There’s been a truly depressing amount of news over the last 48 hours. Here are the bullet points for what’s been going on in (biomedical) science and education.
Today’s update includes a Supreme Court ruling on NIH grants, updated fine print from HHS, and news out of UCLA, University of Texas, and George Mason University.
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that NIH can – at least temporarily – discontinue paying out over $700 million in research for grants involving diversity, equity, and inclusion.Nature puts the number at $2 billion dollars
The reporting around this is a little unclear, but it appears that this could apply just to the grants in question, meaning that NIH wouldn’t be able use the same process to cancel grants moving forward. SCOTUSblog has a good rundown.
It is worth pointing out that NIH is currently conducting another review of its grant portfolio as part of its new unified strategy, the Court’s ruling does not appear to affect the policies described in the recent executive order on federal grantmaking, and HHS has updated their grants policy language (see bullet point below).
From Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent: “For the Government, the incremental expenditure of money is at stake. For the plaintiffs and the public, scientific progress itself hangs in the balance—along with the lives that progress saves.”
HHS has quietly updated the terms and conditions of awards, which affects grants from NIH and other agencies under its umbrella.
The document now contains language that “Federal awards may also be terminated if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities” (Section 3.6.4).
The Civil Rights section (2.5.4.3.) is now expanded and amended in order to be in-line with the Administration’s interpretation of the Civil Rights Act and executive orders on gender identity.
The new terms are effective October 1st (the start of the new federal fiscal year).
Today NIH released its plan for implementing “Gold Standard Science”, It is mostly a rundown of already announced initiatives and requests for information. There is no mention of some of the more structural/political aspects of the recent round of science-related executive orders and policy changes.
Propublica has a new piece that lays out the statistics in terms of how many people have left health-related federal agencies over the last year. Nothing especially surprising, but the raw numbers and visualizations are striking.
NIH Early Independence Awards will not be moving forward in FY26 because of administrative changes and delays. At present, the funding opportunities are expected to resume in FY27.
The Administration has stated that it is undertaking a review of 55 million visa holders in the United States. There are few details at the moment, but this seems to refer to a continual vetting process for anyone holding any kind of US visa.
Amid funding cuts and demands from the Administration that it pay a $1 billion settlement, UCLA has paused faculty recruitment and is making other organizational changes.
The Department of Education announced today that it has found George Mason University to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act for giving “preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from ‘underrepresented groups’ to advance ‘anti-racism.’”
The regents of the University of Texas voted yesterday to disband the faculty senate. Much of the decision-making power that was formerly held by the senate will now be held by university boards and presidents.
Congress will be back in session starting on September 2nd, so expect the budget appropriations process to resume then. In the meantime, Ars Technica has a review of what the process from here may look like.