Secession talks emerge in one Northern California county. Is a new state a possibility?
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When considering the possibility of a 51st U.S. state, places like Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are likely some of the first to spring to mind.
But what about a sparser alternative, nestled between California and Nevada, with prime views of Lake Tahoe’s southern shore?
A new proposal, put forth by a resident and supported by at least one former county leader, would have El Dorado County secede from California and become its own state.
The idea is being spearheaded by county resident Sharon Durst, who spoke alongside former county Supervisor Ray Nutting at a community meeting last month, the Mountain Democrat newspaper reported. Durst also laid out the case for secession in a more than 7,000-word post published May 26 on newsletter platform Substack.
—The Sacramento Bee
College Board refuses to drop gender topics from AP psychology course
TAMPA, Fla. — The national nonprofit that runs Advanced Placement classes has declined to alter its popular psychology course to meet Florida’s restrictions on teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation.
The Department of Education asked the College Board in May to consider modifying the material to ensure compliance with the State Board of Education’s new rule prohibiting instruction on those topics at all grade levels, unless it is expressly required in approved standards.
On Thursday, the College Board informed the department in a letter that it wouldn’t be making any changes.
“Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the group wrote. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”
—Tampa Bay Times
San Diego County pilot program aims to prevent childhood suicide
San Diego will be among a handful of counties statewide to test a new suicide-prevention program that takes a public health approach to identifying and helping those who have attempted to harm themselves.
Called the Youth Suicide Reporting and Crisis Response Pilot Program, the $50 million initiative, sponsored by the California Health and Human Services Agency, would require reporting of suicide and attempted suicide using hospital and other systems created to track infectious disease.
Confidential reports could then be used to increase rapid responses for youth up to age 25, collaborating with schools and other local programs "to prevent subsequent suicide attempts among youth following a suicide event and to encourage help-seeking behaviors."
Suicide has decreased somewhat in San Diego County, according to data from the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office, with 55 deaths reported in 2021 compared to 60 in 2020 among those age 25 and younger. But, within that group, a more-concerning trend is emerging.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
Johnson in ‘serious contempt’ poses major dilemma for UK’s Sunak
Boris Johnson committed a “serious contempt” of Parliament and repeatedly misled U.K. lawmakers about rule-breaking parties in Downing Street during the pandemic, according to a long-awaited probe which despite its largely unsurprising findings still shocked with the severity of its indictment of the former prime minister.
Yet how the current premier Rishi Sunak responds is likely to have major implications for the prospects of both men. Their long-running animosity behind the scenes has boiled over into an ugly public spat in recent weeks and shredded any lingering sense of unity in the governing Conservative Party.
As things stand, the findings of the seven-strong, majority-Tory parliamentary committee which investigated Johnson’s behavior are confined to a report for Members of Parliament to vote on. That will happen on Monday, but a major question for Sunak is how to frame the question: Will MPs be asked to endorse the findings, or merely acknowledge that the report was published?
If it is the former — and MPs give a full-throated endorsement of the panel’s verdict on Johnson — the former prime minister’s hopes of a political comeback would be severely dented. It would undermine his argument that he was unfairly pushed out, or as he has repeatedly said, was the victim of a “witch hunt.”
—Bloomberg News
