9/29/25: ‘Brace yourselves’: Government shutdown threat deepens as Capitol Hill digs in (CNN) President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans believe there is only one way to avert a shutdown at midnight on Tuesday: Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has to change his mind. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/29/politics/government-shutdown-senate-trump
See also: Trump Faces Democrats as Shutdown Deadline Nears (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/government-shutdown-2025-democrats-trump-meeting-ec8e5d54
See also: Expectations Low Amid High Tensions as Shutdown Deadline Nears (Bloomberg Law) https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/expectations-for-trump-summit-low-before-shutdown-deadline?context=search&index=1
9/29/25: Higher Ed’s H-1B Visas in 4 Charts (Inside Higher Ed) More than 16,700 employees at colleges and universities got H-1B visas approved in fiscal year 2025, but they are concentrated at 100 large research institutions. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2025/09/29/4-charts-breaking-down-h-1b-visas-and-higher-ed
9/29/25: Federal Research: Agency Funding and Outreach to Historically Black, Tribal, and Minority-Serving Colleges and Universities (GAO-25-107576) To support U.S. innovation, the federal government has invested in academic research, including at Black, tribal, and minority-serving colleges and universities. As federal research funding to all colleges and universities grew from fiscal years 2018 through 2022, the funding to these specific institutions also grew. We identified 75 federal programs that targeted funding to help these institutions do research and build their research capacity. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107576
9/28/25: White House considers funding advantage for colleges that align with Trump policies (The Washington Post) The proposal could transform the government’s vast research funding operation, which has long awarded university grants based on scientific merit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/09/28/trump-university-research-grants-funding-preference/
9/27/25: Give In or Fight Back? Colleges Are Torn on How to Respond to Trump. (New York Times) The University of California, one of the Trump administration’s biggest targets so far, is in an uproar over how to respond to the president’s attacks. So is the rest of higher education. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/us/trump-university-california-berkeley-tactics.html
9/26/25: NIH pulled off a ‘near miracle.’ Scientists say there’s still a problem. (Washington Post) The National Institutes of Health is on track to give away all of its grant money to labs, but research on cancer, aging and diabetes is still being left behind. Article Link
9/25/25: ‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry (Science) After months of anticipation , the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) today released its instructions for the next round of applicants to its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) . To the dismay of many, the prestigious program, which funds more than 1000 promising STEM graduate students each year, will now exclude a key group of students, as second-year Ph.D. students are no longer eligible. https://www.science.org/content/article/completely-shattered-changes-nsf-s-graduate-student-fellowship-spur-outcry
9/24/25: The FAR Overhaul: What Contractors Need to Know (Holland & Knight) Holland & Knight and BRG co-hosted a webinar on the Trump Administration’s “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul,” an initiative to implement significant changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). During the program, Larry Allen of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), alongside Holland & Knight Government Contracts attorneys Jeremy Burkhart and Christian Nagel and BRG Directors Rob McDonald and Clint Woofter, shared insights into the updates so far. They focused on the revisions most closely affecting government contractors and offered advice for navigating the new regulatory landscape. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/media-entities/2025/09/the-far-overhaul-what-contractors-need-to-know
9/4/25: U.S. academic and research institutions face mounting scrutiny over China ties (Hogan Lovells) In recent months, the U.S. academic and research community has been subject to intense scrutiny over ties to China. Even more than the controversial China Initiative of the first Trump administration, the past eight months have seen regulators, law enforcement, and Congress aggressively target U.S. scientists, universities, and academic medical centers through investigations to identify potentially inappropriate connections to China. Although China-related inquiries are of course only one aspect of the U.S. government’s focus on universities, they require careful attention and calibrated responses because of the potential exposure for institutions and their faculty. https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/us-academic-and-research-institutions-face-mounting-scrutiny-over-china-ties ?
