San Francisco Chronicle: Former DACA Recipient, 39, Dies In ICE Custody In California
A former DACA recipient died in federal custody at a California hospital, one day after he was transferred from one of the state’s largest ICE detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday. Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, a Mexican national, was declared dead around 2:30 a.m. Monday at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, according to an ICE statement. He is the 14th detainee to die in ICE custody this year amid a surge in immigration arrests and detainments. Ayala-Uribe’s cause of death is still under investigation, ICE said. (Park, 9/23)

Bay Area News Group: ICE Activity At Oakland Courthouse Draws Condemnation, Dismay
East Bay elected leaders and superior court officials are speaking out after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained an Alameda County Public Defender’s Office client earlier this month at a courthouse in downtown Oakland. (Green, 9/24)

San Francisco Chronicle: A New ICE Prison Has Ignited Chaos In This Tiny California Town
The private [California City] prison, which previously held state inmates, began housing detained migrants at the end of August. The detention center is already dealing with the kind of concerns that have been rampant in other facilities. Immigration attorneys with clients inside said detainees’ recent sit-ins and hunger strikes have resulted in officers entering cells in riot gear and putting at least four inmates in solitary confinement. (DiNatale, 9/24)

CBS News: New Medical School In San Joaquin County Aims To Address Health Care Shortage
A new medical school is coming to San Joaquin County, marking a first for the area and a significant step toward addressing the region's longstanding shortage of health care professionals. County leaders say the school, which will be operated by Aria University, a private nonprofit, will serve as a training ground for local students and a critical part of the county's strategy to improve healthcare access. (Reynoso, 9/22)

Becker's Hospital Review: Sharp HealthCare Creates New C-Suite Role
San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare has named Tommy Korn, MD, as its first chief spatial computing officer.“ ... The newly created role comes as Sharp HealthCare continues exploring how spatial computing can be applied in healthcare. (Diaz, 9/23)

CalMatters: CA Counties Report Fewer Homeless People, As Funding Cuts Loom
California counties are reporting decreases in homelessness, suggesting the state is finally making progress in solving one of its most difficult and persistent problems. But even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials are celebrating, the money that made those wins possible is at risk of evaporating. President Donald Trump’s administration this month tried to block organizations that don’t support its social agenda from accessing federal homeless housing funds — causing experts in the field to worry that politically liberal California could find itself blacklisted from crucial dollars. (Kendall, 9/24)

Voice of San Diego: Two Months Into A Crackdown, San Diego Struggles To Keep Freeways Clear Of Encampments
On July 22, the city of San Diego entered into a one-year agreement with the state to clean up encampments along a portion of downtown freeways. While the agreement has allowed the city to clear more than 80 tons of trash and place 18 people into shelters, the same areas they clear repopulate within hours. That’s because shelter space is limited and some people don’t want to go to a shelter. (Martinez Barba, 9/24)

Berkeleyside: West Berkeley Rep Wants To Make It Easier For City To Tow RVs
A Berkeley councilmember wants to make it easier for the city to tow RVs and other large vehicles off local roads, especially if they pose environmental hazards or are blocking roadways. Councilmember Terry Taplin, who represents Southwest Berkeley, has introduced legislation that would allow city workers to tow abandoned vehicles from city streets rather than just from private property, as is currently allowed. ... The proposal comes a year after the Berkeley City Council adopted a more aggressive policy on closing homeless encampments. (Gecan, 9/23)

NPR: Does Trump's Plan To Get Homeless People Off The Streets Violate Civil Liberties?
President Trump is promising to sweep homeless people off America’s streets. One controversial part of his plan could force thousands of people into institutions where they would be treated “long-term” for for addiction and mental illness. Critics say the policy raises big concerns about civil liberties and cost. But parts of this idea - known as “civil commitment” are gaining traction with some Democratic leaders. (Donevan and Ryan, 9/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Audit: Alameda County Is Putting The Safety Of Foster Youth At Risk
Alameda County is jeopardizing the health and safety of children and teens under its watch, a new state audit has found, following repeated allegations that it mishandled cases of abuse and neglect. The scathing report, released Tuesday by California State Auditor Grant Parks, stated that the Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services often failed to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect with the urgency legally required. The agency also did not ensure foster youth received timely access to critical physical and mental health services and did not adequately report serious incidents that occurred at its transitional shelter for foster youths awaiting placement, the audit revealed. (Angst, 9/23)

Los Angeles Times: Check Your Freezer: FDA Expands Recall On Radioactive Frozen Shrimp
For the sixth time in more than a month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is recalling frozen shrimp products for possible contamination by Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. ... The latest company to voluntarily pull possibly contaminated sea food from the shelves is Seattle-based AquaStar. It is recalling three types of shrimp products that were sold in grocery stores across 31 states in the U.S., including California. (Garcia, 9/23)

Los Angeles Times: The Real Reasons Why Autism Rates Have Shot Up Over The Decades
This week, the Trump administration announced that it was taking “bold action” to address the “epidemic” of autism spectrum disorder — starting with a new safety label on Tylenol and other acetaminophen products that suggests a link to autism. The scientific evidence for doing so is weak, researchers said.Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said federal officials “will be uncompromising and relentless in our search for answers” and that they soon would be “closely examining” the role of vaccines, whose alleged link to autism has been widely discredited. (Purtill, 9/24)

Stat: Pushback Grows To Trump's 'Tough It Out' Advice During Pregnancy
Federal health officials are telling Americans no, they shouldn’t take Tylenol during pregnancy for fear of autism and yes, they should try a drug used in cancer care to treat children who have developed autism. The medical world disagrees. “We were actually pretty alarmed by some of the output that was coming from the administration,” Marketa Wills, CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, said in an interview. At a remarkable White House briefing on Monday, President Trump and his top health and science officials said Tylenol use in pregnancy caused some cases of autism in children and said leucovorin, a form of vitamin B9, could treat the disease. (Cooney, Gaffney and Merelli, 9/24)

AP: Dr. Trump? The President Reprises His COVID Era, This Time Sharing Unproven Medical Advice On Autism
President Donald Trump isn’t a doctor. But he played one on TV Monday, offering copious amounts of unproven medical advice that he suggested -- often without providing evidence -- might help reduce autism rates. The presentation recalled the early days of the coronavirus pandemic during Trump’s first term, when the president stood for daily White House briefings and tossed out grossly inaccurate claims — including famously suggesting that injecting disinfectants could help people. “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” Trump asked in April 2020. “As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.” (Weissert, 9/23)

The New York Times: F.D.A.’s Approval Of A Drug For Autism Upends Review Process
In taking the unusual step of approving an old generic drug as a treatment for autism, the Food and Drug Administration stunned some experts by departing sharply from the agency’s typical standard for reviewing drugs. The drug, leucovorin, has long been used to treat the toxic effects of chemotherapy, but it was endorsed as a therapy for some people with autism by President Trump and top U.S. health officials during a White House briefing on Monday. The move flipped the standard process: Typically, a pharmaceutical company carefully studies a drug, often with input from the F.D.A. on the design of rigorous studies, and then files a formal application for approval. But in this case, the agency said it reviewed medical research and made the approval decision to expand the drug’s use on its own. (Jewett and Mueller, 9/23)

FiercePharma: FDA To Tweak Tylenol Safety Label, Relabel Decades-Old GSK Drug As 'Autism Symptom' Treatment
the FDA has already begun the process to change the safety label of acetaminophen to reflect evidence that could suggest an increased risk of autism and other neurological conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The "precautionary principle" of the label edit “may lead many to avoid using acetaminophen during pregnancy, especially since most low-grade fevers don’t require treatment,” FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, M.D., explained in an FDA release. (Becker, 9/23)

The New York Times: Harvard Dean Was Paid $150,000 As An Expert Witness In Tylenol Lawsuits 
The dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who consulted with top Trump health officials ahead of Monday’s warning about Tylenol and autism, was paid at least $150,000 to serve as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in lawsuits against the maker of Tylenol. Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, a leading epidemiologist, disclosed the figure in a court deposition he gave in the summer of 2023 that is publicly available in federal court filings and was reviewed by The New York Times. He had previously disclosed that he had served as an expert witness in the case but not how much money he had made. (Robbins and Ghorayshi, 9/23)

EdSource: After Federal Cuts, California Schools Could Lose Hundreds Of Mental Health Clinicians 
After Jane Huang graduated from Eureka High School in 2018, she knew she wanted to go to college in a different town.  She had struggled with severe depression, and when she could not keep up with her classes, teachers called her “lazy.” She dreaded going to school, where she felt isolated from friends and family and outcast as one of the few Chinese American students in Eureka, a rural and low-income seaport town in Northern California. As an undergraduate student at Cal State East Bay, majoring in psychology, Huang returned to Eureka High School as a student mental health worker in a role funded by the federal government’s school-based mental health grants in 2022.  (Sanganeria, 9/24)

AP: Trump Administration Rehires Hundreds Of Federal Employees Laid Off By DOGE
Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work. The General Services Administration has given the employees — who managed government workspaces — until the end of the week to accept or decline reinstatement, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. Those who accept must report for duty on Oct. 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation, during which time the GSA in some cases racked up high costs — passed along to taxpayers — to stay in dozens of properties whose leases it had slated for termination or were allowed to expire. (Goodman and Foley, 9/23)

Axios: Trump's "Most Favored Nation" Plan: Drugmakers Meet President Halfway On Drug Prices
Big drug companies so far are responding to President Trump's demand they commit to his "most favored nation" pricing policy by raising prices abroad without cutting them in the U.S. Why it matters: That only gets halfway toward Trump's goal of ending what he calls "global freeloading" and getting other developed countries to foot more of the cost while lowering costs for Americans. (Sullivan, 9/24)

Politico: Hegseth Axes Panel That Encourages Women To Enter Military
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has shuttered a nearly century-old committee created to expand the role of women in the military, part of a broader effort to redefine the image of the armed forces. The closure of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services — one of dozens of study groups that offer guidance to the secretary — is Hegseth’s latest effort to rid the Pentagon of efforts that don’t fit into his “warrior ethos” vision for the department and service academies. (Mcleary, 9/23)

Politico: House Centrists Attempt Quiet Rescue Of Obamacare Subsidy Talks 
House centrists are discussing the outlines of a possible compromise to extend Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies in hopes of jump-starting stalled talks over the soon-to-expire tax credits that have also emerged as a key fault line in the brewing government shutdown battle. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus has privately broached whether an income cap should be imposed on who can benefit from the subsidies. Several Republicans in the group have floated a $200,000 cap, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks. (Hill and Guggenheim, 9/23)

Politico: Republican Lawmakers Face Internal Rift Over Abortion 
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill were already looking at a messy political battle over the looming expiration of billions of dollars in Obamacare subsidies. Then the anti-abortion advocates showed up. With a possible government shutdown less than a week away, Democrats’ big ask is that Republicans agree to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which were expanded by Congress in 2021 and are set to sunset at the end of the year. But now prominent anti-abortion groups are wading into the debate, pounding the halls of Congress to make their case that the enhanced tax credits for ACA insurance premiums function as an indirect subsidy for services designed to end pregnancies. The argument could make conservative Republicans who already loathed the policy dig in further against greenlighting an extension. (Guggenheim, Hill and Ollstein, 9/24)

The Washington Post: A Shutdown Would Give Trump More Power Over Federal Spending
The Trump administration would have broad authority to make decisions about spending if the government shuts down next week — and it would also have broad authority to make those decisions if the government stays open under a long-term funding extension. Congress has operated under such an extension for months and is trying to pass another short-term extension, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, before federal funding laws expire. Without action, a shutdown would start Oct. 1 just after midnight. (Bogage and Beggin, 9/23)