CalMatters: LA Communities Are Unaware They've Lived Near Toxic Gas For Decades
In a quiet Compton neighborhood near the 710 freeway, children on a recent afternoon chased each other at Kelly Park after school. Parents watched their kids play, unaware of a potential threat to their health. On the other side of the freeway, just blocks from the park and Kelly Elementary School, a fumigation company uses a highly toxic pesticide to spray fruits and vegetables. The facility, Global Pest Management, has been emitting methyl bromide, which can cause lung damage and neurological health effects, into the air near the neighborhood for several decades. (Reyes-Velarde, 4/23)

Axios: Nearly Half Of US Exposed To Air Pollution Amid Trump Climate Cuts
Nearly half of Americans are now exposed to potentially dangerous levels of air pollution, per a new report. The findings, which predate the current Trump administration, come as the White House is reconsidering EPA rules and regulations meant to curb pollution and promote cleaner air. (Fitzpatrick, 4/22)

CapRadio: Menopause Symptom Treatment Bill Clears Its First Hurdle At The California Legislature
Menopause is having a moment at the California Legislature — lawmakers have filed two bills this year that would make care for symptoms more accessible. One of those bills passed its first committee hearing on Tuesday. Bay Area Democratic Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan told lawmakers at the hearing her interest in the topic started with her own experience. (Myscofski, 4/22)

The New York Times: Birthrates Languish In Record Lows, C.D.C. Reports
Births in the United States increased by just 1 percent in 2024, still near the record low rates that have alarmed demographers and become a central part of the Trump administration’s cultural agenda, according to data released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 3.6 million babies were born in the United States last year, a meager rise from the record-setting low in 2023. The fertility rate, approximately 1.6 births per woman over her lifetime, is well below the 2.1 births needed to maintain the country’s population through births alone. (Ghorayshi, 4/23)

Los Angeles Times: New Taxes Will Soon Dwarf The Billions Spent On Homelessness In The Last Decade. Who's Watching Over It?
After nearly a decade of unprecedented taxpayer spending on homelessness with little to show in improvement on the streets, the giant nonprofits behind the measures that secured that funding asked voters to double down. To assuage concerns that past funds may have been dispensed rashly, leading to waste and abuse, the authors of two new tax measures wove into them a complex system of oversight to increase transparency and accountability. (Smith, 4/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: California City Risks Losing Only Shelter Over $1 Funding Dispute
A dispute over a single dollar may cost a Northern California city’s only homeless shelter to lose nearly $270,000 in state funding — and possibly force it to shutter. We Care, which provides emergency housing and support for up to 49 men, needs a letter of support and a nominal $1 allocation from the City of Turlock to access the state grant administered through Stanislaus County. But city leaders, including the mayor, have so far refused, citing frustration with the county’s broader role in managing homelessness. (Vaziri, 4/22)

Voice of OC: Irvine Rolls Out Affordable Housing Program For Homeless Students
Students and their families struggling to get enough to eat or keep a roof over their heads could soon get some relief in Irvine after city officials refocused their approach to some of the city’s neediest residents. It comes as Irvine officials are taking a closer look at their efforts to build affordable housing in the city and rethinking how those projects can better serve the local community, especially homeless students in local school districts. (Hicks, 4/22)

CalMatters: Meth, Homelessness And The LA Mental Health Judge Who Can Help
In a Hollywood courtroom, prosecutor and defense attorney both asserted their positions on how to best administer justice to the man appearing before them in shackled restraints. Judge Ronald Owen Kaye surveyed documents on his computer, then looked over his eyeglasses from person to person. “We’ve got quite a lot going on here,” Kaye said that day in February. He then turned his focus squarely to the defendant. With a state-appointed psychiatrist’s evaluation now on file, the judge wanted to discuss next steps. “I’d like to hear where you stand on all this, sir. Let’s talk turkey.” (Garcia, 4/23)

Becker's Hospital Review: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Retools Pediatric Sleep Studies Using Apple Watch Tech
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has launched the nation’s first pediatric sleep registry using Apple Watch technology, along with a new data collection app aimed at transforming how sleep disorders are diagnosed and treated in children. The app, called WISE-HARE — short for Wearable Intelligent Sensor Enhancement Home Apnea Risk Evaluation — was developed by Los Angeles-based CHLA in collaboration with graduates from Apple’s Developer Academy in Fortaleza, Brazil. It collects high-fidelity data from Apple Watches, which will be used to train machine learning algorithms to detect sleep disorders and provide clinicians with critical insights for patient care. (Diaz, 4/22)

Modern Healthcare: CFPB To Retract Medical Debt Opinion
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to retract an advisory opinion reminding debt collectors — including revenue cycle management firms often contracted by healthcare providers — that asking patients to pay for invalid or inaccurate medical bills is a violation of federal law. The advisory opinion, published in the Federal Register in October, was challenged by two debt collection companies the same week. In a district court filing this month, the collection companies and the agency jointly requested a pause in the proceedings, saying the CFPB intends to revoke the opinion. (DeSilva, 4/22)

San Francisco Chronicle: Hearst Foundations Announce More Than $3 Million In Grants
The Hearst Foundations announced more than $3 million in grants sent to 16 California organizations and institutions Tuesday, supporting causes including research into regenerative therapy for heart failure and housing and education programs in the Bay Area. ... The recent round of awards includes $150,000 to For the People, an Oakland-based group providing reentry services to formerly incarcerated people, and to AbilityPath in Redwood City to help with the costs of building Mitchell Park Place, an affordable housing complex to aid adults with developmental disabilities. (Burke, 4/22)

Los Angeles Times: Online Charter Schools Skirt California's Childhood Vaccine Laws
Heartland’s student body differs from other California schools in one major way. Just 5% of Heartland’s 810 kindergarten students received all their childhood vaccines last year, and 9% were vaccinated against measles, according to a Times analysis of data that California schools report to the state. The vaccination rate for kindergarten students across the state last year was 93.7%. (Nelson and Wiley, 4/23)

The Desert Sun: How Repeated Security Failures At Riverside County Jails Contributed To High Murder Rate
Killings are relatively rare in American jails, but those in Riverside County experienced a surge in them. They had the highest homicide rate among large jails in California from 2020 through 2023, according to state data. (Damien, 4/23)

KQED: RFK Jr. Announced A Phase-Out Of ‘Poisonous’ Food Dyes. Critics Say The Plan Lacks Teeth
The Trump administration announced a major food safety initiative this week: a plan to phase out eight petroleum-based synthetic food dyes from the U.S. food supply. The policy, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Food and Drug Administration, marks a dramatic escalation in federal attention to artificial additives that health advocates say may pose risks to children’s health. At a news conference, Kennedy described the plan as part of the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, calling synthetic dyes “poisonous compounds” that offer no nutritional value. (McClurg, 4/23)

Politico: RFK Jr. Eyes Reversing CDC's Covid-19 Vaccine Recommendation For Children
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution, marking Kennedy’s most significant move yet to shake up the nation’s vaccination practices. (Cancryn, 4/22)

CBS News: NIH Director Pushes Back Timeline For RFK Jr.'s Autism Answers
The head of the National Institutes of Health now says it could take until next year to get preliminary results from their new studies into autism, marking the latest delay to findings that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had promised by September. "We're going to get hopefully grants out the door by the end of the summer," NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told reporters Tuesday. "And people will get to work. We'll have a major conference, with updates, within the next year." (Tin, 4/22)

Axios: Vaccine Developers Mobilize Amid "Great Unraveling" Of Their Work
Hundreds of vaccine researchers gathered in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, still struggling to counter rising anti-vaccine sentiment and mistrust many blamed on top Trump administration health officials. (Reed, 4/23)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Stops Maine's Funding Over Transgender Athletes. Could California Follow?
President Trump was welcoming governors to the White House in February when he sought out Maine Gov. Janet Mills, demanding to know whether she would comply with his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports. ... Maine is defending the primacy of local control as well as its state law — which is grounded in pro-LGBTQ+ policy. Trump, meanwhile, is opposing Maine on conservative ideological grounds using federal funding as the cudgel to prevail. Some see Maine as a precursor to what California can expect: a Trump administration attempt to halt federal education funding. (Blume, 4/23)

Stat: Women’s Health Initiative, Known For Hormone Trials, To Lose U.S. Funds
Federal funding for the Women’s Health Initiative, which as one of the largest research projects in women’s health has shaped treatment of menopause, osteoporosis, and nutrition, will be reduced in September, the program said Tuesday in a message to its 40 regional centers. (Cooney, 4/22)

The New York Times: National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds Of Active Research Awards
Casey Fiesler, an information science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, learned late on Friday evening that one of the three grants she had been awarded by the National Science Foundation was being terminated. “It was a total surprise,” Dr. Fiesler said. “This is the one that I thought was totally safe.” The grant supported Dr. Fiesler’s research on building A.I. literacy. She received no official explanation for why the grant was being terminated more than a year ahead of its scheduled end. (Miller and Zimmer, 4/22)

The Washington Post: DOJ Cancels Grants For Gun-Violence And Addiction Prevention, Victim Advocacy
The Justice Department on Tuesday canceled hundreds of grants to community organizations and local governments, including funding for gun-violence prevention programs, crime-victim advocacy and efforts to combat opioid addiction, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. (Stein, Jackman and Roebuck, 4/22)

Becker's Hospital Review: DOGE Has Access To 19 HHS Systems: Report
The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency has access to sensitive information in 19 HHS databases and systems, according to a court filing obtained by Wired. HHS submitted the filing as part of the discovery process for a lawsuit the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ filed against the federal government, aiming to restrict DOGE’s access to federal systems. Nine such systems had not been previously disclosed as being accessed by DOGE. HHS did not respond to Wired‘s request for comment. (Bean, 4/22)

The New York Times: Female Soldiers Will Have To Pass ‘Sex-Neutral’ Physical Test, U.S. Army Says 
Women in U.S. Army combat roles will be expected to pass the same “sex-neutral” physical test as male soldiers, that military branch announced on Monday, weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the elimination of lower physical fitness standards for women in combat. The change could hinder the Army’s ability to recruit and retain women in particularly dangerous military jobs. The new test, the Army Fitness Test, will replace the Army Combat Fitness Test, and “is designed to enhance Soldier fitness, improve warfighting readiness, and increase the lethality of the force,” the Army wrote in its announcement. The new scoring standards will be phased in beginning on June 1, the Army said. (Wolfe, 4/22)