Ventura County Star: Aging Vets Face Unmet VA Needs, Advocate Testifies
Ventura County's 40,000 veterans face unmet needs when it comes to VA nursing home care, Ventura County's veteran services officer told a congressional subcommittee in Camarillo on Monday. Speaking at a field hearing to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs, Mike McManus said veterans with a service-linked disability rating of at least 70 percent are eligible for VA nursing homes. Only 4 percent of the county's veterans — about 1,600 people — meet that qualification. (Kisken, 7/30)

Ventura County Star: Congressmen Dig Into Opioid Epidemic At Simi Valley Roundtable
Congressmen Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, hosted a roundtable Monday at Simi Valley City Hall to gather input from local leaders to help federal efforts to combat the nation's opioid epidemic and human trafficking. McCaul is the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The roundtable was a fact-gathering, free flow of ideas that focused almost entirely on the opioid crisis. While billed as a roundtable on human trafficking as well, that topic was barely discussed. (Harris, 7/30)

KPBS: Do Housing Costs Deserve Some Of The Blame For California’s Plummeting Fertility Rate? 
Financial burdens, compounded by the high cost of housing, has knocked down the state's fertility rate, according to experts. It is changing the shape of families, the potential tax base and labor force as people struggle to achieve the California dream. (Sharma, 7/30)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Does San Diego County Have Enough Public Health Nurses? 
Without better monitoring, San Diego County can’t prove that it has enough public health nurses to meet demand, according to a newly released analysis from the California State Auditor. Released late last week, the audit finds that the county Health and Human Services Agency “cannot sufficiently demonstrate” that there are enough public health nurses to serve foster, chronically ill and severely disabled children across the region. Requested nearly a year ago by state Sen. Ben Hueso who said he thought public health nurse workloads were way too high, auditors examined three years of staffing information and found that, as the legislator alleged, caseloads exceeded state bench marks from 2015 through 2017. (Sisson, 7/30)

In other news from across the state —

The Mercury News: Lawsuit Accuses Cupertino Nursing Home Of Understaffing To Increase Profit
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Cupertino Healthcare & Wellness Center and more than a dozen other skilled nursing homes accused of deliberately running an understaffed business to make a bigger profit. The 24-hour skilled nursing home and rehab facility on Voss Avenue is one of four Bay Area businesses named in the suit; the other three are in Hayward, Novato and San Rafael. (Sarwari, 7/30)

Capital Public Radio: Black Lives Matter, Family Demand Sacramento Police Release Video Of Officer Who Hit A Teenager On Bike
Activists with Sacramento’s Black Lives Matter chapter and the family of a 16-year-old who was hit by a police car last week are calling for the release of any law-enforcement video of the incident. On July 22, police say the teenager — whose identity Capital Public Radio is not revealing because they are a minor — was stopped in the north Sacramento riding a bike without lights and fled when asked if he had a warrant out for his arrest. (Romero, 7/30)

Sacramento Bee: Smoke Inhalation From Carr Fire Poses Health Risks, Officials Say
As the Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex Fire both continue to wreak havoc on Northern California, health officials warn locals in and near areas affected by wildfires to be mindful of the health risks posed by poor air quality. ...The most recent reports place Redding’s air quality index level in at 273 – in the “very unhealthy” range. At this level, everyone is at risk for “more serious health effects,” the Shasta County Department of Resource Management website explains. (Holzer, 7/30)

Capital Public Radio: What To Know About Air Quality During Fire Season 
More than a dozen wildfires are burning throughout the state, filling the sky with smoke and in some areas making it hazardous to be outdoors. But how can you tell if the air quality is actually harmful? (Gardner, 7/30)

The New York Times: New V.A. Secretary Faces A Department In Turmoil
The Department of Veterans Affairs has experienced five months of tumult. Its previous secretary got into a political brawl with his staff and was fired by Twitter message. His first proposed replacement was scuttled by allegations of drunkenness. Then the acting secretary who took charge was accused of making false statements to Congress. In the department’s headquarters a block from the White House, political appointees who worked in the Trump campaign forced career officials out of key positions; inexperienced newcomers published an erroneous report about thousands of military suicides that never happened; and the department’s top technology official fended off calls from Congress to resign over his ties to Cambridge Analytica, the voter-profiling company. (Philipps, 7/30)

The Associated Press: Robert Wilkie Sworn In As Trump’s Veterans Affairs Secretary
President Donald Trump said Monday during an Oval Office ceremony that Wilkie will work day and night “to protect those who protect us.” He also told Wilkie that hundreds of thousands of people are counting on him. The former Pentagon official was selected to replace Secretary David Shulkin, who was fired amid ethics charges and internal rebellion at the department over the role of private care for veterans. Wilkie was confirmed by an 86-9 vote in the Senate last week. He secured the backing of many Democrats after insisting he would not privatize the government’s second-largest department. (7/30)

USA Today: President Trump Swears In VA Secretary Robert Wilkie
"I want to congratulate you and congratulate you strongly,” Trump told Robert Wilkie, previously an undersecretary at the Pentagon, who was joined by family members in the Oval Office ceremony. "Since day one, my administration has been focused on serving the men and women who make freedom possible – our great veterans," the president said. "These American heroes deserve only the best and they will have it under Robert Wilkie – I have no doubt about it." (Slack, 7/30)

The Wall Street Journal: Wilkie Sworn In As VA Head
A longtime Washington insider, Mr. Wilkie has worked for decades at the Pentagon and in the defense contracting industry. He brings to the VA the expectation he can manage the complex bureaucracy of the second-largest department in the federal government, after the Department of Defense. He is President Trump’s second permanent VA secretary, taking over after the departure of David Shulkin, who was fired by the president earlier this year. While Mr. Wilkie awaited confirmation, the department was helmed by Peter O’Rourke, whose new role has yet to be defined by the department. A VA spokesman declined to comment further and said the VA had no announcements to make regarding personnel changes. (Kesling, 7/30)

The New York Times: A Migrant Boy Rejoins His Mother, But He’s Not The Same
Before they were separated at the southwest border, Ana Carolina Fernandes’s 5-year-old son loved playing with the yellow, impish Minion characters from the “Despicable Me” movies. Now his favorite game is patting down and shackling “migrants” with plastic cuffs. After being separated from his mother for 50 days, Thiago isn’t the same boy who was taken away from her by Border Patrol agents when they arrived in the United States from Brazil, Ms. Fernandes said last week. (Jordan, 7/31)

The Associated Press: ICE, Border Patrol At Senate Hearing On Family Separations
The Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding answers from federal immigration officials about the Trump administration's separation of migrant children from their families and its struggle to reunite them, a fraught effort that's drawn election-year criticism from both parties. But a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the topic may have a wider focus after the committee's bipartisan leaders asked federal investigators to probe reports of sexual and other abuse of immigrants at government detention facilities. (7/31)

USA Today: Judge Orders Minors Transferred Out Of Immigration Detention Facility
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to transfer all undocumented immigrant minors out of a detention facility in Texas due to allegations of abuse and over-medication against the children. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ruled that conditions at the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas, violate a 1997 court settlement that dictates how the government must care for minors who entered the country illegally on their own or were separated from their parents. (Gomez, 7/30)

The New York Times: How One Agency Built A Multimillion-Dollar Business In Migrant Children
When 17-year-old Destani Williams ran away from an upstate New York residential treatment program in May 2017 and was found dead a week later, it was but the latest in a string of troubling incidents at Cayuga Centers, a 166-year-old child-welfare agency. In the year leading up to her death, three workers were arrested on charges of abuse, and the agency was sued for negligence as a result. The local police in Auburn, N.Y., complained about hundreds of emergency calls to deal with runaway residents and violent incidents on the campus, which included residents injuring police officers, throwing chairs through windows and wielding shards of glass to cut staff members. (Robbins, 7/31)

The New York Times: Trump Spurns Medicaid Proposal After Furious White House Debate
Hoping to head off a full expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, some senior officials in the Trump administration and Republican governors have been pushing hard for a smaller expansion to satisfy a growing political demand in their states. But President Trump decided on Friday to shut down the debate until after the midterm elections, administration officials said. The debate has divided the Trump administration between top officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and hard-liners, mainly at the White House, more determined to snuff out the Affordable Care Act. (Pear, 7/30)

The New York Times: Manchin Is First Democrat To Meet With Kavanaugh As Parties Intensify Feud
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia broke with his party on Monday to become the first Democrat to meet with Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, as the two parties escalated their feud over access to documents relating to the nominee. Mr. Manchin, who faces a tough fight for re-election in a state that Mr. Trump won handily in 2016, is central to the Democrats’ uphill battle to defeat Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, and is under intense pressure at home from both sides. If he votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh, he will infuriate Democratic voters. But if he votes against confirmation, he risks his own Senate seat. (Stolberg and Shear, 7/30)

The Associated Press: States Suing Trump Administration, Company Over 3D Guns
Eight states are filing suit against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety. The suit, filed Monday in Seattle, asks a judge to block the federal government’s late-June settlement with Defense Distributed, which allowed the company to make the plans available online. Officials say that 1,000 people have already downloaded blueprints for AR-15 rifles. (Rubinkam, 7/30)

Reuters: Democratic Candidates Embrace Gun Control Despite Political Risks
Aftab Pureval, a Democrat seeking to unseat a Republican congressman in Ohio, knows the political risks in calling for gun restrictions – and taking on the powerful National Rifle Association, which has spent more than $115,000 supporting his opponent over the years. But after a spate of school shootings, including February's massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, Pureval believes voters in the Republican-leaning district have had enough of congressional inaction. (7/30)

The New York Times: Vaginal Laser Treatments Can Cause Burns And Scarring, The F.D.A. Says
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday announced that it had warned several companies to stop marketing laser devices for procedures billed as “vaginal rejuvenation,” saying they were dangerous and deceptive treatments. The agency originally permitted the lasers and related energy-based devices onto the market for treatment of serious conditions, like cancer, genital warts, or surgery including hysterectomies. (Kaplan, 7/30)