Reconciliation Bill: Build Back Better
On Thursday, 10/28, President Joe Biden unveiled a framework for a $1.75 trillion reconciliation package his administration believes can pass Congress and urged House Democrats to quickly clear a separate public works bill for his signature, despite misgivings by progressives…
Child Tax Credit
The framework would extend the popular child tax credit for another year for households earning up to $150,000 annually…
Education
Biden’s economic plan would spend $400 billion on early childhood programs, including limiting child care costs to no more than seven percent of income for middle-class families…
Higher Education
The plan would put $40 billion into higher education and workforce training programs…
Health Care
The framework would extend the expanded Affordable Care Act premium tax credits through 2025…
Housing
The framework calls for spending $150 billion on affordable housing with the goal of building more than one million new affordable rental and single-family homes, rental and down payment assistance, and public housing…
State and Local Taxes (SALT)
“SALT will be in the endgame, yes,” House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) told reporters…
Climate - $555 billion
By far the largest component of the climate spending - some $320 billion of it - would go to expanding a slew of tax credits for renewable power…
Lawmakers also would give a boost to existing tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles, making them more widely available, even to used cars…
$110 billion would be dedicated to boosting U.S. manufacturing of clean energy technologies, so more solar panels, electric vehicle parts, and other green tech is made domestically…
The package proposes to expand rebates and credits with the goal of encouraging investments in home efficiency and renewable power…
The plan would dole out as much as $105 billion to helping communities build resilience to the impacts of climate change, such as from droughts, more frequent wildfires and intense hurricanes…
The Civilian Climate Corps could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work preventing wildfires, restoring wetlands, capping abandoned oil wells and making homes more energy efficient…
California
Four weeks after an oil spill washed blobs of crude onto Southern California’s coast, surfers have returned to the waves and people play in the surf…
Contra Costa, Marin and Alameda counties are set to ease indoor mask mandates today, 11/1…
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll propose using next year’s surplus to pay down $11.3 billion in pension obligations, but didn’t give further details…
Public health nurses, microbiologists, epidemiologists, health officers and other staff members who fend off infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, inspect restaurants, and work to keep communities healthy are abandoning the field…
California lost about 27,800 child care workers between February and April of 2020 - or roughly a third of its workforce…
California has given away at least $20 billion to criminals in the form of fraudulent unemployment benefits, state officials said last week, confirming a number smaller than originally feared but one that still accounts for more than 11 percent of all benefits paid since the start of the pandemic…
Coronavirus
The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) independent vaccine advisers voted Tuesday, 10/26, to recommend authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot for children ages 5-11, after deliberating whether everyone in that age group should be eligible for immunization…
Hospital admissions are declining sharply among U.S. children with COVID-19, even more than adults, quieting concerns for now that the return to school could trigger a major uptick in viral transmission…
Please find a brief summarizing CDC guidance to support COVID-19 contact tracing in K-12 schools from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) here…
A growing number of colleges and universities are mandating vaccination against COVID-19 for employees - including undergraduate and graduate student employees - in response to President Biden’s 9/9 order mandating vaccination for employees of federal contractors…
March Madness celebrations caused a noticeable spike in COVID-19 infections last spring, a new study found…
President and Administration
State and local governments picked up the pace of distributing emergency rental assistance funds in September amid a push from the Biden administration to accelerate payments to households…
Last week, President Biden nominated Jessica Rosenworcel, the acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to the permanent job, putting her on track to become the first woman to lead the agency…
The Biden Administration issued the first-ever National Gender Strategy to advance the full participation of all people - including women and girls - in the U.S. and around the world…
The Washington Post published a deep dive into the attack on the Capitol…
Congress
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is pressuring House Democrats to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill as soon as possible but is running into stiff opposition from progressives, who want to see the legislative text of a larger tax and spending package first…
Key Republican senators obtained hundreds of millions of dollars each in earmarks in their chamber’s spending bill, an offering that could help grease the wheels for a bipartisan government funding bill later this year…
Urban and farm-state lawmakers want the White House to convene a conference on U.S. hunger, which hasn’t happened since 1969, and intend to pass legislation calling for one before the end of the year…
Childhood hunger and obesity that comes from malnutrition are a national security problem that’s thwarting military recruitment, retired admirals and generals say…
Senate Republicans will press their Democratic counterparts this week on passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)…
Louisiana Treasurer John Schroder says he’s adamant that his state shouldn’t work with Wall Street banks that have curtailed gun-industry ties, and that could cost JPMorgan Chase a $700 million bond deal…
The Bipartisan Policy Center is forecasting that the recent $480 billion statutory debt limit increase could last as long as mid-February…
Last week the Senate confirmed voting rights expert Myrna Perez to be a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals - where she’ll be the only Latino on the court…
Education
College and university enrollments are still on the decline for most institutions, early data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show…
Excelencia in Education, an advocacy group focused on Latinx students, announced the 2021 cohort of colleges and universities receiving the Seal of Excelencia certification, an honor given to institutions for supporting Latinx student success…
A new report by Gradient Learning, based on a survey of 1,031 students aged 13 and older, found that strong relationships with educators correspond with student belonging…
In the coming months, lawsuits over bans on teaching critical race theory and COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students and teachers will test how much leeway officials have to shape school policy on some of today’s most explosive political issues…
Almost a third - 32 percent - of Jewish college students said they personally experienced anti-Semitism directed at them on campus or by a member of their college community within the last year, according to a new survey from Hillel International and the Anti-Defamation League…
Voter turnout among college students jumped to a record high of 66 percent in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report from the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education…
The Education Department Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) released a two new Q&As…
Mental Health
The Department has released a new resource to enhance the promotion of mental health and social and emotional well-being among children and students…
LGBTQ+ college students face “sizable” mental health challenges compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers, according to a new report by the Proud & Thriving Project…
The Biden administration is rolling out a new coordinated strategy it hopes will slow the menacing rise in drug overdose deaths…
More people are turning to cannabis to alleviate mental health problems like anxiety and depression, as well as insomnia, psychologists and researchers say…