Weekly Update 10/23/23

California

Newly appointed California Sen. Laphonza Butler will not seek a full Senate term next year, avoiding a contest that features three high-profile Democrats jostling for the once-in-a-lifetime job…

Christina Pascucci, a veteran television news reporter in Los Angeles, launched a longshot campaign for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat on Wednesday, 10/18, further plunging one of the nation’s most competitive and closely watched primaries deeper into uncertain territory…

Recently released by the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, the Latino Data Hub is a free tool in English and Spanish that breaks down information on Latinos in California and nationwide on a granular level…

President and Administration

The Biden administration is expected to send Congress a funding request for domestic priorities this week…

The Biden administration asked Congress on Friday, 10/20, to approve a $106 billion package of emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as funds for the southern U.S. border and other humanitarian needs…

The Education Department said on Friday, 10/20, that it believed that about 305,000 federal student loan borrowers received bills from servicers with incorrect payment amounts in recent months as they applied for Biden’s new income-driven repayment plan and prepared to begin repaying…

Congress

A rare moment of bipartisanship in the Senate recently emerged over the need to improve mental health treatment…

Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat drug overdoses, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing…

In the Senate, leaders are still trying to negotiate an amendment package to get going on that three-bill funding package that stalled last month…

More than a hundred members of Congress are against a proposed rule to set a minimum federal staffing standard in nursing homes…

Education

A California judge said Thursday, 10/19, that a school district policy on transgender students is likely unconstitutional…

Last school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them, according to an investigation by The Washington Post…

Legislation aimed at tackling the issue of cyberattacks on the state's public K-12 education system was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, 10/11…

California’s labor board has ruled that the Oakland school district administration didn't have to negotiate with the local teachers union before shuttering or merging schools, a precedent-setting decision that could constrain labor’s influence over future consolidations…

California students made up lost ground in math and science last school year but fell even further behind in reading, according to the second statewide test results released since the pandemic…

State schools superintendent Tony Thurmond said he’ll request upwards of $500 million in next year’s budget to train school staff as learning gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers persist across California…

Fewer than half of the Head Start centers have a public transit stop within walking distance for preschoolers, according to a new analysis being released today by groups calling on policymakers to prioritize transit accessibility in the nation’s main early childhood education program for low-income families…

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general sued a state panel on Friday, 10/20, in an effort to block the debut of the country’s first public religious charter school…