Good morning. It’s Thursday, and I’m reading about how a former ESPN sportscaster was ejected out the window in an RV crash, smashed into the highway, then slid through traffic — and still survived. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Harvard executives are trying to placate Silicon Valley venture capitalists who manage the university’s $51 billion endowment. Some of those investors had criticized the former university president’s congressional testimony as being too soft on antisemitic rhetoric, and are railing against what they see as a pro-Palestinian bias in academia. The placating of investors adds a new dimension to the tumult in higher education since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war — universities had previously only sought to smooth things over with donors, rather than the people managing their money.

Juliet Chung and Berber Jin / The Wall Street Journal

2.

The Biden administration finalized a $1.1 billion deal that’ll keep California’s only nuclear power plant running until 2030. Last year, the Legislature voided a deal that would’ve closed the nearly 40-year-old Diablo Canyon Power Plant in 2025 at the behest of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who argued that the state needed the plant’s output to ward off blackouts and offset climate change’s stresses on the power grid. Environmentalists argue that California has enough energy without the plant’s outputs, and that the aging reactors are a safety liability.

Staff / Associated Press

3.

A Yuba County elections worker was exposed to what was likely a fentanyl-laced envelope on Tuesday. The worker was unharmed. A sheriff’s test found that the envelope’s powdery substance was fentanyl, but officials said more testing is needed from the Department of Justice. Regardless, the incident no doubt underscored this year’s high stakes for election workers, who have already faced death threats and public ridicule on account of baseless claims of election fraud.

Ishani Desai / The Sacramento Bee

4.

A billionaire-backed company revealed detailed plans to build a walkable, affordable city on rural farmland northeast of San Francisco — a “utopia” complete with a transit hub, nightlife and a $400 million pool of down payment assistance for new residents. But the developers face serious challenges. For one, Solano County residents are already skeptical of the group, which surreptitiously gobbled up some 50,000 acres of land and didn’t reveal its plans until last year. And the group, which formally filed a ballot initiative with the county yesterday, needs to collect 13,500 signatures to even have a shot at rezoning the land for housing development.

David Sjostedt / The San Francisco Standard

5.

We’re loaded. USC reported that its endowment grew by more than $330 million last year to a cool $7.7 billion. (Although if you’ll recall the previous story about Harvard, there are clearly levels to the term “loaded.”) Interestingly, $4 of every $10 the university makes comes from its healthcare services, which account for the university’s largest source of revenue. Student tuition and fees amount to just over a quarter. 

Nicholas Corral / Daily Trojan

Anna Hsu copy edited this newsletter.

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