Weekly Update 7/1/24

President and Administration

The Biden administration is proposing Medicare pay home health agencies $280 million less in 2025, a major departure from the $140 million increase home health care received this year…

The conservative-majority Supreme Court handed Democratic leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom a major win Friday (6/28) by allowing them to remove tent encampments as homelessness has become a top concern of voters…

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday (6/24) announced new steps to increase access to affordable housing as stubbornly-high prices on groceries and other necessities push up the cost of living…

A commission to study reparations for Black Washingtonians descended from enslaved people or affected by Jim Crow-era institutional racism is about to move forward after securing funding in the D.C. Council’s 2025 budget…

Chief Justice Roberts announced that today (7/1) will be the Court’s last decisions of this term…

Congress

House GOP appropriators are proposing significant funding cuts at the Department of Transportation (DOT), aiming specifically at discretionary grants that appropriators feel duplicate money already provided by the 2021 infrastructure law…

House Republicans advanced their plan to significantly reduce federal education programs, teeing up what will likely be a fierce election-year spending fight…

House Republicans have included a provision in the housing and transportation spending bill that would bar any funding for the Biden administration’s executive orders on advancing racial equity…

California

A long-simmering battle between nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists is bubbling up again…

Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have agreed to place a $10 billion bond measure on the November ballot that would fund construction and repairs of K-12 schools and community colleges…

California lawmakers released a $10 billion climate bond proposal late Saturday night (6/29), teeing up votes ahead of the Wednesday (7/3) deadline to place borrowing measures on the ballot…

Education

A first-of-its-kind public Catholic school proposed for Oklahoma students is unconstitutional and can’t open, the state Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (6/25)…

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) introduced legislation to block charter schools that enter contracts with for-profit entities from receiving federal funds…

Police officers are employed to keep their communities safe. Since the 1960s, the “Officer Friendly” school program has assured children that the police are there to help…

The most visible school security measures — police officers, cameras, metal detectors — have dominated research and public debate on school safety for decades…

For the last three years, U.S. schools have been in an unusual position: They had lots of money to spend…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 6/28/24

The Supreme Court, on 6/28, made it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, a charge used in hundreds of prosecutions and also faced by former President Donald Trump…

This week, the U.S. surgeon general declared gun violence a public-health crisis for the first time, calling on policymakers to pass stronger laws to reduce deaths…

The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions’ new goal is to reduce gun violence 30 percent by 2030…

Former Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo has been indicted in connection with the investigation into the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas…

More than 500 people — some linked to transnational cartels and organized crime rings — have been charged with gun trafficking and other crimes under the landmark gun safety legislation President Biden signed two years ago…

A constitutional amendment banning involuntary prison labor is headed to the November ballot in California after both houses of the Legislature voted to approve the proposal on Thursday…

Mayor Sheng Thao made her first public remarks on 6/24 since the FBI raided her house last week — questioning the motives of the authorities who conducted the searches and vowing that “I will not be threatened out of this office….”

Weekly Update 6/24/24

President and Administration

Unlike other natural disasters, extreme heat doesn’t topple buildings, flood streets or turn road signs into missiles…

Telemedicine hasn’t yet transformed health care — as it seemed poised to do after virtual care took off during the COVID-19 pandemic…

A push by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to slap tobacco-style warning labels on social media galvanized supporters on Monday (6/17)…

On Tuesday (6/18), President Biden announced a major new policy initiative that would shield tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants from being deported…

A new CDC study suggests that locking and safely storing firearms could decrease gun homicides and injury to children…

Congress

The Senate is moving ahead on annual spending bills despite lacking a bipartisan agreement on funding totals…

This week, GOP leaders will embark on their most ambitious fiscal 2025 task yet: passing the Defense, State-Foreign Operations, and Homeland Security spending bills on the floor…

California

California regulators passed rules Thursday (6/20) to protect workers from rising indoor temperatures…

Gov. Newsom and legislative leadership on Saturday (6/22) announced a deal to address one of the largest budget deficits in California history…

Gov. Newsom on Tuesday (6/18) vowed to severely restrict the use of smartphones during the school day…

Education

As evidence mounts that the U.S. education system has barely started to reckon with the impact of COVID-related school closures on students with disabilities…

Experts say students’ lack of connection to school is one of the biggest factors leading to high absenteeism across the country…

Nearly 15 million children were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, doubling pre-pandemic numbers, and millions have lived through at least one traumatic experience, such as parent death or abuse…

In 35 states, students have a right to attend high school until at least age 20; a 74 investigation revealed a 19-year-old was repeatedly turned away…

Depending on where they grow up, some American students receive considerably less schooling every year than their peers in other areas, according to newly published research…

The ESSER cliff is coming. Most districts and states that initiated high-impact tutoring using federal ESSER dollars are scrambling…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 6/21/24

The Supreme Court upheld a federal law today, 6/21, that prevents those subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from having guns in its first major Second Amendment decision since a 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights…

The Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on bump stocks - devices that can attach to a semi-automatic rifle to make it fire as fast as a machine gun…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released two reports on new methods to measure the prevalence of crime using BJS's National Crime Victimization Survey, the nation’s primary source of information on criminal victimization…

Following a record-setting three years of gun violence, Philadelphia has seen a dramatic decline in shootings in 2024, but experts are unsure of why…

Antioch officers lost their jobs over crimes and racist texting scandals, while others faced demotions, pay cuts, reprimand…

After years of engagement led by organizations like Coalition for a Safer Delaware, a purchaser licensing bill, sometimes referred to as permit-to-purchase, passed the final hurdle in Delaware and has been signed into law by Governor John Carney…

The FBI served a search warrant Thursday, 6/20, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s home, part of surprise raids centering on a politically influential family in charge of the city’s contracted recycling company…

Weekly Update 6/17/24

President and Administration

As more states require schools to out transgender students to their families, a new study links involuntary disclosure of sexual orientation or gender identity to heightened rates of depression and anxiety…

Poverty and child poverty rose in 2022 by the largest amounts on record in data back to 1967, a sharp retreat from the historic progress made during the COVID-19 pandemic…

The Better Response report features effective policy solutions states can adopt to ensure that people experiencing a mental health emergency receive the appropriate care they need…

According to a study published in the Journal of Urban Economics, DACA recipients are more likely than migrants without deportation safeguards to ask the police for help…

Over 60 national care organizations sent a letter to President Biden last week, urging the president to take action for undocumented care workers and family caregivers…

Violent crime dropped significantly in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same time last year…

The Supreme Court on Thursday (6/13) maintained access to the abortion pill mifepristone, rebuffing attempts from abortion opponents to roll back policies that have made it easier to obtain the widely used drug…

President Biden could unveil new protections for some undocumented immigrants as soon as this week…

The federal government is laying the groundwork for a potentially major change to the nation’s largest rental assistance program…

Property insurers across the U.S. are raising rates and fleeing climate vulnerable areas in response to development in risky areas…

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal deficit climbed to $1.2 trillion for the first eight months of this fiscal year, up $38 billion from the shortfall recorded during the same period last year…

The Federal Reserve is set to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday (6/12), with a persistent drumbeat of data showing the U.S. economy is still chugging along…

Congress

Conservative and liberal lawmakers lambasted the FDA and the Justice Department at a Senate hearing Wednesday (6/12) for what they said is inadequate oversight of illegal e-cigarettes sales…

California

Chinese-made bicycles are about to get more expensive in the U.S…

As the Legislature works on a budget agreement with the governor, the airport industry is requesting $5.8 million in state matching funds to secure federal grants for airport improvement projects…

A Democratic lawmaker is pulling her support from a pair of bipartisan California retail theft bills following planned amendments that would revoke the laws…

Governor Newsom is more than doubling the number of California National Guard service members deployed statewide to stem transnational trade of illegal narcotics…

Californians are sour on government spending and borrowing, according to a statewide survey released late Thursday (6/13)…

Legislative Democrats passed initial budget bills on Thursday (6/13) ahead of a June 15 deadline, but the real action is coming soon…

Education

 At the nation’s first religious charter school — an Oklahoma virtual K-12 named for the patron saint of the internet — student registration and staff recruitment are in full swing for an August opening…

In many states and districts, post-pandemic learning recovery began with literacy…

A philanthropic initiative launched in 2022 to get students back on track from COVID learning loss is returning promising results…

Every school day, police respond to thousands of calls from schools across California…