California
California residents will be required to wear facial coverings in all indoor public spaces from 12/15 to 1/15 to help fend off a rise in COVID-19 cases as the holidays approach..
Amplify Energy and its subsidiaries have been charged with negligence in the Orange County oil spill…
A major rainstorm flooded a Santa Cruz homeless community…
California, Arizona and Nevada agree to take less water from ailing Colorado River…
Coronavirus
On Thursday, 12/16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended adults take a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna over Johnson & Johnson’s after agency officials reported the rate of a rare but serious blood-clotting condition was higher than previously detected…
Preliminary data from South Africa suggests that children have a higher risk of hospital admission from Omicron than from previous waves of infection with other variants…
Dr. Anthony Fauci said there is ‘no need for a variant-specific booster’ at this time because research shows that the current U.S. booster vaccine programs are effective against Omicron…
The CDC is endorsing “test-to-stay” policies that allow close contacts of students infected with COVID-19 to remain in classrooms if they test negative…
A federal appeals court reinstated a Biden administration rule requiring employees of large businesses to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly COVID testing starting in early January…
Biden administration health officials are privately warning COVID-19 test makers and laboratories that demand for tests could double or even triple over the next two months as cases surge across the country…
The Biden administration on Thursday, 12/16, filed two emergency applications in the Supreme Court, asking the justices to revive a requirement that health care workers at hospitals that receive federal money be vaccinated against COVID-19…
Pfizer’s pill to treat COVID-19 retained its 89 percent efficacy at preventing hospitalization and death in the full results of a study of 2,246 high-risk patients…
President and Administration
Last week, President Biden addressed the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, marking the tragedy's nine-year anniversary by calling it "an unconscionable act of violence”…
There was a brief lull in eviction filings after the federal ban ended in August…
Nearly two years and six relief bills into the pandemic, the U.S. has spent the majority of its available COVID-19 rescue funding…
Last week, the Federal Reserve said it will speed up the timeline for ending its extraordinary aid to the economy - a likely first step toward raising interest rates during the 2022 election year to help fend off heightened inflation…
Congress
On Wednesday, 12/15, the House cleared legislation to raise the statutory debt limit by $2.5 trillion, an amount intended to give the Treasury Department enough borrowing room to make it past the midterm elections and into 2023…
Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) announcement that he will not support the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill leaves the White House and Democratic leadership with few options to advance much of their economic agenda…
The enhanced Child Tax Credit, implemented under the American Rescue Plan expires in 11 days, and without the Build Back Better bill – or some other reconciliation package as a vehicle – it’s hard to see this getting renewed…
Voting rights legislation is going nowhere in the Senate. Sen. Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have said for months that they won’t change the filibuster rule without GOP buy-in…
Education
Julia Keleher, the embattled former education secretary in Puerto Rico who oversaw large-scale reforms to the island’s faltering public schools, will serve six months in federal prison and pay a $21,000 fine after being sentenced Friday, 12/17, for fraud conspiracy…
Multiple reports released by nonprofit and education-focused research organizations in California are calling for the state to reconsider its “Local Control Funding Formula,” which the groups say has been successful in empowering local district budget processes and investments but has not done enough to close concerning achievement gaps for students with disabilities, English Learners, and low-income or homeless students…
A new poll from Data for Progress that found a majority of voters believe Biden should extend the pause on student loan repayment given the Omicron variant, something the Biden administration has so far been unwilling to commit to do…
For both community colleges and four-year institutions, cyberthreats are now very pronounced, and that reality has led to more institutions facing cyber-insurance premium hikes of as much as 400 percent - or even discovering they are uninsurable…
The troubling enrollment losses that school districts reported last year have in many places continued this fall, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt public education across the country…
A 10 percent boost to state higher education funding over a 12-year period would have resulted in 27,200 more bachelor’s degrees awarded to Black, Latinx and white students who attended the public, four-year colleges sampled in a new report from the Midwest Higher Education Compact…
The Education Department’s negotiated-rulemaking committee has wrapped up its work after months of debate over the Biden administration’s proposals…
Three higher education associations - the American Council on Education, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers - published a statement Wednesday, 12/15, that outlines “sound, equity-minded” policies for accommodating transfer students…