Weekly Update 6/3/24

President and Administration

On Tuesday (5/28), the White House announced steps to modernize a major roadblock to the clean energy transformation: America’s aging electrical infrastructure…

On Thursday (5/30), the Department of Health and Human Services released a framework for its eventual best practices…

The Biden administration is insisting that small and rural nursing homes, which have struggled to hire staff for years, have nothing to fear from a new mandate…

More than a dozen internet providers agreed to continue offering discounted internet plans to lower-income households through the end of the year…

Through a partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, HunterCare is deploying telehealth technology to all Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) in Oklahoma…

This issue brief by SAMHSA offers valuable information to State Mental Health Authorities (SMHA) about the benefits of peer support and inclusion of the peer workforce…

U.S. adults have the highest rate of suicide and significantly higher mental health needs than adults in nine other high-income countries…

On Thursday (5/30), the IRS said it will make permanent the free electronic tax return filing system that it experimented with this year…

President Biden is expected to sign an executive order tomorrow allowing him to temporarily seal the U.S. border with Mexico…

The criminal trial of Donald Trump concluded Thursday afternoon (5/30) with a jury finding him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business…

Congress

Congress is headed for a perilous spending pileup in early 2025 — with crisis points on the debt ceiling…

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said his chamber will vote Wednesday (6/5) on legislation aimed at ensuring a women's right to obtain birth control…

California

A coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union released a report Wednesday (5/29) showing a drop in Black K-12 student enrollment…

California firefighters made significant progress Sunday (6/2) to tame a wind-driven wildfire that scorched thousands of acres…

On Wednesday (5/30), California’s legislative leaders reached a budget deal that dismisses many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts…

There are growing signs of an uptick in COVID-19 in California thanks to the new FLiRT sub variants…

Education

In a breakthrough win for Gov. Greg Abbott and school choice activists around the country…

In August, New Orleans Public Schools will open a district-operated school named for Leah Chase…

Infrastructure and Transportation Update - May 2024

President and Administration

On Monday (5/13), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced $1.7 million in research funding for a Climate Change and Transportation Research Center at the University of California, Davis…

In May, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced over $63 million in grants from the Infrastructure Law for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program…

City governments are adopting electric vehicles faster than individual car buyers…

As part of its ambitious goals to slash emissions and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, California is pushing an array of first-in-the-nation policies to go electric…

A new study found that replacing a seven year-old diesel school bus with electric would result in $84,200 in health and climate benefits…

California

Last month Oakland became the first school district nationwide to have a fully electric fleet of school buses…

In a fast-changing natural world, there are some things California fire officials can reliably count on…

California’s already high gas prices could see an additional spike of almost 50 cents a gallon tucked inside a little-known draft report…

Weekly Update 5/28/24

President and Administration

Federal weather forecasters predicted a record hurricane season in the Atlantic this summer, likely driven by a La Niña weather pattern…

The Biden administration announced $81 million in funding Tuesday (5/21) for a major new drought deal for California's San Joaquin Valley aimed at heading off brawls over scarce water resources…

City governments are adopting electric vehicles faster than individual car buyers…

White adults who say they have poor or fair mental health are more likely to say they’ve received mental health services in the past three years, compared with Black and Hispanic adults…

For years, discussions about America’s substance-abuse crisis have focused almost exclusively on the narrative that it is white, middle-age adults who face the greatest risk of dying from drug overdoses…

The Education Department says it has now processed more than 10 million 2024-25 federal student aid forms…

On Wednesday, 5/22, the Biden administration announced another series of student loan cancellations, wiping out debt for 166,000 borrowers…

Daily and near-daily marijuana use is now more common than similar levels of drinking in the U.S….

Congress

House Republican leaders hope to pass all 12 FY25 appropriations bills on the floor before the August recess…

On Thursday, 3/23, bipartisan members launched the Congressional Preventive Health and Wellness Caucus…

California

The Stanislaus County Public Defender’s Office was one of, if not the, most underfunded and overworked defense offices in the Central Valley…

On Thursday, 5/22, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a new funding opportunity that advances a key next step in bringing an HBCU campus to the City of San Francisco…

California lawmakers are steaming ahead with a plan to approve Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes, where patrons can have a hot meal, sip on coffee and watch a show while smoking their joints…

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s largest teachers union have reached a deal that would provide California schools billions more in future funding…

Education

Soon after she had gone to jail for trying to get her children a better education, Kelley Williams-Bolar’s teenage daughter Jada confronted her mother with an accusation that will stick with her forever…

Teachers’ unions, long defenders of the teaching profession, are now putting their own spin on an often-criticized component: teacher preparation…

It’s not often that statehouse elections in rural Texas steer the national conversation about school choice…

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice…

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…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 5/17/24

This week the Justice Department formalized its process to reclassify marijuana as lower-risk and remove it from a category where it’s treated as more dangerous than fentanyl and meth…

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday, 5/15, when asked about a Florida sheriff’s deputy recently fatally shooting a Black airman…

Today, 5/17, on the docket for the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee is a non-binding resolution from House Republicans that provides statistics about police officer fatalities and other sentiments expressing solidarity with officers…

President Biden honored fallen law enforcement officers at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service in D.C., for National Police Week…

This term, the US Supreme Court will rule on United States v. Rahimi, the case where a defendant, Zackey Rahimi, was convicted under a federal law that forbids individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm…

During the COVID pandemic, Americans committed gun violence at the fastest pace since the 1990s…

In Illinois, 114,000 people are banned from owning guns for legal tangles or mental health concerns but three-quarters of them have yet to surrender their firearms…