Storm leaves two dead
Tomo Chien
February 06, 2024
Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and I’ve seen some crazy visuals of the storm on Twitter. Two of my favorites: A man getting pulled out of the Los Angeles River by a helicopter crew, and a grand piano tossed out on the street after a mudslide. Onto the five USC, LA and California stories you need to know for today.
1.
Yesterday’s storm left at least two people dead and caused an estimated $9 to $11 billion in damage as an atmospheric river loitered over the state’s most densely populated regions. Nearly a million people were left without power and officials tallied over 100 mudslides. Downtown LA recorded 7.03 inches of rain, the third-wettest two-day stretch in its history. At USC, at least 11 buildings were damaged by rain and some professors scrambled to cancel classes. The storm is expected to leave the state by midweek.
2.
California could determine control of the U.S. House. Pockets of conservative strength in the otherwise deep-blue state dot the Central Valley and Southern California suburbs, and those districts — especially ones that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but still have a Republican representative — rank among a diminishing number of genuinely competitive swing districts nationwide. You don’t need to look very far: Republican Rep. Mike Garcia, who represents the suburbs north of LA, is facing a Democratic challenger after winning reelection by just 333 votes last cycle.
3.
Men’s basketball players at Dartmouth are considered university employees under federal labor law and thus have the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday. It’s a potentially landmark ruling that could cause a legal “domino effect” across the country — especially at USC, which already faces a separate labor board complaint that it misclassifies athletes in the football and basketball programs as “student-athletes” rather than employees. That ruling is still pending, but experts say the school will need to justify athletes’ non-employee status given the revenue they generate.
4.
A California bill could legalize psychedelic-assisted therapy, an abridged version of a failed attempt last year to decriminalize drugs like psilocybin and mescaline across the board. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vetoed the first bill, argued that lawmakers need to write regulated treatment guidelines before decriminalizing possession. Critics argue that “even talking about psychedelics decreases the perception of harm” and worry about teenagers buying “gray market” products. Proponents, including veteran groups, say psilocybin can help patients overcome PTSD.
5.
Before this week’s storm hit, a frantic emergency preparedness enthusiast declared on Twitter that the coming deluge would be “the dreaded #ARkStorm,” a once-in-a-1,000-year theoretical event modeled by meteorologists that would swallow entire cities. The enthusiast was wrong, of course, but that didn’t stop her Tweet from going viral and stoking fears of a coming biblical storm. Meteorologists say it was just the latest instance of them needing to play “Whac-a-Mole” with online disinformation in the social media age. The enthusiast, for her part, wasn’t particularly apologetic. “I’m just a well-meaning chick on Twitter,” she said.