Weekly Update 12/19/22

California

On Monday, 12/12, the Supreme Court rejected a request from tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds and Altria, to block California’s ban on flavored tobacco…

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the nation's largest water supplier, declared a drought emergency for all of Southern California on Thursday, 12/15…

Coronavirus

On Wednesday, 12/14, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a report that revealed more than 3,500 Americans have died due to what is known as “chronic COVID” or “long haul COVID”…

In an effort to prepare for another potential COVID-19 surge this winter, the Biden administration is reopening its partnership with the U.S. Postal Service for a limited time to mail free at-home COVID-19 tests…

President and Administration

The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office awarded a team of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Puerto Rico, North Carolina State University and Fearless Fund more than $2 million to investigate how to convert seaweed and wood waste in Puerto and the Caribbean into sustainable aviation fuel and graphite…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $45 million in competitive grants to help states and partnering organizations implement updated building energy codes and lower energy bills for American families and businesses…

On Tuesday, 12/13, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act…

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to terminate the “Remain in Mexico” policy at least until Texas and Missouri resolve legal challenges against the federal government to keep the policy in place…

Congress

On Thursday, 12/14, the Senate passed a bill that would extend federal funding until December 23, 2022, averting a government shutdown…

A group of former ambassadors to Afghanistan sent a letter to congressional leaders requesting that the Afghan Adjustment Act be included in the omnibus spending bill…

On Thursday, 12/15, the House passed the Puerto Rico Status Act (H.R. 8393), which would enable island voters to decide whether the territory becomes a state in 2023…

According to Representative Garret Graves (R-LA), a Republican House Transportation Committee plans to pressure the Department of Transportation to provide an explanation on how they administer and prioritize grants…

Education

On Friday, 12/16, the Department of Education published an updated list of federal education assistance funds that proprietary institutions of higher education have to include as federal revenue…

Due to nearly three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, in combination with other stressors such as climate disaster and political incivility, faculty members of higher education continue to push for greater and improved student mental health services…

According to a new report by Complete College America (CCA), which draws on both publicly available data and data from the CCA Alliance, student completion rates at four-year universities and two-year colleges rose by six percent from 2016 to 2021…

In response to concerns from the American Council on Education and other higher education organizations, the Department of Veterans Affairs is delaying the rollout of a new enrollment management system that will be used to certify GI Bill benefits…

According to an investigation by ProPublica and The Seattle Times, Northwest School of Innovative Learning (SOIL), Washington state’s largest publicly funded private school for children with disabilities, collected more than $38 million in tax funding for special education services that families and former teachers say it did not provide…

According to data released by the California Department of Education, chronic absenteeism increased from 14.3 percent in 2020-21 to 30 percent last school year…

Democratic and Republican state lawmakers have introduced legislation to increase awareness about the presence of fentanyl on California’s K-12 campuses…

Weekly Update 12/12/22

California

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday, 12/2, unveiled an outline of his plan to place a cap on oil refinery profits in California, a proposal he’s asking lawmakers to approve to limit future spikes on gasoline prices…

There has been a troubling spike in COVID-positive hospital admissions among seniors in California, rising to levels not seen since the summer Omicron surge…

A bipartisan group of 15 senators, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), are calling on Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to divert appropriate resources to the massive drought wreaking havoc on the western United States…

Coronavirus

Difficulty getting care for COVID-19 has become an increasingly common problem for poor, uninsured Americans…

According to a study published in the Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, stress stemming as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns has prematurely aged the brains of teenagers by at least three years…

The FDA on Thursday, 12/9, authorized emergency use of updated bivalent COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old…

President and Administration

Included in the bipartisan industrial policy legislation that President Biden signed into law this summer is $10 billion to jump-start economically sputtering regions across the country: a series of “innovation hubs” across 20 metropolitan areas…

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released a draft of the National Broadband Map that will be used by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to allocate $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment grants next summer…

United Health Foundation’s annual ranking of Americans’ health is out, offering a look into how the pandemic impacted a range of health factors…

More than 180,000 nonfatal opioid overdoses were reported by emergency services in the U.S. during the past 12 months, according to new data from the Biden administration…

The nation’s hospitals remain under critical strain as COVID-19 cases are back on the rise, RSV remains high and flu hospitalization rates are the highest for this time of year that they’ve been in a decade, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on last week…

On 12/7, the Department of Education hosted the YOU Belong in STEM National Coordinating Conference as a key initiative for the Biden-Harris Administration…

Congress

The Senate Finance Committee released draft bill language on Monday, 12/2, to ensure Medicare and Medicaid patients receive mental health coverage on par with physical health services…

On Tuesday, 12/3, the House passed the Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act, which would mandate that the FCC create maps showing where poor maternal health outcomes coincide with broadband services gaps…

The House overwhelmingly passed defense policy legislation on Thursday, 12/8, that would repeal the Pentagon's mandate that troops receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be forced out of the military…

Education

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) blasted most colleges for failing to tell students how much the education will actually cost them…

According to a report released by the National Institute for Early Education Research, the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced access to Head Start programs funded by the federal government for children living in poverty, which has exacerbated inequities in enrollment, staff salaries and quality of services…

Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Director Valerie Williams introduced a blog series that will explain topics of interest related to the discipline and behavior guidance package released by her office this past summer…

Researchers saw promising signs of a slow-moving rebound in student achievement this fall, more than a year after a dire spring where performance “bottomed out”…

After the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, parents of murdered children set out to implement tougher federal gun laws…

Depression and anxiety continue to plague an overwhelming number of America’s middle and high school students, particularly LGBTQ and students of color, hampering efforts to boost learning from pandemic losses…

A coalition of higher ed organizations is launching a campaign called California Reconnect, to re-enroll adult learners who stopped out of college in the state…

Weekly Update 12/5/22

California

A nine-member Reparations Task Force has spent months traveling across California to learn about the generational effects of racist policies and actions…

Tax revenue from California’s licensed cannabis market plummeted to below $130 million during the third quarter, a nearly $100 million drop from the same period last year…

R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco and vape companies on Tuesday, 11/29, asked the Supreme Court for an emergency injunction that would stop a flavored-tobacco ban set to go into effect in the state of California no later than 12/21…

California lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to exempt student loan forgiveness from state taxes when the state legislature gavels in today, 12/5…

President and Administration

The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in a second major legal challenge to its student debt relief program and potentially hear it alongside the case the justices already agreed to hear in February or March…

The White House released an updated fact sheet highlighting the impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on Puerto Rico…

The White House released an updated California fact sheet highlighting the impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on California…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accidentally posted the names, birthdates, nationalities and detention locations of more than 6,000 immigrants who claimed to be fleeing torture and persecution to its website on Monday 11/28

The Department of Homeland Security is projecting between 9,000 to 14,000 migrants may attempt to cross the U.S. southern border a day when the Trump-era “Title 42” border policy ends in late December, more than double the current number of people crossing…

Less than half of men report being satisfied with their friendships, and only about one in five said they had received emotional support from a friend in the last week, compared with four in ten women, according to a 2021 survey from the Survey Center on American Life…

The underlying health of the U.S. economy is quite strong and massive investments being made in manufacturing and infrastructure will help bring inflation down over the longer term, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Thursday, 12/1…

Top Democrats in the House and Senate are calling on the Biden administration to crack down on the companies that universities hire to advertise and manage their online courses, including reexamining whether a key part of the industry’s business model is allowed under federal law…

Congress

The Senate passed legislation Tuesday, 11/29, to enshrine same-sex marriage protections in federal law, bringing the bill a critical step closer to President Joe Biden’s desk

The Senate on Thursday, 12/1, voted overwhelmingly to impose a labor agreement between rail companies and their workers who have been locked in a stubborn stalemate, moving with uncommon speed to avert a potential holiday season rail strike that would jeopardize shipping across the country…

A House committee has gained access to six years of former President Trump’s tax returns after the Supreme Court paved the way for the release of records he had long sought to keep secret…

Education

With the nation’s schools facing acute teacher shortages, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the Department of Education’s strategy for not adequately addressing the crisis and guiding states’ in how to attract and retain more educators…

K-12 teacher shortages are an undeniable reality in some communities, a newly released study indicates…

Districts where students spent the most time in remote learning during the 2020-21 school year lost at least half a million more students than they would have if they’d stayed open, a new report shows…

A new study documents significant gains in college persistence as a result of a student emergency grants program and contains insights to help others implement similar programs…

New America Foundation has released a report, “In Default and Left Behind,” based on focus group interviews with 50 borrowers who went into default on their student loans before the pandemic…

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that college completion rates have stagnated, with 62.3 percent of students who enrolled in 2016 completing a degree by June 2022— virtually unchanged from last year’s six-year completion rate of 62.2 percent…

A host of higher education associations, institutional leaders, and advocates are calling on Congress to pass legislation this year to provide protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program…

Weekly Update 11/28/22

President and Administration

The White House announced last week that student loan payments will be turned off for at least another six months to give the federal courts time to consider the many lawsuits challenging his administration’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for eligible Americans…

As of June 2022, more than a quarter million Americans under 18 had lost a primary caregiver to COVID-19, according to a tracker maintained by the Imperial College of London…

A record high of nearly 40 million children missed a measles vaccine dose in 2021, putting them at risk for one of the world’s most contagious deadly diseases…

Congress

Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees have quietly started to put together FY 2023 spending bills, even though there’s no bipartisan agreement on a topline figure for overall spending…

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the incoming Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee ranking member, is leading a bipartisan effort to write legislation next year to improve health care coverage for the 12.2 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid…

Education

The tight labor market is prompting more employers to eliminate one of the most significant requirements for many higher-paying jobs: the need for a college degree…

Public Safety & Justice Update 11/22/22

So far this year there have been more than 600 mass shootings — defined as a shooting when four or more people die or are injured in a single incident — in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA)...

Anderson Lee Aldrich was arrested and charged with murder and hate crimes for the murder of five people and wounding of 18 others inside a Colorado Spring’s LGBTQ club on 11/19…

The Colorado LGBTQ nightclub shooting by a suspected gunman who was arrested last year in connection with a bomb threat has renewed questions about "red flag" laws that are used irregularly across the U.S…

Christopher Jones Jr. is accused of shooting University of Virginia football players, killing three and injuring two others, on a bus that had returned from a field trip Sunday, 11/13…

Threat assessment has become an increasingly vital task during the past two decades at colleges and universities across the country…

Mental health professionals are riding along with officers to deal with the rise in mental health cases, but some critics question how safe this is…

Los Angeles police had been trained for decades in pretextual stops: Pull over a driver for a minor infraction such as broken taillight, use something vaguely suspicious — a shaking hand, a whiff of pot — to justify a search, hope to find drugs or weapons…

Police have killed more than 1,000 Americans this year – more than any other point in the past decade, according to recent data from Mapping Police Violence…

A panel of three appeals court judges appeared skeptical Tuesday, 11/22, that the federal government violated former president Donald Trump’s rights when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August, questioning whether a lower court judge erred in appointing an outside expert to review documents seized from the property…

The families of nine people killed last year by a coworker at a Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) rail yard will receive $8 million to settle damage claims filed last November, officials said…