Weekly Update 9/28/20

California

According to an estimate by researchers at Stanford University, the historically bad concentrations of wildfire smoke in California between Aug. 1 and Sept. 10 were responsible for at least 1,200 and possibly up to 3,000 deaths that otherwise would not have occurred…

California reported 3,400 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, 9/25, which marks a slight uptick from recent lows, but the more concerning number is the 14-day rolling average of new cases which has begun to climb ever so slightly in the past few days, which is up by 100 or so daily cases…

President and Administration

Twice in the last 15 months, federal courts have scrutinized rationales offered by the Trump administration for trying to upend key parts of the 2020 census, and twice judges have found them wanting…

The Trump administration is moving to impose two- and four-year limits on visas for international students, who are now allowed to stay in the U.S. for as long as it takes to complete their programs…

On Saturday, 9/26, President Trump announced that he has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years…

New guidance from the CDC for the upcoming holiday season warns that hosts and attendees at holiday celebrations will need to take steps to limit the risk of contracting and spreading the novel coronavirus…

Education

Undergraduate enrollments are down 2.5 percent compared to last fall, with the biggest losses being at community colleges, where enrollments declined by 7.5 percent, according to preliminary data on fall enrollments from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center…

An extensive review of county-level COVID-19 case data in the United States reveals a complicated picture that in some ways challenges popular narratives about the role colleges and universities played in the pandemic’s spread, and in other ways reinforces them…

Congress

On 9/21, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the bipartisan S. 2661, the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act…

On 9/24 the House Education Committee cleared the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020 through markup on a party line vote, with all Democrats voting in favor of the bill…

Presidential Election

President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will debate each other for the first time Tuesday evening, 9/29, in the first of three presidential debates…

Weekly Update 9/21/20

California

As firefighters work to contain dozens of wildfires raging across California and other western states, the Bobcat Fire is approaching nearly 100,000 acres, making it one of Los Angeles County's largest-ever blazes…

California’s death count from the coronavirus has surpassed 15,000, even as the state saw widespread improvement in infection levels…

Former Governor of California Jerry Brown, who has long warned of the impending disaster of global warming, spoke on Sunday, 9/13, the eve of President Trump’s visit to California, saying the wildfires in California were a stark reminder of the long-term costs of Mr. Trump’s aggressive campaign to repeal environmental protections…

Coronavirus

This week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is scheduled to begin reaching out to nine million Americans who may be eligible for a federal stimulus check but who have yet to claim the coronavirus relief payment…

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) renewed its call for lawmakers to pass legislation extending and expanding Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, citing colder temperatures as an added obstacle for already-struggling restaurants, bars, and hospitality businesses…

President and Administration

Pandemic-EBT was a program that had been running remarkably smoothly after being set up quickly during a pandemic…

Already burdened by the COVID-19 outbreak and a tightened deadline, the Census Bureau must now contend with several natural disasters as wildfires and hurricanes disrupt the final weeks of the nation’s once-a-decade headcount…

President Trump and his adversaries mobilized on Sunday, 9/20, for an epic campaign-season showdown over the future of the Supreme Court even as the nation prepared to honor the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an outdoor viewing to be held according to pandemic-era guidelines…

Top congressional Democrats are calling for a federal investigation after a nurse who worked at an immigration detention center in Georgia filed a whistleblower complaint alleging a lack of medical care and unsafe work practices that facilitated the spread of COVID-19…

Congress
House Democrats and Senate Republicans are still swapping offers on a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open at the end of the month…

The Senate will join the House in opting out of the payroll tax deferral option touted by President Trump…

More legislation is being proposed to give tax relief to individuals and businesses affected by wildfires and other recent disasters…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are set to appear before lawmakers Tuesday, 9/22, on the need for more stimulus to shore up the U.S. economy’s recovery from the coronavirus slump…

Education

The House passed a bill Tuesday, 9/15, that would authorize grants to boost racial and socioeconomic integration in U.S. schools, an effort expected to be reborn if Joe Biden is elected president…

As he nears retirement, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chair of the Senate Education Committee, is making a final push to bring about what he’s been trying to do for at least seven years -- simplifying the form students have to fill out to get federal financial aid for college…

The Student Experience in the Research University Consortium conducted a comprehensive survey of undergraduate, graduate and professional students from May to July that asked a series of questions about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their academic and personal lives…

Presidential Election

Top Senate Democrats planted a legislative flag Thursday, 9/17, in urging executive action for canceling student loan debt, teasing out the potential terms of borrower relief if Joe Biden is elected president…

Of Note

The body of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in repose at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, 9/23, and Thursday, 9/24, the court announced…

Weekly Update 9/14/20

California

Today, 9/14, Gov. Gavin Newsom will join President Donald Trump for a wildfire briefing near Sacramento with state fire and emergency officials…

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, 9/11, signed a bill allowing prisoners who fight fires while incarcerated to have their records expunged after serving time so they have an easier path to becoming regular firefighters upon release…

Researchers and Democratic leaders say that not only are President Trump’s comments giving some Latinos pause, but so are comments from politicians of all parties about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to safely deliver ballots in time to be counted…

Coronavirus

COVID-19 cases were growing by five percent or more in 11 states as of Sunday, 9/13, an increase from eight states on Friday, 9/11…

President and Administration 

On Friday, 9/4, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced its final rule regarding “disparate impact,” a legal doctrine that protects minorities from adverse practices and policies, even if discrimination isn’t explicit…

A nationwide injunction blocking a Trump administration rule that denies legal status to immigrants receiving public assistance was stayed by a Second Circuit panel…

Education

The IRS and Treasury have repeatedly been told that efforts to curb workarounds of the tax law’s deduction limit on state and local tax payments could also harm fundraising efforts for certain nonprofits…

Congress

A coalition of 88 transportation industry groups has called for the nation’s highway law to be extended by a year, as prospects dim for a multiyear reauthorization and congressional leaders seek a short-term solution…

House employees won’t have their payroll taxes deferred under President Donald Trump’s recent order, a top House official said Friday, 9/11, in the latest setback for the administration's ill-received plan…

Weekly Update 9/8/20

California

Over Labor Day weekend, California witnessed one of its hottest weekends in memory, which intensified destructive wildfires that erupted…

California reported 151 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, 9/4, ticking up the state’s rolling average of fatalities, but hospitalizations and the numbers of patients in intensive care unit beds continued several weeks of steady declines…

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of San Jose ordered the Census Bureau on Saturday, 9/5, to stop shutting down operations and resume its full-scale nationwide population count through Sept. 17, when the judge will consider the Trump administration’s plan to end the census survey a month ahead of schedule…

Coronavirus

The pandemic’s economic blow has exacted another superlative, with the largest share of U.S. young adults living at home since the end of the Great Depression era…

About 13 million more Americans were back at workplaces in August than in May as fewer education, manufacturing and transportation employees said they were working from home because of the pandemic…

On 9/1, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released for public comment a discussion draft of a preliminary framework to assist policymakers in planning for equitable allocation of a vaccine against COVID-19…

 The Trump Administration is pulling U.S. officials from the headquarters of the World Health Organization, the multilateral agency leading the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic, even as cases in the United States climb above 6 million…

Employment disparities between Black and White Americans widened in August but narrowed between men and women, even as jobless rates came down across the board…

The Trump administration said it’s recovered almost 70% of $1.6 billion in relief payments mistakenly sent to dead people as the government rushed out stimulus money to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus, according to the Government Accountability Office’s report released Monday, 8/31…

President and Administration 

President Trump has instructed federal government agencies to halt racial sensitivity training with a White House memo that condemned such initiatives as contrary to the nation’s “fundamental beliefs”…

President Donald Trump said Congress should authorize sending taxpayers checks from about $300 billion left over in a pandemic lending program…

The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending program for small- and mid-sized companies is now approving loans to nonprofit institutions…

Major questions remain unanswered after the IRS issued guidance on President Trump’s payroll tax deferral…

Congress

The House will meet in proforma session this week (a short period of time when no votes are held and no formal business is typically conducted) and will be back in session on September 15…

Lawmakers returning this week and next to Washington face immediate pressure to negotiate to head off the lapse of government funding and critical programs only weeks before the November election…

Negotiations between the White House and Democratic lawmakers hit a wall in early August, with the two sides far apart on the size and scope of what is needed…

Senate Republicans said today, 9/8, that they will introduce and set up a floor vote on a slimmed-down virus stimulus bill in an effort to break a month-long impasse on aid for the U.S. economy…

Under the Emergency Stopgap USCIS Stabilization Act (HR 8089), a bill passed by the House on 8/22, the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) could expand fee-based fast-track visa processing and increase premium processing fees…

Education

The Education Department announced in May that it would dole out Care Act funds to private schools without regard to “family income, residency, or eligibility based on low achievement” - an attempt to give private schools a larger share of federal coronavirus relief dollars…

State school leaders should expect to administer standardized tests for K-12 students during the forthcoming year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote in a letter Thursday, 9/3…

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin’s ruling on Thursday, 9/3, prohibits Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from enforcing her restrictions on the CARES Act funding anywhere in Massachusetts…

While overall enrollment fell relatively slightly over the summer, the biggest losses were concentrated at community colleges, which had 5.6% fewer students than the previous summer, and for-profit colleges, which had 7% fewer students, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported Tuesday, 9/1…

Presidential Election

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is expanding his transition team with senior campaign aides, vice presidential contenders and a former primary rival, two months before he faces President Donald Trump in the general election…

Weekly Update 8/31/20

California

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, 8/28, overhauled California's economic reopening by slowing down the pace and allowing for different levels of industry operation as California's coronavirus situation steadily improves following a summer surge…

In March, Gov. Newsom promised an “army” of contact tracers to track down coronavirus patients and convince them to self-isolate and disclose recent activities with other people, a tried-and-true public health technique considered critical to controlling infection spread…

Gov. Newsom signed legislation Friday, 8/28, to ban flavored tobacco products in an attempt to prevent youth smoking, a proposal that has struggled for years to get through the Legislature because of heavy industry lobbying…

Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-CA) will join Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) to discuss the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act on Wednesday, 2:00pm PT…

Coronavirus

The U.S. coronavirus case count topped six million on Monday, 8/31, even though infections are falling in nearly every state and the death count appears to have reached a plateau…

One of President Trump’s top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to people familiar with the discussions…

At least 33 states, including California, continue to recommend testing people who have been exposed to COVID-19 and have no symptoms, spurning guidance published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week that said testing may be unnecessary…

President and Administration 

The Trump administration is pushing back on demands for evidence sought by 14 states (California is not included) that sued over operational changes at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS)…

An analysis of preparedness grants disbursed by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shows the agency spends far more on counter-terror than natural disasters…

Education

The U.S. Department of Education has released its final rule on distance learning, which it said would modernize regulations and will not go into effect until July 1, 2021…

The Agriculture Department is extending a handful of waivers to make free school meals more widely available through the end of the calendar year, giving in to intense pressure from lawmakers and school leaders…

ACT announced Tuesday, 8/25, that it was canceling the December 2020 and the February 2021 test administrations of the ACT, "due to new COVID-19 testing procedures and other changes necessary to navigate safe testing”…

The Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University released a new memorandum advising college administrators on how to encourage student voting during the pandemic - and after…

Congress

Senate Republicans are likely to include a provision to provide billions of dollars for child care providers in the GOP’s narrow coronavirus relief bill…

House Financial Services Committee plans to hold a hearing on the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve response to the coronavirus pandemic, the committee says in announcement…

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said U.S. House will take up legislation to decriminalize marijuana and expunge records of nonviolent federal cannabis convictions during the week of Sept. 21, according to a letter to colleagues…

Margaret Hunter, the wife of former U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter, was sentenced on Monday, 8/24, to eight months of home detention for her role in the couple’s misuse of campaign funds for personal expenses…

Presidential Election

Capital gains taxes are the price of making a good investment…

In an interview NBC’s Today Show on Friday, 8/28, Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris said that the officer in Jacob Blake’s shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin should be charged…