PBS News Hour: California Floods, Post-Roe America, Santa Claus History, Jazz Legacies, and More

California Storms and Unseasonable Warmth

• ⛈️ Torrential rains have inundated California, causing destructive floods and mudslides, leading to evacuations and at least three fatalities, including a sheriff's deputy.
• ⚠️ Officials are warning travelers to reconsider plans due to dangerous conditions, exacerbated by burn scars on hillsides that prevent water saturation.
• 🏠 In Wrightwood, a ski resort town, residents were under a shelter-in-place warning as muddy waters courned through their town, submerging a bridge and a car.
• ⚡ An atmospheric river storm knocked out power for nearly 150,000 people, prompting Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency.
• ☀️ Conversely, much of the U.S. experienced unseasonably warm temperatures, with some parts of the Midwest and South being 15 to 30 degrees warmer than normal.

Navigating Post-Roe America

• 📚 Author Irin Carmon discusses her new book, "Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America," which chronicles the experiences of women navigating a post-Roe landscape.
• 🤰 The book highlights that most women in the stories are not seeking abortions but want to keep their pregnancies, yet face limitations and harm from the American medical and legal systems.
• ⚖️ Carmon shares her personal experience of being pregnant when Roe v. Wade was overturned, feeling a profound erasure of the seriousness of pregnancy in legal discussions.
• ⚠️ She emphasizes that even privileged women can feel diminished autonomy during pregnancy, raising concerns about the rights and treatment of others in less advantageous situations.

The Evolution of Santa Claus

• 🎅 The figure of Santa Claus, while appearing modern, has evolved over centuries from Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop known for generosity.
• 🎁 Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of children, with traditions of a gift-bringer appearing around the 12th century.
• 😈 During the Protestant Reformation, the Christ child sometimes replaced Saint Nicholas, but lacked the