Good evening, SoCal. We're wrapping up the day for you with the most important stories you need to know and your weather outlook.
Your Weather Planner
After record-breaking heat Tuesday, temperatures will cool in the coming days. That begins Wednesday near the coastline due to a shift to onshore winds.
Temperatures will still remain much warmer than average, especially across the mountains and deserts, where there will not be much change midweek.
Enjoy these mild to warm conditions, because temperatures will drop like a rock during the second half of the week. Temperatures will return to near average on Thursday. Rain and mountain snow begin that evening, with the heaviest precipitation falling through Friday morning. Lighter rain and snow chances continue into the weekend.
Tomorrow's Highs
Get your 7-day forecast: LA West | LA East | San Fernando Valley/Ventura County | Orange County
Today's Big Stories
1. LA County health director: Indoor mask mandate could be lifted Friday
Los Angeles County's much-debated COVID-19 indoor mask-wearing mandate could be lifted by Friday, according to the public health director, aligning the county with the state's action that took effect Tuesday.
The move would mean Los Angeles County will no longer require people to wear masks at indoor businesses. The county is one of the final holdouts in California not to align with the state on the masking rules.
The state last month dropped its indoor mask-wearing mandate for vaccinated people. On Tuesday, it also dropped the mandate for unvaccinated people.
Los Angeles County, however, resisted lifting its indoor masking requirement. Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the county wanted to wait until the local virus-transmission rate fell out of the "high" category as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and maintained the lower level for at least two weeks. Under the current rate of decline, Ferrer previously said that would mean the mask mandate would be in place until the end of March.
But on Friday, the CDC announced new standards that rely largely on COVID hospital numbers to govern whether masks should be worn. Those new standards — while resulting in mask recommendations being lifted for much of the country, still classified Los Angeles as having "high" virus activity and urged that people continue to wear masks.
Ferrer told the county Board of Supervisors that the county's designation will likely change when the CDC updates its data on Thursday.
"We anticipate that on Thursday, when CDC updates their community-level table, LA County will be moving to low risk," Ferrer said. "And we are prepared on Thursday to issue a modified health officer order with an effective date of implementation for Friday, March 4th, that will strongly recommend and not require indoor masking in most public indoors spaces."
2. Senate Republicans, Manchin block abortion rights bill
On Monday, the Senate failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify the right to an abortion guaranteed in Roe v. Wade ahead of a Supreme Court ruling that could limit access to the procedure nationwide.
The bill needed 60 votes to advance — and fell 14 votes short, with West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin joining every present Senate Republican to vote against the measure.
The final vote was 46-48, with six Senators not voting or not present for the vote. The bill passed the House in September on a near party-line vote.
The bill had 48 Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate, with Manchin and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey being the only members of the Democratic caucus not sponsoring the bill. Casey voted in favor of proceeding to debate on the measure Monday night.
“Abortion is a fundamental right and women's decisions over women's healthcare belong to women, not to extremist right-wing legislators,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters ahead of the vote.
Schumer called it a “dark, dark time for women’s reproductive rights” nationwide, citing recent efforts by a number of states to restrict access to the procedure — including Texas, which has implemented a law which virtually bans all abortions after six weeks — and the Supreme Court’s looming decision which could change the precedent set in landmark abortion decisions Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
3. MLB cancels Opening Day after owners, players fail to reach deal. So, how did we get here?
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that, owing to the club owners’ ongoing lockout of players, that the start of the regular season — including Opening Day as well as each teams’ first two series of games — has been canceled, opting instead to delay the start of the 2022 regular season.
In simplest terms, the owners have decided that they aren’t going to let the players come back to work until the two sides have signed onto a new collective bargaining agreement between the players’ union and the league.
More broadly, it means no games, no spring training, no use of team facilities, and that the league’s many taxpayer-funded stadiums will sit empty until a new deal is struck.
That also means that anything MLB licenses from the players’ union — including player headshots and likenesses — isn’t being used by MLB or its teams. As a result, the league’s own websites look like relative ghost towns; team news stories are populated with stock images, while team roster pages are simply lists of names next to generic player silhouettes, like row after row of new Twitter profiles.
It’s the league’s first work stoppage to cancel games since the 1994 player strike.
4. LA City Council confirms first female LAFD chief
The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday unanimously confirmed the appointment of Deputy Chief Kristin Crowley to be the first woman and first openly gay person to lead the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The appointment is effective March 26, when Chief Ralph Terrazas is scheduled to retire.
"I think it's so fitting for this nomination to come to council today, on the first day of Women's History Month," Council President Nury Martinez said. "Our city's fire department has gone 136 years without a woman in its highest office and today we're going to finally be able to turn the page."
Crowley already made history within the LAFD when she became the city's first female fire marshal in 2016.
"I'm truly honored to be considered the nominee for the next fire chief of the Los Angeles city fire department and I am humbled and proud to have earned the opportunity to represent each and every one of our 3,779-strong civilian and sworn personnel of our department," Crowley told council members before Tuesday's vote.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues after Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a "special military operation" on its neighbor.
President Joe Biden, in coordination with a number of NATO nations and other allies, has implemented a comprehensive package of devastating sanctions on Russia for its invasion, which sent Russian currency plummeting and isolated the Kremlin from the rest of the world's economy.
Overall death tolls in the conflict are unclear, but a senior Western intelligence official estimated on Tuesday that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or captured so far.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, citing attacks on civilians, blasted Moscow's actions as "frank, undisguised terror" and accused them of war crimes. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced Monday that he is opening a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Click the link above for live coverage.
Your Notes for Tomorrow
- POTUS and FLOTUS visit Wisconsin to discuss the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, rebuilding roads and bridges and creating jobs
- SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson starts meeting with Senate leaders
- Vice President Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh visit North Carolina to highlight administration jobs investments
- International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meeting on Ukraine
- Billboard's annual Women in Music Awards
- Read Across America Day
In Case You Missed It
Gen Z is breaking up with Tinder, new dating apps here for rebound
More than ever, the road to love goes right through your phone. A survey showed nearly 40% of heterosexual couples in the U.S. say they met online, and young people, of course, are all over this.
Pew Research Center data shows nearly half of people aged 18 to 29 have used dating apps. However, data shows that Gen Z is tiring of the apps that have dominated this past decade, such as the Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. In an interview for "LA Times Today," reporter Jaimie Ding told host Amrit Singh about the new apps that are gaining in popularity.