California
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $2 billion push Wednesday, 12/30, to reopen California elementary schools for the youngest students in February, offering incentives and testing to school districts that resume classroom instruction…
California extended its stay-at-home order for Southern California and San Joaquin Valley on Tuesday, 12/28, and the Greater Sacramento Region on Saturday, 1/2…
Coronavirus
The mandatory paid leave provision that ensured workers would continue drawing paychecks while they absented themselves to care for children or ill family members became a voluntary one on 1/1, as it wasn’t carried forward in the $900 billion COVID-19 economic relief bill passed by Congress…
Business leaders are calling on Congress to act on a new pandemic relief bill next year, including aid for state and local governments and liability protections for employers from virus-related lawsuits…
The revival of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) bracing for a very busy start to 2021…
A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 29 percent of healthcare workers were “vaccine hesitant," a figure slightly higher than the percentage of the general population, 27 percent…
President and Administration
Nonprofit organizations that provide anti-racism and anti-LGBT bias training won an order halting the federal government from enforcing an executive order that threatens to chill their advocacy and block them from receiving federal grant money…
On Thursday, 12/31, Trump extended a ban on new green cards and work visas until months after he leaves office, citing weakness in the U.S. labor market due to COVID-19…
A final rule to ease employers’ use of independent contractors has been cleared by the White House, setting the stage for the U.S. Labor Department (DOL) to complete one of its biggest rulemakings of the Trump era in the administration’s final days…
President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday, 1/2, that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act…
Trump will make his last stand to overturn his election loss on Wednesday, 1/6, when Vice President Pence presides over the congressional session to ratify November’s results…
Education
In a farewell letter sent today, 1/4, to leaders in the House and Senate and to committees that oversee the Education Department, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged lawmakers to reject President-elect Joe Biden's education agenda, while imploring them to shield Trump administration policies that Biden has promised to eliminate…
Congress
Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House for the 117th Congress, clinching the gavel for the fourth and potentially last time as she prepares to steer the sharply divided chamber through the final turbulent days of the Trump era…
Congressional Democrats are looking to President-elect Joe Biden for more spending in 2021 to address the COVID-19 pandemic and boost the economy…
The two Senate races taking place Tuesday, 1/5, are expected to be close…
Transition
President-elect Joe Biden will issue a memo effective Inauguration Day that will block actions taken by the outgoing administration that haven’t yet become official, the transition team announced on 12/30…
Career staffers at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) aren’t being allowed to meet with President-elect Joe Biden Transition team to work on the incoming administration’s first budget request…
President- elect Joe Biden warned the “darkest days” of the COVID-19 pandemic were still to come and called on Congress to be ready to produce another stimulus package…