Weekly Update 11/6/23

Appropriations

On Thursday, 11/2, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) floated a fresh idea on for heading off a shutdown after the Nov. 17 deadline, one that would seemingly create a series of rolling funding threats and could draw opposition from across the political spectrum…

The House delayed consideration of its transportation funding bill until this week, as some Republicans expressed concerns with the bill’s proposed Amtrak cuts…

On Wednesday, 11/1, The Senate passed its three-bill funding package nearly two months after the measure cleared its first legislative hurdle in the upper chamber…

On Friday, 11/3, the House on voted 213-203 to approve a $25.4 billion fiscal 2024 funding bill for the EPA and Interior Department, a measure that would dramatically slash funds for the agencies and the Biden administration’s climate change priorities, but which has no hope of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or being signed by President Biden…

Senate appropriators are mulling a continuing resolution that would run until mid-December, which would put the chamber on a collision course with new Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who’s been pushing to kick final spending decisions into next year…

The House Republican Israel aid bill that passed Thursday night, 11/2, with help from a dozen Democrats has no shot at passage in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said he won’t even put it on the floor…

On Thursday, 11/2, the House Ways and Means Committee unanimously approved $4.9 billion in tax breaks for disaster victims…

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that will help officials track down missing Black women and children…

California

California's last-ditch property insurer for wildfire coverage is expanding at its fastest rate yet as home and commercial property owners find it difficult to buy policies on the regular market, according to figures released Wednesday, 11/1…

Wildfire smoke contributes to thousands of deaths each year in the United States, according to a new report that also finds that exposure to soot and smog adds to the likelihood that babies will be born prematurely or have low birth weight, writes E&E News' Sean Reilly…

California officials are pushing hard to secure $3 billion in federal infrastructure funding to ramp up construction on the state’s embattled high-speed rail project…

The effort to legalize magic mushrooms in California has taken an unexpected bipartisan twist that could improve its odds of passage…

Sen. Laphonza Butler is tapping Marvin Figueroa as chief of staff…

President and Administration

Top Biden officials are preparing Democratic lawmakers and immigration policy advocates for the likelihood the administration will have to swallow compromises on asylum law in order for the president’s national security funding request to pass…

President Biden’s Treasury Department is expected to announce a decision that could make it even harder to persuade Americans to buy electric cars — or could fuel new GOP accusations that his policies are aiding China…

President Biden is considering canceling student debt for borrowers whose balances have ballooned because of interest accrual, those who’ve been trying to repay for 25 years and students who attended low-performing colleges…

As the Biden administration reiterates calls for tougher gun measures in response to the mass shooting in Maine two weeks ago, House Republicans updated a fiscal 2024 spending bill with provisions that take the opposite track…

On Tuesday, 10/31, the court will consider whether school officials — in one case, board members for the San Diego-area Poway school district — can block constituents from responding to posts on platforms like Facebook and X…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its annual report on food security, showing that 44.2 million people (in 17.0 million households) in the U.S. could not afford enough food to eat at some point in 2022…

Congress

The top Democrat and Republican senators on the Finance Committee released a discussion draft aimed at reining in pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) and boosting mental health access…

Democratic lawmakers are putting new pressure on congressional leaders to secure emergency funding in the upcoming federal stopgap funding measure to keep afloat the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC…

On Wednesday, 11/1, a pair of Senate committees launched an investigation pressing private insurance companies to explain how they plan to cover escalating losses arising from extreme weather fueled by climate change…

Education

A new study finds that “charter schools tend to demonstrate greater efficiency on both metrics of cost-effectiveness and return on investment, using fewer dollars to achieve better outcomes, relative to traditional public schools…”

Developed by K-12 IT practitioners, for K-12 IT practitioners—and aligned to cybersecurity risk management best practices—the K12 SIX Essentials series establishes baseline cybersecurity standards for U.S. school districts and provides guidance and tools to support their implementation…

Excluding students — particularly Black, Latino and indigenous students — from class leads to a big drop in their GPAs , according to a study by researchers with UCSF…

An overwhelming majority of Americans want children to have active shooter drills in school, but a new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that they differ on how to conduct them, and what safety measures to invest in…

Weekly Update 10/30/23

California

California once boasted the nation’s best vaccination rates…

More than 30 states and DC filed a federal lawsuit against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, alleging the platforms’ apps are designed to be addictive and harm children’s mental health…

 After months of staying largely silent on efforts to raise penalties for fentanyl dealers, Gov. Gavin Newsom is now paving the way to treat them like murderers…

President and Administration

On Thursday, 10/19, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to allow E-Rate funding to be used for wi-fi on school buses, beginning in funding year 2024, as the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) is set to sunset…

The new White House gun safety office has its hands full…

The maker of Paxlovid, an antiviral COVID-19 treatment, is OK with the government's plan to give away its stockpiled doses for free for the rest of the year…

Many analysts are forecasting a positive outlook on the economy…

This piece by economics blogger Noah Smith about 2022 Federal Reserve and Treasury Department data that highlights how average American household wealth has increased and overall wealth inequality has dipped since the pandemic…

The Education Department was expected to unveil its Title IX final rule this month, but dozens of civil rights groups and sexual misconduct prevention groups are concerned about another delay…

President Biden’s Request for Domestic Funding

The White House is asking Congress to provide $1.55 billion in supplemental funding to help states and territories provide treatment, harm reduction and recovery support services to people with opioid use disorder…

On Wednesday, 10/18, President Biden asked Congress for $16 billion to support the child care industry as part of a larger supplemental funding request for domestic priorities…

Congress

On Friday, 10/27, Senate leaders reached an agreement to vote on amendments and passage of the stalled three-bill spending package…

On Thursday, 10/26, the Senate voted 35-62 to reject the minibus amendment by Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) that would have barred earmarks (Politico Pro)….

With a newly installed speaker after three tumultuous weeks, the House is back in legislative action with passage of the fiscal 2024 Energy-Water bill on Thursday, 10/26. In a 210-199 vote, the lower chamber approved the measure that aims to gut clean energy programs and climate spending from the Inflation Reduction Act…

Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will introduce legislation that would make permanent requirements that state Medicaid programs cover medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorder…

Education

The NEA Big Read, established in 2016, supports Americans reading and discussing a single book communitywide…

A U.S. Department of Education delay in revising the forms known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) means college advisors nationally will have to wait two months until December, or even after Christmas break, to start helping the 20 million students that typically apply…

Girls consistently are outperforming boys, graduating at higher rates at public high schools…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 10/27/23

Residents continued to shelter Thursday night as hundreds of heavily armed police and FBI agents searched for shooter Robert Card, an Army reservist authorities say fatally shot 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in the worst mass killing in state history…

Murders in the United States dropped just over 6 percent in 2022 compared with 2021, according to the F.B.I. Experts say preliminary data for 2023 indicates that the decline has accelerated this year…

With police departments across the country struggling to hire and retain officers, the Justice Department issued a new report this week with strategies aimed at helping law enforcement agencies grow their forces…

Guns are deeply ingrained in American society and the nation’s political debates…

Wednesday’s deadly shootings in Maine brought scrutiny to the relatively loose gun laws in the state, where Democratic lawmakers have unsuccessfully tried to pass tougher requirements in the past year despite controlling both chambers of the legislature…

A disproportionate number of people injured or killed by officers in San Jose are mentally ill or intoxicated from drugs or alcohol…

A judge this week reinstated all charges, including a murder count, against a former police officer who shot and killed a driver through a rolled-up car window in a confrontation police initially described as the officer shooting the driver after he lunged at him with a knife outside the car…

California has seen increases in some crime over the last decade, including notable jumps in homicides, auto theft, and most recently retail theft, as well as a slow gradual uptick in aggravated assaults…

Weekly Update 10/23/23

California

Newly appointed California Sen. Laphonza Butler will not seek a full Senate term next year, avoiding a contest that features three high-profile Democrats jostling for the once-in-a-lifetime job…

Christina Pascucci, a veteran television news reporter in Los Angeles, launched a longshot campaign for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat on Wednesday, 10/18, further plunging one of the nation’s most competitive and closely watched primaries deeper into uncertain territory…

Recently released by the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, the Latino Data Hub is a free tool in English and Spanish that breaks down information on Latinos in California and nationwide on a granular level…

President and Administration

The Biden administration is expected to send Congress a funding request for domestic priorities this week…

The Biden administration asked Congress on Friday, 10/20, to approve a $106 billion package of emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as funds for the southern U.S. border and other humanitarian needs…

The Education Department said on Friday, 10/20, that it believed that about 305,000 federal student loan borrowers received bills from servicers with incorrect payment amounts in recent months as they applied for Biden’s new income-driven repayment plan and prepared to begin repaying…

Congress

A rare moment of bipartisanship in the Senate recently emerged over the need to improve mental health treatment…

Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat drug overdoses, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing…

In the Senate, leaders are still trying to negotiate an amendment package to get going on that three-bill funding package that stalled last month…

More than a hundred members of Congress are against a proposed rule to set a minimum federal staffing standard in nursing homes…

Education

A California judge said Thursday, 10/19, that a school district policy on transgender students is likely unconstitutional…

Last school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them, according to an investigation by The Washington Post…

Legislation aimed at tackling the issue of cyberattacks on the state's public K-12 education system was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, 10/11…

California’s labor board has ruled that the Oakland school district administration didn't have to negotiate with the local teachers union before shuttering or merging schools, a precedent-setting decision that could constrain labor’s influence over future consolidations…

California students made up lost ground in math and science last school year but fell even further behind in reading, according to the second statewide test results released since the pandemic…

State schools superintendent Tony Thurmond said he’ll request upwards of $500 million in next year’s budget to train school staff as learning gaps between disadvantaged students and their peers persist across California…

Fewer than half of the Head Start centers have a public transit stop within walking distance for preschoolers, according to a new analysis being released today by groups calling on policymakers to prioritize transit accessibility in the nation’s main early childhood education program for low-income families…

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general sued a state panel on Friday, 10/20, in an effort to block the debut of the country’s first public religious charter school…

Weekly Update 10/16/23

California

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top health care priority is heading to voters in March — a package of mental health reforms and a more than $6 billion bond for more treatment capacity…

Sen. Laphonza Butler has until Dec. 8 to decide if she wants to run for a full term next year…

Pro-housing activists had a blockbuster year in the Legislature, notching some of their biggest wins since the YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) movement got its start in the Bay Area more than a decade ago…

On Tuesday, 10/10, Governor Newsom signed a law that will require data brokers to delete all information collected on individuals, when requested…

On Tuesday, 10/10, dozens of business executives, school superintendents and labor leaders gathered at the California Department of Education in Sacramento to discuss expanding paid internships for high school students throughout the state…

On Friday, 10/13, the White House announced that California will receive up to $1.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy to produce and create a market for renewable hydrogen…

President and Administration

Across the country, almost 690 nursing homes have shut their doors since 2020, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)…

A White House official says the administration will soon announce additional commitments from the private and public sectors to meet its goal of reducing diet-related disease by 2030…

HealthBegins firmly believes that the Community Health Worker, Promotora, and Community Health Representative (CHW/P/R) workforce are critical to delivering effective, equitable care for patients and for advancing health equity for communities harmed by societal practices…

The latest flood of illicit e-cigarettes is arriving from China in Barbiecore colors and fruit, ice cream and slushy flavors, and accounts for a major share of the estimated $5.5 billion e-cigarette market in the United States…

The Biden administration will work to address what a top Education Department official calls “pervasive problems” in the nation’s student loan system…

Congress

Top House appropriators are predicting another stopgap (and blaming the Senate), in a sign that a late-November shutdown might not be in the cards…

Education

On Monday, 10/10, an Oklahoma state board voted to approve a contract for the nation’s first Catholic charter school…

It’s well established that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic…

On Monday, 10/9, the Texas Senate unveiled its main bill to establish an education savings account program, a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott this special session…

The international debate over technology and youth was jolted two weeks ago by a surprising announcement: Schools in the United Kingdom will soon ban the use of cell phones…

The percentage of charter school students in Washington state scoring proficient in math went up nearly 15 points in the latest round of state tests compared to those administered in the 2020-21 school year, a marked sign of improvement in a subject whose pandemic-era scores nosedived…

Holding back struggling readers in elementary school can yield benefits that extend in surprising directions, a recently released study suggests…

A federal civil rights investigation into a California school district found that staff improperly restrained and secluded special education students and infrequently checked in with them afterward…

As climate disasters become more commonplace, school districts are learning that a strong storm can put learning in a state of disarray…

Four teenagers take turns reading steadily from a teleprompter. Their message is as simple as their videos’ black and white color scheme: With fentanyl, there is no second chance…