“Throughout the presidential campaign and since, the president-elect has made many troubling statements that run counter to the principles that define California today,” said Kevin de León, the state Senate president pro tempore, “If the president-elect has identified 2 to 3 million criminal immigrants, we can only assume it’s a pretense to open up criteria to deport mothers who are pulled over for a broken taillight. We want to ensure that those facing deportation are afforded due process...”   read more

Popular theories for the cause of the decline, including an increase in obesity rates and an opiod epidemic, fail to explain a problem that feels broader. “If you actually dissect the data, neither of those arguments hold,” said Muennig. “This report slams it home that this is really a mystery.” Researchers suspect that the strain of income inequality in the U.S. -- and the stress that this causes — could be a major contributing factor to the uptick, but it has been hard to prove.   read more

These findings reveal the spiraling and often unseen effects of mass deportations, a point that is no longer purely academic as Donald Trump weighs whether to make good on his campaign promise to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants. Previous research suggests that Hispanic households, like black ones, were disproportionately victimized by subprime lending schemes. But the fact that foreclosure rates among Hispanics surpassed those among blacks points to something else going on.   read more

With the full power of the presidency just weeks away, Trump’s decision to single out Jones for ridicule has drawn condemnation from historians and White House veterans. “When you attack a man for living an ordinary life in an ordinary job, it is bullying,” said Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for President George W. Bush and a top strategist to other Republicans. “It is cyberbullying. This is a strategy to bully somebody who dissents. That’s what is dark and disturbing.”   read more

"The state of health apps is even worse than we thought," said Dr. James Madara, chief executive of the American Medical Association. Perhaps most concerning was what happened when doctor reviewers entered information that should have drawn warnings from the app — like selecting "yes" when the app asked if the user was feeling suicidal, or entering extremely abnormal levels for blood sugar levels. "The vast majority of apps do not have any kind of response," said lead study author Singh.   read more

The Trump International Hotel has come under scrutiny by government ethics experts who worry that foreign governments, special interest groups and others will book rooms and events there to curry favor with the president-elect. About 100 foreign diplomats from around the world used the hotel for a reception just a week after the election. Since the election, government ethics experts have called for the Trump Organization to sell its interest in the hotel.   read more

Since 2003, state law has mandated that pregnant women be provided information when mulling an abortion. The Texas Department of State Health Services issued the new edition of "A Woman's Right to Know" on Monday. The new edition of the booklet contains a section titled "Breast Cancer Risk," despite numerous, peer-reviewed studies that have refuted links between abortion and breast cancer. The booklet also says women who terminate pregnancies can become suicidal and infertile.   read more

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a continuing dispute led by civil rights groups over transparency in how the NYPD holds officers accountable for misconduct. The lawsuit calls for release of disciplinary actions taken against police officers. “There is no excuse for New York City to be taking steps backwards on police transparency,” said CUPR's Monifa Bandele. “It leaves communities most impacted by police abuses and misconduct at further risk and without accountability from the NYPD.”   read more

Food allergies can trigger reactions severe enough to kill. About 12 million Americans may have such allergies. The report said the FDA should replace the "precautionary" label approach with one that's risk-based. The idea is to determine a safety level for different allergens The resulting labeling would give consumers more information in deciding if they'd take a chance on a food or not, said Taylor, who pointed to a similar voluntary system in Australia and New Zealand.   read more

The ruling was particularly important because it upheld the government’s use of emails gathered without a warrant under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The law permits the government, on domestic soil, to collect phone calls and emails of noncitizens abroad, even when they are communicating with an American. The government gathered the emails via the PRISM program, which collects messages in the accounts of targeted foreigners from webmail providers.   read more

U.S. Rep.Cummings said he'd "fight any effort to roll back civil service protections." He worries that whistle blowers could lose their legal right to be immune from retaliation. Evan Osborne said these protections date to the 1800s when federal employees couldn't be fired on the whim of new administrations coming to power. "The idea of civil servant protections has a long history in the country," Osborne said.   read more

Racial bias in the New York state prison system is a fact of life. It is also measurable. A review by The New York Times of tens of thousands of disciplinary cases against inmates in 2015, hundreds of pages of internal reports and three years of parole decisions found that racial disparities were embedded in the prison system. Blacks and Latinos were disciplined at higher rates than whites and were sent to solitary confinement more frequently and for longer durations.   read more

Six days before the election, Flynn posted on Twitter a fake news story that claimed N.Y. police had found evidence linking Clinton and her staff to pedophilia, money laundering, perjury and other felonies. “U decide,” Flynn wrote in the message, though it appeared there was little doubt what he thought. Flynn's views on social media, including messages viewed as Islamophobia and spreading fake news, had already prompted questions about his fitness to be Trump’s national security adviser.   read more

Despite losing a milestone abortion case at the U.S. Supreme Court this summer, Texas threw down another stumbling block last week. It will require facilities that provide abortions to pay for the cremation or burial of fetal remains, rather than dispose of them as biological medical waste. It is the latest attempt by abortion opponents to make it more burdensome for women to get abortions — by creating rules and laws that make it more difficult for providers to stay in business.   read more

Supporters of the bipartisan bill say it is needed to ensure freedom of speech in a growing online economy. It was written in response to businesses that have made customers sign non-disparagement clauses and then sued if a bad review showed up. In one case, a Dallas couple was sued by a pet-sitting company for up to $1 million after giving the company a one-star review on Yelp and complaining that their fish had been overfed. The case was dismissed this past summer.   read more

More people died of opioid overdose deaths in Ohio during 2014 than any other state, providing further proof that Ohio is the epicenter of an opioid epidemic ravaging the nation. And it appears doubtful Ohio will relinquish the grim standing soon. "We still have not peaked yet," said ADAMHS's Jones-Kelley. "That's the scariest part." Fentanyl -- and more recently carfentanil -- are extraordinarily potent synthetic opiates that officials blame for the ever-rising number of deaths.   read more