Category: What We’re Reading

Happy New Year! Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team has been reading this week.

Retail Politics – How a politician comes across in ads and in debates can be very different from how they are day-to-day. Here’s one reporter, who’s been traveling with Cruz campaign, take on candidate. Read more in The Washington Post.

Polar Opposites – The Republican Party that elected Paul Ryan speaker eight weeks ago also rocketed Donald Trump to the top of the national polls eight weeks before that.  The men ascended at essentially the same time, but it’s hard to believe they’ll both make it through 2016 politically alive because their philosophies, approaches and opinions are significantly different.  Read more in Roll Call. 

Welcome Back! – The best known surrogate of the 2016 race, and probably the best known political surrogate period, is back on the trail stumping for his wife. President Bill Clinton is back. Read more in The Hill and The New York Times.

Guns – The White House announced an Executive Order to expand background checks for some firearm purchases and step up federal enforcement of the nation’s gun laws. While the Administration is limited in what it can do, the move is designed to engage governors, state legislators, and local government. Essentially, side stepping Congress on the highly political, divisive issue. Despite previous high-profile efforts by the President to persuade Congress to take up legislation restricting gun sales, neither the House or Senate has done so. Predictably, Congress has already threatened to hold up the Attorney General’s funding in an effort to restrict the move. The Executive Order makes gun sales and control a central issue in the 2016 campaigns. Read more in The New York Times and in Vox.

Freeze in the Arctic State – A hiring freeze and travel ban for Alaska state agencies and employees could have an impact on funding for the WWAMI program in Anchorage. Read more in Governing. 

Results – As the Supreme Court considers the affirmative action policy of the University of Texas at Austin (for the second time), the University of Michigan seems to have found the secret to reshaping freshman minority enrollment, all while in the face of Michigan voters banning affirmative action. Read more in The New York Times.

Overstep – In 2010 and 2011, The Obama administration laid out universities’ and school districts’ obligations to address harassment and sexual violence in two key “Dear Colleague” letters, and those letters helped to usher in sweeping changes on many campuses. Critics said federal officials  overstepped their bounds by pressuring schools to create quasi-criminal justice systems on campus that fail to adequately protect the rights of the accused. Now, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has taken up the cause by sending a letter questioning whether the Education Department has exceeded its legal authority in its efforts to push colleges to do more on sexual assault. Read more in The Hill and The Washington Post.

Year in Review – As 2016 starts, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has their year in review. See it at the OSTP Blog.

Happy Holidays! Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

Tax 2.0 – Congressional leadership is saying that passage of a major tax deal has increased the chances that Congress will tackle tax reform in 2017. Read more at The Hill. 

Big Boost – Congress passes a 2016 spending and tax bill that blows away caps on discretionary spending to fund more student aid and health research. Read more at Inside Higher Ed.

Bernie v. DNC – The Sanders campaign took advantage of a down firewall to access Clinton campaign voter data. The DNC subsequently barred the Sanders campaign from any of the DNC data. Politico has an overview, and the New York Times has why voter data is important.

5 Myths – Here are the five most common myths (and some tips) about wine for your holiday season. Tip: put your wine in the blender for 30 seconds..Who knew? Read more at Food 52. 

Diary of Air Travel – A visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London). Read it at The New York Times. 

Here is a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

Long View – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2016-2020: Turning Discovery Into Health.   The plan focuses on four essential, interdependent objectives that will help guide NIH’s priorities over the next five years as it pursues its mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and applying that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.  Read the plan here. 

Final Act – 2016 is a Presidential election year and Obama’s last year in office. What’s on the agenda? Read the memo at Politico. 

Second Red Alert – Bejing has issued a second Red Alert for air quality. The first was issued last week, and lasted the bulk of the week. The second alert is expected to last longer than the previous alert. Read more at The New York Times.

Debate 5.0 – The latest Republican presidential debate had Donald Trump holding strong, Jeb Bush making a slight comeback, and Ted Cruz solidifying his role as the #2 horse in the race. Read more at the New York Times or CNN has the whole debate in 90 seconds.

Treasonous – During the Republican presidential debate this week, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) might have said more than he should have. He may have revealed classified information about the CIA meta data program. If he did do so, that’s treason and Congress is looking into it. Read more at MSNBC. 

Hike It Up – For the first time in a decade, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates from 0%-.25% to .25%-.5%. Read more the New York Times. 

Saintly – Mother Teresa will be canonized after a second miracle has been confirmed. She cured  a man in Santos, Brazil, with a serious viral brain infection. Mother Teresa was beatified in 2003, but full Sainthood requires two miracles. Her canonization is expected in September. Read more at NBC News. 

Save Tatooine – In honor of the latest Star Wars film, recent documentary, Set Wars: The Surprising Second Life Of Star Wars, is trying to save Mos Epsa, which was the set to Tatooine. To create the documentary, the filmmakers utilized Verse, which is a platform that allows directors to create a self-guided journey through the documentary with access to various subplots, locations, and narratives. Learn more at Forbes. 

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

Corporate Culture – More college presidents are being selected not from academia, but from business, and that’s considered a good thing. Currently, twenty percent of college presidents come from a career that is not academia. It seems that it’s a double-edged sword: while these presidents do have funding prowess and are able to “sell” the school and efficiently manage, but they can be tone-deaf when dealing with the needs of students and faculty. Read more at The Atlantic. 

Shoot the Hostage – One of the biggest issues for Speaker John Boehner was dealing with the House Freedom Caucus. The 2010 election had a radical effect on politics including how to conduct negotiations. The key difference between the Boehner “old school” politicos the new wave of politicians is how far they are willing to test the institution (or blow it up) to get what they want. Read more at The Washington Post. 

Too Much Waivering – The University of Missouri System, and the University of Missouri at Columbia in particular, are the newest targets of a legislative inquiry, and the finding that one-half of faculty members don’t meet the system’s minimum teaching load requirement has a prominent lawmaker threatening to withhold state funding. Read more at Inside Higher Education. 

Tribal Authority – A case that’s been low-profile, but will be high-impact, the Supreme Court heard on Monday the case, Dollar General Corporation v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. At the heart of the case is a fairly straight forward one of sexual assault. A 13-year-old boy said he was sexually assaulted by his manager at Dollar General. The store is on land belonging to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. The boy is a member of the tribe. The manager is not. The boy’s family sued Dollar General and Townsend in tribal court in civil court because currently, tribal courts only have jurisdiction over civil cases, not criminal, when a non-native person is accused. So instead of trying the accused for the crime, the boy’s family filed a civil lawsuit against him and Dollar General. Dollar General in turn sued the tribal court, declaring it had no legal jurisdiction over non-natives, even as a civil case absent express Congressional authority. Read more at SOTUS blog. 

Red Alert – The capital city of the planet’s largest polluter, Bejing, is issuing a “Red” alert over smog for the first time this week. Starting Tuesday and continuing for three days, the more than 20 million residents of Beijing will have heavy limitations imposed on their daily activities. Schools will be closed, outdoor construction will be halted, and cars will have to drive on alternate days. Read more at The Atlantic. 

Trump Trumped – On MSNBC show, Morning Joe, Donald Trump was cut off and shut down for refusing to answer questions and talking over the hosts. Host Joe Scarborough said unless Trump stopped, they would go to commercial, and they did. When the show return, Trump stayed and answered questions for the next ten minutes. Read more at The Washington Post. 

“Oh, for the love of God.” – Constitutional law scholars respond to Donald Trump’s plan to refuse to allow Muslim into the country. Read more at The Washington Post. 

More Access – Florida Senator and Republican presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, says the nation needs more welders and fewer philosophers, which his why he wants to change accreditation rules to let more vocational schools and online universities take advantage of the roughly $130 billion a year in federal loans and grants. Read more at USA Today. 

Trump Trolled – A Florida businessman took out a full page at in the Miami Herald calling Trump a BULLionare. Predictably, Trump’s lawyer sent a cease and desist order to both the businessman and Jeb Bush’s Leadership PAC. The response from Bush’s lawyer is nothing short of AMAZING. Read the response at the Washington Post. 

Bubble – With America becoming more polarized, Charles Murray, a political scientist, says the educated and wealthy live in a social and cultural bubble. Take his quiz and see if you live in a bubble at the PBS News Hour. 

Here’s a selection of article the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

Complicated Timelines – Congress returns after the Thanksgiving Recess this week and faces some significant deadlines and challenges before the end of the year (or Friday when the transportation bill expires). Read more at Roll Call. 

Packed Agenda – Congress has an ambitious schedule for the next two weeks (18 days to be exact). It will try to pass all the must pass legislation as well as a full omnibus appropriations bill…and hopefully score some political points. Never underestimate the magic of Christmas! It truly helps legislation happen. Read more at Politico. 

Fisher at SCOTUS, Again – Fisher vs. University of Texas is back before the Supreme Court on December 9th. Still at issue is did the university use race in an unconstitutional way in picking the freshman class in 2008, and in keeping Fisher out of that class. The specific issue before the court is that the Fifth Circuit disobeyed the Supreme Court’s 2013 order to reconsider the Texas policy using a rigorous “strict scrutiny” approach. Read more at SOTUS Blog. 

Guns & the Hill – Just hours before the San Bernardino shooting, physicians from around the country made the rounds on Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to lift the federal funding ban on gun violence research. Read more at The Washington Post. 

Billionaire Club – Recent studies have shown that going to an Ivy League college does not make you more apt to make a ton of money, like a billion dollars. Attending one of these elite institutions will not likely impact your future earnings. Read more at The Washington Post. 

College Costs – Colleges are facing tough times and there is much speculation on how to better create a more affordable college experience. The Washington post has four things colleges should do. Read more at The Post. And the counter point of four things columnists should know about universities before they write about them. Also at The Post. 

Open Mic – This week’s “Open Mike” blog by Mike Lauer, Deputy Director for Intermural Research, focuses on  NIH Support of Graduate Training Programs.  Read more at NIH.

Renminbi Approved – The IMF designated the Chinese renminbi as one of the world’s elite currencies, which reflects the heft of China’s economy as a global economic power. The decision will help pave the way for broader use of the renminbi in trade and finance. Just four other currencies — the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen — have the IMF designation. Read more at The New York Times. 

Cheney Returns! – Former Vice President Dick Cheney returns to the Capitol this week, and permanently, as the former VP and Congressman has his likeness join the 44 other busts of VP in the Senate. Read more at Roll Call. 

Taxes and Grad Students – Graduate students can claim tax benefits at a higher rate than their undergraduate peers and over half of graduate students earning above $106,000 are eligible for a tax benefit. Which graduate students are claiming these benefits? Some little-known facts. Read more at Ed Central. 

Tough Questions – The University of Oregon board of trustees face challenging questions about how best to prevent sexual assaults on campus. Read more at The Register Guard. 

‘Tis the Season – As Christmas comes barreling closer, the stress of giving gifts is upon us! How do you give your loved ones a gift that the love, like or just don’t hate? Science has some answers. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

I’m Such A Poor Boy, I Need No Sympathy – Forty years ago this week, Bohemian Rhaposdy went to the top of the charts in Britain. It was too long and it was Queen’s first #1 song. Unlike anything else, the song has inspired diverse artists from Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys to Guns ‘n Roses’ Slash. Read more about Queen’s legacy in the Economist.