Weekly Update 9/20/21

California

On Thursday, 9/16, state auditor Elaine Howle said in a report that delays in the rent relief program and uncertainty over the federal rules raised concerns about the ability of the state Department of Housing and Community Development to distribute the first $1.8 billion in federal funds by a 9/30 deadline…

California’s home visiting programs for parents and children will receive a $19.2-million federal funding boost, U.S. officials announced Friday, 9/17…

The California Legislature passed a measure Thursday, 9/16, that would extend federal food assistance benefits to more college students in the state…

Gov. Newsom signed two major housing bills last week that could boost the state's housing supply by adding density to neighborhoods where single-family homes have long reigned…

A federal appeals court in California heard oral arguments last week from the California Department of Justice (DOJ) and the telecom industry…

California no longer has a ‘high’ level of community COVID-19 transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)…

California has been adding new jobs faster this year than other states, with 44 percent of all new positions added nationwide last month in the Golden State…

Gov. Newsom's comprehensive defeat of the recall against him has vaulted him into his strongest political position to date, boosting his national profile and setting him up for a far simpler reelection race next year…

Coronavirus

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel voted unanimously on Friday, 9/17, in favor of a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 65 and older and for individuals at high risk for severe disease, with the shot given at least six months after their initial vaccination… 

A new breed of fast, cheap, and, in most cases, accurate new COVID-19 tests could remake the fraught debate over virus outbreaks at school this fall…

The CDC recently issued a toolkit for K- 12 school administrators responding to COVID-19 cases…

According to a new Israeli study, 11.2 percent of children had symptoms after recovery…

As the nation’s COVID-19 death toll exceeded 663,000 last week, it meant roughly one in every 500 Americans had succumbed to the disease…

President and Administration

People living in poverty in the U.S. fell to a record low last year…

President Biden warned on Tuesday, 9/14, that the United States had only a decade left to confront a global climate crisis…

The Senate confirmed several Biden administration nominees last week, including James Kvaal’s nomination to be undersecretary of Education…

Congress 

Today, 9/20, the House Rules Committee will meet to consider the continuing resolution (CR) to continue programs when the fiscal year ends on 9/30…

Senate appropriators aim to inch forward on their work on annual spending bills, even as lawmakers prepare for a stopgap funding measure to avert an 10/1 shutdown…

House Democrats could initially hold off on sending a $550 billion infrastructure bill to President Biden for signature to help keep the party united and his economic agenda on track…

The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced measures for a clean electricity performance program and an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure plan as part of Democrats’ reconciliation plan last week…

Senate Democratic centrists are calling on President Joe Biden to nominate another director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a week after lukewarm support from those same lawmakers prompted Biden to pull his initial pick…

House Democrats are working with the Biden administration to add bank account reporting requirements to their tax bill, a measure that could be used to pay for a modification of the cap on the federal deduction of state and local taxes (SALT)…

The U.S. child-care system fails to adequately serve many families due to insufficient supply and high cost, holding back parents’ ability to contribute to the economy, according to a new report from the U.S. Treasury Department released Wednesday, 9/15…

Senate Democrats have reached a deal on revised voting rights legislation…

Education

Fifty-nine members of the House sent a letter last week to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Suzanne Goldberg, urging the Department of Education to issue proposed changes to the Trump administration's Title IX rules in October… 

Doubling the maximum Pell Grant to $13,000 would result in substantial reductions in future student loan debt, according to a new report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute…

Around 60 percent of undergraduates used some form of federal financial aid to pay for their postsecondary education during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the latest data released by the National Center for Education Statistics…

About 1.5 million students in the high school Class of 2021 took the SAT at least once - down 700,000 from the Class of 2020…

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released two resource collections to assist schools and institutions in supporting a successful and equitable school year…

As part of its interactive Return to School Roadmap, the Education Department released “Maximizing In-Person Learning and Implementing Effective Practices for Students in Quarantine and Isolation”…

The 2022-23 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form and FAFSA on the Web worksheet are available in English and Spanish, in PDF, as resources that may be used as a training tool or for financial aid presentations…

Last week, the Biden Administration celebrated the 2021 National Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) Week…

Weekly Update 9/13/21

California

President Joe Biden is headed to Long Beach, California, today, 9/13, to appear with Gov. Gavin Newsom on the final day before the recall vote…

Roughly 60 percent of likely voters polled said they opposed recalling Newsom, compared to 38.5 percent who supported removing Newsom and filling his term with someone else…

At least two million direct deposits from the Golden State Stimulus II program will hit bank accounts across California this week, following the first round of 600,000 payments that went out 8/27…

Newsom signed the “California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal”(“CalAIM”) initiative into law in late July… 

Coronavirus

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published on Friday, 9/10, finds that unvaccinated people have about 4.5 times higher risk of contracting COVID-19, more than 10 times the risk of getting hospitalized and 11 times the risk of death…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it is “working around the clock” to support making COVID-19 vaccines available for children 12 and younger, but cannot offer a specific date or timeline…

The CDC reports that as of 7/31, coverage with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was 42 percent, and 32 percent had completed the series of shots…

Universal masking and limited close encounters with people infected with COVID-19 reduced the spread of the virus at colleges, at least during a five-month period before the delta variant took hold, according to a new report by the CDC…

COVID-19 vaccines work so well that most people don’t yet need a booster, a panel of scientists from around the world said in a review that’s likely to fuel the debate over whether to use them…

President and Administration

The administration’s focus on accelerating the space race is among VP Kamala Harris’ high-profile portfolios, albeit one that’s received virtually no attention…

The White House on Thursday, 9/9, withdrew David Chipman's nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) after resistance from Senate Democratic centrists imperiled his bid…

FDA has ordered more than five million e-cigarette products off the market, it said Thursday, 9/9, in an announcement timed to a court-ordered deadline that will determine the future of the vaping industry…

The U.S. economy "downshifted slightly" in August as the renewed surge of COVID-19 hit dining, travel and tourism, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday, 9/8, but the economy overall remained in the throes of a post-pandemic rush of rising prices, labor shortages and stilted hiring…

The Biden administration announced a blueprint Wednesday, 9/8, outlining how solar energy could produce nearly half of the nation’s electricity by mid-century, as part of its bid to address climate change…

Marijuana legalization is not associated with increased marijuana use among high school students, a new study published in JAMA found…

Biden announced judicial nominees Wednesday, 9/8, including three judges for the 9th Circuit Court, country’s largest - and famously most liberal - federal appeals court…

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities allowed 113 Americans, U.S. permanent residents and holders of other Western passports to leave the country on a flight to Qatar on Thursday, 9/9, the first such departure by air since U.S. forces withdrew last month…

Congress 

House Democratic leaders are preparing for a stopgap funding measure to avert a government shutdown as they juggle debates over government funding, the debt limit, and their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package…

Law enforcement officials are bracing for potential clashes and unrest during an upcoming right-wing rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday, 9/18…

Reconciliation Programs of Interest

The House Ways and Means Committee started a markup Thursday, 9/9, but is expected to tackle tax proposals this week…

Medicare beneficiaries would see coverage for hearing, vision, and dental care under a measure approved by the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, 9/10…

The House Education and Labor Committee approved an amendment to a proposed child care expansion that would make all families eligible to receive new benefits, instead of restricting them for top earners…

Rail, transit near affordable housing, and carbon emission programs would get a funding boost in a House transportation panel’s portion of the reconciliation bill…

House Democrats presented a smaller-scale overhaul of the way investments are taxed in a plan, released by the House Ways and Means Committee today, 9/13…

Education

11.3 million children lacked access to the learning options they needed during COVID-19, according to a new Bellwether Education Partners report with the Walton Family Foundation…

One pilot study, not yet peer-reviewed, found that daily rapid testing of school-related close contacts didn’t lead to a substantial increase in COVID-19 transmission compared with quarantine among students at some 160 schools and colleges…

Amid a heated political feud over the way educators should teach students about issues like white supremacy and slavery, a new study points to a positive, lasting link between antiracist instruction and improved academic outcomes for teens who struggle in school…

The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels…

This week the Senate will vote on the nomination of James Kvaal to be under secretary of Education…

The National Science Board (NSB) recently released a new report, The STEM Labor Force of Today: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers, which shows the critical contribution that STEM workers make to the U.S. economy and reinforces the value of training and education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)…

The STEM Teaching Tools site, funded by the National Science Foundation, offers open education resource tools that can help teach science, technology, engineering and math….

Immigration Update 9/9/21

The Courts

A U.S. District judge last week denied the government’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the agency’s use of private security guards to make arrests in California’s prisons…

On 8/24, the Supreme Court refused to block a ruling from a federal judge in Texas requiring the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico…

A federal district court judge in Nevada struck down a decades-old law making it a felony to re-enter the United States after deportation on the grounds that it has "racist, nativist roots”…

President and Administration

Some employment-based visas are set to go to waste at the end of September, U.S. officials say, painting a bleak picture of the government’s ability to smooth legal immigration and address perennial backlogs and resource constraints…

The Department of Homeland Security is weighing how to redefine “public charge” as it rejects the Trump administration’s effort to turn away immigrants who may need food stamps, housing assistance, or other aid…

On 8/18, the Biden administration proposed a major overhaul to the U.S. asylum system that would speed up processing, a move that comes as migrant apprehensions at the U.S. southern border have reached a 21-year high…

The number of children traveling alone who were picked up at the Mexican border by U.S. immigration authorities hit an all-time high in July - 19,000 - and the number of people who came in families likely reached its second-highest total on record…

Congress

The Senate parliamentarian is planning to hear dueling arguments Friday, 9/10, over whether Democrats can include a pathway to legal status for certain undocumented immigrants in their $3.5 trillion social spending plan…

Afghan Refugees

The White House is asking Congress to pass a law to allow all Afghan refugees brought to the U.S. to apply for a green card after a year, which would provide a solution for the legal quandary the Biden administration created when it began bringing tens of thousands of Afghans to the country without a permanent immigration status…

Gov. Gavin Newsom said California will be “a place of refuge” for Afghans fleeing the Taliban, with the governor and legislative leaders announcing last Friday, 9/3, a $16.7-million proposal to provide cash assistance to refugees and a partnership with Airbnb to provide free, temporary housing for refugees settling in the state…

The Biden administration's plan to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan refugees - with nearly 20,000 Afghan refugees at military installations in five states, while another 40,000 evacuees remain at bases overseas awaiting processing - is facing formidable operational and legal challenges…

Weekly Update 9/7/21

California

The California legislature has sent Gov. Gavin Newsom two major housing bills…

The California Community College system is investigating an admissions and financial aid scam involving “bot” students enrolled in courses and fraudulent financial aid applications…

Last week, Gov. Newsom announced that 80 percent of eligible Californians are at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19…

The first batch of about 600,000 payments totaling some $354 million was directly deposited Friday, 9/3, and California will send out checks to other taxpayers every two weeks…

On 8/23, California Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman ordered the University of California–Berkeley to temporarily freeze the number of students it admits every year under the California Environmental Quality Act, putting crowded classrooms in the same category as heavy infrastructure like highways and airports…

The latest Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that 61 percent of Californians support Newsom’s policy of requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend large outdoor gatherings or certain indoor activities…

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to California on Wednesday, 9/8, to campaign for Newsom in the closing days of his recall election fight…

With fires raging across the state, the USDA Forest Service has closed all 20 million acres of California’s national forests to public access for two weeks, which began last Tuesday, 8/24…

Major gambling players intend to ante up $100 million for an online sports betting initiative that would fund homelessness and mental health efforts, adding a new wrinkle to the 2022 battle over California's lucrative gaming future… 

Coronavirus

Since the school year kicked off in late July, at least 1,000 schools across 31 states have closed because of COVID-19…

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the U.S. has more than doubled since last Labor Day, a sobering statistic that illustrates how the delta variant has hampered progress in curbing the pandemic even as vaccines became widely available…

More than seven million out-of-work people across the U.S. lost all of their jobless benefits as three federal programs expired on Monday, 9/6, in what several experts described as one of the largest and most abrupt ends to government aid in U.S. history…

President and Administration

The Health and Human Services Department is creating a new office to address climate change as a public health issue, part of an effort to tie growing environmental concerns to the administration’s broader health equity agenda…

President Biden is considering using his clemency powers to commute the sentences of certain federal drug offenders released to home confinement during the pandemic rather than forcing them to return to prison after the pandemic emergency ends… 

Congress 

Committees continue what started last week: markups to debate and assemble their slices of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package…

 Secretary of State Antony Blinken will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, 9/14 to testify about the administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan… 

Education

The Department of Education will not be targeting its federal aid verification process for the 2022-23 award year, ending a temporary change put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic to alleviate challenges students face in accessing financial aid…

In a recent press release, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered a number of health tips for a successful school year for students, teachers, school staff, and their families…

As part of its interactive Return to School Roadmap, the Education Department released “Strategies for Using American Rescue Plan Funding to Address the Impact of Lost Instructional Time,” a resource to support educators as they work to continuously improve their instructional strategies…

While more Black students in California are earning college degrees, concerning equity gaps in graduation rates remain, with differences based on gender, according to a new report which examines college completion rates for Black men and women in the state’s three public higher education systems: California Community Colleges, California State University and the University of California…

Weekly Update 8/30/21

California

The California Department of Housing and Community Development didn’t properly distribute the $316 million of federal relief funds meant to help homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, auditors said last week in a report…

Frustrated by out-of-control increases in drug overdose deaths, California’s leaders are trying something radical: They want the state to be the first to pay people to stay sober…

A group of California lawmakers is considering whether to introduce a proposal to require all residents to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to patronize hotels, indoor restaurants, gyms, theaters and other establishments - and compel in-state employers to require their workers to get vaccinated…

The 44-16 passage of CA SB9 was a major victory for Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and for housing advocates who have pushed, often unsuccessfully, to streamline the construction of more housing density…

The National Republican Congressional Committee is running digital ads targeting frontline Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) by citing the rising cost of school supplies as kids head back to class…

Coronavirus

The U.S. program to help tenants and landlords struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is still moving at a slow pace and has delivered a fraction of the promised aid, data released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday, 8/25, show…

A divided Supreme Court lifted the Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions, ending protections for millions of people who have fallen behind on their rent during the COVID-19 pandemic…

Last week, Biden pressed businesses and public leaders to implement vaccine mandates after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine for people 16 and older earlier in the day…

Last week, Moderna said it had completed the application process for full approval of its COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., putting the company on course to obtain the second such clearance from federal regulators…

Pfizer-BioNTech are officially seeking full U.S. approval for a COVID-19 booster shot for people 16 and older, asking regulators to sign off on a third dose to quell a rise in infections among vaccinated people…

As COVID-19 cases surge around the country, a majority of Americans say they support mask mandates for students and teachers in K-12 schools, according to a new poll, but their views are sharply divided along political lines…

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins predicted that the FDA will likely not authorize COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 5 to 11 until the end 2021…

Reported data shows that recipients who received a J&J booster dose generated virus-fighting antibodies “ninefold higher” than those seen four weeks after a single dose…

A new CDC study finds that hospitalization rates in late July were 29 times higher among unvaccinated people in Los Angeles County than among the fully vaccinated…

President and Administration

For the first time in decades, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - the nation's top public health agency - is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a "serious public health threat”… 

Biden’s approval rating has slipped to the lowest point of his presidency…

Congress 

Democratic lawmakers and the White House scrambled Friday, 8/27, to shore up safeguards for millions of tenants facing a housing crisis after the Supreme Court blocked an eviction ban imposed by the Biden administration…

The House passed a $3.5 trillion budget framework last Tuesday, 8/24, capping off several days of furious negotiating, with all House Democrats voting in favor of it…

Moderate and progressive Democrats are on a collision course over how to pay for President Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic agenda, a disagreement that has the potential to stall the legislation or sink it entirely…

More than 100 House Democrats, led by Ways and Means Committee members Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and Don Beyer (D-VA), are seeking to expand a federal subsidy for affordable housing in the chamber’s forthcoming spending bill…

The Defense Department would receive $549 million more than Biden requested to cleanup per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) under the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Bill, which the House committee will mark up on Wednesday, 9/1…

Education

School districts applied for more than $5.1 billion to buy laptops, Wi-Fi hotspots, routers, and other devices to help students connect to the internet from home ahead of an 8/13 deadline, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said last week…

Today, 8/30, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened directed investigations in five states - Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah - exploring whether statewide prohibitions on universal indoor masking discriminate against students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from COVID-19 by preventing them from safely accessing in-person education…

The FDA’s announcement of its full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine last week opened the door for colleges and universities that have been hesitant to require vaccines for students to begin instituting mandates, especially since other FDA-approved vaccinations - such as for tuberculosis or hepatitis B - are already required on most campuses…

Last week, the Education Department said that it will immediately cease enforcement of a part of the Trump-era Title IX regulations that prohibits decision makers in sexual misconduct investigations from considering evidence by parties or witnesses if they don’t participate in cross-examination…

Financial aid offers could be better designed to be clearer and more accessible to students, according to a recent report which offers 10 recommendations to improve financial aid offers…

The Education Department will now presume that borrowers with approved borrower defense to repayment claims should be awarded full relief, unless evidence is presented that states otherwise…

Funding/Support Opportunities

• Nothing of note.