Weekly Update 10/12/21

California

A number of new laws will significantly help community college students transfer into both Cal State and UC campuses, and boost financial aid and housing assistance as part of a $47.1-billion higher education package signed by Gov. Newsom on Wednesday, 10/6…

On Wednesday, 10/6, Gov. Newsom signed two bills to boost universal transitional kindergarten by 2025 and create college savings accounts for 3.7 million kids…

The national guard has been deployed to hospitals in rural north and central California, where short-staffed hospitals have been overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients…

In recent years, fentanyl, which is exponentially stronger and more lethal than heroin but cheaper to produce, has saturated the region’s drug market and driven up the rate of opioid-related deaths…

Jobless claims in California stay far above normal levels despite one-week improvement…

Coronavirus

Last week, a top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official said that updated data might make a strong case in support of everyone 18 and older being eligible for COVID-19 vaccine boosters, but the agency will have to see whether its outside advisers agree…

Last week, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) asked the FDA to grant emergency use authorization for a booster dose of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 and older, making it the final vaccine used in the United States for which permission is being sought for an extra shot…

The White House announced Wednesday, 10/6, an additional $1 billion purchase of rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests as some public health officials worry the U.S. could get hit with another wave of infections this winter…

President and Administration

President Joe Biden‘s push to get legal help to tenants and billions in pandemic rent relief aid to landlords is cloaking a dilemma that existed long before COVID-19: how millions of low-income tenants will be able to make rent in the long run without help…

The Biden administration began defining its China trade policy last week, saying it aims to launch new talks with Beijing but will keep existing tariffs in place, while also restoring the ability of U.S. importers to seek exemptions from those levies…

Last week, the Supreme Court returned after a pandemic-induced absence of more than 18 months, starting a new term that will include major cases on abortion, gun rights, and religious school choice…

Congress 

The Senate passed a short-term extension of the debt limit on Thursday, 10/7, by a 50-48 party line vote, staving off a potential fiscal and economic crisis until at least 12/3…

Congressional Democrats are beginning to discuss how to pare down their sweeping social-spending bill…

Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) every year since 1961…

Other

At least 85 percent of the global population has experienced weather events made worse by climate change, according to research published yesterday, 10/12, in the journal Nature Climate Change…

Education

In a memorandum, Attorney General Merrick Garland called on federal agencies to meet with local law enforcement in the next month to create a plan to combat the “disturbing spike” in violence toward school leaders…

During a press call Thursday, 10/7, leaders with Everytown for Gun Safety, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association bemoaned a return to campus gun violence after a year without mass school shootings…

A Long Beach school security officer was fired Wednesday, 10/6, a week after he fatally shot an 18-year-old woman a block from campus… 

Changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program were announced last Wednesday, 10/6…

A group of House members, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) sent the White House a letter on Friday, 10/8, demanding “the release to the public by October 22, 2021 the memo that the President requested from the Department of Education to determine the extent of the administration’s authority to broadly cancel student debt through administrative action…

Students, sexual assault survivors and their advocates gathered outside the Education Department Wednesday, 10/6, and delivered a petition with more than 50,000 signatures calling for an immediate rollback of Trump administration policies governing how colleges handle sexual misconduct on campus…

On Friday, 10/8, the Education Department announced the establishment of an Office of Enforcement within Federal Student Aid (FSA)…

Congressional Democrats’ $3.5 trillion social spending plan is expected to face substantial cuts in the coming weeks, as moderates in the Senate say they don’t support the legislation’s high price tag…

More than 1,775 U.S. colleges and universities - three-quarters of the four-year institutions in the United States - are either test optional or test blind this year, according to a list published by FairTest: the National Center for Fair and Open Testing…

Last week, the Senate confirmed Lisa Brown, as General Counsel, Roberto Rodríguez, in the role of Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, and Gwen Graham as Assistant Secretary for Legislation and Congressional Affairs…

The Senate voted 50 to 49 Thursday, 10/7, to discharge Catherine Lhamon’s nomination for assistant secretary of civil rights at the Department of Education from committee…

Immigration Update 10/5/21

California

Protesters shut down the Golden Gate Bridge briefly on Thursday morning, 9/30, calling on Democrats in Congress to take action to protect immigrant families…

California will take in the highest number of Afghan refugees of participating U.S. states…

The Courts

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Biden administration to stop using a public-health law to turn back families who enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico seeking asylum…

Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated his fight with Biden over immigration, directing Florida agencies to stop assisting federal authorities in relocating migrants…

President and Administration

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas issued broad new directives to immigration officers Thursday, 9/30, saying that someone is an undocumented immigrant “should not alone be the basis” of a decision to detain and deport them from the United States… 

The DHS said on Wednesday, 9/29, that it planned to issue a new memorandum in the coming weeks terminating the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires many asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they await hearings on their requests for safe haven in the U.S…

On 9/20, the White House announced that in early November it intends to end the COVID-19 travel bans imposed in 2020 and replace them with vaccination and COVID-19 testing requirements for almost all travelers…

On 9/17, the White House published a new brief on “The Economic Benefits of Extending Permanent Legal Status to Unauthorized Immigrants”…

Congress

The Senate parliamentarian has nixed Democrats' back-up plan for getting immigration reform into a sweeping spending bill, handing them a second setback…

Last Monday, 9/26, the Biden administration released its proposed measure to preserve and fortify an Obama-era program that protects “dreamers'' from deportation after a federal judge declared the original initiative illegal…

Haitian Refugees

The sudden appearance of thousands of Haitian migrants overwhelmed Border Patrol agents in Del Rio in mid-September…

ICE has deported about 2,000 migrants on chartered flights to Haiti as the administration tries to deter more people from rushing to the border…

Images of the agents on horseback rounding up migrants and of dozens of state police vehicles blocking entrance across the river have fueled criticism from Democratic lawmakers and administration officials that the Haitians are being treated inhumanely…

Earlier this month, President Biden forcibly condemned the “horrible” treatment of Haitian migrants assembled along the U.S-Mexico border, pledging consequences for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents who were photographed on horseback…

Weekly Update 10/4/21

California

Nearly all of Orange County’s coastline is at risk after more than a hundred thousand gallons of crude oil spilled just five miles off the coast…

As state and federal laws meant to bring ghost guns into compliance with traditional firearm laws await implementation, local officials and prosecutors across California are increasingly resorting to bans and lawsuits to regulate the weapons in their cities, as the do-it-yourself weapons appear with increasing frequency at homicide scenes, traffic stops and community gun buybacks…

California’s statewide eviction moratorium is officially over, although some local measures endure…

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday, 10/1, that California will mandate student COVID-19 vaccines once federal officials fully approve the immunizations, becoming the first state to mandate vaccinations…

California’s temporary transition to universal mail voting became permanent last week, as Gov. Newsom signed legislation directing county elections officials to mail ballots to every registered, active voter in future elections…

Experts who study these trends say there are several factors at play, including California’s declining birth rate, families moving out of the state and a leveling-off of immigration - all of which appear to have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic…

Health experts have long credited California’s success to the state’s higher than average vaccination rates and thoughtful virus mitigation measures, including mask and vaccine mandates…

The San Jose City Council voted last week to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, deeming it the largest city in the state to do so…

Coronavirus

Pfizer has submitted initial data to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for 5- to 11-year olds, the pharmaceutical company announced last week…

The FDA’s independent vaccine advisory committee will hold three meetings in October to discuss COVID-19 booster shots, mix-and-match boosters and vaccines for children aged 5 to 11, the agency announced Friday, 10/1…

Forty-five percent of parents say they would not have their children inoculated against COVID-19 if a vaccine were approved for those under 12…

New study of schools in Maricopa and Pima Counties, Arizona, found that schools without a mask requirement were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks than schools that started the year requiring masks…

An unvaccinated 10-year-old, who may look like the very picture of COVID-19 vulnerability heading into the school year, faces a lower mortality risk than a vaccinated 25-year-old…

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report found that the side effects of a COVID-19 booster dose are similar to those of a second dose of vaccine, with no new serious unexpected patterns emerging…

Rural Americans are dying of COVID-19 at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts - a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated…

On Friday, 10/1, Merck announced that they will seek authorization for the first antiviral pill for COVID-19…

As California’s requirement that all healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 took effect on Thursday, 9/30, major health systems reported that the mandate had helped boost their vaccination rates to 90 percent or higher…

A group of lawsuit plaintiffs, including four Air Force officers and a Secret Service agent, have asked a federal court to block the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination mandates, declaring, “Americans have remained idle for far too long as our nation’s elected officials continue to satisfy their voracious appetites for power”…

President and Administration

President Joe Biden is set to speak about the federal debt limit today, 10/4, as the Treasury Department gets closer to a payments default amid a partisan showdown between Republicans and Democrats on the issue…

When the Supreme Court decided to strike down the CDC moratorium on evictions in August, lawmakers and housing experts warned of a national eviction crisis…

 On 9/15, the Education Department announced the formation of the Puerto Rico Education Sustainability (PRES) Team…

The White House will convene a 30-country meeting this month to try to ramp up global efforts to address the threat of ransomware to economic and national security…

A new Morning Consult poll found that 44 percent of U.S. adults believe the rules around voting are not strict enough to prevent votes from being cast illegally, a rarity in modern American elections, compared with 33 percent who say the rules make it too difficult for eligible citizens to cast their ballots…

President Biden on Thursday, 9/30, named 10 nominees to the federal bench, continuing his efforts to diversify the judicial branch with picks who would notch demographic firsts on their respective courts…

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is launching an Office of Recovery, within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, to advance the agency’s commitment to, and support of, recovery…

Congress 

The Senate is set for another showdown over the federal debt limit this week, as Democrats again will press Republicans for help suspending the limit…

Democrats will regroup this week to salvage two pillars of their agenda, after gridlock between the party’s two flanks scuttled passage of an infrastructure bill and threatens to drag on for weeks…

Biden on Saturday, 10/2, signed into law a 30-day extension of federal surface transport programs that ended brief furloughs for some 3,700 Department of Transportation employees…

Democrats risk settling for a less generous expansion of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction than previously hoped after Biden conceded that lawmakers will have to scale back his economic agenda to get it enacted…

Education

The Biden administration must act to combat a surge in threats and violence toward education leaders amid volatile tensions over schools’ pandemic response and lessons on systemic racism, the 90,000-member National School Boards Association wrote in a letter Wednesday, 9/29…

The 2022-23 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) launched on Friday, 10/1…

On Thursday, 9/30, the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) released a Q&A entitled the Return to School Roadmap: Development and Implementation of Individualized Education Programs in the Least Restrictive Environment under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act…

Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration are looking into adding a means test to the free community college provision of the Build Back Better Act…

The University of California is planning to add 20,000 students to its system by 2030…

Federal student loan servicer Navient announced last week that it is requesting to transfer its loan servicing contract with the Department of Education to Maximus, the current servicer for defaulted student loans…

Weekly Update 9/27/21

California

The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday, 9/22, to give some additional leeway by extending the preliminary map deadline to 11/15 and final certification to 12/27…

Officials unveiled a new COVID-19 Vaccine Action Plan that outlines how the state will immediately begin administering COVID-19 vaccine doses to eligible residents, continue the state’s equity focus on eligible but unvaccinated individuals, and expand operations once more residents become eligible and booster shots become available…

Pacific Gas & Electric's legal troubles continued to mount on Friday, 9/24, as a district attorney charged the utility with numerous felonies tied to the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County that killed four people…

Coronavirus

On Friday, 9/24, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky overruled a recommendation delivered by an advisory panel of her agency - paving the way for teachers to receive booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine…

In a pivotal development for school COVID-19 safety, Pfizer-BioNTech announced last week that its vaccine was safe and created a “robust” antibody response for children ages five to 11 in trials…

With more than 40 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines available, U.S. health authorities said they’re confident there will be enough for both qualified older Americans seeking booster shots and the young children for whom initial vaccines are expected to be approved in the not-too-distant future…

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Thursday, 9/23, declared his support for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for eligible schoolchildren, saying the FDA’s full approval of jabs for certain adolescents should clear the way for state officials to implement plans to begin vaccinations… 

Last week, Johnson and Johnson announced  promising booster data showing 94% efficacy for its COVID-19 vaccine when given after six months of the initial dose… 

President and Administration

Just one week after his inauguration, President Joe Biden did what his predecessor would not: He issued an executive order to create a special enrollment period through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), citing a need created by the pandemic… 

The Biden administration is struggling to ease congestion in the nation’s freight system, as mounting backlogs threaten to dash the president’s hopes for a smooth economic recovery with higher prices and spot product shortages…

President Biden announced on Wednesday, 9/22, the 30 science and technology leaders who will serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a group of external advisers tasked with making science, technology and innovation policy recommendations to the White House and the president… 

Last week, the Department of Labor announced the appointments of 29 members to serve on the Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship, and provide advice and recommendations on issues related to Registered Apprenticeship…

More than 50 CEOs of major companies including Vanguard, Re/Max, Pizza Hut and others are calling on lawmakers to allocate more federal dollars for childcare, calling lack of affordable and quality childcare “one of the biggest barriers to economic recovery and growth”…

Congress 

The House passed a fiscal rescue package Tuesday, 9/21, intended to prevent a government shutdown this week and a U.S. debt default in the coming weeks - if only Senate Republicans would go along…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced yesterday, 9/26, that debate on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill will start today, 9/27, right on time to fulfill the promise made to centrists last month…

House Budget Democrats approved their $3.5 trillion spending plan in a rare Saturday session on 9/25, sending more than 2,400 pages of text to the floor as the party looks to signal progress on the massive bill heading into a critical week…

The House on Thursday, 9/23, easily passed a $768 billion National Defense Authorization Act in a 316-113 vote…

Allowing lawmakers of differing parties to be chief sponsors on legislation and requiring committees to adopt civility standards are two of the proposals being floated for lowering the temperature on Capitol Hill…

Education

Since COVID-19 first shuttered schools last spring, American children have been subjected to a kind of natural experiment in inactivity…

The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) at the Education Department is understaffed, as its staffing levels haven’t kept pace with the growing student loan portfolio, according to findings by the Government Accountability Office…

The College Board announced Wednesday, 9/22, that the CSS Profile -- used by about 300 colleges to determine aid eligibility -- would become free to all students with a family income of up to $100,000…

Nineteen higher education organizations and associations are urging senators to preserve a provision in the Build Back Better Act that would repeal the taxability of Pell Grants once the upper chamber begins its work on the budget reconciliation bill…

Teens are still reporting negative impacts of the pandemic on their mental health and overall well-being. Half of teens from a recent EdChoice/Morning Consult survey say they have received the COVID-19 vaccine, while about a quarter aren’t vaccinated and don’t plan to get the vaccine in the future…

Public Safety Update 9/23/21

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced on 9/22 that talks on bipartisan police reform have failed…

Last week, on 9/14, the Department of Justice announced department-wide changes to policies explicitly prohibiting the use of “chokeholds” and “carotid restraints” unless deadly force is authorized, and limiting the circumstances in which the department’s federal law enforcement components are authorized to use unannounced, or “no-knock,” entries..

Last week, on 9/13, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) will adjust how monitors oversee local police departments carrying out federally mandated reform plans…

This year is predicted to be one of the worst years for gun violence in decades according to recent statistics from the Gun Violence Archive…

The Justice Department is investigating allegations of unconstitutional abuse of prisoners in Georgia, an inquiry that could require the state to carry out a federally mandated overhaul…

Earlier this month, President Biden withdrew his previous top choice to lead the ATF, David Chipman, amid strong opposition in the Senate that threatened his chances of winning confirmation…

Last week, on 9/14, San Diego City Council passed an ordinance targeting ghost guns, making it illegal to buy and sell gun parts in the city that cannot be traced by law enforcement…

Two more Washington, D.C. police officers who responded to the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection have died by suicide, bringing the total to four…

Insider recently asked its readers of color: “What would an ideal version of public safety look like to you?”…

Former inmates now confined at home because of the pandemic may now formally submit commutation applications…

California lawmakers passed a bill this month that would decertify officers for serious misconduct such as sexual assault, perjury and wrongfully killing civilians…

A bill passed earlier this month by the California legislature seeks to decriminalize jaywalking by allowing pedestrians more leeway to cross the road in an effort to reduce inequities in jaywalking arrests…