News and updates

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

Everyone is Counted – The Supreme Court is unanimous in its decision that population counts for redistricting purposes should take into account the whole population and not simply registered voters. Read more at CNN. 

Soda Tax – When Bloomberg introduced a soda tax in New York, soft drink companies and consumers alike railed against the tax. Now, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to introduce a similar tax. Rather than taxing what you shouldn’t eat, Kenney is framing it as a way to pay for something Philadelphians want: universal prekindergarten. Read more in The New York Times. 

Crumbles – Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling and no where is that more evident, nor coming more to a head, than Washington DC’s Metro system. Read more about the issues in The New York Times. 

Senate v. SCOTUS – With an impending nomination to the Supreme Court, tensions between the court and the Senate have been on slow boil. Shortly before Justice Scalia’s death, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that the trend of approving qualified Supreme Court nominees along party-line Senate votes undermines the legitimacy of the court. Senator Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned the Chief Justice that the recent decisions have inflamed the partisan tone, and basically, mind his own business. Read more in Politico. 

Revenue Rai$ers – Asking private universities to spend more of their massive endowments for operating expenses – as some in Congress might be tempted to do – is shortsighted and could be “financially dangerous” to some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, Rice University President David Leebron said Monday.  Congressional lawmakers in recent weeks have raised questions over why some of the nation’s wealthiest colleges, including Rice, continue to increase tuition despite having billions of dollars set aside. Read more in The Houston Chronicle. 

Advisory – The National Cancer Institute (NCI) today named a blue ribbon panel of scientists and other experts to help guide Vice President Joe Biden’s ambitious $1 billion moonshot to cure cancer.  Announced during President Barack Obama’s January State of the Union Address, the moonshot project will aim to double progress against cancer in the next 5 years and break down silos that prevent researchers from working together. NCI is spending $195 million on the effort this year and Obama has requested another $680 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for next year. Read more in Science. 

You’re On! – Performance-based funding has caught on in a big way in higher education. While that model lacks a precise definition, about 30 states now allocate at least some of the money they give to colleges based on achievement measures. The idea has obvious appeal at a time when money is tight and holding institutions accountable is popular. But so far, the evidence has been mixed on whether such models actually drive the improvements — such as raising graduation rates — that they are meant to encourage. Read more in The Chronicle for Higher Education. 

History Lesson – 1912, former President Teddy Roosevelt broke dramatically with his party and ran for president on an independent ticket. While strong rhetoric was used and Roosevelt came in second, his candidacy didn’t fundamentally change the party. Read more in Politico. 

Backlash – Former President Bill Clinton went on the defensive at a rally for his wife, presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this week, as President Clinton defended his 1994 crime bill that raised mandatory minimum sentences. Read more in The Hill. 

Increased Grace – Pope Francis released a post-synodal apostolic exhortation called “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love” today calling for increased pastoral care and less judgement by priests for couples who wish to remarry and have not had their previous marriage annulled as well as contraception. The document is more than 250 pages long. Read more at NPR. 

New York Times is now examining scientific misconceptions each week.

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

It’s Not The Hunger Games – It’s college acceptance letter season, and it’s not all obsessively checking the mailbox (not just because most acceptance comes electronically these days). What’s more college isn’t (despite public and Hollywood perception) all ivy covered walls and hallowed halls. Read more at the Five Thirty-Eight. 

Lawyer Up – Nationally, college campuses now are relying on lawyers, case workers, advocates and other officials to help negotiate changing ideas and standards of sexual behavior. Read more in The New York Times. 

Yes We Can! – The Congressional Budget Office projected a $7.7 billion surplus in funding for the federal Pell grant program this year, which means the government may have enough money to offer low-income students more financial aid. Read more in The Washington Post.

Creative Financing – Facing a $220 million budget shortfall, Democrats in Connecticut have proposed taxing the unspent earnings of university endowments with more than $10 billion in assets. Only Yale’s $25.6 billion endowment—the country’s second largest after Harvard—fits the tax bill. Yale’s tax-exempt investments earned $2.6 billion last year, eight times more than the University of Connecticut’s $384 million endowment. Read more in The Wall Street Journal. 

Secret Communications – In ISIS’s training and operational planning, the group appeared to routinely use a piece of software called TrueCrypt. Before companies like Apple and Microsoft built encryption into their products, TrueCrypt and programs like it were the primary means for securing files and disks by those with a privacy bent of whatever stripe. Read more in The New Yorker. 

Actually, It’s Abuse – Last week, a man hijacked an Egyptian aircraft because he wanted to get a message to his wife about how much he loved her. His wife says he was unpredictable and abusive. Read more in The New York Times. 

Managed to Make Literally Everyone Mad – In a rare moment, for Trump, of saying too much and experiencing blowback, Donald Trump blew up the news cycle on Wednesday by telling Chris Matthews at a town hall that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions if the procedure is outlawed. Literally, every group hated these comments, which he’s tried to walk back. Read more at Vox. Vox also explains what the issue with Trump’s campaign manager was earlier in the week. Read it at Vox. 

Impressively Bad – Poll numbers are in and Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by at least 80 percent of some of the groups that Republican strategists had hoped the GOP might improve among: young voters and Latinos. Also, he’s viewed unfavorably by three our of four moderates. Oh, he’s viewed unfavorably by non-college whites by 52 percent. Read more in The Washington Post. 

The House and Senate headed out for the Easter Recess this week, but the news kept coming. Here is a selection of articles the Federal Relations team enjoyed reading this week.

Climate Science in Science – Last week, the House Science Committee held a hearing on NOAA’s FY17 budget proposal. Overall, the hearing did not go badly, but the occasion did not pass without grilling NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan about climate change. Read more in the Washington Post. 

I Like Ike – The last brokered Republican convention was in 1952 between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert A. Taft, and they didn’t like each other. While that was ugly, the rhetoric leading up to the 1952 convention wasn’t nearly as heated and vitriolic as 2016. Read more about that convention in Vox. 

Sock a Little Away – A recent open records request revealed that the federal government is concerned about the financial management of many institutions of higher education and some of with concerns are surprising. ED has requested many colleges, including Drexel University and Bryn Mawr College, to set aside money in exchange for access to federal grants and loans, signaling that their financial management may be on shaky ground. While most of the attention of poor financial management is paid to for-profit institutions, which does comprise a signifiant number of colleges under scrutiny (400 schools with letters are for-profit institutions), there are more traditional, nonprofit institutions (148) also causing concerns. Read more in The Washington Post. 

O’la Cuba – President Obama made a monumental trip to Cuba, the first American leader to set foot on Cuban soil in 88 years, this week. The trip included a third official meeting with Raúl Castro as well as an unprecedented, for Cuba, Q&A with reporters after the meeting.  Read more about the trip in the New York Times. Read more about why relations between the US and Cuba have been so hostile for so long in Vox. 

Endangering a Species – Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans’ historically large House majority in danger. The House GOP’s leading indicators — its most vulnerable members — are already sounding the alarm against Trump and his rhetoric on women, Hispanics and other groups.  Read more in Politico. 

Know Your Audience – In 2014, the NSF promised Congress that it would do a better job of describing the projects it funds. Since then, NSF program officers have been paying more attention to the titles that researchers submit with their grant proposals, and that additional scrutiny is paying off. Projects funded in 2015 are more than twice as likely to sport new titles as those funded in 2012, according to a new analysis by an internal NSF working group. Read more in Science. 

Pay Up – A new report indicates promising student loan repayment trends. The Department’s office of Federal Student Aid unveiled new, expanded data on the $357 billion Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, which typically consists of federal student loans originated by banks. Hardship deferments, delinquencies have fallen and forbearance have declined. Read more at ED or read the Quarterly Student Aid report here. 

Dead Lock – The Supreme Court issued a deadlocked ruling Tuesday, its first since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The court tied 4-4 in a case involving whether a pair of wives should be held financially responsible for the failure of their husbands’ real estate endeavor. Read more in The Hill. Meanwhile, what does that mean? What happens when the Supreme Court has a tie? Read more in Slate. 

Ancient Battle – The Republican front-runner, billionaire Donald Trump, will be 70 years old on Election Day, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic favorite, will be 69. If they win their parties’ respective nominations, no pair atop the ballot will have been older, on average, since the nation’s founding. Read more in The Hill.

What’s in a Name? – The UK’s National Environmental Research Council went to the wild world of the internet to find a name for its new $300 million Antarctic research vessel. The internet has spoken and Boaty McBoatface is winning by a clear margin. The exercise has been so popular, the site has crashed. Read more at I F*cking Love Science.