California
Recall candidates seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom must furnish five years of tax returns, Secretary of State Shirley Weber said last week…
Californians will soon need to certify that they are looking for work to keep the unemployment aid flowing…
California residents over age 50 would be newly eligible for the state’s Medicaid program regardless of immigration status under a budget plan that cleared the Legislature last week…
Officials unveiled a new system Friday, 6/18, through which Californians can access a digital copy of their COVID-19 vaccination record…
Coronavirus
The sharp decline in routine childhood immunizations following stay-at-home orders last spring reversed considerably by the fall…
The CDC Foundation has released a new report on the “Intentions and Views around COVID-19 Vaccination Among K-12 Populations”…
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sought medical care for post-COVID-19 health problems that they had not been diagnosed with before becoming infected with the virus, according to the largest study to date of long-term symptoms in COVID-19 patients…
President Joe Biden urged unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated, warning that a highly transmissible variant of the virus could cause more deaths…
President and Administration
Technology developed with U.S. research grants will be blocked from being manufacturing overseas as part of President Biden’s supply-chain initiative…
Last week, the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released the Final Rule for the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, which will direct $268 million for expanding broadband to eligible historically minority-serving institutions (MSIs), Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), and Tribal Colleges or Universities (TCUs)…
On Thursday, 6/17, President Biden signed legislation that made June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S., after the House and Senate passed the bill in votes earlier this week…
The Biden administration released a new broadband mapping tool that shows high-speed internet needs in rural areas, as part of its push for $2 trillion legislation to fix America’s infrastructure…
The Senate confirmed former National Security Agency (NSA) deputy director Chris Inglis to be the national cyber director, leading the new Office of the National Cyber Director inside the White House…
The Biden administration is readying to implement the president’s executive order requiring federal contractors to lift the minimum wage for government contractors to $15, from its current level of $10.95, as the Labor Department sent its proposed rule to the White House for review…
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia last week, ruling 9-0 that a Catholic social services agency, which believes marriage is between a man and a woman, has a right to exclude same-sex couples from becoming foster parents - and that the city violated the organization’s First Amendment rights when it froze an existing contract due to the policy…
Congress
Bipartisan infrastructure negotiations continued last week with lawmakers and the White House still not on the same page when it comes to paying for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending…
The House Appropriations Committee is slated to begin marking up its fiscal 2022 budget this week with the hope of having all 12 bills done by mid-July…
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), one of the leaders in Congress behind the push for an expansion of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, is considering proposing a one-time wealth tax on the richest Americans…
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is expected to force a vote on whether to move forward with debate on S. 1 - the For the People Act - tomorrow, 6/22, bringing to a head a legislative drama that has been unfolding for months…
By almost every measure, 2021 has already been a terrible year for gun violence…
Missouri has become the latest state to throw down a broad challenge to the enforcement of federal firearms laws, as Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country intensify their fierce political counterattack against President Biden’s gun control proposals…
Democrats are preparing to vote on a scaled-down guns bill - most likely a curtailed plan to boost background checks for firearm buyers…
Last week, President Biden elevated Amazon critic and anti-monopoly advocate Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)…
In an unclassified FBI threat assessment on QAnon sent to lawmakers last week, the FBI warned that online QAnon conspiracy theorists may carry out more acts of violence as they move from serving as "digital soldiers" to taking action in the real world following the 1/6 U.S. Capitol attack…
Education
Title IX’s protections against sexual discrimination and violence extend to gay and transgender students, the Department of Education announced last week, in an interpretation of the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County…
Last week, Secretary Cardona held a virtual roundtable conversation with a diverse group of early childhood stakeholders and leaders who bring perspective from the experiences of early educators, families, and communities during the public health emergency…
A group of Democratic lawmakers introduced the Pell Grant Preservation and Expansion Act of 2021 last week which would double the Pell Grant over a five-year period and extend eligibility to undocumented students…
The Office of Federal Student Aid at has updated two of its quarterly portfolio reports with new figures on student loans, showing that the federal student aid portfolio has increased by $49 billion since this time last year…
Mental Health
Inside Higher Ed recently released their latest print-on-demand compilation, "Taking a Holistic Approach to Student Wellness”…
Emergency room visits following suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls spiked in the first months of 2021, compared with rates in 2019, the CDC reported on Friday, 6/18…
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has announced Vibrant Emotional Health will be the administrators of the new 988 dialing code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline…