California
California lifted a stay-at-home order in the 13-county Sacramento region on Tuesday, 1/12, as hospital conditions improved, a rare turn of good news for the state…
California health officials are recommending a temporary halt to distribution of a particular lot of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine out of concern over allergic reactions…
California is reducing the age threshold for COVID-19 vaccinations to 65 years old and giving older residents greater priority over workers who were due to receive inoculations next, the state announced Wednesday, 1/13…
Several higher education systems and organizations applauded Gov. Newsom’s budget proposal this week…
Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner doubled down Monday, 1/11, on criticism of Gov. Newsom's plans to reopen schools, joining unions in demanding state standards and more funding for all schools regardless of whether they reopen classrooms…
President and Administration
The Trump administration added Cuba to a list of state sponsors of terrorism Monday, 1/11…
In a surprise move, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday, 1/13, will unveil a climate rule that will effectively prohibit the future regulation of greenhouse gases from any stationary industry other than power plants…
A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday, 1/12, granted an appeal from Trump administration lawyers and restored a controversial abortion rule that requires women who want medication to end an early pregnancy to travel to a hospital or clinic to pick up the pills, despite the COVID-19 pandemic…
Trump has approved an emergency declaration for the District of Columbia with the approach of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and in the wake of the assault on the U.S. Capitol last week…
Expanded tax perks in the new round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding are designed to stretch support to small businesses still stuck in widespread shutdowns caused by the pandemic…
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which restarted this week with $284 billion in pandemic-relief loans for U.S. small businesses, opened to small banks on Friday, 1/15, and all lenders today, 1/19…
Chad Wolf may no longer be the acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department (DHS), but he is still serving as a DHS political appointee and using newly delegated authorities to make legal actions he took while he was chief…
Trump-appointed Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham said Wednesday, 1/13, he’s asked political appointees to “stand down” in their efforts to push through a population count that excludes undocumented immigrants before President Trump leaves office…
Congress
Democratic Senators-elect Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and Alex Padilla (D-CA) will be sworn in Wednesday, 1/20, after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration…
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the General Counsel published a memorandum on Friday, 1/8, that states that LGBTQ students are not expressly included in protections under Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at federally funded institutions…
On Wednesday, 1/13, Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine whether colleges and universities are doing enough to make sure disabled students have the same access to learning during the coronavirus pandemic as others…
Peer-reviewed analysis of 30 large U.S. universities released in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering indicated that in 18 of them, a peak in campus infections preceded a peak in the surrounding county by less than 14 days, suggesting infections were translated from the campus to the nearby community…
The Education Department added long called-for information to its College Scorecard that shows how well students at institutions, including for-profits, are able to repay student loans…
Transition
President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday, 1/11, that he will nominate William J. Burns as the next director of the CIA…
San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten has been nominated to join president-elect Joe Biden’s administration as the Deputy Secretary of Education….
The incoming administration will focus on decreasing wait times to obtain citizenship to eight years from 13 years, granting automatic green cards to immigrants protected by the Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies, and adding immigration judges to decrease backlogs on court hearings, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said on Tuesday, 1/12…
President-elect Biden on Thursday, 1/14, proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the COVID-19 crisis…
President-elect Biden is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to vaccines while promising to use a wartime law to expand production…
The association representing for-profit colleges and universities, in a letter Monday, 1/11, urged President-elect Joe Biden's administration not to single them out unfairly…