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What We’re Reading This Week, March 21-25

The House and Senate headed out for the Easter Recess this week, but the news kept coming. Here is a selection of articles the Federal Relations team enjoyed reading this week.

Climate Science in Science – Last week, the House Science Committee held a hearing on NOAA’s FY17 budget proposal. Overall, the hearing did not go badly, but the occasion did not pass without grilling NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan about climate change. Read more in the Washington Post. 

Capitol Dome Restoration – March 2016

I Like Ike – The last brokered Republican convention was in 1952 between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert A. Taft, and they didn’t like each other. While that was ugly, the rhetoric leading up to the 1952 convention wasn’t nearly as heated and vitriolic as 2016. Read more about that convention in Vox. 

Sock a Little Away – A recent open records request revealed that the federal government is concerned about the financial management of many institutions of higher education and some of with concerns are surprising. ED has requested many colleges, including Drexel University and Bryn Mawr College, to set aside money in exchange for access to federal grants and loans, signaling that their financial management may be on shaky ground. While most of the attention of poor financial management is paid to for-profit institutions, which does comprise a signifiant number of colleges under scrutiny (400 schools with letters are for-profit institutions), there are more traditional, nonprofit institutions (148) also causing concerns. Read more in The Washington Post. 

O’la Cuba – President Obama made a monumental trip to Cuba, the first American leader to set foot on Cuban soil in 88 years, this week. The trip included a third official meeting with Raúl Castro as well as an unprecedented, for Cuba, Q&A with reporters after the meeting.  Read more about the trip in the New York Times. Read more about why relations between the US and Cuba have been so hostile for so long in Vox. 

Endangering a Species – Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans’ historically large House majority in danger. The House GOP’s leading indicators — its most vulnerable members — are already sounding the alarm against Trump and his rhetoric on women, Hispanics and other groups.  Read more in Politico. 

Know Your Audience – In 2014, the NSF promised Congress that it would do a better job of describing the projects it funds. Since then, NSF program officers have been paying more attention to the titles that researchers submit with their grant proposals, and that additional scrutiny is paying off. Projects funded in 2015 are more than twice as likely to sport new titles as those funded in 2012, according to a new analysis by an internal NSF working group. Read more in Science. 

Pay Up – A new report indicates promising student loan repayment trends. The Department’s office of Federal Student Aid unveiled new, expanded data on the $357 billion Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, which typically consists of federal student loans originated by banks. Hardship deferments, delinquencies have fallen and forbearance have declined. Read more at ED or read the Quarterly Student Aid report here. 

Dead Lock – The Supreme Court issued a deadlocked ruling Tuesday, its first since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The court tied 4-4 in a case involving whether a pair of wives should be held financially responsible for the failure of their husbands’ real estate endeavor. Read more in The Hill. Meanwhile, what does that mean? What happens when the Supreme Court has a tie? Read more in Slate. 

Ancient Battle – The Republican front-runner, billionaire Donald Trump, will be 70 years old on Election Day, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic favorite, will be 69. If they win their parties’ respective nominations, no pair atop the ballot will have been older, on average, since the nation’s founding. Read more in The Hill.

What’s in a Name? – The UK’s National Environmental Research Council went to the wild world of the internet to find a name for its new $300 million Antarctic research vessel. The internet has spoken and Boaty McBoatface is winning by a clear margin. The exercise has been so popular, the site has crashed. Read more at I F*cking Love Science.