Will more Californians vote early because of Trump?

President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit mail-in voting could encourage something that election officials and voting advocates have struggled to do for years: Get people to vote earlier.

As more than 20 states and the Trump administration continue their legal battle over whether Trump can force the U.S. Postal Service to restrict vote-by-mail ballots in time for the Nov. 3 election, people are taking to social media to encourage others to vote early and use ballot drop boxes rather than rely on the mail, writes CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller.

• Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation: “This whole play may backfire. What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”

Ballots in envelopes take the longest to process, and submitting them several days before the deadline helps county election officials tally results faster, since they can remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day. The faster results are tabulated, the faster race callers can declare winners too.

In March, Trump issued an executive order that sought to give the federal government control over who receives mail-in ballots. To help carry out his order, the postal service issued rules last month that would create a system to track each voter’s ballot with a unique barcode and cross-reference it with a database of eligible registered voters. 

The federal government does not have a comprehensive list of every eligible registered voter and would need to rely on states to submit voter information to a “federal ballot mail portal” that does not yet exist. Trump’s plan would have the postal service refuse to deliver ballots in states that withhold data on eligible voters.

Federal courts have issued and upheld temporary injunctions, siding with the suing states to stop the postal service from implementing its plan. The U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to continue planning for how it would carry out the president’s order, and is poised to issue a ruling on the matter.

Until there’s a final ruling from the courts, California counties will conduct “business as usual,” said Tricia Webber, clerk and registrar of voters for Santa Cruz County and president of the California Association of County Election Officials.

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CalMatters dives into a bill currently awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision and another that he signed: 

• Autoimmune medications: Biologic drugs treat complex autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Unlike synthetic drugs, which are made by mixing chemicals in a lab, biologic drugs come from living cells and are very expensive. To save on health insurance costs, one bill — backed by the insurance lobby and business groups — would allow insurers and pharmacists to substitute a patient’s brand name biologic drug with a lower cost alternative known as a biosimilar. Groups representing rheumatologists and patient advocates oppose the bill, arguing that swapping a patient’s medication for no medical reason other than to save money could disrupt treatment. Read more from Ana B. Ibarra.

• Student privacy: Newsom last week signed into law a bill prohibiting technology companies from using student data to train or develop artificial intelligence models. Influential unions representing California teachers, nurses and college professors supported the measure. The law is unlikely to protect all of children’s data, however, especially for apps and websites used outside of the classroom. Read more from Adam Echelman.

CalMatters is suing UC Berkeley to force the university to release information on how much it pays its student athletes for using their name, image and likeness in promotional materials, reports CalMatters’ Mikhail Zinshteyn. 

The suit, filed last week, is nearly identical to the one we filed against UCLA in August. In both cases, the campuses — which have the most lucrative athletics programs among the state’s public universities — refused to divulge financial data about payments to their Division I athletes, including the identity of the players or teams they played for. UC Berkeley and UCLA have said that the information would put their players at a competitive disadvantage or violate students’ right to privacy in education.

But the lawsuit alleges that state taxpayers are entitled to learn how their dollars are being distributed at public institutions. CalMatters spent almost a year seeking the data from UC Berkeley. It filed numerous California Public Records Acts requests to public universities across the state.

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The number of multiracial adolescent girls being treated for self-harm injuries in California hospitals is increasing, according to a new analysis by UC Berkeley. Some experts point to the steady rise of depressive symptoms and suicidality among teens as possible reasons why. Read more from Anissa Durham for CalMatters.