Weekly Update 11/15/21

California

All fully vaccinated adults in California seeking a COVID-19 booster shot should be eligible to get one…

It’s been more than a decade since California’s education system placed a strong emphasis on teaching reading…

Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and Oakland are the first large school districts nationwide to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for older students, becoming a national test case for the logistical hurdles and possible lawsuits…

California Rep. Devin Nunes (R) could be motivated to move a few miles and Rep. Katie Porter (D) would have to figure out how to win in a district with fewer fellow Democrats under the draft congressional map now out for public comment…

Several groups filed a federal lawsuit last week against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming the agency has chosen not to intervene in California’s repeated failures to meet decades-old air pollution targets for fine particulate matter in the San Joaquin Valley…

Coronavirus

New COVID-19 infections are rising again in most states for the first time in two months, and deaths are increasing in about half of the states… 

Anxious about a surge of COVID-19 infections enveloping Europe as cases tick up in the United States, senior health officials in the Biden administration are pressing urgently to offer vaccine booster shots to all adults…

Last week, the American Federation of Government Employees urged the Biden administration to delay the deadline for federal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 from 11/22 to 1/4…

A federal appeals court ruled Friday, 11/12, to keep in place a stay blocking a Biden administration rule requiring that large employers mandate their employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly COVID-19 testing…

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 78 percent of U.S. adults either believe or aren’t sure about at least one of eight false statements about the COVID-19 pandemic or COVID-19 vaccines, with unvaccinated adults and Republicans among those most likely to hold misconceptions…

During the month of September, Texans not vaccinated against COVID-19 were 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19-related complications and 13 times more likely to test positive than people who were fully vaccinated, according to a new study by the Texas Department of State Health Services…

President and Administration

The Department of Justice on Wednesday, 11/10, sued Uber alleging a “pattern” of discrimination violating the Americans With Disabilities Act, signaling that the Biden administration is more aggressively targeting tech companies’ civil rights records…

U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge - surging food prices and supply chain issues…

Consumer prices surged 6.2 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest pace since 1990, with inflation accelerating monthly…

The Pentagon is stepping up efforts to get family members of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, creating a database of the dozens who are trapped there…

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has committed $421 million in additional Emergency Connectivity Funding…

President Biden on Friday, 11/12, nominated former Commissioner Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in a move that would bring the Obama-era official back for a second tour atop the agency… 

Congress 

House Democrats are hoping to pass the Build Back Better bill sometime this week while Senators meet with the parliamentarian to debate whether key components bring a direct budgetary effect…

With the Senate expected to consider its version of the annual defense policy bill this week, senators have already filed hundreds of amendments…

This week’s rush to move along a massive spending package is only the first item on a holiday season list Democrats must check off…

Democrats’ plan to undo former President Trump’s $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction is likely to end up enshrining looser restrictions on the popular and politically important write-off for the foreseeable future…

A House panel Wednesday, 11/10, advanced a bipartisan measure that would set up the nation’s first online database to connect retirement cash with those who may not even know they’re owed the money…

 Seven months ago, a House committee advanced a bill to study reparations for slavery, after more than three decades of efforts to build support for the idea…

On a highly distorted congressional map that is still taking shape, the Republican party has added enough safe House districts to capture control of the chamber based on its redistricting edge alone…

 Education

The number of new international students increased by 68 percent this fall over last fall, and the number of total international students grew by four percent across more than 860 U.S. higher education institutions that responded to a “snapshot” survey on fall international enrollments conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and nine other higher education associations… 

President Biden has nominated Glenna Gallo for assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services at the U.S. Department of Education…

Last week in an interview, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that it "wasn't a mistake" to keep schools closed for as long as they were throughout the COVID-19 pandemic…

Each year, millions of students who receive federal financial aid are required to undergo an additional review of their financial information by the Department of Education called verification, a process that has proven to be burdensome for both students and institutions…

A group of 13 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to leaders in the House of Representatives last week asking them to revise a part of the Build Back Better bill that extends a boost in the Pell Grant award only to students who attend nonprofit public and private institutions…

Weekly Update 11/8/21

California

Last week, the Education Department announced the approval of California’s American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) plan and distributed the $5 billion remaining ARP ESSER funds to the state…

CA Attorney General Rob Bonta unveiled on Wednesday, 10/27, a new California Department of Justice housing “strike force” that will work with other government agencies to enforce state housing laws, including by prodding local governments to meet their legal housing obligations…

Proponents are circulating various ballot initiatives that seek to overhaul public education in California - three of which have entered the signature-gathering phase…

If everything had gone according to plan, California would have approved new guidelines this month for math education in public schools…

The California Community Colleges system suffered a 14.8 percent enrollment decrease - a loss of 318,800 students - during the 2020-21 academic year compared to the previous year…

A study released last week said that global warming was essentially two-thirds to 88 percent responsible for the atmospheric conditions fueling increasingly destructive wildfires…

The entire Bay Area has returned to the CDC’s orange ‘substantial’ and red ‘high’ categories of COVID-19 transmission - a step backward for some counties, like Marin and San Francisco, where transmission was previously classified as yellow, or ‘moderate’…

Members of Congress want to close the gap on the Central Valley’s doctor shortage with student loan forgiveness incentives…

After years of restricting the growth of fossil fuel infrastructure, California has increasingly looked to natural gas for power generation this year after drought and wildfires left it with few other options to keep the lights on…

California’s independent redistricting commission is in its third week of looking at possible scenarios for redrawing lines based on how the state’s population has shifted, responding to public input it has received, while trying to keep an equal number of people in each district - 52 for Congress, 80 for state Assembly and 40 for state Senate…

Coronavirus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday, 11/2, formally endorsed the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged five through 11, a move that will buttress defenses against a possible surge as winter arrives and ease the worries of tens of millions of pandemic-weary parents…

The pace at which vaccines lose their effectiveness remains a subject of intense debate…

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a federal rule mandating COVID-19 vaccinations or at least weekly testing for workers at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees on Thursday, 11/4…

Last week, the Education Department, in collaboration with the CDC, launched a new COVID-19 data dashboard to help the public track COVID-19 on K-12 schools…

The U.S. lifted restrictions yesterday, 11/9, on travel from a long list of countries including Mexico, Canada and most of Europe, setting the stage for emotional reunions nearly two years in the making and providing a boost for the airline and tourism industries decimated by the pandemic…

A high percentage of federal workers are reporting they have been vaccinated against COVID-19…

Pfizer’s oral antiviral candidate Paxlovid cut COVID-19 hospitalizations or death by 89 percent in trial, Pfizer said in statement…

A new study has found that with layered mitigation measures, in-school transmission even before student or staff vaccination is rare…

 Pfizer's CEO says a vaccine-resistant COVID-19 variant is 'likely' to emerge...

President and Administration

Federal food aid programs are failing to provide low-income homes with nutritious meals, exacerbating the public health “crisis” of diet-related diseases and obesity within the U.S., lawmakers and poverty analysts said last week…

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Chuck Rettig anticipates another difficult income tax return filing season next year due to errors involving advanced child credit payments and economic impact payments…

The Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday, 11/3,  to begin slowing its massive bond purchases later this month was a long-awaited step, and shows both optimism about the pace of job growth and wariness about price surges that have pushed inflation to its highest level in three decades…

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Wednesday, 11/3, that she thinks inflation nationwide will continue rising for “months,” but argued that passage of President Biden’s legislative agenda and a recently announced trade deal with the European Union (EU) would ease pressure on rising prices… 

The Justice Department is increasing actions to combat ransomware and cybercrime through arrests and other actions, as the Biden administration escalates its response to urgent economic and national security threats…

Last week, Biden joined world leaders in pledging to tackle climate change…

President Biden’s commission to examine potential Supreme Court reforms plans to have their final report submitted by 12/15… 

Last week, the Senate voted 58-35 to confirm Robert Santos to be director of the Census Bureau… 

Congress 

On Friday, 11/5, the House cleared a $550 billion infrastructure bill for President Biden's signature just before midnight and moved ahead on Democrats' $1.75 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation bill…

Last week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said another continuing resolution will likely be needed in December to fund the government, following an initial meeting on Tuesday, 11/2, between top lawmakers on the House and Senate appropriations committees over fiscal year 2022 funding bills…

One big takeaway from the Build Back Better bill is clear: the $1.75 trillion package marks a dramatic shift toward boosting support for families with children after decades of government benefits being skewed toward the elderly…

House Democrats on Thursday, 11/4, decided to tweak their proposal to change the $10,000 deduction cap on state and local tax (SALT) payments, floating a more generous deduction than they were previously considering…

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is taking flak from both sides of Capitol Hill - and both parties - over delays to defense policy legislation as the window narrows for lawmakers to negotiate and pass a compromise bill…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) assured three potential holdout House Democrats late Thursday, 11/4, that immigrant protections will be a top priority after the party finishes the Build Back Better bill, potentially strengthening a deal that doesn’t include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants…

Last week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that the House has no plans to use the reconciliation process to raise the debt limit…

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), who has declined to say where he stands on eliminating the filibuster, is now willing to support an exception to the 60-vote hurdle in order to pass voting rights legislation…

Education

On Friday, 11/5, the Education Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved a compliance review of the Saco Public Schools in Maine…

Providing community college students with comprehensive supports increases their chances of earning an associate degree within three years, according to a study released last week by the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab, a research lab focused on economic opportunity for marginalized communities…

A coalition of 105 advocacy organizations sent a letter to Biden Thursday, 11/4, urging him to cancel student loan debt via executive action and to continue the repayment pause until the debt is canceled…

Of the 200 largest U.S. school systems, 135 now have mask mandates - down from 150 on 10/1 and lower than at any point this school year since mid-August, according to numbers from Burbio, a data service that has tracked school policy through the pandemic…

Despite promises to focus on the growing racial and income divide among the nation’s students, new fall testing data show academic gaps have worsened, falling heaviest on some of the most vulnerable children…

The stress and anxiety that have plagued college students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to ease, according to a new report on mental health published by the Hi, How Are You Project and American Campus Communities… 

Lawmakers don’t need to decide between increasing Pell Grants for lower-income students or expanding eligibility to more middle-income students, because boosting the maximum award would accomplish both, according to a new report by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators…

Long Beach City College leaders are allowing up to 15 houseless students to sleep overnight in their cars in a campus parking structure…

Weekly Update 11/1/21

Reconciliation Bill: Build Back Better

On Thursday, 10/28, President Joe Biden unveiled a framework for a $1.75 trillion reconciliation package his administration believes can pass Congress and urged House Democrats to quickly clear a separate public works bill for his signature, despite misgivings by progressives…

Child Tax Credit

The framework would extend the popular child tax credit for another year for households earning up to $150,000 annually…

Education

Biden’s economic plan would spend $400 billion on early childhood programs, including limiting child care costs to no more than seven percent of income for middle-class families…

Higher Education

The plan would put $40 billion into higher education and workforce training programs…

Health Care

The framework would extend the expanded Affordable Care Act premium tax credits through 2025…

Housing 

The framework calls for spending $150 billion on affordable housing with the goal of building more than one million new affordable rental and single-family homes, rental and down payment assistance, and public housing…

State and Local Taxes (SALT)

“SALT will be in the endgame, yes,” House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) told reporters…

Climate - $555 billion 

By far the largest component of the climate spending - some $320 billion of it - would go to expanding a slew of tax credits for renewable power…

Lawmakers also would give a boost to existing tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles, making them more widely available, even to used cars…

$110 billion would be dedicated to boosting U.S. manufacturing of clean energy technologies, so more solar panels, electric vehicle parts, and other green tech is made domestically…

The package proposes to expand rebates and credits with the goal of encouraging investments in home efficiency and renewable power…

The plan would dole out as much as $105 billion to helping communities build resilience to the impacts of climate change, such as from droughts, more frequent wildfires and intense hurricanes…

The Civilian Climate Corps could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work preventing wildfires, restoring wetlands, capping abandoned oil wells and making homes more energy efficient…

California

Four weeks after an oil spill washed blobs of crude onto Southern California’s coast, surfers have returned to the waves and people play in the surf…

Contra Costa, Marin and Alameda counties are set to ease indoor mask mandates today, 11/1…

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll propose using next year’s surplus to pay down $11.3 billion in pension obligations, but didn’t give further details…

Public health nurses, microbiologists, epidemiologists, health officers and other staff members who fend off infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, inspect restaurants, and work to keep communities healthy are abandoning the field…

California lost about 27,800 child care workers between February and April of 2020 - or roughly a third of its workforce…

California has given away at least $20 billion to criminals in the form of fraudulent unemployment benefits, state officials said last week, confirming a number smaller than originally feared but one that still accounts for more than 11 percent of all benefits paid since the start of the pandemic… 

Coronavirus

The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) independent vaccine advisers voted Tuesday, 10/26, to recommend authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot for children ages 5-11, after deliberating whether everyone in that age group should be eligible for immunization…

Hospital admissions are declining sharply among U.S. children with COVID-19, even more than adults, quieting concerns for now that the return to school could trigger a major uptick in viral transmission…

Please find a brief summarizing CDC guidance to support COVID-19 contact tracing in K-12 schools from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) here… 

A growing number of colleges and universities are mandating vaccination against COVID-19 for employees - including undergraduate and graduate student employees - in response to President Biden’s 9/9 order mandating vaccination for employees of federal contractors…

March Madness celebrations caused a noticeable spike in COVID-19 infections last spring, a new study found…

President and Administration

State and local governments picked up the pace of distributing emergency rental assistance funds in September amid a push from the Biden administration to accelerate payments to households… 

Last week, President Biden nominated Jessica Rosenworcel, the acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to the permanent job, putting her on track to become the first woman to lead the agency…

The Biden Administration issued the first-ever National Gender Strategy to advance the full participation of all people - including women and girls - in the U.S. and around the world…

The Washington Post published a deep dive into the attack on the Capitol…

Congress 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is pressuring House Democrats to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill as soon as possible but is running into stiff opposition from progressives, who want to see the legislative text of a larger tax and spending package first…

Key Republican senators obtained hundreds of millions of dollars each in earmarks in their chamber’s spending bill, an offering that could help grease the wheels for a bipartisan government funding bill later this year…

Urban and farm-state lawmakers want the White House to convene a conference on U.S. hunger, which hasn’t happened since 1969, and intend to pass legislation calling for one before the end of the year…

Childhood hunger and obesity that comes from malnutrition are a national security problem that’s thwarting military recruitment, retired admirals and generals say…

Senate Republicans will press their Democratic counterparts this week on passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)…

Louisiana Treasurer John Schroder says he’s adamant that his state shouldn’t work with Wall Street banks that have curtailed gun-industry ties, and that could cost JPMorgan Chase a $700 million bond deal…

The Bipartisan Policy Center is forecasting that the recent $480 billion statutory debt limit increase could last as long as mid-February…

Last week the Senate confirmed voting rights expert Myrna Perez to be a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals - where she’ll be the only Latino on the court…

Education

College and university enrollments are still on the decline for most institutions, early data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show… 

Excelencia in Education, an advocacy group focused on Latinx students, announced the 2021 cohort of colleges and universities receiving the Seal of Excelencia certification, an honor given to institutions for supporting Latinx student success…

A new report by Gradient Learning, based on a survey of 1,031 students aged 13 and older, found that strong relationships with educators correspond with student belonging…

In the coming months, lawsuits over bans on teaching critical race theory and COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students and teachers will test how much leeway officials have to shape school policy on some of today’s most explosive political issues…

Almost a third - 32 percent - of Jewish college students said they personally experienced anti-Semitism directed at them on campus or by a member of their college community within the last year, according to a new survey from Hillel International and the Anti-Defamation League…

Voter turnout among college students jumped to a record high of 66 percent in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report from the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education…

The Education Department Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) released a two new Q&As…

Mental Health

The Department has released a new resource to enhance the promotion of mental health and social and emotional well-being among children and students…

LGBTQ+ college students face “sizable” mental health challenges compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers, according to a new report by the Proud & Thriving Project…

The Biden administration is rolling out a new coordinated strategy it hopes will slow the menacing rise in drug overdose deaths…

More people are turning to cannabis to alleviate mental health problems like anxiety and depression, as well as insomnia, psychologists and researchers say…

Public Safety Update 10/29/21

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two cases regarding qualified immunity, a legal doctrine shielding officers from lawsuits that has been at the center of national protests and debates in Congress and state legislatures since the murder of George Floyd…

Late last month, the FBI released crime statistics for 2020…

Recent FBI data shows that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, trends in California’s crime rates mirrored national trends—with some key differences...

The return to in-person learning has come with increased violence in schools, causing some to revert to virtual classes…

The Alexandria City Council voted last week, 10/13, to return police to the city’s public schools through June 2022…

This election season, Democrats are distancing themselves from the “defund the police” movement despite continued national cries to reallocate funding from law enforcement…

After George Floyd’s murder last year, many cities protested, calling to “defund” the police, with Portland residents protesting for over 130 days…

The Yes 4 Minneapolis coalition petitioned to put an initiative on the ballot to amend the city's charter to replace the police department with an agency that provides a "comprehensive public health approach" to public safety…

After last month’s negotiations to achieve bipartisan police reform collapsed, police and criminal justice reform remain a local issue for the foreseeable future…

Police unions are among those pushing back on vaccine mandates citing laws and contract provisions that require employers to negotiate with unions when they want to change workplace rules…

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 73—legislation to end mandatory jail sentences for certain drug sale offenses—into law, amending incarceration mandates established in the 1980’s during the escalation of the “war on drugs”…

The Public Policy Institute of California released a report showing racial disparities within the criminal justice system continue to be a pressing issue for the US and California in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and a national call for police reform…

Last year, Congress passed bipartisan legislation creating a three-digit hotline, 988, for mental health emergencies…

Weekly Update 10/25/21

California

About one in five local school districts that received COVID-19 relief money through two federal funds had spent 20 percent or less of their initial money by the end of June, a state auditor found…

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, 10/20, signed an executive order to address supply chain congestion at shipping ports in California…

Gov. Newsom on Thursday, 10/21, announced a crackdown on oil and gas wells, a long-awaited move to protect public health that sets up a fight between environmentalists and labor unions allied with industry…

California is now tied with Nevada for the highest unemployment rate in the country at 7.5% after adding just 47,400 new jobs last month…

Last week, Gov. Newsom issued a proclamation extending the drought emergency statewide and asked residents to redouble their water conservation efforts amid an exceptionally dry year when wildfires have ravaged large swaths of the state…

California, which has some of the strictest mask and vaccination mandates in the country, has improved to a ‘moderate’ rate of transmission for COVID-19, the only one of the 50 states to drop to that level, according to the latest CDC data…

Coronavirus

Pfizer said its COVID-19 shot was 90.7 percent effective against symptomatic cases in children ages 5 to 11, according to a briefing document posted on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website…

The CDC said it is considering a COVID-19 ‘test-to-stay’ program in schools instead of quarantine…

On Wednesday, 10/20, the FDA authorized booster shots of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) COVID-19 vaccines, a move that makes boosters available for all three vaccines in the U.S…

In July, news of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all eligible public and private school students broke quietly in Puerto Rico…

The new U.S. travel policy will block entry to foreign nationals who have recovered from COVID-19 and then gotten one dose of two-dose vaccines - a standard that France and the European Commission consider full vaccination…

A new CDC study found that the Pfizer vaccine was 93 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations among those aged 12 to 18…

President and Administration

The Biden administration is developing plans for how it will restart federal student loan payments early next year when the pandemic pause on monthly payments for tens of millions of Americans ends…

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she still expects the U.S. economy to return to full employment “next year,” even after a slowdown in the pace of hiring…

As the United States and nations around the world struggle to blunt the effects of rising temperatures and extreme weather, sweeping assessments released Thursday, 10/21, by the White House, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon conclude that climate change will exacerbate long-standing threats to global security…

Congress 

Congressional Democrats are down to a handful of key disputes in their frenetic effort to draft President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion social spending package by the end of the week…

Last week the Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) released the nine remaining fiscal 2022 spending bills…

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee plans to vote tomorrow, 10/26, on whether to advance nominees to head the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration and Office of Inspector General…

Senior Democrats are discussing another short-term Highway Trust Fund extension until 12/3, another patch that would avert program authorizations on track to expire Sunday, 10/31…

Education

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee released a draft of its funding bill for federal higher education programs that mirrors the priorities of the House’s version, though with slightly lower investments. The legislation for fiscal year 2022 provides:..

Biden’s Build Back Better plan is setting up a conflict between Hispanic-serving colleges and historically Black institutions - with both vying for the same resources to address inequities for underserved populations…

New research suggests that adolescents who take remedial classes are better prepared for academic success in high school and college…

Catherine Lhamon was confirmed by the Senate to serve as assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education in a 51-to-50 vote held Wednesday, 10/20…

A long-COVID task force has published a workbook to help schools dealing with students who have long-COVID…

U.S. school enrollment dropped by 2.9 million from 2019 to 2020, with enrollment among the under-35 population dipping to its lowest level (52.4 percent of the total population) in over 20 years, according to data tables released last week by the Census Bureau…

The U.S. Senate recently confirmed Roberto Rodríguez, in the role of Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD) at the Department…

Mental Health

Across the country, 4,612 teens and children have been victims of shootings, with 1,215 killed this year - surpassing past years’ numbers and comparable to 2020’s record-high stats…

The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association have declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health…