Good morning. It’s Tuesday, March 11.

• Coldest storm of winter takes aim at California.
• Report says 2025 will be the year of winery closures.
• And case of judge who fatally shot wife ends in mistrial.

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Statewide

1.

The coldest storm system of the winter is expected to push across California on Wednesday through Thursday, delivering an intense burst of rain and snow, forecasters said. Models showed that the rate of precipitation per hour could exceed a half-inch of rain and several inches of snow, posing risks of mudslides in low-lying areas and blocked roads in the mountains. By the end of the weather event, forecasters said, even lower mountain reaches will be blanketed by inches of snow, while high elevations of the Sierra Nevada and California Cascades could accumulate as much as 4 feet. Accuweather | S.F. Chronicle

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2.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the migrants toiling in California’s fields and food-processing plants were anointed “essential workers” by the government. Many of those workers are now so consumed by fear of detention and deportation that they are staying home. “These people have come into our country to do this work,” said Tom Deardorff, a fourth-generation farmer in Oxnard. “We owe them not just ‘thank you.’ We owe them the common decency and dignity to not be threatened by government draconian penalties.” N.Y. Times

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3.

California adheres to the practice of draining one place to sustain another. That’s had consequences for communities that become abstract pawns in a narrative of “water wars,” wrote Ryan Christopher Jones, a Fresno photojournalist. Thinking about California water as a war, he added, “ensures that no side really ever wins — only that some lose more than others.” The New York Times opinion section published a visually rich dispatch by Jones on “the otherwordly California waterway that keeps exploding into politics.“

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4.

There has never been a Black female governor in America. Allies of Kamala Harris told Politico that she has long been intrigued by the idea of becoming the first, especially given the opportunity to lead the world’s fifth-largest economy. They said she is seriously considering a run for governor of California and has even given herself a deadline to decide: by the end of summer. “I am staying in this fight,” Harris has told supporters. Politico | The Guardian

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Northern California

5.

For the first time in a generation, the number of American wineries declined in 2024 as the industry was buffeted by changing consumer tastes and a flood of cheaper foreign wine. In 2025, with a trade war looming, analysts say the outlook has only grown bleaker. The San Francisco Chronicle offered a prediction: “This will be the year of California winery closures.”

• An analysis found that retaliatory tariffs would be especially painful in rural communities where President Trump’s supporters predominate. But it would also hit hard in some blue counties, including Napa County. Washington Post

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6.

San Francisco is getting its first statue of Bruce Lee, the movie legend who was born there and lived in Oakland for a time. Spearheaded by the Chinese Historical Society of America, the statue will stand in Portsmouth Square, the city’s historic heart, and depict Lee in a combat pose, ready to strike. “Bruce Lee flipped the entire world upside down and made it cool to be Chinese,” promoter Jeff Chinn said in a tearful speech announcing the project. “So from my heart, thank you, Bruce. This statue is for you.” S.F. Chronicle | SFist

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Southern California

7.

On Aug. 3, 2023, Jeffrey Ferguson and his wife were arguing in their Anaheim Hills home after an evening of drinking. At one point, Ferguson, a Superior Court judge, pointed his index finger at her in imitation of a gun, according to the couple’s adult son, who was home. “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” the son heard his mother say. That’s when Ferguson pulled a Glock from his ankle holster and fatally shot his wife in the chest.

Yet on Monday, after eight days of deliberation, a jury deadlocked in Ferguson’s trial, during which the 74-year-old former judge insisted the gunshot was accidental. All but one of the 12 jurors had favored conviction. L.A. Times | A.P.

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8.

A Los Angeles police officer secretly recorded dozens of conversations in which fellow officers made racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks about colleagues and police applicants, according to a complaint filed with the LAPD. One officer offered advice on how to fight African Americans: “You hit black people in the liver; I heard they got weak livers.” In unrecorded conversations, officers referred to Black people as monkeys, the complaint said. A supervisor was said to make a prescient remark: “Man, we’re going to end up in the L.A. Times the way you all talk in here.” L.A. Times

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9.

Last month, Compton Unified made headlines for being a rare bright spot as standardized test scores showed proficiency in math and reading flagging across the rest of California. Despite serving a low-income population, Compton outperformed other districts by enlisting roving tutors among other interventions, reports said. But some teachers are now calling out administrators for putting a relentless focus on test preparation at the expense of regular instruction. “They’re not learning how to think critically, how to be rational, how to be lifelong learners,” said Kristen Luevanos, a union leader. “They’re learning how to read and answer questions.” EdSource

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10.

“I don’t believe that there’s ever closure.”

People who returned to the ashen remains of their homes in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, in many cases, found that nothing remained. Others recovered objects as mundane as a can of cat food that came to hold meaning for them. The New York Times published a powerful photo project on those objects and what they mean to their owners.

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11.

The Supreme Court on Monday revived a Southern California family’s long legal quest to force a Spanish museum to return a $30 million painting stolen from their ancestors by the Nazis in 1939. In a brief order overturning a lower court ruling, the justices said the case should be reconsidered under a new California law passed that aims to strengthen the claims of Holocaust survivors and their families seeking to recover stolen art. Praising the ruling, lawyers for the family said, “We hope Spain and its museum will now do the right thing.” Washington Post | L.A. Times

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12.

Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles County district attorney, announced Monday that he opposes reducing the sentences of Lyle and Erik Menendez, reversing an effort begun last year under Hochman’s predecessor, George Gascón. During a news conference, Hochman said the brothers who killed their parents in 1989 had repeatedly lied through the years and failed to take “complete responsibility.” Hochman’s move is largely symbolic, however, given that a similar effort initiated by a court is expected to go forward. Gov. Gavin Newsom is also weighing a clemency petition. N.Y. Times | Washington Post

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