The Department of Education (ED) has published a “living document” with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and information on virtual office hours to support HR 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (P.L.119-21) (OBBB).
The first round of FAQs on student loan reforms is posted. The Department considers the FAQs to be a living document and will continue to post new and updated FAQs as they become available.
The House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee released its FY27 spending bill yesterday, and it heads to markup this morning. The draft bill would provide $58.5 billion in discretionary spending, an increase of $461 million from FY26.
Key features of the bill include:
A summary of the bill can be found here and the full bill text can be found here.
After a markup session during which numerous amendments were considered, the House Appropriations Committee adopted its FY2027 Commerce-Justice-Science funding bill by a vote of 32 – 28.
The bill, which funds a number of science agencies, including NSF, NOAA, NASA, and NIST, is available here.
The text of the report, which details how the funds are to be spent, is available here.
In preparation for its markup tomorrow morning, the House Appropriations Committee has released the report that accompanies the FY2027 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill. The report includes details on funding levels provided to the agencies. The report is available here.
NSF
NSF would be funded at $7.0 billion under this bill, a decrease of $1.75 billion below the current level.
The Research and Related Activities account would be funded at $6.44 billion, a decrease of $736 million.
The Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction would receive $172.95 million, which is $78.1 million below the current level.
Although the entire National Science Board has been dismissed, the bill appropriates $3.05 million to the board.
NOAA
The bill appropriates a total of $5.85 billion to NOAA, a cut of $319.8 million.
Within NOAA, activities funded by the Operations, Research, and Facilities account would see a total of $4.69 billion, of which $4.01 billion would be from direct appropriations and $659 million would be from a transfer of funds from the ‘‘Promote and Develop Fishery Products and Research Pertaining to American Fisheries’’ Fund and $28 million from prior year funds.
OAR would be funded at $580.2 million overall. This amount includes $92.5 million for Climate CIs and Labs and $20 million for the RISA program. Sea Grant and Sea Grant Aquaculture would be level funded at $80 million and $14 million, respectively.
As part of the National Ocean Service, the Regional IOOS Observations network would be funded at $56 million.
NASA
NASA would be level funded at $24.44 billion.
The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) would be funded at $6 billion, a cut of $1.25 billion. Within SMD, Earth Science would be funded at $1.325 billion while Planetary Science would see a total of $2.5 billion. Astrophysics and Heliophysics would receive $1.485 billion and $625 million, respectively. Biological and Physical Sciences would see a total of $65 million.
The bill proposes to fund the Space Tech Directorate at $913 million, a cut of $7.5 million, while Aeronautics would be appropriated a total of $850 million, a cut of $85 million.
The Space Grant Program would be level funded at $58 million.
The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill tomorrow morning. The Senate has yet to take any action on its version.
After five hours of an open vote, the House was able to pass the Senate budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 33) in an effort end the stalemate on DHS funding and if and how much for fund ICE. This resolution instructs Congress to provide $70 million for immigration enforcement funding.
The House voted to adopt the resolution 215-211, strictly along party lines with one member voting present.
While the budget vote marked an important step, it will not, on its own end, the 75-day partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. The House still must take up a Senate-passed appropriations bill (HR 7147) to fund the rest of the DHS, outside of immigration agencies. The concurrent resolution is a significant step for Congress to begin funding the agency.
At present, the Coast Guard, TSA and other DHS units are being funded through extraordinary measures. Funding available to do so will be fully depleted in the next month.
The House planned on having a busy week and was scheduled to consider the FISA reauthorization and the Farm Bill. However, after multiple caucus issues, the Farm Bill was removed from the House Floor and returned to the House Rules Committee.