California
Students across most of California won’t be able to attend school in person this fall, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday, 7/17, dealing another setback to efforts at restarting the world’s fifth-largest economy and possibly spurring similar orders nationwide…
Los Angeles County again led the way in new California COVID-19 cases with 2,722 new positive results Saturday, 7/18, for a total of 153,014 cases since the pandemic began…
A California judge on Thursday, 7/16, issued a tentative order that, if solidified, would uphold the state's ban on for-profit prisons…
Coronavirus
U.S. cases rose 2.2%, above the 1.9% daily average over the last week…
Using statistical analysis, a new study by Victor Chernozhukov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hiroyuki Kasahara and Paul Schrimpf of the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics concludes that 40,000 lives would have been saved in two months if a national mask mandate for employees of public-facing businesses had gone into effect on April 1 and had been strictly obeyed through May…
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed that more guidance for opening schools won’t be released until later this month…
Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC, warned that racial disparities seen in how coronavirus affects more minorities may be replicated in schools as they re-open if not careful…
The Federal Reserve formally unveiled terms Friday, 7/17, that will allow nonprofit organizations to borrow through its $600 billion loan program for small and midsize businesses disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic…
The federal government should weigh forgiving all “small” loans provided under the Paycheck Protection Program during the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has extended its “no-sail order” for cruise ships through the end of September, preventing vessels from sailing in U.S. waters out of concerns over COVID-19…
President and Administration
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) sent Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield a letter last week asking him or a CDC designee to testify at a hearing on how K-12 public schools can reopen for in-person classroom instruction this fall…
President Trump says he will not issue a national mandate requiring Americans to wear masks in order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus…
President Trump is expected to issue an executive order that would ban undocumented immigrants from being included in the 2020 census…
A U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ruled Friday, 7/17, that the Trump administration must begin to operate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program again, after the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has continued to not accept new applications for the immigration program despite a Supreme Court ruling last month that reinstated DACA…
President Trump said he will announce a new federal law enforcement initiative this week focused on violence in U.S. cities…
Congress
Senate Republicans are raising the alarm over the country's rapidly growing number of coronavirus cases…
Talks on a new coronavirus stimulus package will start at the White House on today, 7/20, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and others…
Senate Republicans are preparing to offer a five-year shield from coronavirus lawsuits as part of a forthcoming relief proposal…
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called on the Senate on Thursday, 7/16, to support an amendment to the next coronavirus relief bill that would bar states that do not implement mask mandates from receiving stimulus funding…
Democratic senators called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to honor the legacy of the late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and allow the Voting Rights Act to the Senate floor to be passed…
Appropriations Update:
By a vote of 30-22, on Wednesday, 7/15, the House Appropriations Committee approved the FY 21 Homeland Security bill with the following amendments adopted by voice vote…
Education
The Department of Homeland Security rescinded a July 6 policy directive that would have required international students to take at least some in-person coursework in the fall in order to remain in the U.S…
A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday, 7/15, on behalf of the attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia, is trying to end Education Secretary DeVos’s new borrower-defense rule, which makes it more difficult for students who have been defrauded, particularly by for-profit colleges, to have their student loans canceled…
Fourteen Republican attorneys general (AGs) filed a brief in defense of the United States Department of Education’s new regulations that dictate how colleges respond to reports of sexual misconduct…