This paper provides a high-level roadmap for how certified community behavioral health clinics can work with criminal justice systems. These clinics are designed to ensure access to coordinated comprehensive mental health or substance use disorder care. This paper also identifies strategies and opportunities that certified community behavioral health clinics and states are using to improve outcomes for individuals involved in criminal justice systems. Key findings include that the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s 2024 Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics Impact Report shows that nearly all clinics (98%) are actively engaged in one or more activities in partnership with criminal justice agencies. Specifically, 63.7% of certified community behavioral health clinics conduct outreach and engagement with people involved in the justice system. In addition, 59.9% of certified community behavioral health clinics provide training for justice partners. Lastly, 49.3% of certified community behavioral health clinics provide reentry support, and 41.2% of certified community behavioral health clinics use a crisis co-response model in which a law enforcement officer response alongside a mental health clinician or service provider to calls for service that may involve a person experiencing a mental health crisis and/or homelessness.

The Alabama Supreme Court, at the direction of the Alabama Legislature, convened a study group in 2025 to examine court fees across the state. Researchers found that an additional $100 in cumulative court fees is associated with an additional 34 jail detentions per 100,000 people at the county level. This small but significant increase suggests that fee increases could increase detention rather than deter it. The cost of jail detention accrues to counties, which also assess local fees. This suggests that the anticipated revenue gain from fee increases should be weighed against the costs of increased detention, as well as the social costs of assessing debt on low -wealth residents and families who may struggle to pay. Researchers also found wide cross-county variations in fee levels. The highest total court fees in 2011, the study’s baseline, were in Barbour County ($6,228, with 53 fees at a median of $80), Chambers County ($6,121, with 52 fees at a median of $50), and DeKalb County ($6,058, with 53 fees at a median of $50). Between 2012 and 2024, 25 of 67 counties introduced new fees or increased existing ones.

Commercial spyware firms—private companies that develop and sell sophisticated hacking tools to governments—are operating in a legal environment marked by weak oversight and notable regulatory gaps. This article examines litigation against the NSO Group and its Pegasus spyware as a case study to evaluate whether private lawsuits can function as a regulatory tool in this underregulated industry. This article supports the observation that traditional state-centered regulation has struggled to constrain commercial spyware. It further demonstrates that lawsuits brought by individual victims have faced considerable challenges, due to jurisdictional hurdles and structural resource disparities. At the same time, litigation initiated by major technology companies has achieved limited success and could occupy an effective supplemental regulatory role. Building on the emerging scholarship painting Big Tech as a potential de facto complementary regulator in the field of surveillance in general, and in the context of spyware in particular, this article shows that technology companies possess incentives, resources, and jurisdictional leverage necessary to pursue or back sustained litigation aimed at shaping legal rules that alter the economic and legal viability of abusive spyware use.

New York City’s Small Schools of Choice were created to redesign students’ high school experiences and increase high school graduation rates for students from low-income backgrounds who historically had limited access to small, personalized academic instruction. These schools typically serve approximately 100 students per grade and emphasize academic rigor, the real-world relevance of learning, and personalized relationships between teachers and their students. This brief explores whether students’ enrollment in small schools of choice continues to help them advance as they move into postsecondary education and the labor market. Researchers found that on average, ninth-grade enrollment in a small school of choice had large positive effects (9.5 percentage points) on students’ enrollment in postsecondary education immediately after graduating from high school, and small to moderate positive effects (2.5 percentage points) on students’ four-year postsecondary degree attainment rate. In addition, researchers found some variation in effects across students, such as larger increases in postsecondary enrollment and degree attainment rates among students who were already proficient in math before entering high school. Lastly, researchers found no effect on students’ employment rates or earnings, despite increased rates of enrollment in postsecondary education.

Budget shortfalls have become the top challenge U.S. public school district leaders are facing in 2026, with 54% of survey respondents ranking it in their top three concerns—up from 33% in 2025. Declining enrollment is also increasingly a concern among survey respondents, especially for leaders in rural districts. Interviewed leaders pointed to the loss of federal COVID-19 relief funds, rising costs, and state and local revenues that have not kept pace as the primary drivers of budget shortfalls. Leaders indicated that budget cuts have worsened other challenges in their districts, such as ensuring adequate staffing and improving reading and math achievement. To increase enrollment, school districts are competing for students: About 40% of survey respondents said that their districts are considering marketing campaigns, 33% are considering expanding pre-kindergarten (pre-K) services, and a similar share are considering offering new extracurriculars (e.g., sports, out-of-school programs). In the face of continued enrollment decline, many public school districts will need support both to plan for long-term downsizing and to identify and invest in the services that can help them better attract and retain families.

Military service members and veterans may experience adverse health outcomes, such as cancer and respiratory diseases, that are possibly associated with toxic exposures during military service. This report describes available information on the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) staff use of the individual longitudinal exposure record and information about veterans’ and service members’ access to their individual longitudinal exposure records. This record provides claims benefits staff, clinicians, and researchers with information linking deployment histories, health assessments, and potential toxic exposures. Researchers found that record data from October 2019 through January 2026 show that department staff use of the individual longitudinal exposure record web application increased after the August 2022 enactment of PACT Act, which expanded eligibility for VA health care and disability benefits to veterans who had experienced certain toxic exposures during their military service. In addition, in March 2026, officials provided service members the ability to access and add self-reported updates to their records. Officials reported that they plan to provide service members with a way to request corrections by September 2026 and veterans with access and a way to request corrections by October 2026.

Over nearly two centuries, U.S. inventions have become increasingly dissimilar: not just fewer head-to-head collisions between inventors, but growing distance between neighboring inventions. This paper documents the secular decline in similarity using validated neural language models. Specifically, researchers develop a spatial competition model in which inventors choose locations in idea space. The model explains spreading out and connects it to several independently documented patterns — rising research and development investment per inventor, increasing patent values, weakening knowledge spillovers, and declining research productivity. The mechanism is spatial; as inventors spread out to capture new territory, inventions become more valuable but also more costly for others to absorb. In doing so, the model turns spillover intensity, innovation step size, and research productivity from fixed primitives into outcomes of inventor positioning. A calibrated decomposition attributes roughly 40% of the long-run decline in U.S. research productivity to these spatial forces, alongside traditional explanations such as fishing out, in which easier ideas have been found first and remaining ideas are harder to find, and the burden of knowledge. Where inventors stand relative to each other in idea space matters as much for growth as how many of them there are.

This report examines how U.S. adults spend time eating, for food acquisition, meal preparation, and physical activity, using data from the 2022-2023 Eating and Health Module of the American Time Use Survey. Researchers found that on an average day, U.S. adults spent 67.5 minutes eating as a primary activity and 16.4 minutes eating while multitasking. A larger share of total time spent on primary eating and drinking now occurs at home, increasing from 64.6% in 2006−2008 to 74.4% in 2022−2023. Prepared food consumption and grocery shopping patterns vary across demographic and health groups. Specifically, nearly 90% of adults reported some responsibility for grocery shopping, but women were almost twice as likely as men to be fully responsible. Researchers also found that adults reported purchasing prepared, ready-to-eat food 2.2 times per week, with adults with higher obesity risk more commonly purchasing these meals. Lastly, nearly two-thirds of adults (64.1%) engaged in physical activity at least once during the past week. Physical activity was more frequent and vigorous among adults with a healthy body mass index (BMI) and higher self-assessed diet quality and health status. Among adults surveyed, 17.3% reported all their physical activity was vigorous.

This brief highlights current challenges older adults with disabilities experience in accessing key services and supports that are essential for independent living. Key findings include that in December 2025, nearly 1 in 4 (24.0%) older adults with disabilities reported there was a time in the past 12 months when they did not get personal assistance they needed. This includes personal care assistance and help with daily activities such as eating, dressing, bathing, or managing medications. Overall, 11.3% of adults ages 60 and older (including those with and without disabilities) reported unmet needs for personal assistance in the past 12 months. Among adults ages 65 and older enrolled in Medicare, those who also participated in Medicaid (known as dual enrollees) faced the greatest level of unmet need for personal assistance. Specifically, one in four (24.8%) Medicare beneficiaries with dual coverage reported unmet needs, compared with 1 in 10 (9.9%) of those with Medicare only. Lastly, about 18% of adults ages 60 and older reported that they regularly provide help or take care of an adult relative or friend who needs assistance due to aging, disability, or illness.

Shifts in the demographic composition of U.S. military veterans underscore the need for updated population-based estimates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors to accurately characterize suicide risk in this population. In this cross-sectional study of 2,636 U,S, veterans using 2025 to 2026 Veterans Health Administration data, the prevalence of past 2-week suicidal ideation increased by nearly 50%, which was statistically significant, compared with estimates from 2019 to 2020. In contrast, the prevalence of lifetime suicide planning and suicide attempts remained stable. These findings suggest that suicidal ideation has increased among U.S. veterans over the past 5 years, whereas suicidal planning and attempts have not, underscoring the need to strengthen early intervention and treatment engagement. Further, younger and female veterans appear to carry disproportionate risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Targeting key risk factors in vulnerable sub-populations may help mitigate suicide risk.