Weekly Update 10/5/20

California

A new infusion of federal aid looks increasingly unlikely to materialize in the coming weeks, dimming hopes that California will restore billions of dollars state leaders trimmed from the budget as part of an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom…

California hit a grim milestone on Sunday, 10/4, as the total number of acres burned this wildfire season crossed four million, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection…

More than 16,000 Californians have now died due to COVID-19, according to the California Department of Public Health…

Coronavirus

Americans’ incomes fell by 2.3% in August by the most in three months after the government’s supplemental unemployment benefits expired, threatening to temper consumer spending…

President and Administration

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tested positive for COVID-19, she said today, 10/5, making her the latest in President Trump's orbit to contract the virus…

President Trump on Saturday, 10/3, called for Congress to pass a stimulus package, urging swift action…

The U.S. Postal Service must prioritize election mail and immediately reverse changes that resulted in widespread delays in California and several other states, a federal judge ruled Monday, 9/28…

Education

A federal judge rejected tuition refund claims last week in a lawsuit headed by Northeastern University students who argue the virtual education they received after the pandemic hit the U.S. is not what they paid for…

As Senate Republicans rush to confirm a conservative justice to the Supreme Court who could nudge it toward invalidating the Affordable Care Act, concerns are rising that an end to Obamacare could leave millions of college students without health insurance…

The CDC released new guidance which includes fresh detailed information on how to prioritize testing for students, faculty members and staff members in the event of an outbreak…

For every 100 workers who lose their jobs amid mass layoff events, enrollment at community colleges increases by three students within the next three years, according to a new research paper published last week…

COVID-19 has taken an even deeper financial toll on colleges and universities than expected, said associations representing two- and four-year institutions…

Congress

On Thursday night, 10/1, the House cleared a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief measure in the Democrats’ latest bid to pressure Republicans into a massive bipartisan deal before the election…

Top Republicans insisted they would move ahead at an uncommonly swift pace to hold hearings on Judge Barrett’s nomination by Oct. 12, send her nomination to the full Senate by Oct. 22 and confirm her as early as Oct. 26, eight days before the election— even if it meant breaking Senate norms and considering a lifetime judicial nomination by videoconference…

Presidential Election

Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will meet for their first and only debate on Wednesday, 10/7, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. It will be moderated by Susan Page of USA Today..

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…