Trump Claims Venezuela Will Hand Over Oil, and L.A. Wildfires Leave Behind Toxic Homes

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, January 7th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14From the moment President Trump announced that the U.S. had seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, his administration has been talking up the potential of the country's vast oil reserves. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserve in the world. Look, oil is critical. What we want to do is fix up the oil, fix up the country. Now Trump claims Venezuela will start handing over some of that oil to the U.S. In a social media post yesterday, he said the country will ship roughly$2 to$3 billion worth of oil, though it's not clear what, if anything, Venezuela will get in return. Trump said he would control the profits from selling it to, quote, benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.

0:58Trump has also said he's going to clear the path for American oil companies to start more production in Venezuela. He's set to meet with oil executives in Washington later this week. Meanwhile, the Times has learned that the White House is making other demands on Venezuela. U.S. officials say Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a classified meeting this week with Delce Rodriguez, the country's interim president, in which he demanded that she expel Chinese, Russian, Cuban, and Iranian advisors and military personnel. But in the face of the administration's ongoing claims that the U.S. is in charge, Venezuelan leaders are publicly striking a defiant tone.

1:39In a speech yesterday, Rodriguez said, quote, quote, the government of Venezuela runs our country, no one else. A large crowd also marched through the streets of the capital, Caracas, demanding Maduro's release. And people say there's an effort on the ground in Venezuela to root out anyone who supported the U.S. raid, with armed government forces stopping people at checkpoints to search their cell phones.

2:17Now, a few more quick updates on the Trump administration. With President Trump emboldened by the capture of Maduro, he and his team are doubling down on their threats to acquire Greenland. The Times has learned that this week, Trump told his aides to deliver an updated plan for bringing the territory under U.S. control. And in a briefing with lawmakers, Marco Rubio said the president plans to try and purchase it, though he didn't give any details. Trump has talked about taking over Greenland since his first term, framing it as a national security priority. It's rich in rare earth minerals and located in the Arctic Circle, where the U.S., Russia and China are fighting for control.

2:58In a joint statement released yesterday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other countries pushed back on the Trump administration, writing, quote, Greenland belongs to its people. Also, in a speech to House Republicans... You got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be... I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. President Trump sounded the alarm about the midterm elections, saying he expects Democrats to pick up seats in the fall, potentially setting the stage for his third impeachment. As of yesterday, Republicans' razor-thin majority in the House got even slimmer after Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned and Doug LaMalfa of California died during an emergency surgery.

3:46And on the fifth anniversary of a pro-Trump mob attacking the U.S. Capitol, the administration made its most brazen effort yet to rewrite the history of the riot. The White House posted a new page on its website yesterday that blames Capitol Police officers for starting the assault and blames Democrats, who were the main targets of the violence, for failing to prevent it. The site also lists out the names of several right-wing members of the crowd who died during or in connection with the assault, but it contains no references to the nearly 140 police officers who were injured that day or those who died in the aftermath.

4:34One year ago today, wildfires erupted in Los Angeles, destroying much of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades. At least 31 people were killed, and nearly 80 square miles of neighborhoods and businesses were obliterated. Now, people whose homes didn't burn are confronting a different danger. Contamination from the smoke of everything that went up in flames. Tires and metals and plastics. A New Times investigation traced how one family ended up back in a toxic house and how many others may be facing the same reality. After the fire, Jeff Van Ness and Kathleen Pineda spent seven months in a hotel with their two kids, while insurance paid for a professional cleaning of their house.

5:22Afterwards, the company, Farmers Insurance, said tests showed it was safe. The family wasn't sure. Kathleen had a previous cancer diagnosis and their kids were little. They didn't want to take any risks. So they paid for their own test, which showed concerning levels of lead. But farmers dismissed that and stopped paying for the hotel. By August, the family felt like they had no choice but to move back and just try to keep cleaning, mopping and wiping absolutely everything constantly. To understand whether that was safe, the Times asked the family this fall for permission to test for contaminants and to collect hair samples to measure their potential exposure.

6:05The results? Everyone's hair showed a measurable spike in heavy metals after they moved back in. Their daughter's hair had 10 times the normal levels of arsenic, and lead readings showed 27 times the federal limit of the heavy metal near the refrigerator. The Times asked 10 health experts to review the results. All of them said that the remediation that insurance had covered wasn't sufficient. The Van Ness' story is almost certainly not a one-off, since there is no state or federal standard for how an insurance company should clean a house after smoke damage. And the Times found that the standard the insurance industry uses relies in part on research papers that either haven't been peer-reviewed or were funded by the industry itself.

6:56One public health expert described it as science for hire. Toxicologists say that to truly decontaminate a house, you'd have to remove every surface the smoke touched. The hardwood floors, the tiles, plaster, stucco. A process that would be far, far more expensive than the roughly$25 ,000 of cleaning that farmers covered for the Van Ness family. In response to questions from the Times, farmers said every claim is evaluated on an individual basis and that it couldn't comment on individual cases.

7:34We're still on the ocean, of course, but the landscape has changed entirely. And finally, we're starting to see wildlife, seen a few penguins, a few seals already. Times climate reporter Raymond Zhang and photographer Chang Li are on a nearly two-month-long expedition sailing to Antarctica. So it's a big morning for us on the ship. We have just entered the sea ice zone around Antarctica. They've joined a team of about 40 researchers from around the world on an icebreaker headed towards Thwaites. It's a glacier the size of Florida that's more than a mile thick, and it is melting fast. Just because of the way Thwaites is situated, it just sort of is like this cork in the bottle.

8:17If the Thwaites really starts to disintegrate, break up, flow really quickly out to sea, then you could start seeing a lot more glaciers around it doing the same. Ray says that the scientists are planning to gather data from Thwaites to better understand Antarctica's melting glaciers, which are already starting to push up sea levels. You can track Ray and Chang's journey at nytimes.com slash Antarctica with a live location of the ship, along with Q &As about the expedition and video updates as the research begins.

8:52Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily. I would say that Democrats are broadly filled with an anxious optimism. A look at how Democrats and Republicans are strategizing and bracing for the midterm elections. I think that dreading is the correct word here. Republicans ended last year feeling very pessimistic about their chance of holding on to control of the House. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.