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Fewer people crossed state lines to obtain abortions in 2024 than a year earlier, a new survey has found. The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, estimates in a report released Tuesday that the overall number of clinician-provided abortions in states where it’s legal rose by less than 1% from 2023 to 2024. But the number of people crossing state lines for abortions dropped by about 9%. (Mulvihill, 4/15)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday to close a $2.8 billion budget gap in the state’s Medicaid services and ensure coverage through June for 15 million people, including immigrants, who receive health care via the program. The legislation is part of the state’s solution to solve the $6.2 billion hole in the state’s Medicaid budget. It comes a year after California launched an ambitious coverage expansion to provide free health care to all low-income adults regardless of their immigration status. (Nguyễn, 4/14)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: States Push Medicaid Work Rules, But Few Programs Help Enrollees Find Jobs

For many years, Eric Wunderlin’s health issues made it hard to find stable employment. This article is part of Â鶹ŮÓÅ’s Medicaid Watch, featuring policy research, polling, and news about the Medicaid financing debate and related issues. Struggling to manage depression and diabetes, Wunderlin worked part-time, minimum-wage retail jobs around Dayton, Ohio, making so little he said he sometimes had to choose between paying rent and buying food. But in 2018, his CareSource Medicaid health plan offered him help getting a job. (Whitehead, Galewitz and Houghton, 4/15)

A progressive Democratic lawmaker is seeking a simple but jarring remedy of last resort for California’s college students navigating the state’s housing crisis: Let them sleep in their cars. While roughly half a dozen state legislative proposals this year seek to fund student or faculty housing or loosen building regulations, the benefits would come far too late for current students struggling to stay afloat. With one in four California community college students experiencing homelessness in the past year, Democrats — who have a supermajority in the statehouse — face increasing pressure to deliver on affordability issues. (He, 4/13)

General education teachers are more likely than ever to be working with students who have special needs. And yet, according to NPR reporting, the 10 largest universities in the country have a patchwork of special education requirements for future teachers. When it comes to elementary teacher prep programs, which are designed to prepare students to earn state teaching certifications, six of those institutions require education students to take just one dedicated course in special education. The remaining four require more than one course. (Wallis, 4/15)

As fundamental questions of gender and sexuality dominate Republican priorities at the state and federal level, the Texas Legislature is considering a record number of anti-trans bills this session. (Klibanoff, 4/14)

After two officers he had worked with during a 20-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps took their own lives, Dustin Schellenger researched what mental health resources were available to his friends, both of whom were local first responders when they died. (Salhotra, 4/14)