As recently as December, Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot down the idea of banning lawmakers from owning and trading individual stocks. “We’re a free-market economy,” she said then. “They should be able to participate in that.” Facing internal pressure, she has now shifted her stance, saying Wednesday that she would support the measure if members of her caucus wanted her to do so. Legislation could be introduced soon, she said. Washington Post | Axios

California sued Tesla on Wednesday, accusing the carmaker of discrimination and harassment of Black employees at its Fremont factory. The state’s civil rights regulator said it heard hundreds of worker complaints and found evidence that the plant “is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion.” Tesla called the suit misguided. Bloomberg | A.P.

Chloe Kim, the 21-year-old snowboarder from Torrance, soared to another Olympic gold medal in the halfpipe on Thursday. Kim opened the competition by landing a score that no one could top, wrote sports reporter John Branch: “Kim knew it, too. When she got to the bottom of her first run, she put her hands to her head, fell on her knees in joy and laughed, as if she had shocked even herself.” N.Y. Times | Washington Post

“The combos are insane.” See Kim’s run. 👉 @TeamUSA

Every county in the Bay Area plans to lift its indoor masking mandate along with the state on Feb. 16 except one: Santa Clara. Dr. Sara Cody, the chief health officer who drew praise for her quick interventions early in the pandemic, said community transmission remained too widespread to pull back yet. The San Jose Chamber of Commerce, which has largely supported the county’s pandemic response, split with Cody this time, saying the policy would sow confusion. Mercury News | Silicon Valley Business Journal

“I’m going to go in and grab that gun. … If he reaches for it, you know what to do.”

“Yup.”

On Feb. 9th, 2019, six Vallejo police officers arrived at a Taco Bell parking lot and within minutes fired 55 bullets into a silver Mercedes where a 20-year-old named Willie McCoy had been sleeping with a gun in his lap, killing him. The Vallejo Sun obtained body cam audio and recordings of police interviews for a gripping podcast that suggests the officers were never properly investigated. It’s called “The Willie McCoy tapes.”

An Associated Press explainer on San Francisco’s school board recall noted that many Asian Americans were politically awakened by the decision to end merit-based admissions at the elite Lowell High School, where the majority of students are Asian. “It is so blatantly discriminatory against Asians,” said Ann Hsu, mother of two high schoolers. “It is so apparent that the sole purpose is that there’s too many Asians at Lowell.”

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Mission Local: San Francisco’s Chinese community are far from a monolithic voting bloc.

Mendocino Grove gets a rare 98% approval rating on the campground review site HipCamp. Since opening in 2016, the glamping resort located on a forest bluff overlooking the Pacific has become a favorite among people who want to camp with queen beds, down comforters, and a coffee bar. The travel blogger Kara Harms called it “one of the most beautiful and underrated places in the entire United States.” Whimsy Soul

Nearby is a park with a canyon covered in ferns, a 36-foot waterfall, and the elegant New Deal-era Russian Gulch Bridge.

Los Angeles Unified is moving to create as many as six new online schools that could enroll up to 15,000 students in preparation for a deluge of unvaccinated students in the fall. Board member George McKenna was the lone opponent of expanding online education. “How do they get to tell stories to each other?” he said. “How do they grow as children and have laughter? When do they get to tell jokes? I don’t know how you find interpersonal relationships are going to grow.” L.A. Times | L.A. Daily News

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s school vaccine mandate is at least five months away, but some school boards are already saying they won’t enforce it. EdSource

In June 2010, Bill Ewasko, an avid jogger and Vietnam veteran, traveled from his home in suburban Atlanta to Joshua Tree National Park, where he planned to go on a solo backcountry hike. He was never seen again. On Tuesday, hikers found human remains in the northwestern corner of the park. A radio station reported that a recovered wallet appeared to belong to Ewasko. Desert Sun | KCDZ

“The park seems to pull people in and only sometimes lets them go.” In 2018, the N.Y. Times Magazine published 4,700 words on the mystery of Ewasko’s disappearance.

Alta magazine told the story of the legendary zanjeros, or irrigation-ditch minders, of the Imperial Valley. Histories of water in California have highlighted boldface figures like William Mulholland. Largely unnoticed are the workaday water channelers, who have coaxed water out of rivers and over to cities and thirsty fields since the 1800s. Without them, the magazine wrote, “There would be no California as we know it at all.”

The homes may be more expensive in San Francisco and New York City, but San Diego is the least affordable city in the country, a new report found. America’s Finest City earned the designation from OJO Labs because of its greater mismatch between median home prices — $764,000 — and household income, echoing the findings of other studies. San Francisco Business Times

Patch: The most affordable city in California is California City, the virtual ghost metropolis in the desert east of Bakersfield where a typical home sells for about $250,000. 👇

Kristen Stewart was nominated on Tuesday in the best actress category for her portrayal of Princess Diana in “Spencer.” In November, the New Yorker ran an excellent profile that called Stewart her generation’s most interesting movie star. It included this line: “Stewart, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, describes herself as California to the core — she has ‘L.A.’ tattooed on a wrist — and few people since James Dean have looked better or more at ease in a T-shirt and jeans.”