickly become The Land of the Fire. The Santa Ana winds came up on Tuesday and have fanned the flames of five distinct sections of the City. At this writing, the winds are not projected to die down until Tuesday, and weather experts don’t see rain on the horizon. Fire crews from other parts of this country have been assisting an exhausted set of LA firefighters. Government and government-elect officials have already started pointing fingers, as some 12,000 structures have been destroyed. Those structures include homes as well as businesses, schools and libraries. Massive federal support activated early, and the president convened a virtual meeting yesterday to get a fully updated status report.
As the winds came up and the fire took hold in three areas of the region, former President Jimmy Carter’s body was moved from the Carter Center in Atlanta to the Capitol Rotunda, to be greeted by members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the vice president, and former president Trump. Over the next several days, thousands stood in line to pay their respects, and on Thursday his state funeral at the National Cathedral took place. Against the spectacle of four former presidents, and the current president and vice president, (most of whom did not speak to one another other than by nodding), eulogies written by former President Ford and former Vice President Walter Mondale were read by their sons. The pageantry and uniquely American traditions we have created around state funerals were on display throughout the week along with other not-so-attractive historical references.
Just as President-elect Trump inflamed passions by suggesting that the United States could annex Canada and Mexico (and Greenland and Panama), those two border partners were sending support and relief to firefighters in Los Angeles without being asked. Climate change has to be hard for disbelievers at this point, told repeatedly it is a “hoax,” especially when memories of President Carter include his commitment to energy conservation and his post-presidential writings about climate change.
The LA fires have become fodder for misinformation, rumors, and exaggeration. It was during the worst of it that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced consequential deletions in its policies where fact checking and hate speech are concerned. I have always had a kind of soft spot for Facebook, for all of its efforts to distinguish truth from lies, for its commitment to eliminating hate speech on its platform. I had no trouble deactivating my Twitter/X account and moving over to Blue Sky, but I am having a hard time with leaving Facebook now. I am connected to old friends, classmates, colleagues, bosses and to its rhythms and that would be hard to give up but continuing to support a platform that has just reversed its commitments to fair and free speech and to fact checking is also not comfortable. I’m going to wait a month or so to see how Facebook evolves, and at the same time monitor Big Tech companies and whether or not their commitments also change with the new administration in place.
I’m still monitoring Congress, hoping that there are 3-5 stiff spined Republicans who will give the new president a resounding “nay” on several of his Cabinet choices. I understand that the strategy is to put a disrupter at the top of an executive department, but whoever has been listening will surely have real concerns around national security, integrity, and expertise of some of the candidates we’ll be seeing this week. The House said no to President Trump on the debt ceiling, and we know at least several Republican senators are responsible for the withdrawal of several candidates already, once background checks were initiated.
Finally, this week may bring Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on charges lodged against the new president where provoking damage and injury in the Capitol on January 6 four years ago is concerned – an insurrection, not a “festival of love.” It is unfortunate that it took so long to appoint a special counsel, and that we may never see Volume II of this report, having to do Trump’s handling of classified documents, and his concerted strategy of “delay/delay” in all matters of judicial process.
Just as I worry about colleagues who have lost homes in the Greater LA area, I worry about good friends who are nonpartisan public officials in the government right now, especially those who may lose their jobs under the new administration, especially those still desperately needed because of their expertise in understanding how the government works and who can expedite the smooth flow of funds during disasters like the one in LA, which surely will not be the last of unfolding tragedies.
The world is watching, too.
Originally Published in ASA News & Notes January 13, 2025
Annie Searle
Searle is an Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington. She is founder and principal of ASA Risk Consultants, a Seattle-based advisory firm. She spent 10 years at Washington Mutual Bank, most of them as a senior executive. Annie is a member of the CISA 10 Regional Infrastructure Security Group. She was an inaugural inductee in 2011 into the Hall of Fame for the International Network of Women in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. She writes a column monthly for ASA News & Notes and is the author of several books or book chapters. She is also a member of the emeritus board of directors for the Seattle Public Library Foundation.