CalMatters: California Lawmakers Want To Know Why Billions In Spending Isn’t Reducing Homelessness
The state has spent billions of dollars on homelessness in recent years. So why is the crisis getting worse instead of better? That’s what a bipartisan group of California legislators is trying to get to the bottom of by calling for a first-of-its kind, large-scale audit of the state’s homelessness spending. (Kendall, 4/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Only 15% Of Bay Area Cities Have Met California Housing Plan Deadline
More than two months after the deadline for Bay Area cities to submit housing plans to the state, the vast majority — 85% — have not come to an agreement with California officials over how to realistically build more homes in the next eight years, a sign of how long and fraught the state-mandated process can be despite the urgency of the housing crisis. (Echeverria, 4/17)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento County Supervisors Vote On Homeless Hotels Future
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday to decide the future of the 212 people still housed in two motels through Project Roomkey, a pandemic-response homelessness initiative. If passed, the new resolution would clear the way for the county to spend $6.3 million in federal funding to “ramp down and close this emergency sheltering program.” (Lange, 4/18)

Sacramento Bee: California Bill Would Require Schools To Address Body Shaming
Citing a rise in eating disorders among children and teens, a California bill would require schools to develop policies around body shaming. (Angst, 4/17)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Deal Reached For San Diego To Take Over Billing, Staffing From Struggling Ambulance Provider Falck
San Diego and its struggling private ambulance provider have reached a deal that fundamentally changes their partnership by giving the city control over staffing, ambulance deployment and patient billing. (Garrick, 4/17)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Layoffs, Shuttered Programs, Disputes With Insurers. San Diego County Hospitals Facing Financial Headwinds 
Last week, University of California health providers in San Diego and across the state worked to avoid a contract lapse, warning their patients with Aetna health insurance coverage that they faced losing access as an April 21 deadline loomed. (Sisson, 4/16)

Modern Healthcare: Medical Device Supply Chain Problems Plague Hospitals
Scripps Health has about eight times more medical devices and supplies on backorder than the integrated nonprofit health system had in 2019. San Diego, California-based Scripps has been managing shortages in ligatures and oxygenators that stop bleeding, catheters used in heart surgery and urology and custom procedure trays and surgical packs, among other things. (Kacik, 4/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: New COVID Variant XBB.1.16 Hits US, Causing Previously Rare Symptom
A new COVID-19 subvariant “threatens to shatter” hopes to stave off a new coronavirus surge in the U.S. before next winter, and some experts worry it could be linked to the rise of a previously rare pandemic symptom. XBB.1.16, which reached reportable levels in the U.S. last week, could be behind an uptick of conjunctivitis, especially in children, reports from India suggest, alongside the more common symptoms of fever, cough and fatigue. (Vaziri, 4/17)

Axios: What To Know About The XBB. 1.16 "Arcturus" COVID Subvariant
A new COVID-19 subvariant, XBB. 1.16, has been spreading around the world and gaining more recent traction in the U.S. The spread of the new subvariant, known as Arcturus, comes as much of the world eases out of the pandemic. The World Health Organization said it first detected samples of Arcturus in January, before designating it as a new variant under monitoring (VUM) on March 22. (Saric, 4/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid Emerged As Chinese Lab Faced Biosafety Issues, Senate Republican Study Finds
A Chinese laboratory conducting advanced coronavirus research faced a series of biosafety problems in November 2019 that drew the attention of top Beijing officials and coincided with the Covid pandemic’s emergence, according to a new report being released by Senate Republicans on the pandemic’s origins. The report, released Monday by a Republican member of the Senate Health Committee, a final version of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, charts a confluence of unexplained events in that month and concludes the pandemic more likely began from a lab accident than naturally, via an animal infecting humans. (Strobel and Gordon, 4/17)

NPR: COVID During Pregnancy Can Affect Brain Development In Baby Boys, Study Says
Boys born to mothers who got COVID-19 while pregnant appear nearly twice as likely as other boys to be diagnosed with subtle delays in brain development. That's the conclusion of a study of more than 18,000 children born at eight hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts. Nearly 900 of the children were born to mothers who had COVID during their pregnancy. (Hamilton, 4/18)

CIDRAP: Experimental Metabolic Drug Cuts Fatigue In Long-COVID Patients 
The investigational metabolic modulator AXA1125 was associated with significantly less physical and cognitive fatigue compared with a placebo in long-COVID patients, according to a small randomized, controlled phase 2 pilot study trial led by researchers from the University of Oxford and AXA1125 maker Axcella Therapeutics, which also funded the study. (Van Beusekom, 4/17)

USA Today: How US Births During COVID Differed In Red, Blue States
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the biggest one-year drop in U.S. births in nearly 50 years. But a new study shows not every state was equally affected. Researchers found some states experienced steep decreases in fertility while other saw little change, according to the report published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Human Reproductions. (Rodriguez, 4/17)

Modern Healthcare: ACA Insurers Must Include Mental Health Providers In Plans: CMS
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will require insurers on the Affordable Care Act exchanges to include substance abuse and mental health providers in their plans, among other things. (Tepper and Turner, 4/17)

The New York Times: McCarthy Proposes One-Year Debt Ceiling Increase Tied To Spending Cuts 
Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday proposed a one-year debt ceiling increase paired with a set of spending cuts and policy changes, backing down substantially from earlier demands but making clear that Republicans would not raise the borrowing limit to avert a catastrophic debt default without conditions. ... The bill Mr. McCarthy says he is planning to put forward would freeze spending at last fiscal year’s levels, rescind tens of billions of dollars in unspent pandemic relief funds, enact stricter work requirements on food stamp and Medicaid recipients, expand domestic mining and fossil fuel production, and roll back federal regulations Republicans view as overly burdensome. (Edmondson and Tankersley, 4/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Kevin McCarthy Says House GOP Plans To Vote On Debt Limit, Spending Cuts 
Mr. McCarthy also said the House Republican plan would require the federal government to rescind money approved for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic that hasn’t been spent. And he said that able-bodied Americans without children or other dependents should have to work to receive government benefits. While House Republicans broadly support work requirements for programs such as Medicaid, which offers health insurance to low-income Americans, and food stamps, other cuts are expected to face opposition from more moderate Republicans. House Republican leaders held a call on Sunday with members to emphasize the importance of sticking together in the fiscal talks. (Duehren, 4/17)

Reuters: US House Speaker McCarthy Pitches Budget Cuts For Debt Limit Vote
Democrats reacted with swift opposition to McCarthy's framework. "Today House Republicans have made their priorities crystal clear: keep Wall Street happy and take away health care and food assistance from working Americans," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden in a statement. (Cowan and Jackson, 4/17)

Reuters: Republican States Could Be Hit Hardest By McCarthy's Proposed Spending Cuts 
The spending-cut proposals unveiled by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday could fall hardest on people in Republican-leaning states, a Reuters analysis of federal spending data found. ... McCarthy's spending cuts would not scale back Social Security retirement benefits, which are projected to double in cost over the coming 10 years. But the agency warned last month that budget cuts could make it more difficult to administer benefits. That could have a bigger impact in Trump-voting states, where 20.1% of residents rely on the program, compared to 18.6% of residents in Biden states. ... McCarthy also proposed stiffening work requirements for benefit programs like SNAP, which provides grocery money for low-income people. That, likewise could hit Republican-leaning states harder: 3.1% of the population in those states could lose benefits, compared with 2.8% of residents in Biden states, according to a Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. (Sullivan, 4/17)

Los Angeles Times: FDA Case May Reveal If Supreme Court Conservative Justices Are Abortion Foes Above All Else
The Supreme Court’s fast-track encounter with abortion pills this week may reveal much about the three justices who were crucial to overturning Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion. Are they traditional conservatives who are skeptical of politically driven lawsuits that seek to change the law and public policy? Or are they so deeply opposed to abortion that they will look favorably on a lawsuit that would overturn regulations set by the Food and Drug Administration and sharply limit access to a medication that has been used by more than 5 million American women over two decades? (Savage, 4/17)

EdSource: Who’s On The Team: A Guide To The Latest Federal Actions About Transgender Athletes 
Recently, two federal actions brought some clarity to policies and laws related to the right of transgender students to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The decisions, by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Supreme Court, are not the final word on trans athletes, but they are important milestones in the debate. Here’s a guide to those decisions and where the law stands now for young people who want to play on the single-sex teams that they believe match their gender identity, rather than the team that matches the sex they were at birth. (Jones, 4/18)

The Washington Post: Anti-Trans Bills Have Doubled Since 2022. Our Map Shows Where States Stand
On Thursday, members of the Montana legislature held a contentious hours-long hearing on a bill to define sex in state law as male or female. In Nebraska, legislators resumed debate on, then voted to advance a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors, following a weeks-long filibuster by the bill’s opponents. Two days earlier, the Missouri House approved restrictions on trans girls’ participation in sports and on gender-affirming care for minors. The same day, North Dakota’s governor signed into law a measure to ban trans girls from joining female sports teams in grades K-12 and in college. The near-daily flurry of simultaneous hearings and votes is the result of a tsunami of anti-trans bills that have been making their way through dozens of states legislatures since January. (Kirkpatrick and Branigin, 4/17)

Los Angeles Times: A Search For Justice After A Mentally Ill 17-Year-Old Stabs Janitor To Death
To Dora Molina, the teenager who took her husband’s life is a danger to the public and needs to spend up to 30 years behind bars, about the same amount of time she and José Tomás Mejía were together. She doesn’t want the assailant to enjoy his youth so soon after killing the Salvadoran immigrant, who spent his life fighting on behalf of others. (Mejia and Queally, 4/18)

The Washington Post: Overdose Deaths Of Older Americans Quadrupled In Past 20 Years
Overdose fatalities among older Americans climbed in recent years, with 6,702 U.S. residents 65 and older succumbing in 2021, according to research published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers reported that the rate of fatal overdoses for the age group quadrupled — rising from 3 deaths per 100,000 people in 2002 to 12 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. Data indicates that 83 percent were accidental, 13 percent were intentional (suicide), 4 percent were undetermined and 0.07 percent (five deaths) were homicides. (Searing, 4/17)