Community health worker Ron Sanders, right, helps a patient at San Francisco’s Southeast Family Health Center, part of the Transitions Clinic Network that assists former inmates navigate health care after release. A new policy allows states to provide Medicaid health care coverage to inmates for specific services 30-90 days before their release. (Photo courtesy of Transitions Clinic Network) A new policy that allows states to provide Medicaid health care coverage to incarcerated people at least a month prior to their release has drawn bipartisan interest and a slew of state applications. Fede ..read more

Dr. Samuel Cook, a resident at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on May 2, 2024, about the need for more support for HBCU schools of medicine. (Screenshot from U.S. Senate webcast) WASHINGTON — Doctors on Thursday urged Congress to pass legislation addressing the disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality throughout the country and to lower barriers that have hindered people of color from becoming medical professionals. During a hearing in the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and ..read more

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to some of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor) Rutgers University students peacefully dismantled their pro-Palestine encampment on the New Brunswick campus Thursday evening after university administrators agreed to some of their demands. Dozens of tents first erected Monday came down shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday — the deadline Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway set ea ..read more

Gov. Phil Murphy paid his respects to the late Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr. at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark on Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Ed Murray for NJ Advance Media | Pool) Neighbors from the street he lived on his whole life, members of Congress, state lawmakers, and hundreds of Essex County residents packed the pews of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark to mourn and celebrate the life of the late Congressman Donald M. Payne Jr. at his funeral Thursday.  Payne, who family and friends called “Chop,” was remembered as a loving family man and a dedic ..read more

University of Wisconsin-Madison protesters sit around tents on May 1, 2024, as police work to dismantle their encampment on Library Mall. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner) WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden responded Thursday to weeks of protest on college campuses calling for a ceasefire in Gaza with a brief statement that the right to protest should be protected, but “not the right to cause chaos.” “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” Biden said from the White House’s Roosevelt Room. “In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Ameri ..read more

Rep. Rob Menendez, right, is being challenged by Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla in the Democratic primary for the House seat in the 8th District. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Danielle Richards for New Jersey Monitor) About eight months ago, it seemed likely Rep. Rob Menendez would be seeking his second term in Congress with only nominal Democratic challengers, if any. But the indictment of his father, Sen. Bob Menendez, on Sept. 22 turned the Menendez name, once a selling point for the young congressman, into a potential liability. It not only spurred a challenge from a politician familiar w ..read more

Micah Rasmussen is director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. He testified against a bill to revamp the state's Open Public Records Act at a Senate budget hearing on March 9, 2024, at the Statehouse in Trenton. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor) When New Jersey lawmakers passed a law in 2002 protecting the public’s access to government records, it was celebrated as a win for transparency and accountability. Two decades later, an “original sin” in the law — legislators exempting their own doings from disclosure — has laid the groundwork for local public ..read more

Some so-called "dispensaries" sell delta-8 products, rather than state-regulated marijuana. (Photo by Sophie NIeto-Munoz | NJ Monitor) New Jersey’s recreational cannabis law can “coexist” with federal marijuana enforcement laws, a state appellate court said in a decision Wednesday.  Judge Jack Sabatino, writing for a three-judge panel, affirmed a lower court’s ruling against a group of Highland Park residents who claimed the borough violated federal law by allowing the sale of recreational marijuana, which remains federally illegal. At the center of the legal fight is an ordinance t ..read more

Tim Blakeley, manager of Sunset Junction medical marijuana dispensary, shows marijuana plant buds on May 11, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. (Kevork Djansezian | Getty Images) Leading U.S. Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Wednesday to remove marijuana from the list of federal controlled substances, following the Biden administration’s move a day earlier to significantly ease regulations on the drug. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, on Wednesday at a press conference applauded the Justice Depa ..read more

California Highway Patrol officers patrol at a pro-Palestinian encampment, the morning after it was attacked by counter-protestors at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, on May 1, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama | Getty Images) WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans Wednesday passed a bill, with heavy support from Democrats, that would define antisemitism for the Department of Education, amid nationwide college campus protests in which students are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The 320-91 vote would codify the International Holocaust Remembranc ..read more