Today’s Headlines: Colorado River deal will bring water cuts to California

Hello, it’s Tuesday, May 23, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

States reach a Colorado River deal

The seven states that depend on the Colorado River announced that they have reached an agreement on cutting water use from the river over the next three years to prevent reservoirs from falling to critically low levels.

Representatives of the states reached the consensus after months of negotiations, with California, Arizona and Nevada together committing to reduce water use by 3 million acre-feet between now and the end of 2026 — an average of 1 million acre-feet per year, cutting usage by about 14% across the Southwest.

More coverage

• Monday’s historic agreement over Colorado River cuts represents a big win for California.
• Is landmark deal over the Colorado River enough to stave off disaster?
  

Dodgers apologize, re-invite Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Less than a week after removing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from their lineup, the Dodgers on Monday reinvited the organization to Pride Night amid backlash from LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups as well as local politicians and even Dodgers employees.

Pride Night is scheduled for June 16 at Dodger Stadium during a game against the San Francisco Giants. The L.A. chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a satirical performance and activist organization with a decades-long history of raising awareness and money for LGBTQ+ causes while providing comfort and resources to AIDS patients and unhoused queer and trans youth, were set to receive the team’s Community Hero Award in a pregame ceremony.

No debt ceiling agreement in White House meeting

President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared they had a productive debt ceiling discussion late Monday at the White House, but there was no agreement and neither side appeared to be giving ground as Washington strained to raise the nation’s borrowing limit in time to avert a potentially chaotic federal default.

It’s a crucial moment for the Democratic president and the Republican speaker, just 10 days before a looming deadline to raise the debt limit.

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LAUSD shakes up a praised initiative that combats learning loss

A Los Angeles public school program that officials portrayed as a major success for helping struggling young students improve academically is being substantially dismantled by Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who says it’s too costly and not particularly effective.

The abrupt and unannounced change of direction to Primary Promise, which was launched in 2020, has angered many parents and teachers who viewed the effort as transformative in raising achievement in reading and math for students in kindergarten through third grade. Supporters are campaigning to save the program, which provided individually tailored reading and math instruction in small groups.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Alex Campos, left, and Alejandro Gonzalez kiss at a club in the former mining city’s historic center.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

CALIFORNIA

Indigenous tribes warned of a buried kingdom in the Owens Valley. Now, Caltrans crews are unearthing bones. The skeletal remains of more than 30 Native Americans have been unearthed at a Caltrans worksite in the Owens Valley. Tribes want the work to stop.

Free money is still available for small L.A. businesses affected by the pandemic. The city of Los Angeles is offering up to $15,000 to qualified small businesses in the city that missed rent payments during the pandemic. Applications for those funds are due by the end of the day Wednesday.

Yosemite’s Mist Trail hike with majestic waterfall views to get a $5-million upgrade. Mist Trail will receive a $5-million upgrade to its seven-mile round-trip hike at Yosemite National Park that takes visitors to views of Vernal and Nevada falls.

Rich Connell, a longtime Times investigative reporter and editor, dies at 71. Connell’s three decades at The Times included working on the paper’s investigative team where he chronicled the international rise of Mara Salvatrucha, the gang known as MS-13, uncovered a federal corruption investigation of Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre and exposed flaws in the 911 emergency response system.

NATION-WORLD

At Mexico’s gay cowboy conventions, men connect with each other — and their country’s rugged past. As the event has expanded and the subculture has spread, the gatherings have become a refuge for gay men seeking connection not just with each other, but with Mexican identity itself.

At Mexico’s southern border, the migrant flow is undeterred. Officials in Washington assert that the numbers of illicit crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have declined since Title 42 ended. But some 1,000 miles from the Rio Grande, huge numbers of U.S.-bound migrants are making illegal crossings of the more than 500-mile border separating Mexico from Guatemala.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

We asked Peso Pluma about his first hit. Then he hung up on us. During an interview with the hottest new star in music, The Times’ Suzy Exposito asked about the controversy surrounding his earlier songs that allegedly glorify local drug kingpins. Before she finished the question, Pluma utters “nah” and tosses his smartphone across the table.

‘Vanderpump Rules’ star Lala Kent on life after Randall Emmett. Determined not to let the “Randall Scandal” define her, the reality TV star was the first person to smell trouble with the show’s now infamous “Scandoval.”

Review: Halle Bailey makes a lovely ‘Little Mermaid,’ but this remake is less than shipshape. “Much like the studio’s 1989 hand-drawn touchstone, this ostensibly live-action but heavily digitized redo takes a famously tragic story and spins it into a drama of reckless teenage empowerment, populated by colorful under-the-sea critters and set to a rousing calypso beat,” Justin Chang writes.

‘Fast X’ races to the top of the box office for the biggest international launch of 2023. Internationally, “Fast X” opened to $251 million for a global cumulative total of nearly $319 million. Abroad, the only “Fast & Furious” movie ever to beat that number is “The Fate of the Furious” in 2017.

BUSINESS

An L.A. watchmaker crafted a $70,000 timepiece. It could revolutionize the U.S. watch industry. A true U.S.-made watch has not been produced for more than 50 years — ever since the last of the once-great American watch companies went out of business or were sold to the Swiss. A California watchmaker hopes to change that with a new timepiece.

Beverly Hills voters will decide the fate of an ultra-luxury hotel project. Beverly Hills already has 16 hotels, seven of which are considered luxury. But the Cheval Blanc would aim to be the brightest star in a galaxy of sparkle, promising an exceptionally high-end experience for its wealthy clientele.

SPORTS

Column: How did this happen again? USC and Carol Folt are responsible for the Mike Bohn mess. When Mike Bohn barreled into USC as its latest athletic director in 2019, he was sold as a man of character by university President Carol Folt. “As Bohn was backpedaling out of USC nearly 3½ years later, it once again appears the Trojans have only a casual relationship with the word ‘integrity,’” Bill Plaschke writes.

Commentary: For all his accomplishments, NFL legend Jim Brown leaves a highly flawed legacy. How will Brown be remembered? “So, the obvious summation is to say that the great Jim Brown, wonderful athlete, decent movie star and terrible human being to many women, is an enigma. So many who knew him liked him. So many, the majority of those women, did not,” Bill Dwyre writes.

OPINION

Opinion: Flight canceled? Stuck on the tarmac? Here’s a solution: more women in aviation. Aviation’s capacity woes underline a massive industry blind spot: Women remain largely grounded. Only 4.6% of airline pilots are women, and aviation mechanics fare even worse, at 2.6%.

Editorial: California needs more than just money to stop bungling the Exide cleanup. California’s commitment to spend $67 million to clean toxic Exide parkways is good. But the Newsom administration and Legislature need a cleanup done well.

Opinion: Downtown San Francisco had a good run. Can it recover? San Francisco leaders brush off the bad news and say the city will recover. Yet nobody seems to know what that looks like, or what is the path forward.

ONLY IN L.A.

IMAGE Magazine | May 2023 Strip Malls: Occidental

(Nichelle Dailey / For The Times)

There are so many reasons one might enter a strip mall. Laundry. Loitering. Getting their nails done. Refilling their water. Dining at a restaurant. Having a hem taken in. Picking up a package. No matter the type of outing, a strip mall is for pulling up with purpose.

Photographer Nichelle Dailey and artist Sissòn — with the help of The Times fashion director at large, Keyla Marquez — spent a day exploring the high-fashion hangout that is the L.A. strip mall.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

On this day in 1934, notorious American outlaws Bonnie and Clyde were killed in a police shootout in Louisiana.

Before their deaths, they went on a murderous two-year crime spree that included robbing gas stations, restaurants and small-town banks. When the couple died in a hail of gunfire, and photos of Bonnie posing with firearms and a getaway car were discovered, Bonnie became the pin-up girl for the hyper-sexualized archetype of the gun moll — or female criminal.

Over the years, there have been quite a few film and television depictions of the couple’s murder spree. In 2013, The Times’ Mary McNamara wrote about the A&E miniseries “Bonnie and Clyde” that looked great but didn’t make sense historically.

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