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News and updates

News and updates

What We’re Reading This Week, January 30 – February 2

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

Intolerance of the Left – The recent election showed a sharp divide between the left and the right in the political views and opinions on the direction of the country.  Using Marceline, Mo as the example, The Guardian examines the right’s complaints with the left. Read more in The Guardian. 

Red Post, Blue Post – Facebook is growing as a medium for Americans to see news, but the content of your feed can vary greatly given your political leanings. Read more and see the feeds at The Wall Street Journal. 

DeVos Confirmation Uncertain? – Two Republican Senators announced on the Senate floor Feb. 1 that they plan to oppose the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the Secretary of Education.  With the Senate currently divided 52 – 48 in Republicans’ favor, the  status of her nomination is rather precarious.  Read more about the situation in Politico and The Hill.

New Funding Fight on the Horizon? – Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley Feb. 1.  After violence caused by outside agitators erupted on the campus before the speech, the event was canceled by the campus police.  The university did not rescind the original invitation when many on campus asked it to do so.  In the aftermath of the cancellation, President Trump tweeted that perhaps federal funding should be pulled from the university for not allowing the expression of opposing viewpoints.  Read more here in Politico and Inside Higher Education.

Dear Mr. President – This is how federal funding for higher education works. The vast majority of federal dollars that flow to colleges and universities arrives in the form of student loans and grants to cover the cost of attendance. Another path for federal dollars to colleges is research grants, money bestowed by entities such as the National Institutes of Health to aid students and faculty pursuing research in the public interest. Read more from the Washington Post.

A Larger Piece of the Pie  – The House’s New Democrat Coalition does not plan to sit by and let the GOP generate all the policy ideas on issues like taxes, infrastructure and cybersecurity. Read more about the Coalition and its agenda from its vice chairman, Rep. Derek Kilmer on Rollcall.

Travel Ban + Science – The Washington Post explores how Trump’s travel ban could hurt science. According to a 2013 report by the National Science Foundation, more than 5 million of the United States’ 29 million scientists and engineers were not born in the United States. All six of the Americans who won Nobel Prizes last year were immigrants. And nearly a fifth of all papers published in scientific journals these days have authors from at least two countries. Read more from the Washington Post here.

DeVos Nomination Heads to Full Senate Vote

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Late Thursday/early Friday, the Senate cleared procedural hurdles that would bring the nomination of Betsy DeVos to the floor for a vote by the full Senate next week. A number of groups have argued against her nomination to become the Secretary of Education and two Republicans have recently stated that they will oppose her. With the current make-up of the Senate 52 to 48 in the Republicans’ favor, and with no Democrats expected to vote for DeVos, Vice President Mike Pence may be forced to cast the tie-breaking vote.

More Nominations Move Forward

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The Senate continues to make progress on more Trump Cabinet nominees. Both the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Budget committees voted to move forward the nomination of Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) to head the Office of Management and Budget on party-line votes.

In the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the majority used the same procedures employed by the Finance Committee Republicans to address a Democratic boycott of a vote on a nominee: the committee rules, which require at least two members from the minority party for a vote, were suspended and the nomination of Scott Pruitt as Director of the Environmental Protection Agency was approved by the majority. Thursday was the second day of a Democratic boycott of the committee.

Both nominations now head to the floor for consideration by the full Senate.

Pentagon to Revise FY2017 Budget Request

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The Department of Defense is preparing changes to its budget request for this current fiscal year (FY2017). In a memo, Secretary Mattis states that the department will seek changes to its original request, to address shortfalls in warfighting readiness and the accelerated campaign against ISIS. The new request will lead to a higher overall request for the agency for FY2017 and will likely lead to decreases or smaller increases in “lower priority” programs. It is unclear whether research programs will be impacted by the revised budget. The new request will be submitted by March 1.

The same memo states that the FY2018 budget request will be delivered by May 1 and will focus on “balancing the program, addressing pressing programmatic shortfalls, while continuing to build readiness.” Finally, a five-year plan (FY2019-2023) for the Pentagon will seek to push reforms, including horizontal integration across the agency.

More Drama on the Nominations Front

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Earlier on Wednesday, Senate Finance Committee Democrats continued their boycott of committee votes to confirm Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary. The committee rules require at least one member of each party to be present to hold votes. During the committee meeting, in order to get around the boycott, the committee rules were suspended and the nominations of Price and Mnuchin were reported out favorably.

Meanwhile, a vote by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the nomination of Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency has also been delayed by a boycott by the committee Democrats. The committee is expected to reconvene at a future date.

During a sometimes-heated session, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted out favorably the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for the post of Attorney General along a party line vote of 11 to 9.

In separate speeches on the Senate floor, both Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced their intention to vote against the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Both Senators, who are members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over the nomination, had voted in favor of moving DeVos’s nomination forward in committee while expressing reservations about some of the views of the nominee. Given the current make-up of the Senate, and if the other Senators vote along party lines, it is very possible that Vice President Mike Pence may cast the tie-breaking vote in her favor.

Also on Wednesday, the full Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State by a vote of 56 to 43.