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Santa Cruz County schools are asking parents to share their children’s health insurance information – a no-cost step that could determine whether districts can afford to keep offering free student counseling and mental health services.

The post What families need to know about the free mental health services provided by Santa Cruz County public schools appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Nurses at Watsonville Community Hospital plan to rally Monday against an ongoing closure at the facility’s neonatal intensive care unit. Earlier this month, hospital leadership confirmed to Lookout that it closed the NICU in mid-July due to a nursing shortage in the labor and delivery unit.

The post Watsonville Community Hospital nurses to rally over NICU closure, staffing shortages appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission will consider submitting its ad hoc committee’s responses to the civil grand jury’s report on the rail trail at its Thursday meeting. Plus, two surveys are open for Capitola residents to give input on two efforts to improve infrastructure and transportation within the city. The survey for the 41st Avenue corridor closes on Monday, while the Active Transportation Plan survey is ongoing.

The post Carmageddon: RTC pushes back on some grand jury rail-trail criticism; surveys open for Capitola transportation, corridor plans appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Esta traducción fue generada utilizando inteligencia artificial y ha sido revisada por un hablante nativo de español; si bien nos esforzamos por lograr precisión, pueden ocurrir algunos errores de traducción. Para leer el artículo en inglés, haga clic aquí.

Un programa gratuito de salud mental del que dependen miles de estudiantes del condado de Santa Cruz depende de algo sorprendentemente sencillo: cuántas familias están dispuestas a proporcionar la información de su seguro médico.

Las escuelas públicas del condado de Santa Cruz ofrecen una amplia variedad de servicios gratuitos relacionados con el consumo de sustancias y la salud mental para los estudiantes, desde consejería individual hasta charlas en el aula sobre cómo afrontar la ansiedad.

El personal que brinda estos servicios, aunque es esencial para el bienestar de los estudiantes, no recibe financiamiento estatal de la misma manera que los salarios de los maestros. Esto deja a los distritos escolares la tarea de encontrar otras fuentes de financiamiento, como subvenciones, para mantener esos puestos.

Para aliviar las presiones financieras y ayudar a garantizar que los distritos escolares continúen brindando apoyo de salud mental a los estudiantes, en 2024 el estado de California comenzó a exigir que las compañías de seguros reembolsen a las escuelas por los servicios de salud mental que ofrecen. Como resultado, los estudiantes pueden seguir accediendo gratuitamente a estos servicios en la escuela.

Sin embargo, para recibir el reembolso y obtener ese financiamiento, los distritos escolares deben presentar una solicitud de reembolso a los planes de salud o compañías de seguros de los estudiantes. Cuantas más familias proporcionen su información de seguro a los distritos escolares, mayor será la capacidad de los distritos para mantener estos servicios a largo plazo.

El superintendente de escuelas del condado de Santa Cruz, Faris Sabbah, y funcionarios escolares locales quieren asegurarles a las familias que proporcionar la información del seguro a sus distritos escolares no les generará ningún costo por los servicios y no cambiará la cobertura de sus hijos bajo su plan de salud o compañía de seguros.

“Por favor, compartan la información de su seguro con su escuela. Es seguro,” dijo Sabbah. “No hay ningún costo adicional para las familias.”

Añadió que, mediante esta iniciativa, los distritos escolares reciben un reembolso de aproximadamente el 40% de sus costos. Luego, los distritos utilizan dinero de su fondo general o de subvenciones para cubrir el 60% restante.

County superintendent Faris Sabbah speaks during the opening of the Scotts Valley High School Wellness Center in January 2025. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Sabbah dijo que, si un miembro del personal que brinda estos servicios cuesta aproximadamente $100,000, el distrito recibirá alrededor de $40,000 en reembolso. Explicó que a menudo los distritos tardan en recibir el dinero porque el Departamento de Servicios de Atención Médica de California, que administra el programa, está experimentando un retraso acumulado en el procesamiento de las solicitudes.

Actualmente, los 10 distritos escolares del condado ofrecen a los estudiantes servicios de salud mental cuyos costos se facturan a compañías de seguros o planes de salud.

Según Heather Maurin, coordinadora de Seguridad y Bienestar de Santa Cruz City Schools, el personal cuyos servicios pueden ser reembolsados incluye a consejeros escolares, trabajadores sociales, especialistas en salud mental, enfermeros y cualquier persona certificada como coach de bienestar. Dijo que es posible que las familias no se den cuenta de todos los servicios por los que las escuelas pueden recibir reembolsos.

“Si vienes a hablar conmigo sobre tu horario de clases, pero luego dices: ‘Mis padres se están divorciando y estoy realmente triste por eso’,” explicó Maurin. “Y terminas teniendo… una conversación de ocho minutos o más sobre eso… eso se puede facturar.”

Maurin dijo que, debido a que los servicios por los que las escuelas reciben reembolsos incluyen presentaciones en las aulas sobre temas como la prevención del suicidio, que reciben todos los estudiantes, todos los alumnos de Santa Cruz City Schools se ven afectados. El distrito no factura únicamente por servicios comunes como la consejería grupal e individual, sino también por esas presentaciones educativas.

“No queremos que el apoyo de salud mental sea un lugar estigmatizado al que solo acuden algunos niños,” dijo Maurin. “Queremos que se normalice, queremos que esté integrado.”

Maurin dijo que es esencial que los distritos escolares puedan ofrecer estos servicios en sus escuelas porque esto garantiza que los estudiantes que enfrentan obstáculos para acceder a ellos fuera del horario escolar tengan las mismas oportunidades. Señaló que no todos los estudiantes tienen tutores o padres que puedan llevarlos a recibir apoyo de salud mental o por consumo de sustancias durante las tardes o noches: “Iguala las condiciones.”

Santa Cruz High School. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

“Si queremos poder seguir ofreciendo esto, tenemos que tener un alto nivel de participación en el programa para obtener la compensación que necesitamos,” ella dijo.

Maurin dijo que hasta ahora aproximadamente el 65% de los estudiantes de Santa Cruz City Schools han proporcionado al distrito su consentimiento y la información de su seguro.

Añadió que durante el año escolar anterior, el personal tuvo aproximadamente 4,500 interacciones con estudiantes de nivel secundario relacionadas con consejería grupal o individual, apoyo para una evaluación socioemocional o situaciones de crisis. Estas cifras no incluyen la amplia variedad de otros servicios de bienestar que ofrece el distrito escolar, como evaluaciones de salud mental o trastornos por consumo de sustancias, ni las presentaciones educativas.

Dijo que, en los niveles de primaria y secundaria básica, el distrito estima que entre el 10% y el 12% de los estudiantes —unos 350 alumnos— reciben apoyos como consejería en grupos pequeños o consejería de corto plazo, mientras que aproximadamente entre el 2% y el 3% —unos 55 a 60 estudiantes— reciben servicios más intensivos.

Lo que las familias deben saber

• A las familias no se les cobrará nada y participar no afecta la cobertura de su seguro.
• Las escuelas ya ofrecen estos servicios de salud mental, independientemente de que el estudiante tenga seguro o de que la familia haya proporcionado su información al distrito.
• Los distritos escolares necesitan que un alto porcentaje de las familias proporcione su información de seguro para que los servicios ofrecidos por el personal escolar sean reembolsados a un nivel que resulte sostenible para los distritos.
• Toda la información del seguro médico es confidencial.
• Todos los estudiantes, tengan o no seguro, tienen acceso a todos los servicios de salud mental que ofrecen sus escuelas.
• El programa estatal de reembolsos se denomina Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) y es administrado por el Departamento de Servicios de Atención Médica de California (DHCS). Hay más información sobre la iniciativa en el sitio web del DHCS.

The post Lo que las familias deben saber sobre los servicios gratuitos de salud mental que ofrecen las escuelas públicas del condado de Santa Cruz appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Father Fritz sounded glum, and tired, as well he should have been. A native of Haiti and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Fritz—properly, the Reverend Fritzner Valcin—has been driving a little more than an hour west to Springfield, Ohio, every Sunday for the past few years from his home near Buckeye Lake to celebrate Mass with his Haitian flock at St. Raphael Church.

A year earlier, he had almost 100 in attendance on a typical Sunday. But by August 23, the size of Father Fritz’s flock had dwindled to no more than four Haitian worshippers (and two babies), including the organist.

In that time many things had changed, and not for the better. The Supreme Court’s decision in June effectively ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. More than 10,000 Haitians in the Springfield area—a city with a population of fewer than 60,000—who had been working and paying taxes on one day became illegal to employ and subject to deportation the next day.

Since the end of TPS, many Haitians in Springfield received letters to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash or the Columbus suburb of Westerville—both an hour away from Springfield—where they were given ankle monitors and told not to travel beyond a 75-mile radius of their homes.

It has not been a happy time for Father Fritz, a man well-known and loved for his warmth and ebullience. “They were allowed to come to this country and haven’t done anything wrong,” he told me on a recent visit I made to the church. “Emotionally, mentally, they are not in peace.”

That was putting it mildly. Unwilling to go back to Haiti, where they would face violent criminal gangs, and unable to move elsewhere, they have been sheltering at home in Springfield.

There have been reports that at least three Haitians have given up hope and attempted suicide, “but there’s no way to confirm that,” he said. “Mostly everyone is looking for some kind of relief, some direction. They don’t know exactly what to do, where to go at this time. People are afraid. They don’t want to go out.”

My wife and I know Father Fritz from his years as pastor of our church in Columbus—he had been a celebrant at our wedding. When his mother died a few years ago, he wept openly on the altar when our parish paid for his airfare to go back to Haiti for the funeral.

In late June, in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision, we joined several other couples in a small caravan to Springfield. We wanted to worship along with his Haitian parishioners and to offer support by our presence. The Mass, conducted in Haitian Creole, included a choir singing in their native tongue. It was impressive, but in many ways not unlike so many church services in every community around the nation.

The several dozen worshipers were heavily represented by young families, many with small children. A boy of about four years old was in a pew in front of us, fidgeting and craning his head to interact with another boy in the same pew. A grandmother gently throttled the lad to get him to pay attention to the service and not his little pal. A neatly dressed father walked behind some pews off to the side of the altar, cradling a baby on his shoulder to calm the infant.

Father Fritz consecrated the bread and wine into what Catholics believe is the authentic body and blood of Christ and prepared to offer Holy Communion to his flock, a rather far cry from the cats and dogs that alleged Catholic JD Vance said that these same Haitians were killing and eating.

Although Father Fritz conducted the Mass in Haitian Creole, he was aware that we were visiting and, after informing his parishioners of our presence, kindly offered a brief English translation of his homily. The dark days ahead might mean great loss for the Haitians, he said, “but they can never take our joy.”

After that Mass, however, we learned that a woman approached him to say that she wouldn’t be coming to the service anymore. She was moving to Canada.

More than a month later, after TPS ended, I spoke with Father Fritz about that woman and about the state of his flock. “She isn’t the only one,” he said wearily. “I talked to someone else, another woman, and she said, ‘I couldn’t take it anymore.’ She had a brother in Canada who gave her courage to come there. He was ready to support her.”

Attendance is way down at his Haitian Mass, he said: “Yes, because they are afraid. Many people shared with me they are afraid, afraid to go out. Someone shared with me that ‘the handcuffs are coming.’

“People who come to get children baptized, you may not see them again.

“My plan is to continue to go until there is no hope. But it is painful to see the amount of people who are afraid to come to Mass. This is one of the priorities when they come here. This is their value. But they have to hide themselves. Even with little children born here.”

In order to continue to serve his flock, Father Fritz is planning to offer online services via social media streaming video. “Those who can’t attend physically, I will also bring Communion to them,” he said.

As we talked, I realized that, in a cruel irony, the official ending of TPS status happened to occur on the same date as Father Fritz’s birthday. So on that day, ICE had begun to take his joy along with his flock. “I don’t have bad experience with anyone so far,” he said with a sigh. “But that doesn’t mean I’m protected from being stopped.”

Here we go again. The new oil deal with Venezuela, Donald Trump bragged over the weekend, will “substantially lower” gas prices and won’t cost the America taxpayer a dime. It’s historic. It’s yuge. It’s miraculous. So much winning. Hard to argue with in this case, right?

Actually, Ricardo Hausmann found these claims pretty easy to argue with after all. Hausmann is a professor of political economy at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a former planning minister and Central Bank board member of Venezuela. I’d call that pretty credentialed. Responding to a Marco Rubio tweet boasting about the deal, Hausmann wrote, in part:

Secretary Marco Rubio: You have just lost any trust Venezuelans ever had on [sic] you, and it will come to haunt you. You opted to use U.S. power not to free Venezuelans, but to go to bed with our oppressors … Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major U.S. oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last.

Hausmann is not alone. Skeptics included, at least initially, Florida GOP Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, who tweeted: “Any oil ‘deal’ with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House.” She also called Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez an “acting dictator” and concluded: “No democracy. No lasting deal. Period.”

Ah, but we know how things work in today’s GOP. She quickly deleted that post, in both English and Spanish, and returned to X an hour later to write: “The U.S.-Venezuela oil deal is a great deal for the United States and the Venezuelan people.” Guess she’ll avoid a primary next election.

The Venezuela announcement tracks with a very well-worn pattern. Trump raves that the deal in question is the greatest in the annals of history. It will deliver scarcely imaginable benefits. It will cost nothing. And it all happened because of Trump’s genius.

It’s been a lie every time. The tariffs were going to help farmers. Nope: Farmers are furious at Trump, giving Democrats their first potential political opening in rural America in ages. The tariffs were going to allow for elimination of the income tax. Remember that one? The war in Iran was going to take a month. The Reflecting Pool, ruined by Trump’s predecessors, was going to be thing of unparalleled beauty.

It’s tempting to call these lies, and they surely were in the sense that Trump just says everything he does is the greatest without the slightest bit of analysis or conscience entering into the equation. But they’re not just lies. They’re delusions. And delusions, in a way, are even worse than lies.

Why? Because while a liar can change course, a delusional person cannot. Trump is sitting in the mid-to-low 30s in approval. If he were merely a liar, he could try to correct course and do some things differently. He could realize, for example, that the war he started has been a disaster and is massively unpopular and, without exactly admitting it directly, sue for peace and cut his losses. A liar can acknowledge, eventually, that maybe he screwed up a little on the Reflecting Pool.

But a delusionist can do none of those things because the delusionist can’t accept that he’s done anything wrong. And he surrounds himself with people who understand that their only real job, whatever their actual specific responsibilities may be, is to keep the delusions alive and the Emperor happy.

So: A normal president two months out from what’s shaping up as a devastating midterm election would try to do things a little differently. I’m not sure in this case what exactly that would be; releasing some of the petroleum reserve, bringing beef producers to the White House and pressing them to lower prices for a period. Anyway that’s Trump’s problem, not mine. The point is that he won’t do these things because he doesn’t think anything is wrong. In fact, his plan right now is to make himself the centerpiece of the GOP’s midterm message and to that end will reportedly redirect part of a $400 million kitty on “television advertisements about his own record.”

That record is delulu. He mocks affordability. He says the bad polls are fake. He blames everything on Joe Biden. He tells people the economy is roaring, everybody says so (yes, everybody at Mar-a-Lago probably does say so). He boasts, as he did at that rally 10 or so days ago, that the last 19 months have been the greatest first 19 months of any administration in history.

His aides must echo every word of this palaver or risk censure or termination. Ditto Republican elected officials, as Salazar no doubt learned swiftly and loudly after her first tweet. And ditto Republican office seekers, like the Senate candidate in Minnesota (net worth: between $17 and $33 million) who says people concerned about gas prices should “take one less trip to Starbucks.”

The GOP lives in a cocoon, woven by the gossamer threads of Trump’s fantasia. Reality does not penetrate it. It’s funny to watch. But it’s tragic because it’s affecting people’s lives. People are struggling and suffering. But to say that in the Emperor’s presence is to prove only that you’re a deep-stater or a stooge or a RINO.

So no—none of this is fixable. The economy will get worse. More and more innocent people, very much including children, will be rounded up and held in detention centers in the kind of hideous conditions we associate with a right- (or hard left-) wing dictatorship, not the United States of America. The jaw-dropping corruption will continue and will get worse and more desperate, as indeed it has nearly every month of this administration so far. The attempts to rig and steal the midterms will only get more blatant. And next year, the hideous aspects of the Big Ugly Bill, the ones they intentionally delayed until after the midterms, will kick in, like the massive Medicaid cuts, and poor people and those in nursing homes, among many others, will suffer even more.

Oh—and to return to Venezuela. The Associated Press reported over the weekend that there are many aspects of this deal we don’t know about. First of all, the U.S. government and “an unnamed private operator” formed a new company that was given the rights to 17 oil fields for 100 years. Gee, ya think maybe that operator is some kind of friend of Trump? Or maybe that Trump himself has a piece of the company?

Second, as was well known at the time of the U.S. coup, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is in horrible shape and will take years to repair. So when will consumers start seeing this oil? As the AP put it, in its dry, neutral way: “A substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly.”

Third, it isn’t clear yet who will pay for these infrastructure improvements. Remember: Trump said this wouldn’t cost taxpayers any money. He said the same thing about the ballroom (current cost to taxpayers: around $300 million).

And fourth, it also isn’t clear how the U.S. oil industry will react. Oil companies will surely fret, and properly so, that the next president, if a Democrat, will cancel this. And there’s also the unstable situation in Venezuela itself. Salazar, before she censored herself, was correct—Delcy Rodriguez is an “acting dictator.” The actual winner of the last election, recognized by the Biden administration, was Edmundo Gonzales. But Victor Maduro stole it (Rodriguez was his vice president). And the current opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, is in exile, having won the Nobel Peace Prize, and says she hopes to return to the country this year. Not exactly a stable investment climate.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that a year or so from now, we’ll learn that the operating partnership is corrupt, that infrastructure investments aren’t happening as promised, that the venture will have cost taxpayers money, and that U.S. oil firms don’t want any part of it. I hope I’m wrong about all those things. But history suggests otherwise.

And in that case, whoever the next Karoline Leavitt is will be standing up at that podium saying everything’s going beautifully, and Stephen Cheung will be “truthing” that the naysayers are a bunch of Marxist haters. Actually, the only person in this story who’s vaguely Marxist is Trump’s friend Delcy Rodriguez, whose Marxist guerilla father orchestrated the kidnaping of an American businessman in 1974. But never mind that. The Emperor is never wrong.   

Congress has spent the last two centuries passing laws. These laws often remain on the books, so to speak, long after their purpose has been fulfilled until lawmakers repeal them. Occasionally the Trump administration finds something buried within this back catalogue that it can wield for its own purposes—and to no good end.

This summer, for example, the Trump administration has moved to revive two different courts that are authorized by Congress but have laid moribund for decades or even centuries. One of them is the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, or ATRC, which the Justice Department plans to use to deport certain applicable immigrants in classified settings. The pending ATRC case will be the first one ever heard by that court since Congress permitted its creation in a 1996 anti-terrorism law.

Earlier this week, the department also began moving towards reviving prize courts, which allow the U.S. government to seize foreign vessels captured during war—more specifically, any Iranian oil tankers captured during the ongoing illegal war with Iran. Under federal law, these prize courts operate within the existing federal district courts to hear cases on the legality of a ship’s capture and pave the way for the vessel’s eventual sale, as well as the sale of any goods on board.

The Trump administration’s enthusiasm for reviving moribund laws to accomplish its policy goals should inspire Congress to consider repealing or revising them. Trump and his allies have inflicted plenty of harm through violating federal laws during his second term. Another important problem is when he abuses and misuses existing laws. If Congress is interested in restoring its own primacy in our constitutional order, it should reconsider its own past missteps as well.

Both of the court revivals illustrate the problem. While federal law authorizes the use of prize courts, they have not meaningfully existed since the Civil War. The Union Navy blockaded Southern ports throughout the war and seized military and civilian vessels alike. Once captured, the ships were typically brought to Union-held ports for disposal by prize courts. In 1863, the Supreme Court rejected legal challenges to the Southern blockade and upheld President Abraham Lincoln’s authority to seize and sell ships and goods acquired from it.

As Bloomberg noted when it reported on the prize courts’ revival earlier this week, the courts fell into disuse after the Spanish-American War ended in 1900 and were moribund after World War II. They reflect a 19th-century understanding of naval warfare where both a nation’s navy and private citizens acting as privateers could capture vessels on the high seas. The changing nature of naval warfare helped render these tactics obsolete: the average American boat owner these days would have an easier time sailing to the moon than capturing an armed enemy warship.

A Congressional Research Service report in 2024 noted that Congress abolished prize money for private citizens in 1899, and any proceeds from prize-court cases now goes into the Treasury’s general fund instead. The Trump administration’s plans, though still vague, appear to be centered on creating a faster, easier legal pathway to sell captured Iranian oil. This may be riskier for the administration than it looks, since it will give federal courts an opportunity to directly consider whether the ships and goods were lawfully seized. As Lincoln’s own experience showed, such cases can allow judges to consider legality of the war itself. The sixteenth president prevailed; the forty-seventh might not.

The ATRC case is a dark reflection of the prize courts—a wholly modern court system created by Congress within living memory that went unused from the start. The ATRC is authorized by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, a 1996 law that expanded the executive branch’s powers in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and other attacks. Like many emergency laws, it reflects the haste and overzealousness of its drafters. AEDPA today is best known (and often criticized) for limiting habeas relief for federal prisoners in courts, for example, even in non-terrorism cases.

Congress already built a legal framework for deportations and removals of foreign nationals in the Immigration and Nationality Acts. Under AEDPA, the executive branch can instead shunt a suspected “alien terrorist” into the ATRC for removal hearings instead. This power is not unlimited: a federal judge sitting on the court must approve the person’s designation as an alien terrorist based on a probable-cause standard, which the Justice Department can meet with classified evidence not reviewable on public court dockets or, in some circumstances, by the person who is threatened with deportation.

It is telling that the federal government had never before used the ATRC to deport someone, even at the height of the War on Terror under the George W. Bush administration. One legal scholar speculated in a 2008 law-review article that the Justice Department had avoided using the ATRC because it did not want to risk an “adverse constitutional ruling” on appeal. (In the early 2000s, the Bush administration lost multiple Supreme Court cases about the constitutional status of Guantanamo Bay detainees.) Indeed, the use of secret evidence to designate someone as a terrorist and order their removal raises significant due-process questions.

Even if the Trump administration is not able to make full use of these courts, their sudden emergence or re-emergence after decades of disuse is a cautionary tale.  Congress has a pernicious habit of leaving loaded guns lying around in the United States Code. Just because past presidents haven’t picked them up and abused them doesn’t mean Trump and his successors should be able to do so.

One of Trump’s first experiments with moribund laws this time was to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 last year against Venezuelan nationals living inside the United States who it claims are members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. History students may remember the law as one component of the Alien and Sedition Acts, a package of controversial and constitutionally dubious laws enacted by the John Adams administration in the late 1790s. The Alien Enemies Act was the only one that wasn’t repealed, though it remained largely unused until recently.

Trump officials apparently saw it as a way to bypass the other deportation safeguards built into federal law by Congress. The White House invoked it last spring to send more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, even though at least some of them had no proven ties to the group. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals froze future deportations last fall, forcing the administration to use other deportation mechanisms, but the State Department said in January that it lost track of more than 100 people deported by the Trump administration before the courts stopped them.

Another law that would be worth tweaking is the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973. The Constitution gives Congress full authority to govern the federal enclave in which it and the rest of the federal government operates. Since 1973, Congress has delegated much of that authority to an elected mayor and city council. This law is not moribund, of course, but some of its under-used provisions gave too much discretion to the president and compromised the law’s intent. 

Since the spring of 2025, Trump invoked emergency provisions of the Home Rule Act to commandeer the Metropolitan Police Department on a temporary basis and to deploy National Guard troops on the streets of the Capitol. While the provisions were meant to be used in cases of civil unrest, Trump wielded them for aesthetic and ideological reasons to station armed soldiers through the seat of the republic. Similar efforts to deploy troops into American cities hit a wall at the Supreme Court last December, but D.C.’s unique legal status left it vulnerable to continued occupation.

A revised version of the Home Rule Act could set harder limits on how long the president can command D.C. police resources or revoke that power altogether. More urgently, it could explicitly forbid the president from deploying the National Guard within the boundaries of D.C. without the mayor’s assent. National Guard troops have behaved fairly well during their deployment in the capital; a few of them even helped me dig out our car after February’s ice storm. Their individual conduct does not justify the un-American nature of their mission, which is an insult to our nation’s republican values and our abhorrence of anything resembling military rule. (In recent interviews, some National Guard members formerly assigned to D.C. have spoken against their deployment.)

Perhaps the worst loaded gun of all is the Insurrection Act. The vaguely written statute, which was largely written in 1807, allows the president to temporarily deploy the U.S. military for civilian law-enforcement purposes. Past presidents have used it in cases of serious civil unrest, like the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Trump has threatened to use it throughout his presidency and seems to think of it as a “win” button of sorts against protests and political movements that he opposes. Congress could revise the law by narrowing the circumstances under which it can be invoked and setting a clear timetable for which congressional authorization would be required to maintain it.

Other flawed defunct and partially defunct laws abound. Congress might want to revisit the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 after Trump used it to ignite a global trade war last year and levy hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on American businesses and consumers. The Supreme Court finally stopped him earlier this year, but its broad language could cause future problems. A Democratic-led Congress might also be interested in scrapping the Comstock Act’s un-invoked ban on using the Postal Service to distribute abortion-related medication. (Trump is personally opposed to this strategy, but his successors probably won’t be.)

No shortage of reforms will be necessary to address Trump’s illegal acts after his presidency, of course. But plenty of attention should also be paid to how he has lawfully wielded power as well, or exploited ambiguities in the unwise grants of power that Congress has given to the White House over the years. To help restore Congress as the paramount branch of our government, current and future lawmakers should reclaim the tools and powers that their predecessors handed over too hastily to past Oval Office occupants.

California rightly does not treat every criminal conviction as a lifetime ban on public service. But the standards might need to be different when an elected position carries responsibility for children. The Pajaro Valley school board race has exposed gaps in both eligibility standards and candidate verification. Lookout’s editorial board believes AB 2691 should pass — and that lawmakers should keep working to get the balance right.

The post A Lookout View: California’s rules for public office need a second look – especially on school boards appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Las enfermeras del Watsonville Community Hospital tienen previsto manifestarse el lunes por la tarde contra el cierre que continúa en la unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales del hospital.

A mediados de julio, el hospital cerró temporalmente la unidad debido a la escasez de enfermeras en su unidad de trabajo de parto. El director ejecutivo interino, Tim Moran, dijo a Lookout el mes pasado que la unidad ya tenía poco personal antes de que él reemplazara al exdirector ejecutivo Stephen Gray.

La unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales funciona como la unidad de cuidados intensivos para recién nacidos del hospital. Las UCIN se clasifican según el nivel de atención que brindan, de manera similar a los centros de trauma.

Watsonville opera como una unidad de Nivel II, que proporciona atención intermedia a bebés nacidos a las 32 semanas de gestación o después que pueden presentar problemas leves para respirar y alimentarse, y estabiliza a los bebés más prematuros —nacidos antes de las 32 semanas— antes de trasladarlos a un hospital de mayor nivel.

Watsonville Community Hospital. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

La directora interina de enfermería, Susan Casperson, recordó a la junta directiva del hospital durante una reunión la semana pasada que el centro había reclutado y contratado a cinco enfermeras para la unidad de trabajo de parto y parto, pero que dos no contaban con la certificación adecuada. Añadió que otra enfermera que tenía previsto comenzar su orientación como nueva empleada esta semana sufrió un accidente automovilístico, dejando solamente a dos nuevas contrataciones: una para cada turno.

“No es realmente el equipo de respaldo que estábamos tratando de formar,” dijo Casperson la semana pasada. “Dicho esto, en este momento no podemos abrir la UCIN de manera segura.”

Moran había dicho anteriormente a Lookout que las pocas enfermeras que trabajan en la unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales se han trasladado temporalmente a la unidad de trabajo de parto y parto para apoyar a ese departamento.

A mediados de septiembre, la unidad de trabajo de parto y parto recibirá apoyo adicional de enfermeras temporales, según Casperson. Sin embargo, añadió que no ve una manera de reabrir la unidad antes de que lleguen esas enfermeras.

“Las enfermeras están pidiendo a la administración y a la junta directiva del hospital que reviertan esta decisión, inviertan en personal y abran inmediatamente nuestra UCIN,” dijo Roseann Farris, enfermera en WCH, en un comunicado de prensa la semana pasada. “Nuestra comunidad merece un hospital plenamente operativo con acceso a atención que puede salvar vidas. Las enfermeras hicieron un juramento de defender a nuestros pacientes y no permaneceremos en silencio cuando su salud esté en riesgo.”

Roseann Farris, registered nurse and chief nurse representative for Watsonville Community Hospital, addresses the media at a rally in January 2026. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

El hospital atiende aproximadamente al 31% de los bebés nacidos en el condado de Santa Cruz, ligeramente por encima del 29% de Dominican Hospital. Una gran parte de las madres que dan a luz en Watsonville Community Hospital son latinas, de habla hispana y de ingresos bajos o moderados, y viven en Watsonville y el Valle del Pájaro.

El hospital registra un promedio de aproximadamente 60 partos al mes. En julio hubo 70 partos, según un informe reciente del hospital.

Moran dijo a Lookout que, si hay bebés que presentan problemas de salud, el hospital tiene acuerdos de traslado con hospitales cercanos, entre ellos Dominican Hospital en Santa Cruz y Natividad Medical Center en Salinas, ubicado a 23 millas al sur de Watsonville.

Los casos más críticos también pueden ser trasladados a Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital de la Universidad de Stanford en Palo Alto, como parte de una asociación vigente entre ambos centros.

Sin embargo, la unidad continúa enfrentando desafíos adicionales, ya que varias de sus enfermeras —incluida una enfermera de la UCIN— están enfermas de COVID-19, dijo Casperson. Añadió que el hospital ya se comunicó con la agencia de salud pública del condado sobre el brote. El hospital ha implementado un protocolo de uso de mascarillas durante dos semanas, obligatorio en todas las áreas clínicas que tienen contacto con pacientes.

Hay al menos nueve casos de COVID-19, según Moran. Añadió que el brote solamente ha afectado a la unidad de trabajo de parto y parto, que continúa funcionando con normalidad.

Moran dijo que cree que la unidad estará bien, pero que, debido a la “naturaleza frágil” de la plantilla del hospital, resulta un tanto preocupante que varias personas estén enfermas y fuera de servicio al mismo tiempo.

La principal prioridad de Moran es garantizar que el hospital continúe brindando el nivel de atención más seguro posible a las mujeres que acuden al centro para dar a luz, mientras su equipo trabaja para estabilizar la situación del personal.

The post Enfermeras del Watsonville Community Hospital se manifestarán por el cierre de unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales y la escasez de personal appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

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⚡ Quick Take

• Maggie’s sister Beth, who died in season five of The Walking Dead, makes an appearance in Dead City‘s sixth episode.
• It imagines a world where the apocalypse never happened, and reveals what Beth’s life could have been like.
• Nerdist’s Take: It was interesting to see a different version of Maggie and Beth, but the episode should have had more sister time.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season three’s sixth episode is one that’s unlike anything we’ve seen in the show so far. The entire episode takes us out of the gritty post-apocalyptic version of NYC and imagines an alternate timeline where the world wasn’t overrun by walkers. Maggie heads to NYC for an unforgettable day and gets something that she longs for in her heart: more time with her sister. Beth returns in The Walking Dead: Dead City for this alternate universe cameo, and here’s what happens. 

The beginning of the episode has Negan at the bar after he executed Fabian. He’s thinking about his conversation with Maggie where he said they could have been friends in another life. Dillard is whistling outside of the door and about to come in, but things suddenly transition to a regular world. In walks Beth, who comes in to do a mic check for a show she’s doing later that evening. As fans of the OG series remember, Beth loved music and even sung a song with Maggie called “The Parting Glass” way back in season three. Sadly, she lost her life in season five at Grady Memorial when Dawn shot her in the head. 

But, in this alternate reality, Beth goes to meet Maggie at the park in NYC right around Christmastime. Their father has passed away and Maggie is trying to figure out how to save the family farm, where The Walking Dead famously spent season two. Maggie is even married to Danny, whom she mentioned IRL and said she got caught kissing him pre-Glenn, but they are on the brink of a divorce.

Beth is happy living her life in the city and doing music, and even encourages Maggie to find her own life and sell the farm. She wants Maggie to stay for her show, but Maggie is heading back to attend to business at home. It is much like her real sentiments about building community in NYC alongside Renata. 

Beth leaves to work one of her two jobs, and the pair part ways. We don’t see Beth any more until the end of the episode after Maggie’s wild day with her new acquaintance Negan. A lot transpires, from Negan opening up about his wife’s death and a violent incident that landed him in legal trouble to Maggie talking about her relationship and life woes. Maggie ends up staying to see Beth’s show, where she sings a song from their childhood.

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Unfortunately, Negan ruins the moment when he sees the man that he seeks vengeance against, and Maggie follows to stop him from killing the man. She goes back into the show, and they end up walking down the street as two happy sisters smiling and caroling. It’s pretty sad to think about all that Maggie has lost and what could have been if Beth survived, even in the apocalypse. The only blood family member she has left is her son Herschel, and he kinda sucks. Maggie doesn’t have kids in this alternate reality, which is probably for the best.

Anyway, Maggie tells Beth that she’s going to sell the farm and attempt a different kind of life. They go to Beth’s apartment, where they meet her neighbor Luis, a hint that this duo might get together IRL. Maggie gets a phone call from a loan officer who will approve her co-op, and she says what she wants can probably wait a little longer. That ends the cameo of Beth in The Walking Dead: Dead City, which honestly didn’t give her much to do. 

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The episode goes back to our regularly scheduled program with Herschel informing Maggie that Negan shot Fabian AND slashed Dillard in the face. Yikkkeessss. Just when Maggie and Negan were getting to a place where they could legitimately not hate each other, we are probably heading back to square one again.

Tai Gooden is the Features Editor for Nerdist, a fictional villain apologist, and a horror aficionado who is forever waiting for her trip in the TARDIS.

The post How Does Beth Show Up in THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY? appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• We caught up with Emily Kinney to talk about her big The Walking Dead: Dead City cameo, what she wanted for Beth, and much more.
• Kinney says she imagined Beth’s future to be like what we got in this alternate universe episode.
• Fun Fact: Emily Kinney is obsessed with Widow’s Bay, just like the rest of us.

Maggie and Negan just can’t seem to not be a pain in each other’s side for too long. Right after they had a quite cordial and boozy chat in episode five of The Walking Dead: Dead City, Negan found a way to mess up his goodwill. We know that there will be fallout with Maggie, but episode six instead goes in an alternate universe direction to imagine a much more normal but still complex timeline for this duo. And, as we get to know a Maggie who isn’t hardened by the apocalypse, we also get the gift of seeing what Beth’s life would have been like, too. We caught up with Emily Kinney to talk about her big Dead City cameo, what she wanted for Beth, and much more. 

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Nerdist: The Walking Dead fans love fanfic, especially alternate universe ones that imagine characters who are no longer here. And we get that in a sense with this return of Beth to our screens. Why do you think Beth continues to resonate with fans years after her death? 

Emily Kinney: I think there are a couple of reasons… I feel like there’s something about her age when the zombie apocalypse is happening. When you think about being a teenager, you’re coming of age and figuring out who you are… I think there’s something about her discovering who she was during an apocalypse. And there were really the powerful moments of her considering dying by suicide and then really getting to know her better through the episode with Daryl. I think people connected with her because she was someone who was really just starting to figure out who she was. She was also such a creative person and music is such a way that people connect.

Even if there were times when Beth didn’t say a lot, having her be a character that sang made people gravitate towards her in a really beautiful way and feel like they could connect with her and know her, even if she wasn’t the one chopping up all the zombies in the episode. And so I think her leaving made people be like, “Wait, wait, wait. We were just getting to really get into who she was going to be.” 

For sure, she was so sweet and really just beginning her life. Speaking of music, we get a chance to get that part of her back in this episode because she’s a musician. When you envisioned Beth’s future yourself, how well did it line up with what we saw in this episode? 

Kinney: You know what? As soon as I read it, it honestly felt very natural and I was like, “Oh yeah, yes, of course.” Even down to the styling of how she dresses called back to how she dressed during the show, with the braids in her hair and the bracelets and the stuff that she would wear back in the original Walking Dead. We tried to bring some of that into who she was as an adult as well. I feel like that first opening scene at Central Park, it really set up a great through line from the farm to New York City and how she got there, and it all felt really natural to me.

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Indeed. What was it like to be back on set and reunite with Lauren Cohan as on-screen sisters once again? 

Kinney: It was so satisfying. I never imagined I’d be back on the set, but it felt so easy and natural. It felt like a celebration in a weird way. 

You two seemed to get right back into the stride! How do you think Beth continues to influence Maggie’s apocalypse life years after her death? 

Kinney: I think it’s a matter of you don’t really forget where you come from. What was cool about this episode is all the references to what Maggie has going on back at the farm and her family and the people they’ve lost. I think that Beth and all the people that Maggie has lost, even if you’re in a new world, in a new city, how you grew up really sticks with you in so many ways. I know for me, I grew up in Nebraska in a small town, and then I moved to New York when I was 19. Even if as you change and change how you see the world and everything when you leave, how you grew up sticks with you in this way that you can’t shake. And so I think that Beth and all the people that Maggie has lost, they stick with her and they carry on with her.

Maggie is still that farm girl at heart, and I love that. At Nerdist, we always talk about all things that we love that are geeky and nerdy, whether it’s TV shows like The Walking Dead: Dead City, video games, or comics. What do you nerd out about and why do you nerd out about it, Emily? 

Kinney: Oh my gosh. It’s hard for me to pick one. I mean, I want to say music. I actually do a show right now with Jam in the Van called Late Start, and the whole thing is music discovery. So I really love to find a new artist that only has a few followers on Spotify, and then I’ll just listen to their whole catalog. So I love finding new music. And I love to go see shows here in LA. And then I’ve also been really into the new show Widow’s Bay. 

Oh man, I love Widow’s Bay. 

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Kinney: It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a show and been like, “I’m going to start over and watch it all again from the beginning.” And for whatever reason, it really got me and I just love it. So that’s what I’m nerding out about.

It is excellent. Final question: Describe this episode of Dead City in three words? 

Kinney: Nostalgic, emotional, festive!

Tai Gooden is the Features Editor for Nerdist, a fictional villain apologist, and a horror aficionado who is forever waiting for her trip in the TARDIS.

The post Emily Kinney on Beth’s Return in THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY appeared first on Nerdist.