San Diego Union-Tribune: Opioid Settlements To Fund Fentanyl Tests, Naloxone And More 
San Diego County’s share of money from settlements paid by opioid manufacturers will help expand naloxone distribution, support overdose survivors and provide fentanyl test strips to detect contaminated drugs, officials said in an update Tuesday. (Brennan, 5/24)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: County Joins City Of San Diego Plan To Buy Hotels To House Homeless People. 'Silly To Leave Money On The Table.' 
A divided county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to authorize up to $32 million in loans toward the city of San Diego’s potential purchase of four residential properties that could be used to house more than 300 homeless people. (Warth, 5/23)

Voice of OC: Will OC’s Homeless Prevention Workers Need Homeless Services Themselves? 
As Orange County Supervisors approved nearly $22 million in homeless services contracts, one elected official wondered aloud if those contracted workers would need the very services they provide. Questions surfaced over whether enough of that funding – awarded to the homeless services group known as Mercy House at the Board of Supervisors’ regular Tuesday meeting – would go to the very workers who would manage people’s cases directly. And whether they would fall into poverty themselves. (Pho, 5/24)

Berkeleyside: Are COVID-19 Tests, Vaccines, And Treatments Still Free?
The federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declaration ended on May 11, marking an important shift in the nation’s pandemic response. It will be a while longer, however, before anything changes dramatically regarding COVID care and prevention for people living in Oakland, Berkeley, and elsewhere in the state. (Rasilla and Yelilmeli, 5/23)

KQED: At-Home COVID Tests Are Still Effective In 2023 — And You Can Still Get Them For Free
As a new COVID-19 variant rapidly emerges, many are wondering how tools such as at-home testing will fare against the latest virus evolutions. The good news is that testing, along with vaccines and post-infection treatments, are still readily available, and infectious disease experts say these remain some of our best defenses against the spread of COVID-19. (Johnson, Severn, 5/23)

Bloomberg: Covid Kills One Every 4 Minutes As Vaccine Rates Fall, Despite End Of Emergency
After more than three years, the global Covid emergency is officially over. Yet it’s still killing at least one person every four minutes and questions on how to deal with the virus remain unanswered, putting vulnerable people and under-vaccinated countries at risk. (Fay Cortez, 5/23)

AP: High Blood Pressure Plagues Many Black Americans. Combined With COVID, It's Catastrophic
In a nation plagued by high blood pressure, Black people are more likely to suffer from it — and so, in the time of COVID-19, they are more likely than white people to die. It’s a stark reality. And it has played out in thousands of Black households that have lost mothers and fathers over the past three years, a distinct calamity within the many tragedies of the pandemic. (Stafford, 5/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Regulators Will Reassess Widely Used Rat Poison
Eight months after an appeals court found California was ignoring the dangers that a widely used rat-killing chemical may pose to other creatures, state pesticide regulators have announced they will take another look at the chemical. ... Diphacinone, the most commonly used chemical against rats and field mice in California, is an anticoagulant that kills rodents by preventing their blood from clotting. It can also harm bobcats, coyotes, owls and other predators that consume the rodents, and can affect humans who eat contaminated meat. It has been approved by federal regulators but can be further restricted by the states. (Egelko, 5/23)

Los Angeles Times: How Hot Is California Going To Get This Summer? Here's What Experts Say
Californians can expect hotter-than-average temperatures this summer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts that the weather for June, July and August will be warmer than normal. (Lin, 5/23)

Roll Call: CDC: HIV Declines Driven By Teens, Young Adults
New HIV infections dropped 12 percent in 2021 compared to 2017, according to new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates released Tuesday, with the biggest drops among young gay and bisexual men. But the agency warned that HIV prevention efforts need to be accelerated to reach the national goals. (Raman, 5/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: As States Target TikTok, Gen Z Teaches Itself To Navigate Social Media
Every morning since their mom let them have a phone three years ago, Jay Wilson has awakened in their seafoam green bedspread and rolled over to scroll through social media. In April, the bubbly high school senior from Alameda decided to change their habits, charging their phone in the opposite corner of the room so it’s harder to reach from bed. (Mayeda, 5/24)

The Hill: ‘Am I Gay?’-Related Google Searches Soar 1,300 Percent In 19 Years: Analysis 
Google searches related to personal sexual orientation and gender identity have skyrocketed since 2004, according to new research.  The Cultural Currents Institute released an analysis that explored Google searches from 2004 to this month that included searches for questions such as “am I gay”, “am I lesbian”, “am I trans” and “how to come out”, as well as searches for “nonbinary.” The new analysis found that searches for these phrases jumped by more than 1,300 percent during that period. (Sforza, 5/23)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: County Supervisors Approve $7.2M To Shift Focus From Incarceration To Treatment, Other Services
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed Tuesday to make a $7.2 million investment in programs that would route people who commit low-level crimes into services rather than jail. The initiative, called Safety Through Services, is the product of an 18-month study that looked at who ends up in San Diego County jails, why and the best approaches to keep them from returning. (Davis, 5/23)

AP: CDC Investigating Salmonella Outbreak In 6 States Linked To Papa Murphy's Cookie Dough 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with state and federal agencies, are investigating reports of 18 salmonella infections in at least half a dozen states that may have come from raw cookie dough sold at Papa Murphy’s. People have been sickened in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, California and Missouri, the CDC said Tuesday. Illnesses were reported from Feb. 27-May 2. (5/23)

ABC News: Biden To Call For End To 'Epidemic' Of Gun Violence A Year After Uvalde Shooting 
President Joe Biden plans on Wednesday to call on Republicans in Congress to act to end the "epidemic" of gun violence in the United States, the White House said. The remarks are expected during an afternoon speech marking a year since the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. (Haslett, Travers and Shalvey, 5/24)

Reuters: Hollywood Needs To Depict Safer Gun Use In Film And TV - Study
Hollywood should portray safer use of guns in television and film at a time of rampant gun violence in the United States, USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center for Hollywood, Health and Society said in a report released on Tuesday. (Washington, 5/23)

Axios: U.S. Lawmakers OK'd More Pro-Gun Bills Than Safety Measures Since Uvalde
State legislators around the country have passed more laws expanding gun access than they have measures on gun control in the year since the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting that left 19 children and two teachers day, according to an Axios analysis of data provided by the Giffords Center. More than 1,700 gun-related bills have been introduced in state legislatures since the Uvalde shooting, and 93 of them were signed into law. (Contreras and Davis, 5/23)

USA Today: 'It's Just So Scary': As Mass Shootings Increase, House GOP Wants To Repeal Bipartisan Gun Reform
Days after the May 6 mass shooting in Allen, Texas, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado introduced legislation to repeal all “gun control provisions and every Second Amendment Infringement” passed from early 2021 to early 2023 and signed into law by President Joe Biden. “I unapologetically support the Second Amendment," Boebert said in a statement, calling gun control measures "nonsense" and saying she will "stand for law-abiding Americans and the Constitution.” The bill – the Shall Not be Infringed Act – would target provisions in several pieces of legislation, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which earned the support of 15 Republican senators. (Elbeshbishi, 5/24)

NPR: Poll: Most Americans Say Curbing Gun Violence Is More Important Than Gun Rights
The highest percentage of Americans in a decade say they think it's more important to curb gun violence than protect gun rights, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. The finding comes a year after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the second-deadliest in American history. Multiple other mass shootings that have taken place in the time since that one. (Montanaro, 5/24)

ABC News: 'Work Requirements' Emerge As Flashpoint In Debt Ceiling, Spending Talks
As Washington struggles to reach a debt ceiling deal with little more than a week until potential default, a key hangup in the negotiations is turning out to be -- "work requirements." A long-sought effort by Republicans to impose stricter conditions on recipients of Medicaid and other federal assistance programs is now front-and-center in the debt ceiling standoff. (Hutzler, Scott, and Ferris, 5/23)

Politico: Court Sets Legal Showdown On Debt Limit 14th Amendment Argument 
A judge in Boston has ordered a hearing next week on one of the key arguments that President Joe Biden has the legal authority to ignore the debt limit statute and continue to pay the federal government’s bills. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns set a May 31 hearing on a lawsuit filed by a federal workers union contending that the 14th Amendment empowers Biden and other officials to sidestep the standoff with Congress that has threatened a potential default. (Gerstein, 5/23)

The Hill: McCarthy, Dems Temper Expectations On Debt-Ceiling Deal
Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are starting to temper expectations among their members about what a final debt ceiling deal could look like, becoming more explicit in acknowledging that neither side will get everything it wants. (Brooks and Folley, 5/24)

Axios: Rising Medical Costs Force Americans To Skip The Doctor
The share of Americans who skipped medical treatment last year because of costs rose substantially from the lows of 2020 and 2021, per a Federal Reserve Survey out Monday. The ability to afford health care often translates into better health. The survey also found that in families with income less than $25,000, 75% reported being in good health, compared with 91% for those with income of $100,000 or more. (Peck, 5/23)