Federal Update
House and Senate appropriators late yesterday night, 9/26, unveiled a short-term government funding bill to keep federal agencies open until December 16…
California
California’s task force on reparations has begun putting dollar figures to potential compensation for the various forms of racial discrimination, generational pain and suffering Black Americans experienced in the state….
Working with state departments, SEIU Local 1000 has built apprentice programs outside the traditional trades — in nursing, financial services, cybersecurity and maintaining one of the state’s outdated computer systems…
In a significant departure, the California Department of Education is withholding the release of the results of the Smarter Balanced tests that students took last spring until an undetermined date later this year…
Some data indicates that older Americans of color wind up in nursing homes at a higher rate than their white counterparts…
Article 34, passed by a statewide ballot initiative in 1950, has blocked affordable housing for decades while creating costly hurdles for developers and local officials who want to build homes for low-income residents…
Almost two million of California’s poorest and most medically fragile residents may have to switch health insurers as a result of a new strategy by the state to improve care in its Medicaid program…
The University of California is going to create a new path for admission to the system. The path is for students who met the 3.0 grade point average in high school but didn’t complete the required 15 college preparatory courses…
Smoke from wildfires has worsened over the past decade, potentially reversing decades of improvements in Western air quality made under the Clean Air Act, according to research published Thursday, 9/22, from Stanford University…
Despite a tenure that has focused on early education, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Sunday, 9/25, that would have made kindergarten mandatory in California…
California will soon be the only state in the nation to have a governmental office committed to preventing gun violence, state officials said last week…
Coronavirus
The federal government is releasing millions of Moderna booster shots that were delayed by the Food and Drug Administration as a result of a safety inspection at an Indiana packaging plant, even as states report shortages and encourage people to get Pfizer boosters instead…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expects COVID-19 vaccine boosters targeting circulating variants of the virus to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October…
Health authorities encouraging retooled COVID-19 boosters are facing resistance from an unlikely corner: people who had embraced vaccines earlier in the pandemic…