Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest public policy news. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Late last night, President Obama announced that “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.” Bin Laden was killed at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
National Security
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh condemned U.S. forces for killing Osama bin Laden, mourning him as an “Arab holy warrior.” The operation is “the continuation of the American oppression and shedding of blood of Muslims and Arabs,” he said.
A Pakistani TV station broadcast footage of a fire said to be at the compound near Islamabad where Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday.
April was the deadliest month for the U.S. military in Iraq in almost a year and a half and the worst for U.S. troops since President Obama declared the end of combat operations last year.
Education
Faced with deep budget cuts, the University of California system “is ramping up its campaign to recruit high-paying students from other states and countries.”
“The faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago filed paperwork Friday with the state’s labor relations board to become one of only a handful of research universities where professors engage in collective bargaining,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan writes an open letter to America’s teachers.
LGBT Equality
At last night’s White House celebration of the death of Osama bin Laden, gay military organization Servicemembers United distributed flags widely to the crowd.
The Department of Justice continues to defend Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in court as training for repeal implementation proceeds.
Though same-sex marriage is already illegal there, a Minnesota Senate committee has advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
Justice
Tennessee is moving forward with an unconstitutional Voter ID bill that would disenfranchise many low-income seniors.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor laments the broken judicial confirmation process, calling for, among other things, “having a panel of legal experts evaluate potential judges written records.”
Justice Samuel Alito decided not to step into a dispute over whether the Army Corps of Engineers will blow up a leeve and flood 130,000 acres of farmland or risk having the leeve breach elsewhere and destroy a small Illinois town.
Climate Change
“Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is asking President Barack Obama to replace federal regulators overseeing oil markets as crude oil topped $113 a barrel on Friday and gas prices in Vermont neared an average of $4 per gallon.”
“Missouri’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court on Sunday to intervene and block a proposed federal plan to protect the southern Illinois town of Cairo by blowing up a levee on the Mississippi River.”
“Gov. Robert Bentley said the federal government has declared Alabama a category one disaster, a ranking as high as was given to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the terrorism on 9/11.”
Health Care
“House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on Friday dismissed the impact of the coming Senate vote on his budget plan, saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is ‘playing politics’ by holding a vote on the House budget after the recess.”
“House Republicans say their budget proposal would make Medicare work just like the health insurance that covers federal employees, including members of Congress. But a close examination shows the two plans are very different, and the differences help explain why the Republican plan has set off a political uproar.”
“Hundreds of thousands of young adults are taking advantage of the health care law provision that allows people under 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans, some of the nation’s largest insurers are reporting.”
Immigration
President Obama promised graduates at Miami Dade College that he’ll keep working to help undocumented students become American citizens.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a solution to the nation’s immigration problem and Detroit’s economic woes: Let immigrants come to the United States “as long as they agree to live in Detroit.”
The New York Times confirms that “John Tanton, the provocative architect of a national movement to reduce immigration, has quietly left the board of the group he started and helped guide for 32 years.”
Economy
“The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing an investigation of Google Inc.’s dominance of the Internet search industry by alerting high-tech companies to gather information for the probe,” Bloomberg reports.
Research by the USDA’s Economic Research Service “shows that farms that make the highest profits receive the highest levels of subsidies. For example, farms with an annual income of $210,000 receive an average of $30,000 or more.”
“About 62% of the 387 sets of rules required by [the Dodd-Frank financial reform law] haven’t even been proposed,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
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