The Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) is Florida's primary administrative court, offering adjudication of disputes services pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act. In Fiscal Year 2024-25, Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) conducted an average of 157 hearings and wrote an average of 83 Recommended or Final Orders of varying length and complexity. In addition, ALJs closed an average of 53 cases that were settled or otherwise dismissed without a final hearing. As of June 30, 2025, the Adjudication of Disputes program had 87 established positions, consisting of the Chief Judge, the Executive Director/ALJ, 44 ALJs, 14 legal assistants, and 29 administrative support staff, with one legal assistant assigned to three judges. Party preference for Zoom video conference hearings has also dramatically reduced ALJ travel time in favor of office time.

In accordance with Section 20.058(3), Florida Statutes, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) filed its Direct-Support Organizations (DSOs) report to the Department by the Corrections Foundation and the Florida Foundation for Correctional Excellence. These DSOs conduct programs, activities, and projects for the direct or indirect benefit of FDC or individual units of the state correctional system. In consideration of the many ways the Corrections Foundation and the Florida Foundation for Correctional Excellence assist FDC in fulfilling its mission and achieving its goals, the FDC Secretary recommended that FDC's association with both the Corrections Foundation and Florida Foundation for Correctional Excellence be continued. During Fiscal Year 2025-26 the foundation assisted 493 personnel and contractors through the Employee Assistance and Disaster Relief Programs. As no hurricanes impacted Florida in 2025, the overall assistance provided was lower than previous fiscal years. Since 1999, the Employee Assistance Program and Disaster Relief Programs have assisted over 14,500 FDC officers, staff, and contractors out of an estimated 23,000 personnel–equal to approximately 63% of FDC employees.

The City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), started in 2007, is a comprehensive student support program designed to help more students graduate with an associate’s degree by providing wraparound services (e.g., intensive advising, tuition gap coverage, transportation assistance) while requiring students to attend full time. Multiple randomized control trials have shown that the program substantially increases three-year associate’s degree completion rates. Although ASAP is intended to be a degree completion program, not a workforce development program, one potential indirect effect of increasing degree completion is improved labor market outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of ASAP over a 14-year period, measuring associate’s degree attainment and, for the first time, labor market outcomes in New York State. Main findings included that ASAP significantly increased associate’s degree completion rates, with 58% of those offered ASAP earning a degree compared to 50% of those not offered ASAP. Despite large positive effects on degree completion, however, ASAP did not produce a statistically significant impact on annual earnings: ASAP participants earned approximately $2,000 more per year than non-participants. The authors caution that the study is not sensitive enough to support a conclusion that associate’s degrees do not increase earnings.

Several states have recently passed or proposed legislation to incorporate prayer or display the Ten Commandments in public schools. A nationally representative survey of U.S. adults found that many are receptive to religious expressions in public schools but do not think it should be mandatory. The survey, by the Pew Research Center, found that 78% of respondents favor allowing students to voluntarily pray in student-led groups; 57% favor allowing coaches to lead teams in prayer; 50% favor displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and 46% favor allowing teacher-led prayer. Beliefs on teacher-led prayer diverged regarding student participation: 8% of respondents favor teacher-led prayer and believe that students should be required to participate; 53% favor teacher-led prayer if students are not required to participate; and 37% say that teacher-led prayer should not be allowed at all. The authors conclude that about six-in-ten Americans support allowing some form of teacher-led school prayer but believe that students’ participation should be optional.

In response to a statutory requirement in the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, this report examined the feasibility of reduced-credit bachelor’s degree (RCD) programs, which usually require between 90 to 100 credit hours to complete. The authors drew on a national inventory of RCD programs, a review of institutional and specialized accreditation and Ohio regulatory requirements, interviews with stakeholders, and a survey of graduate and professional admissions leaders in Ohio to identify where reduced-credit pathways appear to be most viable under existing conditions, what constraints are likely to shape these programs' development, and what questions remain unanswered. Key findings include that the feasibility of postsecondary institutions implementing RCDs in Ohio varies by the degree field. Specifically, business, information technology, cybersecurity, and some related applied fields appear to offer the clearest near-term opportunities to implement RCDs, while fields with extensive clinical and licensure requirements or tightly sequenced courses appear to be less adaptable. In addition, most of the identified RCD programs preserve core general education requirements and reduce flexibility elsewhere in the curriculum. Per the authors, institutional accreditors are open to RCDs, but approval and implementation remain demanding, and these programs require clear academic justification.

The federal 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created the Opportunity Zones (OZ) program, giving governors discretion to designate low-income census tracts for capital gains tax incentives aimed at steering investment to distressed communities. This working paper examined the interaction of OZ selection and construction growth, finding that governors disproportionately designated OZs where commercial development was already being planned. For example, the authors report that designated OZ tracts had about 75% more construction starts than eligible but non-designated tracts, but about two-thirds of that difference disappears after accounting for projects already planned before designation. Overall, the authors estimate that OZ designation increased construction in designated tracts by about 12% relative to what would have occurred without designation. States that put more weight on development potential when choosing zones—which did not include Florida—saw larger construction increases than states that emphasized economic need, highlighting the tension between targeting the most distressed communities and targeting places where investment was likely to occur even without tax incentives.

Most research on the effects of minimum wages in the U.S. focuses on effects on employment, though the effect of minimum wages on the distribution of family income (i.e., poverty) is the more important policy question. This study uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, which oversamples low-income families, to estimate the effects of minimum wages on low-wage workers in families at different points of the distribution of income-to-needs. The authors found that a higher minimum wage reduces employment, hours, and earnings for low-wage workers, with hours and earnings falling even among those who remain employed. Employment declines are somewhat larger among workers in the poorest families, while declines in hours and earnings are larger among workers in higher-income families. Overall, findings point to no clear pattern in how the effects vary by family income. The authors conclude that there is no evidence that increasing the minimum wage is particularly beneficial for low-wage or low-skill workers in poor or low-income families.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., with over 49,000 deaths by suicide in 2023 alone. Hospitals are particularly well-positioned to serve as suicide interventions points, as 13% to 30% of individuals who die by suicide have an inpatient stay or emergency department visit in the month before death. Research has identified four practices through which hospitals can reduce this risk—formal safety planning, lethal means counseling, warm handoffs to outpatient care, and follow-up contact after discharge—each with demonstrated potential to reduce suicidal behavior and improve care transitions. Yet only 8% of accredited hospitals implement all four practices concurrently. Per the authors, this gap reflects a misalignment of incentives wherein hospitals bear the costs of implementation, but the financial benefits of intervention accrue largely to insurers. The authors propose that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implement fidelity-based quality process metrics for each of the four recommended practices and link payments to these measures in a way that rewards both progress and performance. For example, hospitals would earn payments for improving, but the largest rewards would be reserved for reaching meaningful standards of care.

Generic drugs are one of the most reliable ways to decrease U.S. prescription drug prices. Once several generics compete, prices can fall by 80% or more compared with the brand price. But brand-name manufacturers use a range of tactics to keep generics out of the market, holding prices high for months or years. This report reviews the evidence on seven of these anticompetitive tactics, their costs to patients and payers, and the reforms the research supports. Prescription drugs account for about 16% of national health spending. Generic medicines fill roughly 90% of U.S. prescriptions but represent only about 12% of drug spending. Delays in generic entry preserve brand-only prices and keep costs high for patients, employers, and public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Manufacturers use seven main tactics to delay generic competition: patent thickets, product hopping, pay-for-delay settlements, sample denial, parking of 180-day exclusivity, authorized generics, and citizen petitions.

Exposure to television advertisements for unhealthy food and beverages has been associated with poor dietary habits and childhood obesity. In Mexico, most school-aged children are regularly exposed to advertisements. To examine the association of removing television advertisements of unhealthy food and beverages with body weight among school-aged youth, the study used national, representative survey waves from 2022 and 2023 of non-pregnant, non-lactating youths aged 10 to 17 years in Mexico with a plausible body mass index. Complete removal of television advertisements for unhealthy foods and beverages was simulated. For the main scenario, the authors assumed the intervention would apply to all children and adolescents exposed to television advertising (79.2%) regardless of the time of exposure. Primary outcomes were changes in daily energy intake, body weight, body mass index, obesity prevalence, and obesity cases. Removing unhealthy food and beverage advertisements from television was associated with a substantial reduction in body weight and obesity among children and adolescents in Mexico.