Weekly Update 5/20/24

President and Administration

By 2050, scientists project, more than 20 percent of Earth's population will be over 60…

Rhode Island violated civil rights law by segregating children with mental health and developmental disabilities at a psychiatric hospital in Providence…

Senate Commerce ranking member Ted Cruz (R-TX) proposed plans Thursday (5/16) to maintain the Affordable Connectivity Program in a slimmed-down new form…

After a steep rise during the COVID-19 pandemic, preliminary data shows that drug overdose deaths in the United States ticked down in 2023 for the first time in five years…

President Biden and former President Donald Trump have both accepted an invitation from CNN to debate on June 27…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of a national strategy on Tuesday (5/14)…

On Thursday, 5/16, the Department of Justice announced that the Attorney General has submitted to the Federal Register…

An upside-down American flag, a symbol associated with former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, was displayed outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021…

Congress

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) detailed plans on Thursday (5/16) to mark up a dozen annual spending bills over the next two months…

House Republicans rolled out a Congressional Review Act resolution that would overturn HHS' minimum nursing home staffing mandate…

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Sunday (5/19) in a letter to colleagues that the chamber this week would again take up the border legislation negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year…

In April, the Education Department published a rule that would codify President Biden’s latest attempt to address student loan debt…

California

California lawmakers are taking another run at fixing the state's crumbling wildfire insurance market…

A Newsom-backed bill that would compel cities to build more housing for homeless people got its first hearing last week in the Assembly Housing Committee…

Three reparations bills are now heading to the Senate floor, which include one to create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency; one to establish a fund for reparations policies; and another to compensate Black Californians…

Alameda County’s progressive District Attorney Pamela Price will face a recall election in November…

The Newsom administration in letters to the Legislature last week detailed its proposals to cut financial aid for middle-income students and reduce school facility funding…

The University of Washington has paused an atmospheric science experiment on the USS Hornet in Alameda after the city requested to review the study…

Hammered by mounting pressure to address the growing homelessness crisis in California…

Gov. Gavin Newsom is spearheading an ambitious $12 billion experiment to transform Medi-Cal into both a health insurer and a social services provider…

In a surprising move, a pair of top California Democrats and powerful unions are lining up against a ballot initiative on a topic that their party and labor has long championed: removing rent control limits…

A delegation of 12 California House members, led by Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, sent a letter to the U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Friday (5/17)…

Education

Seventy years after the Supreme Court outlawed separating public school children by race…

California public school enrollment fell again this fall despite an expansion of state-funded pre-k and a boost in charter school enrollment…