Fed Update: COGR News Digest

3/17/25Inside Higher Ed

Appeals Court Overturns Block on Parts of Trump’s DEI Orders

The Trump administration can move forward with carrying out all provisions in the president’s executive orders that crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion, an appeals court ruled Friday.

3/16/25

Universities in precarious position as Trump uses research funding as a wedge (The Hill)

The Trump administration is taking advantage of the entanglement of university finances and government funding, seeking to put schools on a short leash tied to their research capabilities. Columbia has already lost $400 million in grants over what the government calls inaction on antisemitism. Harvard is implementing a hiring freeze due to financial “uncertainties” in federal policy. And Johns Hopkins University announced Thursday it is letting go of 2,000 workers due to federal aid cuts.

New York TimesSee also

Education Department Investigates Dozens of Colleges for Discrimination

According to the department’s statement, all but six of the investigations revolve around colleges’ partnerships with or support for The Ph D Project , a nonprofit organization that connects prospective business doctoral candidates from underrepresented backgrounds with academic networks and hosts recruitment events for business school faculty. In its statement, the Education Department said the organization “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”

3/15/25The Washington Post

Her research grant mentioned ‘hesitancy.’ Now her funding is gone.

A medical researcher may have erroneously lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money because she was swept up in Trump administration efforts to ban studies of vaccine hesitancy and uptake.

Inside Higher Ed

3/14/25 Trump’s Demands to Columbia Reflect Assault on Higher Ed, Experts Say

If Columbia University wants a financial relationship with the federal government, the Ivy League institution will need to overhaul its discipline process, ban masks, expel some students, put an academic department under review, give its campus security “full law enforcement authority” and reform its admissions practices. Those are just some of the sweeping and unprecedented demands the Trump administration made Thursday in a letter to the Manhattan-based institution. They come less than a week after the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts at the university. Columbia has until March 20 to respond.

3/14/25Nature

‘My career is over’: Columbia University scientists hit hard by Trump team’s cuts

On Tuesday morning this week, PhD student Daniella Fodera woke up at 7 a.m. to a call from the head of her research laboratory in Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, delivering devastating news. Her F31 fellowship, a research training grant that provides the majority of her annual income, had been terminated. “It was traumatic,” Fodera says. “I immediately just broke into tears.”

3/14/25Inside Higher Ed

Layoffs Gut Federal Education Research Agency

The department says the research agency failed to effectively fulfill its mandate and exemplifies wasteful spending. But experts warn the cuts will undermine “the backbone of accountability” for the country’s schools and colleges.

3/14/25The Chronicle, Opinion

How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime

I told him to frame his fight to gain as many allies as he can. Mobilize your alumni networks. Enlist families whose children’s lives have been saved in your hospitals; reach out to companies that have commercialized your research, make contact with universities in red and blue states, public and private, who face the same threat. Do it fast. Make sure your campaign is not just about you, because that opens you to attack as a defender of privilege. Make the case to the public that these attacks are senseless assaults on institutions that promote what America is famous for: life-saving science and world-class innovation

The Chronicle, OpinionSee also

US Averts Government Shutdown as Senate Passes GOP Spending Bill

The Senate passed a Republican spending plan Friday, averting a US government shutdown hours before a midnight deadline while exacerbating a furious struggle within the Democratic party over how to confront Donald Trump.

3/14/25The Hill

West Virginia Republican’s bill would ban visas for Chinese students

The bill, dubbed the Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act (Stop CCP VISAs Act) would cut off the threat of Chinese students spying on the American government or stealing advanced technology, Moore said in a news release Friday.

3/13/25Science

Can NIH overturn a court order blocking it from slashing overhead payments? Unlikely, one expert says

Last month , the National Institutes of Health lobbed a bombshell at universities that receive NIH grants by proposing to slash billions of dollars in overhead payments they receive to support cutting-edge research on their campuses. But on 5 March a federal judge in Massachusetts defused the bomb before it could explode. In response to a lawsuit brought by 22 states and a coalition of research organizations, U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley issued an injunction that prevents NIH from implementing the rule change, which would lower the rate to a flat 15%—far below what NIH has previously negotiated with many universities.

3/13/25Science, Editorial

Uphold US-Canada science

A partnership can be demanding, and as with any couple, can have good days and bad. The United States–Canada relationship is most definitely having a bad one. It’s difficult to fully comprehend all the dimensions of the current threats to one of the world’s strongest, longest, and multifaceted alliances. From contemptuous musings on annexation to a tariff war that could wreak economic havoc on both sides of the border, the insults and aggravations are stoking uncertainty about a relationship that has flourished for decades. This includes a strongly intertwined connection between Canadian and American science—one that must continue in these challenging times

3/13/25Science

NIH reinstates some of its early-career scientists

Promising early-career National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists who were fired last month as part of President Donald Trump’s purge of probationary employees learned yesterday that they have their jobs back. But the good news is tempered by looming federal job cuts that could shave thousands of staff at NIH. Those restored include 15 tenure-track investigators—scientists who joined NIH’s in-house research program within the past couple of years with the expectation of earning a permanent lab at the agency. Acting NIH Director Matthew Memoli had appealed to his bosses at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to restore that group after NIH was ordered to fire nearly 1200 probationary employees who were relatively new in their positions or recently promoted.

3/13/25NBC News

Harvard researchers sue the Trump administration for removing their work from public website

Two Harvard medical school professors claim in a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration that their research was pulled from a public government website because it referred to the LGBTQ community.

3/12/25Politico

NIH set to replace chief of staff with former Massie aide

John Burklow, a nearly 40-year veteran of the NIH, is being removed from his role, according to three people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity because the decision is not yet public. The agency is expected to instead appoint Seana Cranston as the NIH’s new chief of staff, two of the people said, though they cautioned it is not final and could still change. Cranston is a former deputy chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who also spent several years as the lawmaker’s legislative director