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Thousands of Texans in need are abandoning the state’s suicide hotline mid-call every month as call centers struggle under a $7 million funding deficit and a growing suicide rate statewide. (Simpson, 1/6)

A Tennessee law requiring pornographic websites to verify their visitors’ age was largely blocked in court before it was to take effect Jan. 1, even as similar laws kicked in for Florida and South Carolina and remained in effect for more than a dozen other states. On Dec. 30, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman in Memphis ruled that Tennessee’s law would likely suppress the First Amendment free speech rights of adults without actually preventing children from accessing the harmful material in question. The state attorney general’s office is appealing the decision. (Mattise, 1/7)

Two prisoners who are among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted last month by President Joe Biden — a move that spares them from the death chamber — have taken an unusual stance: They're refusing to sign paperwork accepting his clemency action. The men believe that having their sentences commuted would put them at a legal disadvantage as they seek to appeal their cases based on claims of innocence. (Ortiz, 1/6)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Health Care Is Newsom’s Biggest Unfinished Project. Trump Complicates That Task. 

Six years after he entered office vowing to be California’s “health care governor,” Democrat Gavin Newsom has steered tens of billions in public funding to safety net services for the state’s neediest residents while engineering rules to make health care more accessible and affordable for all Californians. More than a million California residents living in the U.S. without authorization now qualify for Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, making California among the first states to cover low-income people regardless of their immigration status. The state is experimenting with Medicaid money to pay for social services such as housing and food assistance, especially for those living on the streets or with chronic diseases. And the state is forcing the health care industry to rein in soaring costs while imposing new rules on doctors, hospitals, and insurers to provide better-quality, more accessible care. (Hart and Mai-Duc, 1/7)