For the first time in decades, capital punishment is a rising issue in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign. Several of the Republican candidates are pushing for expanding the death penalty to be used as punishment for a wider array of crimes, including drug and human trafficking. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has argued against capital punishment and promised in his 2020 campaign to remove it from U.S. statutes. The president has not yet acted on his campaign promise, however. Republicans, including presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, have been outspoken on the campaign trail about their desires to enforce tougher…

The Biden administration is proposing a new minimum staffing standard for American nursing homes, and the move is receiving mixed feedback. Those in favor argue that it will help to increase the quality of care in these facilities, while those who oppose the newly proposed standard argue that it could lead to nursing home closures and other unintended consequences. Among its stipulations, the proposed rule would require nursing home facilities to have a registered nurse (RN) on staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Current federal law mandates that nursing homes have an RN on duty for eight…

After two years of negotiations, the U.S. and Iran solidified an agreement in September to swap prisoners and allow Iran to access $6 billion in frozen assets. The deal was met with some support — proof that adversarial countries can reach an agreement — but also a fair amount of skepticism due to perceived enabling of an antagonistic country. For its part, the White House defended the move as a step toward reuniting families. “The president is making five families whole again,” a White House official told reporters following the official swap of the five American prisoners, plus two family…

Lawmakers and stakeholders within the business industry are at odds over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule to collect data on small business loan recipients. Proponents of the rule argue that it will allow for more equitable lending practices, while opponents argue that the rule constitutes a privacy breach and administrative burden. The CFPB’s 1071 rule specifically requires financial institutions to submit information about the race, ethnicity and gender of small business loan recipients. It also requires information on lending decisions and the price of credit. The bureau argued that greater data collection “will give investors and lenders more…

For the first time in 20 years, Congress did not reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a global initiative started under former President George W. Bush to help combat the global HIV epidemic. PEPFAR reauthorization, which is typically reapproved every five years, was left out of appropriations legislation that passed this past September, and its absence meant that parts of the PEPFAR program expired on Sept. 30. Democrats, including the Biden administration, were largely opposed to the lack of reapproved funding. “The fact that Congress did not reauthorize the program sends a message to partners around the…

The House of Representatives passed legislation in September to try and stop states from banning or limiting the sale of gas-powered cars. The Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act (H.R. 1435) passed by a 222-190 vote, with Republicans largely in favor, and is a reaction to California’s 2022 mandate that all new cars sold in the state after 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles, though the bill did not mention California or its mandate specifically. The state’s air resources board acknowledged that the move is “aggressive” and described its timeline to eliminate new gas-powered car sales by 2035 as “ambitious but…

As more and more states move to block genderaffirming care for minors, the issue of whether or not to give Americans under the age of 18 access to this type of medical treatment that includes puberty blockers, hormone therapies and surgeries is becoming more contentious. In the first half of 2023 several states, including Texas, Missouri and Idaho, enacted laws that ban such care, bringing the total number of states that prohibit genderaffirming care up to 20. Advocates of the bans argue that this type of medical care is endangering children and there is a lack of scientific evidence to…

Following the historic fires in Maui, Hawaii, climate activists and lawmakers ramped up a plea to President Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Such a declaration would allow the president to take more actions aimed at reducing the toll and destruction of climate-driven disasters. “Tomorrow, you could wake up and your whole community could be ashes,” Kaniela Ing, a Maui resident and the national director of the Green New Deal Network, a climate justice organization, told Politico amid the Maui fire disaster. “That’s the urgency we’re operating under, so if there was ever a moment to declare a climate…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently finalized new blood donation guidelines that will make it easier for gay and bisexual men to give blood after decades of restrictions. The new guidelines removed a decades-long requirement that men who have sex with other men must abstain from sex for three months before donating blood in order to help protect blood supplies from HIV. Now, all potential blood donors will be given a questionnaire to evaluate individual risk for HIV based on factors such as sexual behavior and recent partners. Interested donors who report having had anal sex with new…

The Biden administration is going after what it calls “junk insurance” as part of its plan to lower health care costs for American consumers. In July the Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor departments issued proposed rules that would limit short-term health plans to three months, with an option to be renewed for only one month. Initially created during the Obama administration, the short-term health plans were meant to be used during transition periods, such as times when people are between jobs, and were limited to 90-day periods. Under the Trump administration in 2018, the 90-day limit was expanded…