Today’s Big Story

A Planet Parade

See almost all planets aligned in the night sky at the same time

Take some time this week to look up at the night sky. Because a rare celestial event will showcase the alignment of nearly all the planets in our solar system. NASA says after dark, throughout the last week of January, you'll be able to see Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Venus and Saturn will appear in the southwest of the sky, Jupiter will appear overhead and Mars will rise in the east.

Uranus and Neptune will also be there, but they won't be bright and visible without a telescope. The “parade” started around the 21st, but will peak around January 29th and the alignment will remain visible until mid-February. These so-called planetary alignments are not super rare, according to NASA, but they don't happen every year and aren’t aways easy to see with the naked eye.

How does something like this happen? Well, planets always appear in a line in the sky because they orbit the sun—the difference is that they will appear closer to each other and Earth, making them visible from our planet. Since each one takes a different time to complete a loop, only occasionally will a few of them reach the same point at the same time.

For those planning to spot the cosmic lineup, NPR said Venus and Saturn will be visible in the southwest during the first couple of hours after dark. Then Jupiter and Mars will show up. Astronomers say a simple way to distinguish a star from a planet is that planets tend to shine steadily while stars twinkle.

According to CNET, nearly everywhere in the U.S., Canada and Mexico should be able to see the planetary parade this time around thanks to its long length and limited planetary movement. The best time to view all the planets from the Northern Hemisphere will be at around 8:30 p.m. local time. You still might be able to catch Venus, Saturn and Neptune on the horizon after that, but all three planets will be under the horizon by 11:30 p.m. to midnight depending on your location. After that, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will remain visible for a few more hours with Mars finally setting just before sunrise.

ICE Turns Up the Heat

Trump officials issue quotas to Immigration officers to ramp up arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that a multi-agency immigration clampdown resulted in 1,179 arrests in a single day—the biggest number since President Trump took office a week ago. The administration is stepping up efforts targeting undocumented immigrants in cities across the U.S. and it's resulted in at least 3,552 arrests since Thursday, per figures posted to ICE’s official X account.

According to the Washington Post, officials have been directed by Trump administration officials to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day during the Biden administration to 1,200 to 1,500, because Trump has been disappointed with the results of his mass deportation campaign so far. The quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets.

The arrests were followed by another blitz: A barrage of video and photos from the federal government showing agents in tactical gear and vests emblazoned with “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” taking cuffed suspects away. And the made-for-TV look of the arrests is not a coincidence. At least two agencies assisting immigration officials with the sweeps ordered by the White House have told personnel to ensure their clothing clearly depicts their respective agency in case they are filmed by journalists, sources familiar with the operations tell CNN.

Whole Foods Workers Unionize

The Philadelphia employees were the first to pull off a labor win at the Amazon-owned grocery chain

Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted on Monday to become the first unionized store in Amazon’s grocery chain, opening a new front in the e-commerce giant’s efforts to fend off labor organizing in multiple segments of its business. Employees at the Philadelphia store cast 130 votes (or about 57% of the ballots cast) in favor of joining a local chapter of The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union for the purposes of collective bargaining. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, 100 workers rejected the motion.

This vote, they say, isn’t just about workers asking for higher wages—like at least $17 an hour, affordable health care benefits with minimal premiums or better retirement packages. Longtime employees, who have been with Whole Foods since well before Amazon bought the chain in 2017, said reductions in benefits and cuts in staffing levels when Amazon took over, among other changes, had been sources of frustration. The president of the union also said there’s an extra layer of consternation with billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

According to CNBC, the labor victory comes as Amazon has faced a groundswell of union activity among its warehouse and delivery workforce in recent years. Employees have sought to unionize to obtain higher wages and improvements to working conditions. Amazon has disputed criticisms from its employees, lawmakers and advocacy groups that its breakneck pace of work has led to high injury rates among its frontline workers. It’s also pushed back on complaints that it has engaged in union-busting activity.

The L.A.-to-NYC Migration Has Begun

It’s because of everything from the fires to the streaming wars

The fires are finally contained and cleanup efforts continue, and while many Angelenos are staying in, or at least close to, the city right now, some have taken the massive destruction as a sign that it’s time to move on—a reversal of the longstanding New Yorker dream of moving west.

With tens of thousands of Californians still under evacuation orders, more than 10,000 structures destroyed (along with a lot of the infrastructure needed to supply them with basic utilities), and experts saying that, optimistically, rebuilding will take two to three years, it’s clear that thousands of people will need to find semipermanent housing in the immediate future. And that’s likely to prove difficult in L.A., where the sudden housing crunch has resulted in price gouging which, despite being illegal, is widespread, reports Curbed.

Famed realtor Ryan Serhant recently told Fox Business that he’s been inundated with calls from L.A. brokers who have clients looking for rental housing on the East Coast. And those clients are increasingly interested in buying instead of renting, as the scope of the destruction becomes clearer: “People have said this is the final straw for the state.” Others, like Alex O’Keefe, a TV writer who worked on The Bear and rents in a South L.A. neighborhood not touched by the fires, says there are other reasons for the exodus. The end of the streaming boom, the writer’s strike, and subsequent changes to streamers’ models have all translated to less work, making it hard for him to carve out a living in the industry. On the upside, will this make L.A. traffic a little less frustrating?

America’s Top Homebuilder Invests In “Off-Market” Disruptor

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