Weekly Update 7/1/24

President and Administration

The Biden administration is proposing Medicare pay home health agencies $280 million less in 2025, a major departure from the $140 million increase home health care received this year…

The conservative-majority Supreme Court handed Democratic leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom a major win Friday (6/28) by allowing them to remove tent encampments as homelessness has become a top concern of voters…

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday (6/24) announced new steps to increase access to affordable housing as stubbornly-high prices on groceries and other necessities push up the cost of living…

A commission to study reparations for Black Washingtonians descended from enslaved people or affected by Jim Crow-era institutional racism is about to move forward after securing funding in the D.C. Council’s 2025 budget…

Chief Justice Roberts announced that today (7/1) will be the Court’s last decisions of this term…

Congress

House GOP appropriators are proposing significant funding cuts at the Department of Transportation (DOT), aiming specifically at discretionary grants that appropriators feel duplicate money already provided by the 2021 infrastructure law…

House Republicans advanced their plan to significantly reduce federal education programs, teeing up what will likely be a fierce election-year spending fight…

House Republicans have included a provision in the housing and transportation spending bill that would bar any funding for the Biden administration’s executive orders on advancing racial equity…

California

A long-simmering battle between nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists is bubbling up again…

Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have agreed to place a $10 billion bond measure on the November ballot that would fund construction and repairs of K-12 schools and community colleges…

California lawmakers released a $10 billion climate bond proposal late Saturday night (6/29), teeing up votes ahead of the Wednesday (7/3) deadline to place borrowing measures on the ballot…

Education

A first-of-its-kind public Catholic school proposed for Oklahoma students is unconstitutional and can’t open, the state Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (6/25)…

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) introduced legislation to block charter schools that enter contracts with for-profit entities from receiving federal funds…

Police officers are employed to keep their communities safe. Since the 1960s, the “Officer Friendly” school program has assured children that the police are there to help…

The most visible school security measures — police officers, cameras, metal detectors — have dominated research and public debate on school safety for decades…

For the last three years, U.S. schools have been in an unusual position: They had lots of money to spend…