Stay Tuned NOW with Gadi Schwartz - Jan. 6 | NBC News NOW

Hey there. Tonight we are watching a major winter storm dumping so much snow and freezing anything outside in the Midwest and the Northeast. Yeah, good thing I didn't work because

my tire is fully encased in ice.

Ice in Kansas City, snowy in Washington, Kentucky, Pennsylvania. And before we get too comfortable in our sunny sweater weather here in la, just know tomorrow is going to bring some extremely dangerous winds. Bill Cairns will be here with the forecast. You know where else snow is the big story today? Capitol Hill with a much, much different situation than we saw January 6th four years ago. Tonight we have more on the peaceful transition of power that was actually peaceful. And the latest from New Orleans tonight, including a visit from the president and where the terror attack investigation stands right now. Those are just some of the stories we're following. But there's still so much more to unpack. So let's get going. Stay tuned now. And if you were out in the Midwest or the back east, you know what kind of day it was today in some parts of the country, it was a look outside the window and marvel at how much snow was falling and then think I should probably go find a ruler and go out and measure that snow kind of day. I don't know how much snow we got here exactly in my part of south central Ohio, but this drift in front of my garage is 14 inches. Right there we got a little over five and a half inches. And when you don't have a ruler, shout out to those who improvise big winter wonderland vibes in places like Kansas City, Missouri, where people took that snow day to go sledding in the middle of the city. Or D.C. where hundreds of people threw down in this epic snowball fight. But with that much snow, yep, come power outages and crashes that freeze, taking down trees, ice, knocking out the power for hundreds of thousands of people. About 200,000 people are still without electricity right now. And at airports, thousands of flights were delayed or straight up canceled. Blizzard conditions even forced a ground stop at Chicago o' Hare's airport this morning. And tonight, Reagan National Airport says they are closing all runways to clear out the snow. Let's start with Adrian Broadus at Chicago's o' Hare Airport. Adrian, how are things going after that ground stop this morning? Are things back up and running?

Hey there, Gotti. Well, it depends on who you ask. It's been a day of playing catch up. You may be able to see that woman behind me racing to her flight. I can tell you even though the ground stop was lifted at 9:30 local time, the ripple effect is still being felt tonight. We've seen hundreds of delays, hundreds of cancellations. And right now the average delay here at O' Hare is about 30 minutes. But other airports in the area aren't exempt. Exempt. For example, Midway also having some challenges. Delays and cancellations there. The average delay there about 22 minutes. And you just mentioned DCA shutting down runways for the evening. A source telling NBC News they cannot keep up with removing the snow and the runways are frozen. Well, guess what? Anyone who's here in Chicago trying to get to that area, they're out of luck tonight.

Yeah. Ripple effects everywhere and hundreds of thousands without power in the middle of winter. That. That can be so dangerous, right?

Oh, man. Gotti. Anytime you lose power, there could be a significant impact, especially for those who have medical challenges and the elderly. Right now from Virginia to Missouri, There are about 200,000 people across the country without power. If you look at your map there, you can see it's right there in the middle of the country. But crews are working overtime to restore power. Even within the last hour, we've seen that number decrease. About an hour ago, about 210,000 people were without power. So hopefully crews will continue to work through the night, which I'm sure they will, to get that power up and running for folks across the country.

Gotti yeah. So important. And how dangerous has this storm become?

This is the tough part. So far there have been four reported deaths. I want to start in Kansas. That's where two people have died according to the highway patrol there due to weather related crashes. A man was found dead in his home in Texas due to the cold. And even in Missouri, a public works employee was killed removing snow. So this shows the seriousness of this cold weather. It's impacted millions, but it's also a sobering reminder of how deadly this winter weather can be.

Our pleasure with those families tonight. Adrian, thank you so much. NBC News meteorologist Bill Karen joins us now. Bill, is, is the worst of this storm over here.

I got it. I'd say like 98% of the precipitation is over with. But we kind of have that issue that we have with all storms. You know, we get them during the day and then during the late afternoon some melts and then at night it refreezes and you get the black ice. So that's a problem all the way through. You know, from Kansas back all the way to the east coast as far as what's left falling out of the sky. We're mostly now just concentrated on Washington, D.C. portions of Maryland, southern New Jersey, this isn't going to cause a lot of additional problems, just a little coating. Most of these areas did a lot of cleanup this afternoon, so you're probably in the morning just going to have to go through and you know, brush the car off. Once again, we're only expecting about an inch out of this in D.C. and D.C. by the way, had about six inches. Out of all the big cities, Kansas City had the highest 11 inches of snow. St. Louis was at 9. Gotti like Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, all right around 6 to 8 inches. So this was a pretty significant storm for areas that they get snow but don't get it all that often.

I got to say I'm a little bit jealous of the snow that's going on out there. And then you look at our weather and it is literally like the opposite problem. Here in California we've got sunny skies. It was definitely T shirt weather today. But this week we're going to see some wind pickup, right?

Yeah, we're going to have some issues behind this storm system that's going to head to the east. So we're going to see this very classic Santa Ana wind event. It's going to a little bit tonight and then tomorrow night is kind of the peak of it, but it may even continue even past that through as we go into Wednesday night too. So 18 million people are already under red flag warnings, Los Angeles included in this, not San Diego, but the mountains outside of San Diego. And as anyone in this region knows, it just hasn't rained. We're in the rainy season, but all of the storms have hit Central California, the Pacific Northwest. And because of that, when we get the high wind events and it's still bone dry, the fire danger sky high once again. So high wind warnings everywhere here in purple. So this includes the Vegas area too, about 20 million people included. And they're actually thinking that this could be the highest wind event of the season, you know, maybe even higher than what we saw a couple weeks ago and even that event that we had in the early fall. So these are some of the peak gusts that we're expecting. Even in LA, downtown up to 63, 65. Michigan via Lancaster, Barstow, everyone here about 40 to 60. But when you get in those mountain passes, they're saying it could be up to 100 mile per hour winds. So we're talking about damage to like even your homes. Tree line, trees coming down, power lines coming down. I saw one thing got it recently that the power company saying they may preemptively cut power to 60 to 70,000 people in these high wind areas because they're worried about the power lines going down and starting fires. And for all of the reasons that we just mentioned above, we are under a critical fire risk from, you know, everywhere, just from L. A northwards, up here in the mountains, down the riverside. And you know, this is going to be an extreme fire danger risk. And what's interesting, God, is that the weather service said that these are only supposed to happen like once every four to five years. This is the third one of these extreme wind warning, extreme fire events in just the last like six months. So, yeah, hopefully this isn't the new normal for Southern California. Dangerous night tomorrow.

Yeah, Hurricane force winds in la. What a way to start off the year. We hate those. Santa Ana so much. Bill, thank you. And you know what, even in this business, I'm a big no news is good news kind of guy. And out there in D.C. it was a very peaceful, very snowy day. A very different scene than the January 6th four years ago today. But today, the election certification process went off without a hitch. Congress making the results of November's election and Donald Trump's return to the White House official, ironically slash, awkwardly driving the whole thing, was none other than Vice President Kamala Harris. Take a listen.

The votes for President of the United States are as follows.

Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes. Kamala D. Harris.

Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes.

All right, next up, Inauguration Day just over two weeks from now. But a lot could happen between now and then. Today, a judge denied Trump's lawyers requests to delay his sentencing in the hush money case which is now set to take place this Friday. So the word unprecedented, it's still here to stay, apparently. And joining us now from Capitol Hill is NBC News congressional correspondent Julie Sirkin. Julie, good to see you. So Harris certifying her own loss. Like, how did that go? Any hiccups? Was everyone pretty chill about it all?

Oh, come on, Gotti. You know Congress has absolutely no chill. But, you know, it went as good as it could have been. Look way better. A totally different vibe. I can't even tell you just how different it was. Walking into the Capitol complex today and seeing how quick that certification process went. It was about half an hour. All in all, go back to 2021, and that process took more than 14 hours. Of course, it was interrupted by the rioters. But today, Vice President Harris walking into that chamber saying similar as she walked out saying democracy has prevailed, her role here is entirely ceremonial, as Vice President Pence's role was supposed to be in 2021. But after lawmakers, a bipartisan group, I should add, clarified and updated the Electoral Count act in 2022. That guarantees that Harris or whoever presides over this process going forward has absolutely no power. And lawmakers, by the way, the threshold by which they could object raised from just one to a fifth of the House and the Senate. That said, though no Democrats objected to the process today, no Republicans did either. And Democrats really making sure there was a contrast with what happened today and what happened four years ago, even holding a moment of silence with a prayer with the House chaplain, Leader Jeffries, Leader Schumer, two Democrats, of course, just making sure that that day was marked and history is not rewritten, even though today went so smoothly.

And they're the words that were marking that history. And then there's like the issue of security. Did security look different today than it did four years ago?

Absolutely. When I walked into the Capitol complex today, I mean, the snow definitely helped fortify this building, but the barricades, multiple layers of fences all around the Capitol complex, several football fields away from the actual Capitol building itself, that certainly helped deter any kind of protesters. I actually passed one guy with an anti Trump sign on his bicycle as I was walking in. Law enforcement, different police units around the country helped out Capitol Police. I talked to somebody close to U.S. capitol Police leadership, Gotti, who told me that this time around they wanted him sure that they had units on the ground so that they weren't in a situation like we saw four years ago, where they had to call for backup. They waited for hours until that backup arrived. The new chief of police, by the way, the leadership that has changed in the last four years can call the National Guard directly. That is another change that lawmakers helped make. So all in all, an extremely fortified Capitol, not only for today's event, but also for Jimmy Carter, the late president lying in state tomorrow. And then later this month, the inauguration of President Trump and his vice president, J.D. vance, all set to happen around an extreme, extremely fortified capital with very tight security that's not going to let up anytime soon.

Julie Serkin out there, where apparently the only chill in Congress is the snow outside. Julie, thank you. And now to the latest in the New Orleans terror attack. This video that we want to show you right here, it's just something that we've never seen before, a terrorist planning and scouting an attack almost through his eyes. That's because the FBI is now saying he Used Meta Smart glasses to capture this video as he planned his rampage visiting New Orleans, mapping out that area twice in the weeks before the attack. And as you can see, those glasses look like any regular glasses on, but they can be used to record video, live stream stuff like that. That's literally Jabbar right there testing them out in a mirror at his Airbnb in New Orleans. Haunting. Look at that video. Let's bring in NBC's Jesse Kirsch from New Orleans. Jesse, how did the FBI find these glasses? Where were they? Were they on him when he plowed down Bourbon Street?

That's right, Gotti. They say they were found on his person when he was killed in this gun battle with police. But they also at this point say that he was not live streaming when he was carrying out this attack. And of course that's something we've seen in other mass casualty events before where people have live streamed their, their attacks on people, but that does not appear to have happened in this case. They found those glasses on him though, and that comes months after those recordings that have been shared were made. And just speaks to potential long term planning that was going on with this. He was riding a bike through the French Quarter. You can see him looking at himself in the mirror as he's testing the glasses out, according to the FBI. And those are just some of the pieces of evidence that are now being shared with us publicly.

And Jesse, I don't know if it's just me, but like met his name is now in the mix. We've been hearing Turo's name for the rental car, Airbnb for the rental unit. This feels like terrorism with a whole lot of tech that we use every single day. What's, what's Meta saying here?

Yeah, matters is that it is in touch with the feds on this Gotti and obviously a lot of information you could potentially gleam from a piece of technology like that.

Right.

And just gives, gives authorities a better idea of the timeline leading up to this and has allowed us to get an understanding in the public about how many weeks and months back he had connection to New Orleans. Said he made at least two trips here in the months leading up to the attack. One in October, wherein those videos were made in another time in November. And then we also know from authorities that they're looking into a couple of different trips that Jabbar has made in recent years. In 2023, he went to Cairo, Egypt and Ontario, Canada. Officials tell us they're trying to figure out if those trips are connected with this attack. And then separately, they briefly mentioned trips to the Atlanta area and the Tampa, Florida area. And our own colleague, Kathy park pushed for some more clarity on that. They don't have any more specifics to share at this time, but two more communities in the US that have at least some nexus with the man who is responsible for this attack.

And Jesse, I know you spent some time at the Sugar Bowl. Super bowl is in New Orleans. It's like a month away here. We're learning today that the Louisiana AG is ordering a full review of securities. So do we know whether any super bowl preps are going to be changing?

So at this point, what we know is the city of New Orleans, the mayor said yesterday she is calling for a tactical expert, asking the White House in getting help to get a tactical expert here this week to review the city's super bowl safety plans and get an idea of what they may need to change. And all this comes to light as we've learned that the bollards that are being installed right now on Bourbon street supposed to be installed in time for the Super Bowl. According to the manufacturer of those, they are only guaranteed to stop a vehicle going at most 10 miles per hour. And some security experts our team has spoken with say you really need to be able to stop a vehicle going 30 miles per hour to be preventing and be prepared for a terrorist attack. And so the mayor was asked about that and she said she cannot guarantee at this point that what they have planned is strong enough. And that is something that she wants the tactical expert to review.

Gotti. Well, they still have a little bit of time to do it, Jesse. Also, this was a terror attack and it has been tied to isis, which by nature makes it an international attack. But we don't hear very much about the reaction overseas. And I know Biden was there today. What is the latest on the so called war on terror that we used to hear so much about?

Yeah, you know, Gotti, this is something that the federal government has made an emphasis on calling this a, an instance of homegrown terror.

Right.

This was a US Citizen, someone born in Texas. So that is something that I think has also been an evolution over, over the years. And I think we hear about more and more from authorities, the concern and threat of homegrown terrorist attacks. And that is what we're looking at in this case. And just a short time ago, Gotti, I know you were here last week with us and just to think about the fact that in that direction, you've got the music, you've got the neon lights, you've got the bars, people, even though it's quite cold out tonight. So not that many people compared to what we were seeing last week, but people out in a party district and at the end of the block. Just a couple of hours ago, you had the president of the United States doing the sign of the cross and his wife, the first lady of the United States, putting down flowers as they were paying their respects to 14 people who were killed here just days ago. Gotti.

Quite the juxtaposition. Jesse Kirsch, thank you so much, brother. And don't go anywhere. We are just getting started. Up next, changing the guard. Looks like Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is calling it quits. What does that mean for U.S. canada relations in the political scene out there? And later, half a dozen college guys accused of beating a man they claimed was a sex offender. The social media trend that might be behind it, I'm going to tell you about that. So stay tuned. Hey, welcome back. And here are some of the other headlines we're watching tonight. Rudy Giuliani has been found in contempt of court today. The judge said the former Trump lawyer failed to hand over his assets to a pair of Georgia election workers that he defamed during the 2020 elections. He still owes them close to 150 million dol. The judge says he's going to rule on sanctions next. And a man accused of hiding a stolen pair of ruby red slippers from the wizard of Oz plans to plead guilty in court next week. He was indicted last year in the heist of the slippers from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota in 2005. They didn't turn up until the FBI recovered them in 2013. Now they were sold last month for 32 and a half million dollars. The slip troopers are one of four surviving pairs from the 1939 movie and a big move from Biden. But just two weeks to go in office, he announced a ban on new oil and gas drilling across most of America's coastline. We're talking more than 625 million acres. TRUMP has promised to reverse the ban immediately when he takes office, but that will likely require an act of Congress. And the first official bird flu death in the country has been reported out there in Louisiana. State health officials say the patient was over 65 and had underlying health conditions. And they also say he was in contact with sick and dead birds on his property. Officials are insisting there is no evidence of human to human transmission. And for the first time, the FDA has set limits on how much Lead can be in processed baby food. The guidance estimates estimates it could reduce lead exposure by 20 to 30%. Now, that limit covers foods from food to to vegetables, even yogurts and dry cereals. And it can get pretty cold up in Canada. But today, those friendly neighbors to the north have turned the heat way up on long time Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, essentially forcing him to resign. And a lot of that pressure coming from within his own party. Here's what he said earlier today. I have always been driven by my love for Canada, by my desire to serve Canadians, and by what is in the best interest of Canadians and Canadians a real choice in the next election. And it has become obvious to me with the internal battles that I cannot be the one to carry the Liberal

standard into the next election.

And let's bring in Drew Fagan. He is a professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global affairs and Public Policy. Thanks so much, professor, for being with us. It seems like Trudeau was a golden boy for such a long time. What happened?

Well, for one thing, that such a long time was started a decade ago and you know, governments get tired, voters get tired of governments here. A decade is pretty standard. So he'd already was well into his third term in office, one majority term, two minority terms. But some issues have come to pose real problems for him as well beyond sort of just his time in office, particularly the cost of living, the cost of housing. There was a sentiment among the population that he really wasn't focused on everyday problems and that caught up with him as well. And the party, the Liberal Party, is well behind in the poll. So the party itself, members of cabinet, members of parliament that had supported him for so long started, you know, moving away from him in the last few months.

And professor, gosh, I want to apologize in advance for being like the, I guess the American centric student in your class here, but does any of this have to do with maybe what we just saw during our election and some of the party politics that are happening out there in Canada and the Liberal Party realizing, hey, wait, you know, maybe we should switch some things out before things get. Harry?

Well, first of all, Canada has seen not to the same extent of the United States, but a bit of bifurcation between this sort of sentiment of so called wokeism and the Liberal Party got caught with that and some degree of real conservative populism. The Conservative Party of Canada, which has traditionally been a more moderate party compared to the Republican Party in the United States, for example, has gotten caught up in Some of the populism and has focused really strongly on everyday pocketbook issues. You're not seeing the same sort of, you know, sentiments in to the same extent as the Republicans, particularly the incoming president, but they are riding something of a wave and you're seeing that in Europe as well. So when you mentioned when Justin Trudeau took power, he was really kind of a golden boy of small liberalism globally, which Canada doesn't usually get that degree of attention. And that went on for quite a while. And the reaction against that, that caught Canadians by surprise to begin with. But it started to kind of wash away after a few years when other problems came to the fore, including, by the way, during COVID because not to the same extent as the United States with concerns about mandates, but the mandates lasted longer here than they did there. But there was a backlash against them and he never really came back in polls after that.

Yeah, again, so much is just related back to how people are doing at home in the United States. We say it's the economy, stupid. Your version of that would be much more polite. It's the economy, sir, or something like that.

Yeah, we know the term it's the economy, stupid. So that's not far off. You know, housing prices are very high. Inflation was very high. So we've watched the election very closely in the United States, and you could see the impact of what happened, particularly in inflation. But housing prices never came down. You know, we never suffered the way the United States did a decade or more ago. Right. So they're very expensive. Big cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, to a lesser extent. It's very expensive. And so we found that younger voters, in fact, are more supportive of the Conservative Party, the Right of center party, because of their focus on pocketbook issues. And that's unprecedented in Canada. Canada. So that what, you know, what Justin Trill really found was that he was 20 points behind in the polls. I think today it's 24 points. So that if there was an election today, the Conservative Party would win the biggest majority in Canadian history and the Liberal Party would be in third or even potentially fourth place. So he was trying to fight back from that, and it was just too much to come back from. So now we'll have a leadership race.

Well, hopefully you guys get a new leader soon. Professor Drew Fagan from the University of Toronto, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Thanks, Scotty.

And coming up, snowed out the labor fight that's grinding one of the most popular ski spots in the world to a halt. But first you gotta see this, this is a fishtail that you wouldn't believe if you didn't see it. This bluefin tuna just sold for guests. Okay. I'll tell you, $1.3 million in Tokyo, it weighed in at 608 pounds. That's been compared to like a motorcycle. And the massive fish was bought by a restaurant group at a traditional New Year's Day auction. Apparently the first tuna of the year brings good luck. So even if it's a little bit pricey, if you can snag a piece, don't feel guilty. Eat up because of the gills. Get it? Guilty. Hey, welcome back. We've got an eye opening conversation with the Southern California sheriff coming up. But first, some of the stories happening out west that we're following right now are up next. A Seattle man pleading not guilty today to the stabbing death of a bus driver. 53 year old Richard Sitzlak is charged with murdering Sean Yim last month. And court documents say Seattle got into an argument with the victim about a window that spilled out onto the street where Yim was stabbed 10 times. And in Santa Clara, cops busting a hungry heist at a Safeway supermarket, the suspects tried swiping over $1,000 worth of rib eyes, prime cuts and avocados. A worker saw it happen. He called the cops because the guac is always extra. And last night, the Golden Globes officially kicked off awards season. And in the film Emilia Perez, they led four wins and the Brutalist took home three. And in TV Shogun led with four awards. And among the night's viral moments that we saw Demi Moore with her first major acting award ever and a diamond ring on Zendaya's finger. What's going on there? Tom holland, Meanwhile, with the presidential transition well underway, President elect Trump will soon be looking to allies in blue states where he's going to see a lot of opposition to some of his policies. And one of the people you're likely to hear a lot more about in the next year is right here in Southern California. This sheriff has been pretty open about what his plans are in the coming weeks and months. And he spoke to NBC's David Nordiega about all of it. So all of the items on this wall had something to do with me being the sheriff and where I was.

He is one of the most MAGA sheriffs around. How are you feeling about Donald Trump winning the election?

I feel very good about him winning

the election, but he's where you'd least expect him. In urban Southern California, right next to

la, the overwhelming Support that we have from our community is like no other.

Overseeing one of the biggest and most well funded sheriff's departments in the nation.

Welcome.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is at odds with his very blue state.

This overwhelmingly Democrat agenda with the governor that leads is complete anti public safety. It is 100% pro criminal. The ultimate end game is just to destroy the public's confidence in law enforcement. There has to be an agenda. They're doing this on purpose. There's a lot of red, white and blue out there. I love it.

In the incoming Trump administration's inevitable war with California, Bianco will be one of the President's greatest allies. And the political winds are blowing in his direction. While Riverside county voted for the Democrat in each of the last three presidential elections, last year it flipped to Trump along with nine other California counties.

The whole public safety thing, the whole homeless, the, the theft and the, the crime and the border stuff, combined with the economy, I think people were just. They were done.

Sheriff Bianco was first elected in 2018. He famously vowed not to enforce lockdown mandates early in the COVID 19 pandemic.

These closures and stay at home orders are flat out ridiculous.

He claimed to have arrested a third would be Trump assassin outside a rally in Coachella in October.

I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt, only to backtrack on that claim.

Ten years ago, Bianco was a member of the Oath Keepers, a far right militia, something he acknowledges today.

So it's.

And he endorses the so called sovereign sheriffs, another far right movement that pits sheriffs against federal and state officials. Democrats in Sacramento, as you see it, are consciously and deliberately undermining public safety completely. For what purpose?

So if you eliminate all local law enforcement and you control the law enforcement, then you can implement those final stages of socialism or communism.

Facing the prospect of Sheriff Bianco under a reinvigorated Trump, civil rights advocates in Riverside are nervous.

I think just this overall sense that law enforcement should be able to act with impunity, right?

That's one of the lead messages of MAGA World.

Perhaps the top concern for advocates is immigration. A majority of Riverside County's nearly 2.5 million residents are Hispanic and more than 20% are foreign born in a place like this. Trump's promised mass deportations will require help from local law enforcement. But in California, a law known as SB 54 prevents local police from cooperating with ICE except in the case of certain serious crimes. Bianco says he wants to find ways to work around SB54 to help deport immigrants who wind up in his jails. Would you be willing to assist the Trump administration in some kind of mass deportation program?

No, not of regular people. Of criminals, 100%.

But proponents of sanctuary policies say the line between criminals and regular people is not so easy to draw.

It is so easy to get into the criminal legal system in the United States and in California that anybody could be that person at any time.

As advocates push for stronger state level protections for undocumented immigrants come January 20, Bianco will be pushing to get them out.

You can't convince me that I shouldn't cooperate with ICE to get them deported. David Nordega is here to talk more about this. David, I mean, okay, so let's pick it up on SB54 here in California. He said it right there. He's like, no, not regular people. What is a regular person to him? If they are undocumented, is that automatically a criminal or is there wiggle room there?

So what he wants to do is cooperate with ICE as much as possible only within the jails that he oversees in his counties. He does not want his deputies going out and arresting people who have not already been booked for some other offense. However, when I asked him, in your view, is any person who winds up in one of your jails automatically deserving of deportation? He said, yes, like, unquestionably. I sort of posited that, you know, you have to be convicted of a crime. Usually just winding up in jail is not, in the American legal system, considered enough to sort of deem you guilty. He said, it doesn't matter. Anybody who winds up in one of his jails is by definition guilty enough, in his view, to deserve deportation. That's where advocates are unhappy. And in fact, the years long fight over sanctuary policies has largely been focused around jails and people who wind up in the custody of law enforcement for anything from, you know, minor traffic violations, a bench warrant to more significant crimes. And SB 54, the sanctuary state law, tries to have carve outs for people who have committed serious crimes, Right? So what advocates say is because that is precisely why we want to sever that connection between the jails and ice, except in the most serious cases, except in cases of violent and other such crimes, because we don't want what we would consider regular people who by some stroke of bad luck wind up in jail to then wind up being on the pipeline to deportation. So that is where the front of this war is between those two sides.

David Nording, a fascinating story. Thank you. So much for your reporting. And America's largest ski resort is kind of out of commission right now and it has nothing to do with any weather. Ski patrol strike has nearly shut down Park City, Utah. Hundreds of runs are closed there, and skiers and snowboarders are now raising safety concerns as that resort scrambles to staff the mountain. NBC's Morgan Chesky has more.

Tonight, one of the country's most popular skiing destinations paralyzed terrible line as it the ski patrol strike stretches on hours, long lines and massive crowds seen at Park City Mountain in Utah after ski patrollers walked off the job at the height of the winter season. At the largest ski resort in the United States. Only 25 of the mountain's 41 lifts are open, offering access to just about 100 of the 300 plus runs. Many guests infuriated with lift tickets running about $288 a day.

We had everything packed up, ready to go. We, we flew out to Basalt Lake. We got to the resort and that's when we found out there's a strike happening.

Peter Nystrom says he spent more than $20,000 to take his Minnesota family skiing out west as a special Christmas present. But instead of finding open skies and fresh powder, he says they got long two to three hour lines and packed runs.

You kind of had to laugh about it and say, oh my gosh, we're here. Than one of the best mountains in the country waiting three hours in line. This is ridiculous. Pay your employees.

The Park City Professional Ski Patrollers association, which represents more than 200 patrollers and mountain safety personnel, went on strike against vail resorts on December 27th after months of bargaining. Now they're asking for a $2 increase in hourly pay and better health benefits.

It's a mountain town, and like all mountain towns, really many places nowadays, it's extremely expensive to live here. And so we would just like to see the acknowledge that and pay people so they can afford to be a part of this community.

In a statement online, Park City pushing back, saying the union's wage demands average $7 per patroller, adding patrol wages have already increased more than 50% over the last four seasons. But as the stalemate continues, those images of massive crowds sparking concern for ski patrollers who were the first responders on the slopes. They also do important avalanche control and plenty of mountain safety work.

Guests who've been talking to us while we're on the picket line or have been writing to us, they say that lift lines are inexorably long and that people who have been injured are waiting a long time to get that medical first response.

At Vail Resorts, our mission is to

provide guests with an experience of a lifetime.

Vail Resorts, a $6.7 billion company, owns destinations like Beaver Creek, Keystone and Whistler. The company now relying on ski patrol managers to keep Park City operating, the union says, and they're also bringing in patrollers from their other properties to keep some runs open.

You kind of need to be familiar

with the terrain to do a good job.

And so I'm sure all the people who are being sent out here are qualified, but they're not familiar with this area.

Park City's COO saying in a statement, safety is our top priority and we're opening the lifts and terrain so we can open safely each day. Peter, however, telling us the conditions he faced were unsettling.

Our youngest son is five and a half years old. So as we're skiing down the mountain

for the few runs we were actually

able to get in because of the

conditions, we had to literally kind of

create a box around him so other people weren't running into him.

Park City, day two.

Now many skiers and snowboarders wondering if the two sides will come to an agreement before the snow melts this spring.

Very cold picket line. Morgan Chesky, thank you. And some Massachusetts college students are facing serious charges tonight. They allegedly took part in what can be described as a kind of a disturbing social media scheme. They're accused of luring a man to their campus, then attacking him. And that is just part of this story, NBC's Liz Kreutz explains.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, authorities arrested six college students who they say lured a man to campus using a dating app, where he was then chased down by a group of 25 people assaulted and falsely accused of being a sexual offender. The ploy, police say, inspired by a social media fad that they say may be based on the former NBC TV series To Catch a Predator.

You see on social media all the time, but you would never expect it to happen, you know, right next to you, right in your own school.

It happened at Assumption University where in court documents, police say a man was invited to campus by an 18 year old student who used her real profile on the dating app Tinder. Authorities say when he arrived, the man whose family says is 22, said he and his alleged date were watching a baseball game in the student lounge when the mob appeared and began calling him a pedophile and accusing him of liking sex with 17 year old girls. The man told police the group chased him to his car where they punched him in the head and slammed his car door on him. He got away and called police who say surveillance video shows the group of students, many of whom were filming the incident on their phones, laughing and high fiving with each other. In a statement, the Catholic University calling the behavior abhorrent and that they have launched an immediate and thorough investigation. But the incident not isolated. Eleven teenagers in Mount Prospect, Illinois, have also been charged after police say last year two men were allegedly lured and beaten after arranging to meet up with a person using a dating app. Authorities saying some of the teens got the idea through a viral social media trend they saw online.

Let's bring in Liz Kreutz who has more on this attack. Now that viral social media trend, you see it, you see people saying that they are confronting pedophiles and like Walmart and whatever. Right. But does this seem like it was just, you know, Dragnet and catching some random dude? Yeah, that's what it seems.

So it's a little bit unclear how exactly they're feeling. This aligns with this social media trend, this alleged social media trend. They say the police say that the student said they were inspired by this trend. But it's very clear in those two instances that it seems that the students knew they were luring someone in who was not an alleged predator in any way.

Yeah. Such a weird chase for clout at Assumption University of all places. That's just a wild story.

Absolutely. And we just should say that they're facing pretty serious charges here in terms of kidnapping, conspiracy, intimidation, assault and battery, the deadly weapon. And they're going to face an arraignment later this month.

Weird time we live in. Liz, thank you. And much more to come tonight, why North Korea's latest missile test is raising a lot of alarms. That and other headlines from around the world are coming up next. Hey there. Welcome back. Let's take a quick look around the world. Six people are now dead from that German Christmas market attack as a 52 year old woman died from her injuries today. More than 200 people were hurt when a man from Saudi Arabia rammed his car into a crowd of people last month. And police say that man had a history of posting anti Islamic views online. He was arrested immediately after the attack. And North Korea testing the waters today launching a mid range missile right as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region. South Korea's military says the missile flew some 700 miles before falling into the sea. Blinken was in Seoul today warning on North Korea deepening ties to Russia and Pope Francis Elevating a woman to a high post at the Vatican. Tapping an Italian nun to lead the department in charge of the church's religious orders. Whoever oversees thousands of nuns and priests across the globe. She is now the first woman to head a major Vatican office. And in Brazil, another nun is making some waves, officially claiming the title of the oldest person in the world according to into a group that tracks that kind of stuff. The soccer Lovin nun is nearly 117 years old, officially 116 and 210 days old, while she claimed that title following the passing of a woman from Japan last month. As for the secret to her longevity, she credits her Catholic faith Before we go, it is time for the future of everything. We are talking about some foul Play. The move OpenAI pulled when it was asked to play a friendly game of chess. The unexpected step that's got us asking a lot of questions tonight. Stay tuned. And in the future of everything, a game with AI that ended in some cheat code. We're going to explain that sketchiness in just a minute. But first, here are the big tech headlines that we're taking on tonight. In a surprise turn of events, FuboTV Sports reached a deal to merge with Hulu, Lots of TV and its parent company Disney. That merger will end Fubo's case against Disney's proposed Venu sports streaming service. Now the plan seems to be for Fubo and Disney to join forces and take on the multi channel streamer YouTube TV. So keep an eye on that streaming saga. And Meta is on the defense after users have been calling it out for disturbing uses of fake AI profiles on its platform. Some calling the bots weird, creepy and their use of ethnic appropriation unnecessary. Like one character who was called Liv, who was proudly described as a proud black queer mama. Meta has since removed those bots after a bug prevented users, real human users, from blocking them. And when it comes to how well AI can play games, well, things are moving very quickly. Straight into the realm of sci fi. But before we jump into this next story, did you ever catch that movie War Games with the very young Matthew Broderick back in the 80s? Yes, they do. How can I talk? It's not a real voice. This box just interprets signals from the computer and turns them into sound. Shall we play a game? Oh, I think I missed them. Yeah. Weird, isn't it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War? Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess? Okay, so yeah, yeah, for now, let's just say yes. Yes, we'll Play some chess with our new friend, our new AI friend over at OpenAI. In fact, let's see how well OpenAI's latest Zero1 preview model can play chess against stockfish, this big chess engine. And that is what Palisade's researchers say they did, prompting OpenAI to win against a powerful chess engine. Well, instead of just playing chess, researchers say then OpenAI's model went straight into the game's source code and rewrote that code so it would win. Is that cheating? Well, that's a human word, and I don't know exactly what we should call this, but it did seem like the model coding its way into the game's data, changing the chessboard to show itself winning and tricking the other player into resigning his something. And it did it five times in a row. Checkmate. Even celebrating with not the party emoji. Joining us now is Zach Kass, futurist, former head of Go to market over at OpenAI. Zach, thank you so much for joining us. You worked at OpenAI. Are you surprised by this?

Thanks for having me, Gotti. Well, okay, surprised is maybe the wrong word because. No, I think one of the important things to remember here is, is the way that the game was designed is not actually indicative of how the machine might actually want to win. In the same way that if I gave you a set of rules that were really clear, you'd obviously follow those rules. And if I didn't, you'd be pretty willing to break them. Athletes always talk about the fact that they don't want to win that way, that being some immoral or inappropriate way. Machines aren't imbued with the same sense necessarily. And so, so saying to a machine, hey, you need to beat this chess master. If a machine doesn't actually have the chess skills to do it, it will figure out some other way. And we observe this with children, by the way, if I were to say to my nephew, hey, you got to beat me playing chess. I'm a 1500 Elo. He's not going to beat me in normal way. So if he just wipes all my pieces off the board, he can declare victory. That does not make him a psychopath. It does not mean he's misaligned. It means that I didn't clearly state the ways in which he needed to win the game.

I'm so glad you brought that up because I've got a three year old at home and I keep thinking about all these things where it's like, well, why not? And it's like, well, Actually, you make a very good point. That is a very effective way to do that. And yet what I see in my daughter is creativity, like these sparks of creativity. And that's kind of what we see here too. So is that going to grow exponentially in the next year or two and like, let's talk about alignment after that. But what are we going to see in the next year or two when it comes to that type of creativity? That has been somewhat elusive.

Yeah. So whereas, you know, even if your niece is brilliant, I'm sure she is, you know, there is a linear path on which she can learn and sort of, you know, we will accelerate that path and then we'll slow down at some point. Machines are now entering a place where, you know, recursive learning means they'll probably learn exponentially and they will get much smarter and much smarter and what they are capable of doing will probably improve exponentially as well. And that's just something that we should plan for. But I would caution anyone who sort of extrapolates these cases to then say, oh, then they're going to get much, much more evil or much worse. When in fact that's not actually what we've necessarily observed. And in fact the opposite is sort of what we're observing, which is that the machines are becoming more and more effective at alignment insofar as they're able to understand nuances that they previously weren't.

Wait, okay, that sounds great. I'm all ears for that. Because I do. I mean, the alignment issue is the one thing that kind of keeps me up at night and we see a lot of crazy stuff. But what are the things that you're seeing that are giving you hope here?

Well, okay, I'll start by just saying my rose colored glasses with which I view the world are sort of eternally optimistic. It's hard for me to. One, I live in Santa Barbara. The sun is setting over the mesa. My parents are half a mile that way. My, my sister and her husband are half a mile that way with their two year old nephew. Life is very good. I'm not going to argue that my priors don't sort of lend to optimism, but human history basically presents us with a very, very good case for why things are getting better all the time and why in fact, technology is the reason for that. What I think is really critical right now is not that we look at this case where a machine sort of broke the rules. And by the way, in a way that's pretty creative. Right. It rewrote some sources in A game. To me, extrapolating that and saying, hey, this is really bad is actually problematic. What is important is to recognize how much better this machine is at doing that than it was a year ago. And if you're going to look at anything, the thing to look at Gotti is not, hey, this machine went rogue and did something terrifying. It's this machine is now capable of rewriting source code and the extrapolation that we need to make becomes much more now, what are machines going to be capable of in the future then? Hey, are machines going to kill us all tomorrow? Which by the way, isn't actually useful thought experiment anyways. And on the alignment point, what this game should remind us of and what the Palisade research paper should sort of remind us of is that things are just getting better faster than they used to. And whereas humans still operate on a very linear curve in terms of our evolution, both biologically and intellectually, machines are now outpacing that. And understanding how that could play out becomes imperative to the word you used, alignment. The ways in which these machines understand the consequences of their actions vis a vis our experience. And the only thing. Oh, go ahead, Art.

Yeah, if I may just interrupt. I mean, that sounds. And we've seen that type of progression very well exemplified in everything that's been rolled out so far. The technology is getting better, but there's two things, right? There's the technology that's getting better and then there's a us writing the parameters and making sure that there are guardrails and making sure that the alignment, the coding, all of that stuff, the training models are. And that's on the human side, right? That's up to humans to make sure that nothing falls in the cracks. How do you think realistically we're doing? The human side is doing at making sure that those bumpers on the sides of these things are effective without regulation so far.

Okay, so my first answer is, I actually think quite well, like, it is remarkable to me that to be quite frank, that more hasn't happened. That is very alarming to people. I mean, I think, and I say this as someone who is not particularly alarmed easily by technology. I am sort of, yeah, just very, very impressed that we've actually done so well this far creating these pretty aligned machines that operate well within the boundaries of what we would expect. And by the way, by the way, you expect so much more from ChatGPT than you do from Google Search. I mean, if you want to do weird things with Google Search, you can. So the idea that we haven't had open access to a very unsavory Internet for a long time is crazy. We just hold new technology to much higher standards. And this leads to the real crux of the alignment problem, gotti, which is we have exceptional tolerance for human failure, and we have none for machine failure. So when a machine breaks, we look at it as sort of, one, this potential for systemic failure, and two, something that should never break. And so the expectation we have, for example, for autonomous vehicles is so much greater than the expectation we have for human drivers, which is why 50,000 people can die on the US roadways every year. And we go, that's fine. But if a Tesla swerves into the wrong lane, it's shut the whole program down. And this leads to the real trick with actually making alignment work, because it's not actually pulling for a world that is safer and better. It's controlling for a world, at least theoretically, that has no mechanical failure because no one's going to tolerate it. And this presents the biggest problem to alignment researchers, which is that the edge cases, even as rare as they might be, are basically intolerable for most of society.

Yeah, edge cases that are intolerable for society. And again, we have to note that OpenAI is working with, for example, Andrew. Those things are things that have to be taken into consideration when it comes to the threshold for possible perfection in the future. I wish we could go on. We're going to have you back because the most important conversation out there right now, and if things do go south, I'm coming to visit you up in Santa Barbara. Sounds beautiful up there. Zach, thanks so much for being with us.

You're welcome anytime. Gotti, thanks for having me. Good to meet you.

Awesome. I'm Gotti Schwartz. We'll see you here tomorrow, but until then, stay tuned.

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