Category: What We’re Reading

Here’s a selection of articles Federal Relations is enjoying this week.

Migratory Patterns – Since before the founding of the nation, Americans have historically been explorers and wanders: the Westward expansion, the Northern Migration, moving from the country to the city. Americans are rolling stones moving in search to discover opportunity — a propensity that has been economically invaluable. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Americans aren’t taking the risk and moving to potential opportunity, and that might be hurting our economy. Read more in the New York Times. 

Tough Sledding – While the job market for recent graduates is booming, those young people without a degree are finding it much more challenging to find a job, and if you find a job, moving up in the operation without a degree is not always and option. Read more in The New York Times.

More Protections – Recently, letters sent by officials at the American Legion, the National Military Family Association, the Military Officers Association of America and nearly 20 other groups called on the department to improve its oversight of colleges that have engaged in deceptive recruiting and other illicit practices but that continue to receive millions in funding under the G.I. Bill. Read more at The New York Times. 

Really, Really Unpopular – This week’s NBC News|SurveyMonkey Election Tracking Poll probed how American voters feel about the presidential front-runners. A majority of voters expressed negative feelings about both of them. Traditionally, a fair number of partisans on either side of the aisle express negative opinions about the other party’s candidate – but the latest poll found that a majority of voters express negative feelings about both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Read the poll at NBC News. 

Increasing – Federal agencies obligated $30.8 billion to 996 academic institutions for science and engineering (S&E) activities in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014, the most recent year for which such information is available, a 6 percent increase over the previous year and the first increase in such funding since FY2009. Read more at NSF. 

Overtime – The Obama Administration’s new overtime rules could be costly for U.S. colleges and universities, who will now need to pay overtime to some post-doctoral researchers, athletic coaches, admissions counselors and other lower-level salaried employees.  The University of Colorado, which employs roughly 30,000 people across the state, is still calculating how expensive the rule-change will be. The new regulations, issued by the U.S. Department of Labor last week, take effect Dec. 1. Read more at the Colorado Daily. 

Science in China – From building the biggest experiments the world has ever seen to rolling out the latest medical advances on a massive scale and pushing the boundaries of exploration from the deepest ocean to outer space – China’s scientific ambitions are immense. Read more at the BBC. 

Celebrity of a Different Sort – NIH Director Francis Collins was at a Washington Nationals game this week to sing the national anthem. Afterwards, Collins was inundated with requests for pictures and autographs…because of course he was — this is DC. Read more in The Washington Post. 

Hey Neighbor! – The biggest news in DC this week is the revelation of the neighborhood the Obamas will move to after they leave the White House. The Obamas had already announced that they will be staying in the District for Sasha to finish high school, and apparently she will be traveling from Kalorama to Sidwell Friends. Read more in Roll Call. 

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

Chaos Ensues – The House floor devolved into chaos and shouting on Thursday as a measure to ensure protections for members of the LGBT community narrowly failed to pass after Republican leaders urged their members to change their votes. Read more at The Hill.

Choiceless – The $10 billion Veterans Choice program, created two years ago, was supposed to cut down on wait times and let veterans see private doctors, but now, the faltering program needs an overhaul as numbers, including waits, have skyrocketed. Read more at NPR. 

Mo’ Money, But Still Less in Schools Than Before – the Center for Budgeting and Policy Priorities has a new report out on the trends of state support for public institutions. Though some states have begun to restore some of the deep cuts in financial support for public two- and four-year colleges since the recession hit, their support remains far below previous levels.  In total, after adjusting for inflation, of the states that have enacted full higher education budgets for the current school year, funding for public two- and four-year colleges is $8.7 billion below what it was just prior to the recession. Read the report at CBPP. 

STEM – The third annual U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index, out this week, says the US is probably going to have to depend on foreign workers to fill future STEM jobs. The number of graduates who earned STEM masters’ and doctorate degrees rose by 6 percent in 2015. STEM hiring also increased, but there’s still a shortage of STEM workers. Read more at US News. 

Alpha Trump – A controversial long-form piece on how Donald Trump has treated women who have worked for him, dated him, or just been in his orbit. Read it at the New York Times. 

Legacy Building – The Administration is a flurry of activity as various agencies finalize a host of regulations— nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three — all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them. Read more at Politico. 

Boom and Bust – The Corinthian Fifteen— students of the now defunct for-profit college who organized a “debt strike,” refusing to repay their student loans even at the risk of going into default—were among the millions of students who enrolled at for-profit universities during the last ten years. Students who went to these schools have come to account for a disproportionate share of the country’s unpaid student-loan balance; they also default at higher rates than other students. So theses student have been bearing a particular burden in the broader student-debt crisis, which has, since 2010, seen student loans overtake credit-card debt and car loans as the second-largest form of outstanding debt in the US. Read more in The New Yorker. 

Due Process and Sexual Assault – Citing an erosion of free speech and due process on college campuses, a group of 21 law professors on Monday released an open letter alleging that the U.S. Department of Education has unlawfully expanded how colleges must define and respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment. The same argument has been made frequently in recent months by Republican lawmakers who say that the department’s Office for Civil Rights illegally created new regulations through a series of documents instructing colleges how to handle cases of sexual misconduct. Read more at Inside Higher Education.

Potty Breaking the Federal Funds – The federal government says that as a condition of receiving federal funds, schools must comply with Title IX, which says schools may not discriminate based on a student’s sex. How would that impact state and local schools that receive federal funds? Read more at CNN. 

Top 7 – Justice Scalia’s absence continues to loom over the court in many ways. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court still has some vital cases on the docket, and no near term replacement to take the split from 4-4. Read more about the cases in Vox. 

Majestic Squirrels – UC Berkeley researchers are researching the communication habits of squirrels, and apparently they’re a lot like us! They too get annoyed when you take their stuff away. Read more at Slate.  

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

Best Time to Be a College Graduate – Employers added 160,000 employees in April, downshifting from the monthly average of 192,000 workers so far this year. While the downshift isn’t good news, the job market for recent college graduates is booming. Overall unemployment numbers are steady at five percent, and recent college graduates have unemployment numbers half of that. Read more at NPR. 

For the Future – NSF Administrator France Cordova unveiled a research agenda intended to shape the agency’s next few decades and win over the next US President and Congress. It contains nine big ideas to illustrate how increased support for the type of basic research that NSF funds could help answer pressing societal problems. Read more in Science. 

Uh…Unity?…Now??…Nah, Never Mind – Early in the week, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee was expected to turn his tune towards inclusion and unity or so said Republican party thought leaders…but is there any chance of that? With the nomination all but assured, it would be conventional, normal, and prudent for Trump to start reaching out and building a coalltion in preparation for the general election. That said, the immediate response by Republican leadership to Trump’s lock of the nomination was tepid at best. The fractious coalition of conservatives that we used to know as the Republican Party is, after a decade of fraying ties between the Washington establishment and its base, is now composed of two separate coalitions. Read more at Politico.  But in advance of two, very publicized meetings with House and Senate leadership, while following a three hour meeting the GOP party leader early in the week, Trump had not followed convention by trying to mend fences and provide a united front.  Rather, he’s taken every opportunity to lob pot shots at Paul Ryan as well as Hillary Clinton. Why? He’s got a mandate or as he explained, a hit broadway show with this campaign now. Read more in the New York Times. 

Getting “Cantored” – Now a verb, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin pushed back against Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), presumably for his nonsupport of Donald Trump. In a recent speech, Palin announced she would support a primary challenger in Ryan’s race. She then compared efforts in the Ryan race to last cycle’s shocking loss of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), which sent the House GOP into a tailspin. Read more in The Washington Post. 

Potty Police – North Carolina Republicans are increasingly worried that the state’s new ‘bathroom law’ blocking protections for the LGBT community will cost the GOP dearly in November’s elections. They say the reason is simple: the party that took over North Carolina as champions of small government is now seen by moderate voters as the party of the bathroom police. The “public safety” rationale for the law has seen major pushback by major American businesses. Read more in Politico. 

Rock & Hard Place – Meanwhile, the law has a practical impact on North Carolina constituents, such as the University of North Carolina. As the federal government and state elected leaders launched legal battles over North Carolina’s controversial bathroom law this week and last, UNC system President Margaret Spellings said the university is “truly caught in the middle.” The Justice Department sent a letter to the UNC President saying that the university’s federal funding was endanger if it complied with the North Carolina law. In the 2014-2015 school year, the UNC System received $1.4 billion in federal funding over the 11 campuses. Spellings responded to Justice late Monday with a letter saying the university is committed to complying with federal non-discrimination laws, but also required to follow the law of the state. Read more in the Raleigh News & Observer. 

Politics of Restrooms – Why do mayors, city councils, and state legislatures even care what restrooms people can or should use? It’s not simply about bathroom choice, but the expanding the rights of the socially disenfranchised, the right to privacy, the backlash over marriage equality, and the fundamental chasm between socially liberal Democrats (mostly mayors of cities) and socially conservative Republicans (state legislatures).  Read more in Vox. 

Kinda the Current Republican Equivalent of Obi Wan – On the national GOP’s standing rules committee, Curly Haugland has been the pedantic curmudgeon, the stubborn speed bump who for years has raised points of order only to watch establishment Republicans stampede over him. This year, he might be the only thing preventing Trump from getting the nomination — on the first ballot. Read more in Politico.

Brazil – In a country beset with issues this year (economic crisis, Zika, impending Olympics), the Brazilian Senate voted this week to suspend the first female President Dilma Rousseff. Her 180 day suspension gives the Senate time to contemplate her impeachment for fiscal improprieties related to government spending. Rousseff has endured an almost Shakespearian fall from grace and power as former allies rally against her and scandals besiege her. This turn of events is all precipitated by her efforts to protect her mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, know as Lula, who is a central figure in Petrobras scandal, one of the most sweeping bribery scandals ever. Read more in The Guardian. Vox also has a good overview of the issue. 

Dope – Speaking of the Olympics, a former Russian official and head of the anti-doping lab revealed that dozens of Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, including at least 15 medal winners, were part of a state-run doping program, meticulously planned for years to ensure dominance at the Russian held Winter Games. according to the director of the country’s anti-doping laboratory at the time. Read more in the New York Times. 

SafeTrack – In a huge announcement this week (to those who live in or around or travel to the District of Columbia), the Washington Area Metro Authority announced a drastic plan to do much-needed and long-over due repairs to the metro system. Part of this plan is to do “safety surges” which requires shutting down large swaths of the Metro system for multiple weeks at a time, effectively shutting down access to parts of DC for up to five weeks. Long and short, Metro is trying to cram three years of deferred maintenance into a single year by shutting down track, single tracking lines, and limiting working hours. Expect fewer trains, more time on platforms and lesser access. Read more about SafeTrack at The Washington Post. 

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

Crumbles and Cracks, Cruz’s Demise – When Senator Ted Cruz emerged as Donald Trump’s sole serious challenger, Cruz needed to pivot and win over the same Republican Party insiders he had built his career running against; he needed them to rally around him. Their problem wasn’t with Cruz’s hard-line conservative principles. It was his hard-edged personality and political practices. Many of his congressional colleagues and mainstream Republicans stayed on the sidelines. Some embraced Trump. Others attacked Cruz, including former Speaker John Boehner, who called him “Lucifer in the flesh.” A few endorsed half-heartedly. They might have feared Trump. But they loathed Cruz. One of Cruz’s few endorsers, Lindsey Graham, compared the choice to poison or being shot. Read more in Politico.

Houses or Education – A few years ago, as the country grappled with the meteoric rise of student debt, economists warned that education loans were holding back college graduates from buying homes, putting a damper on the economic recovery. Yet a new look at popular data used to support that claim tells a very different story. Read more in The Washington Post. 

Concealed Carry – Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s decision to reject House Bill 859, which would legalize firearms at all public colleges in Georgia, comes almost a month after the Governor infuriated many religious conservatives by vetoing “religious liberty” legislation that would have extended legal protections to opponents of same-sex marriages. It was a no win situation for the Governor.  Read more in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

Slight Adjustments –  Dept of Ed officials adjusted the student-loan default rates of 21 colleges, helping them to avoid sanctions in the past two years that could have resulted in a loss of federal funding, according to a list released by the Education Department. The list, released to The Wall Street Journal this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, included one school whose chief executive was later imprisoned for defrauding the government of nearly $1 million in federal student aid. Read more at the Wall Street Journal. 

Just Not There – On Wednesday morning, not even 24 hours after Donald Trump effectively clinched the Republican nomination, Paul Ryan convened his top advisers for a call. With Congress out of session, Ryan was bouncing between multiple states, raising the piles of money needed to keep House Republicans in the majority. Ryan never expected Trump to lock up the nomination so quickly. Read more in Politico. 

Foreign Students – Many people assume foreign students at U.S. colleges are rich, pampered youths out to have a good time before returning home to lives of privilege. Sometimes this is true. But as the number of foreign students surges on U.S. campuses—nearly a million were enrolled last year, up more than 40% from five years earlier—more are coming from middle-class backgrounds like Fan Yue’s. They’re eager to escape flawed education systems back home, where low standards are leaving many ill-prepared for a global economy. Read more in the Wall Street Journal. 

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

Federal “Affordability” Conundrum  –  The crisis of college affordability may not be solvable by the federal government: It has had much less control over tuition than state policies. Read more in The Atlantic. 

On the Rise, But More to Go – Meanwhile, higher education funding is creeping back toward pre-recession levels – but 45 states still appropriated fewer dollars per student last year than they did in 2008, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association’s (SHEEO) 13th annual State Higher Education Finance report. Still, 40 states boosted support in FY 2015, and total state and local government allocations to public colleges increased more than $4 billion, reaching nearly $91 billion. Factor in a 1.1 percent decline in full-time enrollment, and the average state and local support per student rose 5.2 percent to hit $6,966 – still more than $1,200 less than what was spent in 2008 – dragging down the share of education costs borne by students to 46.5 percent. That’s the lowest that figure has been since 2011. Read the report and get the data at SHEEO’s website. 

Ryan’s President Trump Problem – When House Speaker Paul Ryan effectively took himself out of consideration as a possible “Stop Trump” candidate at a contested GOP convention, the smart thinking immediately leapt to the idea that Ryan’s real sights are on the 2020 race. And, in many ways,  a “bide your time” makes sense, but if Ryan’s still Speaker at all in 2017, it’s likely to be a disastrous experience for him because of a forecasted an epic cycle of internecine fights and humiliating climb-downs that make John Boehner’s years in office look dignified due to the repercussions of the Trump campaign on the Republican party. Read more in Vox.

Unedumacated – Trump made headlines after the Nevada caucuses when he pronounced love for the “poorly educated.” New research from the Pew Research Center offers context that helps explain why. It finds that highly educated adults are far more likely to take liberal positions, and the education divide has only grown wider over the past 20 years. Watch the Trump statement after the Nevada primary at Politico. Read the Pew Study here. 

First Loser of the Season – The first primary loss by an incumbent in this election season happened to Rep. Chakah Fattah (D-PA). First elected in 1995, Rep. Fattah was an entrenched Democratic incumbent from Philadelphia, who lost his primary Tuesday night after being indicted on corruption charges last year. Fattah’s legal troubles gave an opening to state Rep. Dwight Evans, who narrowly defeated Fattah on Tuesday. Evans led with 43 percent of the vote to Fattah’s 36 percent, while two other challengers split the remainder with nearly every vote counted. Read more at Politco. 

Kinda Like David and Goliath – A small mammal has sabotaged the world’s most powerful scientific instrument. The Large Hadron Collider went off line this week from an electrical issue. Upon investigation, officials found the charred remains of most likely a weasel that had chewed through the power lines. Read more at NPR.