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News and updates

News and updates

What We’re Reading, February 19-23

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Here is a selection of articles we’re reading this week.

On the Ballot: Scientists! – At the federal level, at least 60 science candidates are bidding for seats in Congress, according to 314 Action, a D.C.- based nonprofit advocacy group formed 2 years ago to encourage scientists to engage in politics. The candidates—mostly firsttimers running for House seats—include a physicist who spent 2 decades at a prominent national laboratory, a clinical oncologist at a top-rated cancer center, a former chemistry professor at a 4-year state college, a geologist trying to document every aspect of a tiny piece of the Mojave Desert, and a postdoctoral bioengineering fellow. Some 200 people with STEM backgrounds are also running for state legislative seats, 314 Action estimates, with a similar number vying for school board and other local- and county-level positions. Read more from Science Magazine.

DACA Students –  Rosa Aramburo sailed into her final year of medical school with stellar test scores and high marks from professors. Her advisers predicted she’d easily land a spot in a coveted residency program. Then President Trump announced the end of the Obama-era program that has issued work permits to Aramburo and nearly 700,000 other undocumented immigrants raised in the United States. Read the rest from WaPo.

Mueller and Trump – They are the sons of wealth, brought up in families accustomed to power. They were raised to show and demand respect, and they were raised to lead. They rose to positions of enormous authority, the president of the United States and the special counsel chosen to investigate him. They dress more formally than most of those around them; both sport meticulously coiffed hair. They have won unusual loyalty from those who believe in them. They attended elite all-male private schools, were accomplished high school athletes and went on to Ivy League colleges. As young men, each was deeply affected by the death of a man he admired greatly. Yet Robert Swan Mueller III and Donald John Trump, born 22 months apart in New York City, also can seem to come from different planets.  Read more from WaPo.

What We’re Reading, February 12-16

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Here is a selection of articles we’ve read this week.

FY2019 PBR: On Feb. 12, the Trump administration released its 2019 budget proposal for changes to make to the federal government’s spending. Many of the cuts in the plan are unlikely to become reality: Congress just increased spending limits last week, and it rarely dares to change entitlement programs. Read more from Washington Post.

Attention Grad Students!:  Graduate students don’t typically make news. But during the recent battle over tax reform, lawmakers looked into capping or eliminating financial benefits that enable most students to pursue graduate degrees. Though the urgent headlines have died down, lawmakers and higher-education leaders are still considering a number of proposals over the next several months that could affect students in graduate programs. More from the Wall Street Journal.

DACA Deadline Looms: A March 5 deadline is looming for Washington to come up with a resolution for nearly 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and currently protected from deportation. The young people, their schools and employers are beginning to make contingency plans in case they have to leave the country, or face unemployment. More from the Wall Street Journal.

Campus Sexual Abuse Bill: A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced legislation to hold campus leaders accountable for sexual abuse that happens on their watch. The bill, the Accountability of Leaders in Education to Report Title IX Investigations Act, or the Alert Act for short, was introduced on Thursday. It would require college and university presidents to certify annually that they have reviewed all incidents of sexual misconduct reported to their campus Title IX coordinator, and that they have not interfered with investigations of those incidents. Read more from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Infrastructure!: The president’s long-awaited infrastructure plan pushes state and local governments to spend more but offers them a smoother path to getting federal regulatory approval. Read more from Governing.

Immigration Stalled Again

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The Senate on Thursday effectively failed to move forward with any of four immigration proposals put forward today. This included a Republican proposal backed by President Donald Trump that would grant 1.8 million “Dreamers” a path to citizenship and provide $25 billion for a border wall and security improvements.

The action came on a 39-60 vote to limit debate on an amendment by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), to an unrelated bill (HR 2579) related to the Administration’s “Four Pillars” proposal  Sixty votes were needed to invoke cloture.

Grassley’s proposal mirrored Trump’s framework to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers brought to the United States as children in exchange for border security funding. It would also end family-based immigration or “chain migration” and phase out a diversity lottery program. Democrats considered the restrictions on family-based immigration a nonstarter.

The Senate earlier rejected three other immigration proposals, including a bipartisan deal by 16 mostly centrist Senators, calling themselves the “Common Sense Caucus,” that Trump threatened to veto because it did not do enough to limit family-based immigration.

All amendments failed this afternoon.

There was no clear path forward in the House for any of these proposals.

Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence Testifies in Congress

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Today Dr. Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and UW Professor of Computer Science, was invited by the subcommittee chair to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Technology in the first of two committee meetings slated to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Dr. Etzioni was joined by experts from Intel, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and NVIDIA. Check out the hearing on YouTube.