Some of President-elect Trump's most audacious promises — lobbed during the comfort of the campaign trail — are already on a collision course with reality, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

1. ✂️ Elon Musk last night scaled back his radically ambitious pledge to slash "at least $2 trillion" from the federal budget, suggesting in a new interview that achieving just half of that would be an "epic outcome."
2. 🇺🇦 Trump's team has told European officials that the true deadline for ending the war in Ukraine is "several months," despite Trump long claiming he would do so within 24 hours of taking office, the Financial Times reported today.
3. 🍳 Weeks after winning an election dominated by inflation concerns, Trump rejected the notion that his presidency would be a "failure" if he were unable to bring down grocery prices.

Between the lines: This isn't to say Trump cannot, or will not, succeed in his ambitious plans to secure the border, downsize government and fundamentally reorder the global economy.

• Hyperbole is part and parcel of the Trump experience, and his supporters often advise the public and the media to "take him seriously, not literally."

💬 What they're saying: "This is fake news. President Trump and his team are working hard before even taking office to deliver on his promises and make life better for the American people," Trump-Vance spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Axios in a statement.

• "President Trump has every intention of delivering, and he will. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they're talking about."

Share this story.

This side-by-side image shows the intense destruction the California wildfires have caused as they have roared through residential areas of Los Angeles. See more.

🚒 Where it stands: The Palisades Fire — the largest and most destructive of several fires burning now in L.A. — is still 0% contained.

• And it may get worse before it gets better. Strong Santa Ana winds, which helped fuel the fires' sudden onslaught, are expected to strengthen again tonight and into tomorrow.
• "It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles," Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a press conference today.
• The destruction across the greater L.A. area is so vast that parts "look like a bomb was dropped" on them, L.A. Sheriff Robert Luna said at the press conference.

1. 🕯️All five living presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden — were in attendance today at the memorial service for former President Jimmy Carter. He was "a great American," Biden said in his eulogy. Go deeper.
2. 🤝 The Biden administration and President-elect Trump's team closely coordinated to push for Gen. Joseph Aoun to be elected as the new president of Lebanon, a U.S. official and a source familiar with the issue told Axios' Barak Ravid.
3. ⚖️ A federal judge in Kentucky struck down Biden administration rules that said schools could not discriminate against transgender students. Go deeper.

There may be water on Mercury, the European Space Agency said today as it released new close-up images of the planet's surface.

• The images showed Mercury's dark side, featuring craters that are in permanent shadow.
• Those craters are some of the coldest places in the solar system, according to the ESA, even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. And there may be frozen water inside them.

Go deeper.