Weekly Update 10/7/24

President and Administration

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning about the dangers of fake online pharmacies that sell counterfeit medications that frequently contain fentanyl…

President Biden signed an Executive Order Thursday (9/26) that seeks to ensure active school shooter drills are helpful without causing unnecessary panic…

Similarly, after a series of controversial active-shooter drills at California schools involving a masked man using a fake gun…

California

California’s long-awaited $25-per-hour health care worker minimum wage will start rolling out in October…

A California dairy worker tested presumptively positive for avian flu after experiencing mild symptoms…

Six months after a scathing state audit found that California had failed to track the $24 billion it spent to combat homelessness over the past half-decade…

Proposition 36, the ballot measure to increase penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, continues to gain support…

Education

Vice presidential candidates Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sparred over school shootings and migrant students in their 2024 election debate…

In a nationally representative survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center this summer, a quarter of teachers and school leaders polled said that politics…

Low performing schools are twice as likely to have lost substantial numbers of students – with nearly 500 losing 20 percent or more since the pandemic…

The EdWeek Research Center surveyed K-12 educators and high school students to learn more about how they view the conditions in their schools…

Federal ESSER funds provided for COVID-19 relief boosted student outcomes and helped schools through an economic crisis…

Weekly Update 9/30/24

President and Administration

President Biden hailed a 10 percent decrease in the number of fatal drug overdoses since the spring of 2023 as the largest on record…

The Department of Defense is committing $500 million a year toward women's health research…

California

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday (9/23) that will restrict student cell phone use at school…

The California School Boards Association is suing the state over Democrats' latest education budget, prolonging a constitutional fight that dominated spending talks this year…

State water officials warned on Thursday (9/26) that an emerging La Niña weather pattern could bring California back into drought…

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have created a process for Californians who had their land unjustly seized through eminent domain…

Education

This summer, over 1,000 NAACP delegates from across the country convened in Las Vegas to address issues impacting civil rights…

Middle schoolers are still lagging months behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in science…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 9/27/24

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was charged this week with bribery, wire fraud, and seeking illegal campaign donations, a years-long catalogue of alleged crimes stemming from what prosecutors called his “corrupt relationships” with wealthy foreigners…

President Joe Biden has signed a new order that will restrict gun technologies, essentially making it less easy to obtain guns and improve shooting drills in schools across the country…

The school shooting in Georgia’s Apalachee High School, the worst the state has seen in its history, has led to the arrest of over 700 students, 98 of them in the state itself…

Laws that ban assault weapons do protect children from dying in mass shootings, but the same can't be said for more common types of gun restrictions and regulations, new research shows…

On 8/21, teenagers were walking in Philadelphia when they encountered another group of juveniles. The two groups exchanged angry words, someone pulled a gun, and shots were fired…

People who solicit minors for sex in California can now be charged with a felony after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on 9/26 increasing penalties for sex trafficking…

Gov. Newsom signed several gun control measures this week, including one that allows the court to consider stalking and animal cruelty as grounds to restrict access to firearms…

The campaign to pass a tough-on-crime ballot initiative in California heads into its final stretch. Proposition 36, which would strengthen criminal penalties for repeat offenders of drug and theft crimes…

Weekly Update 9/23/24

President and Administration

Americans will soon no longer need to visit a doctor or pharmacy to be vaccinated against the seasonal flu…

On Tuesday (9/17), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services delivered to Congress a progress report on the federal implementation of the 2022 National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers…

On Tuesday (9/17), the Federal Communications Commission announced opening of the application window for the Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program…

he measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination rate has fallen below pre-pandemic levels, leaving tens of thousands more children without protection yearly…

The Education Department seeks to assure higher education leaders that the federal financial aid form is in far better shape than it was last year…

Congress

The House Freedom Caucus is central to every Republican spending fight…

The House passed an emergency spending bill Tuesday night (9/17) to boost veterans funding by almost $2.9 billion amid Biden administration warnings that VA benefits are at risk this month…

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday (9/18) approved legislation to protect kids' health using social media…

California’s 13th Congressional District, home to one of the nation’s closest House of Representatives races in 2022…

California

State officials denied a reservoir developer’s water quality permit application on Monday (9/16) in a minor setback for the Gov. Gavin Newsom-backed project…

California’s Insurance Department and Cal Poly Humboldt are teaming up to research how to create what would be the nation’s first public wildfire catastrophe model…

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a swath of housing legislation on Thursday (9/19), including bills to beef up enforcement against cities and counties that block new construction…

California residents have become the first in the nation to receive state-mandated discounts on property insurance to protect their homes against wildfire…

California’s carbon emissions were back in decline in 2022 after they rose in 2021 coming out of the pandemic…

Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Katie Butler as the new director of California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, his administration announced Friday (9/20)…

The California Apartment Association and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation dropped millions into their dueling ballot initiatives recently…

Education

Backers of California’s $10 billion statewide school bond measure have raised $3.7 million to pass Proposition 2 and established the campaign's architecture…

Voters have never approved a ballot initiative that paves the way for private school choice…

States and school districts have less than two weeks to plan for using the remnants of an enormous chunk of federal pandemic relief aid…

Schools in every state can now embrace competency-based education—awarding credit and diplomas based on students’ mastery of skills rather than seat time…

Black students are more than twice as likely as their white or Hispanic peers to have their writing incorrectly flagged as the work of artificial intelligence tools…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 9/20/24

The sheriff of a rural Kentucky county walked into a courthouse on Thursday afternoon and shot and killed a district judge in his chambers after an argument. Mickey Stines, 43, the sheriff in Letcher County, turned himself in after shooting Judge Kevin Mullins and was charged with first-degree murder…

The investigation continues into an apparent second "attempted assassination" of former President Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Secret Service agents removed Trump from the golf course in under 20 seconds after hearing gunfire…

Rep. Mike Collins’ community was rocked by the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history on Sept. 4. Two days later, the Republican representative stood before a crowd of mourners in his district and declared…

In the past three years, this model of homemade semi automatic firearms, known as an FGC-9, has appeared in the hands of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, rebels in Myanmar and neo-Nazis in Spain…

Edward A. Caban, the New York City police commissioner, resigned this week at the request of City Hall, which had asked him to step aside after federal agents seized his phone last week as part of a criminal investigation…