News and Issues

The advocacy group Compassion & Choices says that bills on aid-in-dying have been introduced this year in Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Utah. "I'm very worried about it because I meet people in my practice who conflate hospice and palliative care with assisted suicide or euthanasia,” said Ira Byock, director of the Providence Institute for Human Caring in California. more »

"Beatrix Farrand was America’s finest landscape garden designer. Her most extensive project, Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, DC, has been described as ranking with 'the greatest gardens in the world.' Her career and her work continue to be an inspiration today. She has long been a role model for many women in the landscape design field who have followed her." more »

A bill to strengthen connections to early childhood education programs; a bill to increase the number of months of vocational educational training that may be counted as work under the temporary assistance for needy families program; a bill to provide for the establishment of a commission to accelerate the end of breast cancer; a bill to create a tax credit for foster families; a bill to direct the attorney general to make grants to states that have in place laws that terminate the parental rights of men who father children through rape. more »

Today, the justices have heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the validity of tax subsidies helping millions of Americans buy health insurance if they don’t get it through an employer or the government. If the court rules against the Obama administration, those subsidies could be cut off for everyone in the three dozen states using healthcare.gov, the federal exchange website. A decision is expected by the end of June. more »