California
Over Labor Day weekend, California witnessed one of its hottest weekends in memory, which intensified destructive wildfires that erupted…
California reported 151 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, 9/4, ticking up the state’s rolling average of fatalities, but hospitalizations and the numbers of patients in intensive care unit beds continued several weeks of steady declines…
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of San Jose ordered the Census Bureau on Saturday, 9/5, to stop shutting down operations and resume its full-scale nationwide population count through Sept. 17, when the judge will consider the Trump administration’s plan to end the census survey a month ahead of schedule…
Coronavirus
The pandemic’s economic blow has exacted another superlative, with the largest share of U.S. young adults living at home since the end of the Great Depression era…
About 13 million more Americans were back at workplaces in August than in May as fewer education, manufacturing and transportation employees said they were working from home because of the pandemic…
On 9/1, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released for public comment a discussion draft of a preliminary framework to assist policymakers in planning for equitable allocation of a vaccine against COVID-19…
The Trump Administration is pulling U.S. officials from the headquarters of the World Health Organization, the multilateral agency leading the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic, even as cases in the United States climb above 6 million…
Employment disparities between Black and White Americans widened in August but narrowed between men and women, even as jobless rates came down across the board…
The Trump administration said it’s recovered almost 70% of $1.6 billion in relief payments mistakenly sent to dead people as the government rushed out stimulus money to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus, according to the Government Accountability Office’s report released Monday, 8/31…
President and Administration
President Trump has instructed federal government agencies to halt racial sensitivity training with a White House memo that condemned such initiatives as contrary to the nation’s “fundamental beliefs”…
President Donald Trump said Congress should authorize sending taxpayers checks from about $300 billion left over in a pandemic lending program…
The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending program for small- and mid-sized companies is now approving loans to nonprofit institutions…
Major questions remain unanswered after the IRS issued guidance on President Trump’s payroll tax deferral…
Congress
The House will meet in proforma session this week (a short period of time when no votes are held and no formal business is typically conducted) and will be back in session on September 15…
Lawmakers returning this week and next to Washington face immediate pressure to negotiate to head off the lapse of government funding and critical programs only weeks before the November election…
Negotiations between the White House and Democratic lawmakers hit a wall in early August, with the two sides far apart on the size and scope of what is needed…
Senate Republicans said today, 9/8, that they will introduce and set up a floor vote on a slimmed-down virus stimulus bill in an effort to break a month-long impasse on aid for the U.S. economy…
Under the Emergency Stopgap USCIS Stabilization Act (HR 8089), a bill passed by the House on 8/22, the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) could expand fee-based fast-track visa processing and increase premium processing fees…
Education
The Education Department announced in May that it would dole out Care Act funds to private schools without regard to “family income, residency, or eligibility based on low achievement” - an attempt to give private schools a larger share of federal coronavirus relief dollars…
State school leaders should expect to administer standardized tests for K-12 students during the forthcoming year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote in a letter Thursday, 9/3…
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin’s ruling on Thursday, 9/3, prohibits Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from enforcing her restrictions on the CARES Act funding anywhere in Massachusetts…
While overall enrollment fell relatively slightly over the summer, the biggest losses were concentrated at community colleges, which had 5.6% fewer students than the previous summer, and for-profit colleges, which had 7% fewer students, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported Tuesday, 9/1…
Presidential Election
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is expanding his transition team with senior campaign aides, vice presidential contenders and a former primary rival, two months before he faces President Donald Trump in the general election…