Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.
Growing Rift – As Trump fills his Cabinet, the choices (and rumored nominees) are rekindling animosity between his anti-establishment supporters and more traditional Republican. Read more in The New York Times.
Keeping Carrier – To hear Donald Trump tell it, the story of how Carrier decided not to move jobs to Mexico started when the president-elect was watching the evening news about a week ago. Read more in WaPo.
Ch-ch-changes – During the campaign, President-elect Trump vowed to do a lot of things and get rid of a lot of things. Some have already been walked back…some not. The New York Times has a list of those things Trump wants to get rid of.
Unproductive OSTP – The White House Office of Science and Technology office hasn’t been very productive under President Barack Obama, says the chairman of a key congressional research spending panel. And Representative John Culberson (R–TX) says he’d like to see it downsized. Read more in Science.
Whither DeVos? – If you ask what the recent appointment of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education means for higher education, a common refrain — even among education policy and advocacy leaders — is that it’s too early to say. Read more in Diverse Education.
Missed By How Much – There’s been so much talk since Nov. 8 about what the polls got wrong. The national polls are ultimately going to be off by only about 2 percentage points, which is not out of the ordinary historically speaking. State polls however, missed by wider margins. In 41 of the 50 states, the average of the polls underestimated Donald Trump’s margin of victory. But they weren’t wrong by the same magnitude or in the same direction in every state. The 538 has the margin of miss.
CZI – Seven months ago, Jim Shelton was hired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to head up its education portfolio. CZI is the unusual new company created by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to “improve the world for the next generation.” To fund CZI they pledged Facebook stock worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 billion. Health and medical projects will no doubt get the biggest share of that money. But Shelton is the guy who will write the checks for all of CZI’s investments and philanthropic donations related to education. That means he’ll have a lot of sway in an organization that is going to become hugely influential. Read more in The Chronicle.
Research Support? – Representative Tom Price (R–GA), the orthopedic surgeon and six-term congressman who President-elect Donald Trump yesterday picked to be his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is a conservative spending hawk and fierce opponent of the ACA and abortion. But he has also spoken generally in favor of increasing funding for federal research agencies, including the NIH, which he would oversee if confirmed to the job by the Senate. Science looks into how Price might approach research funding.