Health in California The CALIFORNIA State Board of Education approves a new history and social sciences curriculum that includes new instruction on topics like financial literacy; voter education; genocide; and the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual...
U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled this month that Wisconsin voters lacking the photo identification mandated by that state’s 2011 voter ID law can cast ballots after signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. “Although most...
The recent good news for Illinois is that, as the Cap J reported in July , Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) and the state’s Democrat-controlled Legislature finally agreed on a budget, a $75 billion stopgap spending plan for the 2017 fiscal year that will fund...
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is one loyal dude. For the last 18 months, he has shown unwavering support for New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who has been dueling with the NFL over a ball tampering scandal from the 2015 AFC championship...
CO Voters to Consider Minimum Wage Increase A proposal to raise COLORADO’s minimum wage appears to be headed for the state’s November ballot, with backers saying this month that they expected to deliver 200,000 petition signatures to the...
New Jersey Signs AB 2949 NEW JERSEY Gov. Chris Christie (R) signs AB 2949 , which bars the harvesting of diamondback terrapins in the Garden State. The law also requires state environmental officials to develop a management plan for terrapins (NJTODAY...
Gov. Hogan Funds MD Drug Treatment Initiative MARYLAND Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) office announced it had provided $540,000 to fund a pilot program intended to give nonviolent drug offenders a chance at drug treatment rather than jail. The funds...
The Central Intelligence Agency got its start 69 years ago today when President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act. What—you may wonder—does that have to do with your real estate business? More than you might think. While the business...
AL Gov Calling for Special Session on Lottery ALABAMA Gov. Robert Bentley (R) has called for a special session to consider a referendum on establishing a state lottery. Voters rejected a lottery proposal 17 years ago, but Bentley, who’s been...
New York Signs AB 3461 NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signs AB 3461 , which requires a court order appointing a guardian to oversee the care of an incapacitated person to identify all individuals who are entitled to notice of a person's death,...
Massachusetts Endorses HB 4488 The MASSACHUSETTS House and Senate each endorse HB 4488 , a bill that would bring the Bay State in compliance with the 2001 federal Real ID law. That law requires states to issue driver’s licenses that are more...
Social Policy in Alaska The ALASKA Supreme Court overturns a Last Frontier State law that required doctors to give parents two days’ notice before performing an abortion on a minor girl. The court said the law violated the state constitution...
Potpourri in Massachusetts MASSACHUSETTS Attorney General Maura Healy (D) announces the Bay State will crack down on the sale of semi-automatic weapons, which have been banned there since 1998. Healey said gun sellers have been exploiting a loophole...
In the introduction to 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report published by the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry urged for global supply chain transparency in response to modern slavery. He wrote, “The bottom line is that this is...
Fifty-nine—that’s the number of countries mentioned in the 87 corporate investigations through the end of June, according to research by The FCPA Blog . The implication is clear: The reach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) crosses...
Guest written by Chris Scully, Senior Media Intelligence Analyst, LexisNexis Day 1 of the RNC ended and Day 2 began and was dominated by attention on Melania Trump’s 15-minute address. And, following Sunday night’s disastrous 60 Minutes...
Around this time last year, many lamented the pending exit of Jon Stewart from the late-night TV, but NPR’s Dave Davies may have said it best on Fresh Air when he noted, “Tomorrow morning, a generation of 30-somethings will wake up and realize...
Even as political prognosticators debate the merits of vice presidents and polling, 15,000 credentialed members of the media are in Cleveland for this week’s Republican National Convention. After months of tracking the progress—or lack of...
Late nights, lots of take-out food and a jam-packed schedule that often allows little time for exercise can leave capitol denizens packing extra pounds by the time things go to sine die. Which is why this year the South Carolina Hospital Association and...
MA Approves SB 2394, SB 2409 and SB 2119 The MASSACHUSETTS Senate approves SB 2394 , which would bar Bay State employers from running credit checks on job applicants. The measure, which makes exceptions for positions where the employee would handle...
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) launched an effort last week to extend the Golden State’s wobbly cap-and-trade emissions reductions program a decade beyond its scheduled 2020 end date. The proposal put forth by the California Air Resources...
Voters in Washington, D.C. will consider a referendum in November on whether to make the nation’s capital the 51st state. The hope of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) who proposed the referendum and the D.C. Council that unanimously approved it last...
In the final hours of the fiscal year that ended on June 30, Pennsylvania lawmakers sent Gov. Tom Wolf (D) a bipartisan $31.5 billion general appropriations bill but didn’t include a plan for how to pay for that spending (see PA Passes Partial Budget...
Budgets often contain lots of pet projects or other things not likely to get through the legislature on their own. A prime sampling this year comes from Massachusetts, where, as the Boston Globe reports , tucked away into the recently signed $39 billion...
Twenty-five states joined Texas in challenging President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy in November 2014, expanding temporary relief from deportation for undocumented immigrants. Fifteen states also filed amicus, or “friend...