California
The outlook for the California economy appears more feeble than was the case just three months ago because of the uncertainty from the Omicron variant…
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he wants to allow private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, sells or distributes assault weapons or ghost gun kits or parts in the state for at least $10,000 per violation, modeling his proposal after the legal framework used in the Texas law that bans abortions past six weeks…
Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said Friday, 12/10, that his newly proposed legislation would set new per-engine minimums at Cal Fire and would launch a staffing study to help prepare the department for fire conditions that are projected to keep getting worse in the years ahead…
Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and Senate Budget Chair Nancy Skinner outlined a set of “values" that Atkins’ office said will offer a starting point for budget negotiations with the Assembly and Gov. Newsom…
California plans to start converting residents’ food waste into compost or energy, becoming the second state in the U.S. to do so…
More than a half-million Californians struggling to pay their water bills during the pandemic will probably have their debt paid off by the state…
Coronavirus
For Americans worried about rising prices and shrinking household budgets, January could bring another blow to the bottom line…
More than 40 people in the U.S. have been found to be infected with the Omicron variant so far, and more than three-quarters of them had been vaccinated and one-third of them had been boosted, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Wednesday, 12/8…
A booster using the current version of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine increased antibodies 25-fold, providing a similar level of immunity observed after two doses against the original virus and previous variants, the companies said Wednesday, 12/8…
Federal regulators on Thursday, 12/9, authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds, at least six months after they received their second shot…
Last week, the U.S. surgeon general warned that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the COVID-19 pandemic…
President Biden announced last week that rapid COVID-19 tests were a pillar of his plan to fight the new Omicron variant…
As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches the end of a second year, the United States stands on the cusp of surpassing 800,000 deaths from the virus, and no group has suffered more than older Americans…
President and Administration
A U.S. Supreme Court that has consistently favored religious rights is poised to consider buttressing the rights of parents to use public dollars to pay tuition at faith-based schools…
The Biden administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a challenge to Harvard College’s use of race in admissions and leave in place affirmative action programs at selective universities around the country…
A bipartisan panel of legal scholars examining possible changes to the Supreme Court voted unanimously Tuesday, 12/7, to submit to President Biden its final report, which describes public support for imposing term limits but “profound disagreement” about adding justices…
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, 12/7, urged Congress to allocate an additional $3 billion for maternal healthcare and expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to one year as part of the proposed social safety net and climate package now before the Senate…
The Biden administration signed an executive order on Wednesday, 12/8, which directs the government to spend billions to create a federal fleet of electric vehicles, upgrade federal buildings and change how the government buys electricity, with the aim of cutting the government’s carbon emissions 65 percent by the end of the decade…
Congress
The House passed legislation Tuesday, 12/7, that would create a quick process to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by a simple majority vote in the Senate, approving a procedural measure on a 222 to 212 vote…
The Senate will complete work on the National Defense Authorization Act this week…
House and Senate negotiators reached a landmark agreement last week that would strip military commanders of most of their authority to prosecute sexual assaults and a myriad of other criminal cases, a move that Pentagon leaders, lawmakers and presidents have resisted for nearly a generation…
Last week, the Senate voted 68-31 to approve Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and serve another five-year term with the regulator…
Build Back Better: Latest on Negotiations
President Biden and Senator Manchin (D-WV) will speak about the bill as early as today, 12/13, a discussion that will go a long way toward deciding whether the $1.7 trillion package - the president’s top legislative priority - can be finished before Christmas or will slide into 2022…
Senate Democrats are dropping a proposal that would have imposed taxes on vaping, removing a $9 billion provision backed by some public-health advocates…
Education
The Biden administration’s six priorities for K-12 and higher education grants were released on Friday, 12/10…
When the COVID-19 pandemic first swept the U.S. in March 2020, student debt relief was among the first policies enacted to help struggling Americans…
On Friday, 12/10, the Education Department published the Fall 2021 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan which showed that the Department anticipates issuing the Title IX notice of proposed rulemaking by April 2022, a month earlier than expected…
Global supply chain disruptions are leaving schools with food shortages and the Agriculture Department can use its authority to help, a new School Nutrition Association (SNA) survey suggests…
Nearly one million 2020 grads in the dataset, which comes from the National Student Clearinghouse, did not immediately enroll in college the following fall…
Last year, data from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative panel of U.S. households, found that nearly two-thirds of parents supported canceling standardized testing in the 2020-21 school year…