8/1/25: Higher Ed Lobbying Spending Rises (Inside Higher Ed) Top research universities increased lobbying expenditures in the second quarter ahead of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which brought changes for the sector. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/08/01/higher-ed-lobbying-spending-rises
8/1/25: HHS Accuses Harvard of Thwarting Investigations (Inside Higher Ed) The Trump administration has accused Harvard University officials of failing to comply with an ongoing civil rights investigation into alleged campus antisemitism, The Boston Globe reported . https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/08/01/hhs-accuses-harvard-thwarting-investigations
8/1/25: National Science Foundation Suspends Grants at UCLA (Inside Higher Ed) National Science Foundation said Thursday that it’s suspending grant awards at the University of California, Los Angeles. An NSF spokesperson said that the university’s awards “are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals,” though they didn’t offer more specifics. NSF changed its priorities in April and, as a result, cut off funding to programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion and those aimed at combating misinformation. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/08/01/national-science-foundation-suspends-grants-ucla
See also: Trump administration cuts UCLA research funds (Politico) https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/01/trump-administration-cuts-ucla-research-funds-00488233
7/31/25: With boost to NIH budget, Senate panel rejects Trump’s plan to slash agency (Science) In a stark rejection of President Donald Trump’s plan to dramatically slash federally funded biomedical research in 2026, a Senate funding committee today approved a draft bill that instead gives the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a modest raise of $400 million. It also disregards Trump’s plan to gut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). https://www.science.org/content/article/boost-nih-budget-senate-panel-rejects-trump-s-plan-slash-agency
See also: ‘Congress has your back’: US senators tell scientists they want to protect NIH budget (Nature) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02448-3
7/31/25: DOJ memo presses federal funding recipients to nix DEI (The Hill) Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration is prepared to restrict funds to entities that use diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices — a move likely to impact universities and K-12 schools as well as others. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5430267-doj-memo-funding-recipients-dei/
7/31/25: Universities Are Making Deals With Trump. Here’s How They Stack Up. (The Chronicle) Below is a high-level breakdown of how the three agreements compare. Some institutions voluntarily adopted policies favored by the Trump administration before reaching settlements — as Columbia did, in appointing a senior vice provost to review its program on Middle Eastern studies and adopting the controversial definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Those policies are not outlined in the table below. https://www.chronicle.com/article/universities-are-making-deals-with-trump-heres-how-they-stack-up
See also: The Columbia deal is a tragic wake-up call (Science, Editorial, H. Holden Thorpe) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb0424
See also: Trump administration sharpens framework for university funding settlements (Axios) https://www.axios.com/2025/07/31/trump-settlements-universities-brown-harvard-columbia-federal-funding
7/30/25: Their NIH Grants Are Back. But Nothing Is Back to Normal. (The Chronicle) When the National Institutes of Health terminated six of Katie M. Edwards’s grants this year, she decided to join a lawsuit against the government. Doing so, she knew, could bring negative attention to her efforts to prevent violence among LGBTQ+ and Indigenous youth. But as the Trump administration carries out a sweeping attack on scientific research it considers unfavorable, “I had to do it for my staff, for our life-saving work, for broader justice and public-health research,” said Edwards, a social-work professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. https://www.chronicle.com/article/their-nih-grants-are-back-but-nothing-is-back-to-normal
7/29/25: Government shutdown talk is starting early ahead of a difficult funding fight in Congress this fall (Federal News Network) It’s become tradition. Congressional leaders from both major political parties blame each other for a potential government shutdown as the budget year draws to a close. But this year, the posturing is starting extraordinarily early. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/government-shutdown/2025/07/government-shutdown-talk-is-starting-early-ahead-of-a-difficult-funding-fight-in-congress-this-fall/
