Skip to content
News and updates

News and updates

Congress Home for the Holidays

Posted on

After a busy week, Senators huddled on the floor Thursday night as they made an eleventh-hour attempt to find a path forward on bringing up a bundle of five bills or minibus for consideration before the end of 2025. No agreement to move forward was reached after Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both of Colorado, announced they would hold up the package after White House OMB director Russ Vought’s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is based in Colorado.

 

The package under consideration in the Senate would fund the Departments of Defense, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce (including NOAA), Health and Human Services (including NIH), Transportation, Labor and Interior, along with the EPA and NSF.

A few Republican Senators have held the bill from moving forward but released a hold after Senate leadership agreed to an amendment vote on stripping earmarks in the legislation. The Colorado hold is new to the OMB decision.

The Senate will resume consideration and negotiations in January.

 

 

FY26 NDAA Conference Bill is Released

Posted on

Conferees released the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was released this week.

H.R. 3838, the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 is the final version before final House and Senate passage and the measure goes to the President to become law. The plan would authorize $900.6 billion in national security spending which is $8 billion more than what was in the president’s budget request. In comparison, the FY25 NDAA was $924.7 billion.

The measure contained a provision which would prohibit the Department from modifying indirect cost rates to higher education or nonprofit organizations without prior consultation by those groups and with establishing an implementation plan adequate transition time to change budgeting and accounting processes.

It includes language to repeal the 2002 Iraq War and 1991 Gulf War Authorizations of Military Force.

Also included were limits on reducing troops in Europe and South Korea and $400M for Ukraine security assistance.

The measure did not contain the SAFE Research Act, which was included in the House-version of the NDAA. The SAFE Research Act would have prohibited all federal research agencies from supporting researchers who collaborate with “foreign adversaries,” such as graduate students who were from certain countries of interest or association with certain institutions. The measure used a 5-year lookback with retroactive penalties to researchers. Included in “collaboration” would have included research agreements, study abroad programs, conference participation, university facilities abroad, etc.

Also out are the proposed IVF expansion and controversial base renaming provisions.

Conference Resources:

FY26 NDAA Conference Text Legislative Summary

FY26 NDAA Conferenced Bill Full Text

FY26 NDAA One Pager

The House is expected to pass the measure this week, and the Senate is expected to pass the same measure by the end of the year. When passed, this will the the 65th year the annual authorization bill has passed.

WH Launches Genesis Mission for AI

Posted on

On November 24, President Trump signed an Executive Order entitled Launching the Genesis Mission, which establishes a coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery.

    • Full text can be found here
    • The Fact Sheet can be found here
    • An additional article from the White House can be found here

Some highlights:

    • The EO launches the Genesis Mission to transform the use of AI in how scientific research is conducted and accelerate the speed of scientific discovery.
    • The Secretary of Energy will leverage the National Labs to create a cooperative research system, focusing on computing power and data.
    • DOE will create a closed-loop AI experimentation platform to integrate supercomputers and data assets to generate a foundation model as well as power robotic laboratories.
    • The Secretary of Energy will establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission.
    • The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Kratsios), will coordinate the national initiative and integrate data and infrastructure from across the government.
    • The Asst. to the President for S&T is also tasked with coordinating with NSF, NIST, NIH and other federal agencies.
    • The Secretary of Energy, Assistant to the President for S&T, and the Special Advisor for AI & Crypto (Sacks) will collaborate with academia and the private sector to support the Mission.
    • The EO also outlines focus areas to be addressed by the Mission:
      • biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion energy, space exploration, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics.
    • The EO also directs the Secretary of Energy to share a list with the Asst. to the President for S&T of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission.

Administration Seeks to Dismantle ED by Moving Programs to Different Agencies

Posted on

While publicly acknowledging earlier this year that Congressional approval would be needed to officially terminate the Education Department, the Administration announced today a series of Interagency Agreements (IAA) to move vast portions of its portfolio to other agencies in an effort to dismantle it from the inside.  The announcement from ED is available here.

Specifically, ED is proposing to move six sets of programs to four other federal agencies:

  • Programs  currently under jurisdiction of Office of Higher Education (NOT Title IV student financial aid programs) and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education would be transferred to the Department of Labor– the factsheets for these agreements are here and here.
  • Most of tribal and Native American education programs would be moved to the Department of Interior– the factsheet is available here.
  • International Education and Foreign Language Studies would be shipped to State Department– the factsheet on that transfer is available here. 
  • Two sets of programs would be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services:  Foreign Medical Accreditation and Child Care Access Means Parents in School– the factsheets for these proposed moves are here and here.

Additional reports about the proposed moves are available here, here, and here.

Although these moves have been proposed by the Administration, they are unlikely to be the last word on this front.  We should expect legal and other challenges to today’s annoucements.