San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Walks Back Restrictive Shelter Stay Policy After Complaints
Less than a year after San Francisco reduced the number of days that homeless families can live in shelters, city leaders have reached a compromise with homeless advocates to allow families to apply for longer extensions. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing recently informed the Board of Supervisors that it is changing its length of stay policies starting Oct. 1: Families will be allowed an initial 90-day shelter stay, followed by a 90-day extension granted by the shelter provider — subject to a grievance process if denied. (Toledo, 7/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Settlement Reached In Battle Over S.F. Homeless Encampment Sweeps
Nearly three years after a group of unhoused residents and San Francisco’s most prominent homeless rights organization sued the city over encampment sweeps and its seizure and destruction of belongings, the legal battle is finally coming to an end. The city has agreed to pay $2.8 million in fees to attorneys representing the Coalition on Homelessness, as well as separate payments of $11,000 to two formerly unhoused people, to settle a contentious lawsuit filed by the organization in September 2022. (Angst, 7/23)

The Oaklandside: Alameda County Charts Plan For Nearly A Billion In Homelessness Money
After hours of debate and public comment, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided, in broad brush terms, how to divvy up hundreds of millions of dollars that are suddenly available for housing, homeless services, and other uses. Voters narrowly passed Measure W in 2020, implementing a 10-year, half-cent sales tax. But the money was held up for years as the county dealt with legal challenges. The county ultimately prevailed in court, meaning the $810 million in revenue that’s accrued since 2021 is finally available. (Orenstein, 7/23)

Times of San Diego: Father Joe's Finds More Homeless San Diegans Seeking Psychiatry Services
Visits to Father Joe’s Villages’ psychiatry services jumped substantially in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the same time last year, officials said Wednesday. Father Joe’s Villages’ health center tallied 280 psychiatric visits from April to June 2024, while the organization recorded 424 visits in the same period in 2025 — a 51% increase, according to a press release. (Miller, 7/23)

East Bay Times: California’s Largest Archdiocese Announces ‘Ministry Of Mercy’ To Help Immigrant Families Fearing ICE
With reports of fewer immigrant Catholics at Masses across Southern California, for fear of ongoing immigration enforcement, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is doing its part to reach out to help local families in need. (Ivie, 7/24)

The Washington Post: ICE Moves To Shackle Some 180,000 Immigrants With GPS Ankle Monitors
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has directed personnel to sharply increase the number of immigrants they shackle with GPS-enabled ankle monitors, as the Trump administration widens surveillance of people it is targeting for deportation, according to an internal ICE document reviewed by The Washington Post. In a June 9 memo, ICE ordered staff to place ankle monitors on all people enrolled in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention program “whenever possible.” About 183,000 adult migrants are enrolled in ATD and had previously consented to some form of tracking or mandatory check-ins while they waited for their immigration cases to be resolved. Currently, just 24,000 of these individuals wear ankle monitors. (MacMillan and Foster-Frau, 7/24)

The Guardian: How Trump Has Supercharged The Immigration Crackdown - In Data
Revealed: Guardian analysis provides a detailed picture of surging arrests and a detention system that’s stretched beyond capacity. (Singh, Craft and Witherspoon, 7/23)

The New York Times: Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt To Restrict Birthright Citizenship
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship violated the Constitution, affirming a district court judge’s nationwide injunction and bringing the issue one step closer to a full constitutional review by the Supreme Court. In a 48-page opinion, two of the three judges on the panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that Mr. Trump’s executive order “contradicts the plain language of the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to ‘all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’” (Schwartz, 7/23)

The Desert Sun: DAP Health Begins Administering Twice-Yearly HIV Prevention Medication. What To Know
Doctors at DAP Health have begun administering a new twice-a-year injectable HIV prevention medication, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June. (Sasic, 7/23)

The New York Times: U.S. Quietly Drafts Plan To End Program That Saved Millions From AIDS
The federal program to combat H.I.V. in developing nations earned a reprieve last week when Congress voted to restore $400 million in funding. But that may be short-lived: Officials at the State Department have been mapping out a plan to shut it down in the coming years. Planning documents for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, obtained by The New York Times, call for the organization to set a new course that focuses on “transitioning” countries away from U.S. assistance, some in as little as two years. (Nolen, 7/23)

Times of San Diego: County Issues Warning After Rabid Bat Found In Oceanside Last Week
The county is looking for people who may have come into contact with a bat in North County last week. The bat, which was found July 18 on a sidewalk in Oceanside’s North Valley neighborhood, later tested positive for rabies, according to a release. (Miller, 7/23)

Voice of San Diego: Fearing Lawsuits, El Cajon Police Stopped Responding To Some Mental Health Calls
El Cajon is no longer automatically sending police officers to some mental health crisis calls. In May, the city’s police department quietly halted automatic deployments when someone threatens to harm themselves, if there’s no apparent crime or danger to others. That has meant clinicians from the county’s Mobile Crisis Response and the Psychiatric Emergency Response teams sometimes also didn’t respond to those calls or couldn’t get police support when they sought it. (Halverstadt and Balc, 7/23)

Los Angeles Times: Matthew Perry Doctor Pleads Guilty To Ketamine Distribution
One of the physicians who supplied ketamine to “Friends” star Matthew Perry appeared in a Los Angeles federal court Wednesday morning to plead guilty to multiple drug charges connected to the actor’s death. Dr. Salvador Plasencia, known to Perry as “Dr. P.,” according to prosecutors, pleaded guilty to four felony counts of ketamine distribution. Plasencia, 43, supplied the drug to Perry through his live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, one of three defendants who pleaded guilty last year to their own connected charges. (McDonald, 7/23)

Los Angeles Times: Novel Synthetic Drug 100 Times Stronger Than Fentanyl Responsible For Riverside Overdose
A synthetic drug considered 100 times more potent than fentanyl was determined to have caused the death of a Riverside man, marking the latest in an increase in overdoses involving the synthetic drug, public health officials said. Carfentanil is a schedule II synthetic drug with a similar chemical as fentanyl and is used in Wildnil, an anesthetic for elephants, according to the National Library of Medicine. (Buchanan, 7/23)

Los Angeles Times: FireAid’s Concerts Raised $100 Million For Recovery. Here's How It's Being Distributed.
When the wildfires ripped through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January, Michael Flood, chief executive of the L.A. Regional Food Bank, knew the demand for aid would explode. “It was especially high in January through March as so many people were displaced and lost power and water,” Flood said. He saw demand for food relief rise 30%. ... His organization, which provides food assistance to hundreds of thousands of Angelenos every month, got significant help from the FireAid benefit concert in January. (Brown, 7/23)

The Guardian: Insurance Claims From LA Fires Could ‘Fully Exhaust’ $21bn State Fund 
Insurance claims from the Eaton wildfire could “fully exhaust” a state fund that was set up to protect customers when a wildfire is caused by a utility company. The devastating wildfire in Los Angeles killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,000 structures in January. One leading theory is that ageing equipment belonging to Southern California Edison, the primary electricity provider in the region, ignited the fire. If the utility company is found to have been responsible for igniting the devastating January blaze, then the “financial health of the fund could be strained”, according to documents published by California’s Catastrophe Response Council, a group of lawmakers and members of the public who oversee the state’s wildfire fund. (Nowell, 7/23)

Newsweek: Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough: What We Know About 'Exciting' Early Data
Researchers at the University of Florida are moving closer to developing what they have described as a "universal" cancer vaccine, according to a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on July 18. The vaccine would work by "waking the immune system up against something that looks dangerous, and then that response spills over to recognize and reject the tumor," Dr. Elias Sayour, co-author of the study, director of the Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Initiative, and principal investigator at the RNA Engineering Laboratory at the University of Florida, told Newsweek. (Laws, 7/24)

Newsweek: Gecko's Sticky Toes Inspire Better Cancer Treatment
The amazingly "grippy" toes of geckos have inspired a new approach to cancer therapy that could lead to fewer side effects and better outcomes for patients. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, who have developed a material that can stick fast to tumors inside the body and release chemotherapy drugs—even in difficult-to-treat cases. (Millington, 7/23)

Newsweek: Weight Loss Jab Found To Shrink Breast Cancer Tumors
Millions of Americans have turned to weight-loss injections originally developed to treat diabetes—and now, research suggests that these medications may offer a surprising additional benefit: shrinking obesity-related breast tumors. A new study in mice shows that tirzepatide—the active ingredient in the popular drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound—not only helps shed pounds but may also slow or reduce the growth of breast cancer tumors linked to obesity. (Notarantonio, 7/23)

CIDRAP: Birth Complications Linked To Common STIs In Pregnancy
Earlier this week in The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific, Australian researchers identified a link between common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) during pregnancy and a higher risk of significant birth complications such as preterm birth, stillbirth, and babies born small for gestational age. (Soucheray, 7/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Exclusive | Bill Would Force Hospitals To Warn If They Aren’t Equipped To Save Premature Babies
Hospitals would be required to disclose how they make key decisions regarding extremely premature infants in a bill set to be introduced Thursday by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.). The legislation is in part prompted by a Wall Street Journal investigation last year that found mothers had been told no lifesaving measures were possible for their extremely premature infants, even though other hospitals nearby offered care for infants born at similar gestational ages. (Essley Whyte, 7/23)

AP: US Fertility Drops To New Low In 2024, CDC Data Shows
The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman, new federal data released Thursday shows. The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all. The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data. (Stobbe, 7/24)

The New York Times: RFK Jr. Rescinds Endorsement Of Flu Vaccines With Preservative Falsely Linked To Autism 
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday formally rescinded federal recommendations for all flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism. The decision cements a move last month by vaccine advisers whom Mr. Kennedy named to the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after abruptly firing all 17 previous members. (Mandavilli, 7/23)

The New York Times: Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Trump to fire the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a five-member group that monitors the safety of items like toys, cribs and electronics. The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications, though the court’s three liberal justices dissented. (Liptak and Montague, 7/23)

The Washington Post: Courts Banned This Herbicide Twice. The EPA Wants To Bring It Back. 
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday its proposed decision to reregister dicamba, a herbicide widely used on soybean and cotton farms that has been banned twice by federal courts. The EPA originally approved dicamba’s use on genetically engineered soybeans and cotton in 2016. Environmental groups sued the EPA over dicamba in 2020 because of its potential drift away from the intended target, especially during warmer temperatures, and harm neighboring crops, nearby ecosystems and rural communities. (Ajasa, 7/23)