Fed Update: COGR News Digest

4/27/26Inside Higher Ed

White House Ousts Entire National Science Board

The White House on Friday terminated all members of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, Nature and Science reported. The NSF, which has a nearly $9 billion annual budget, is among the top federal funders of university research. The board has 25 members when it’s at full capacity

ScienceSee also

Could agentic AI topple grant-funding systems?

Funders must take action before an increase in submission of high-quality proposals written using AI models makes it impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff

4/25/26Washington Post, Opinion

As Trump slashes research, California devises a solution

The implications are not abstract. The University of California system alone — where the United Auto Workers union, the organization I lead, represents 60,000 workers, including academic employees and researchers — risks losing between $5 billion and $6 billion every year from the Trump administration’s cuts. The UAW represents more than 120,000 academic workers across the country, many of whom work on the bleeding edge of innovation, all of whom are at risk….Against this disturbing backdrop, California is considering an unusual intervention. California Senate Bill 895 , the California Science and Health Research Bond Act, poses a fundamental question to voters: Who should decide the direction of scientific investment when the federal government falters?

4/24/26The Chronicle

Nearly One-Third of Faculty in Red States Say They’ve Censored Their Research

Nearly a third of researchers polled in a newly released survey said they’ve censored their own research because of laws in their state restricting the teaching and study of “divisive concepts.” Twenty-one states have passed laws since 2021 regulating university curricula, dictating how certain topics related to race and gender can be taught, and restricting shared governance. That’s driving some academics away from topics and out of states with laws on “divisive concepts,” “woke ideologies,” “DEI,” or “critical race theory”, the survey of 4,000 faculty members found. It was conducted last fall by Ithaka S+R, a research and consulting service, and released this past week

4/24/26National Defense Magazine

COMMENTARY: U.S. Research Universities Underutilized National Security Assets

The United States is entering a period of strategic competition where speed — not scale alone — will determine military advantage. Across artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber operations and battlefield medicine, the pace of technological change is accelerating. The Defense Department has substantial budgets and clear objectives, but it struggles to adapt and field capabilities at the pace modern competition demands.

4/24/26Nature

How much for a fake authorship? Ad database reveals secrets of scientific fraud

An analysis of the advert data found that a first-author slot on an article sold by a paper mill costs a median value of nearly US$800, with prices ranging from $57 to more than $5,600. The work is described in a preprint submitted to arXiv this week. Researchers, publishers and indexing services could use the list of adverts to screen their publications and audit which journals and research topics are most likely to be targeted, says study co-author Reese Richardson, a metascientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

4/23/26Science

U.S. moves to reclassify some types of marijuana as lower risk

In a long-awaited change to U.S. drug policy, President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general today signed an order loosening restrictions on some kinds of marijuana—a move that could make it easier for researchers to study the drug’s potential medical benefits and harms. The new policy shifts cannabis from its previous Schedule I category, which includes drugs with a high potential for abuse and no accepted therapeutic value, such as heroin, to the less risky Schedule III.