Six congressional staff from a range of Washington members’ offices visited the UW Seattle campus today to tour some of UW’s impressive research facilities. We are always happy to share the exciting things happening on campus as we continue to work together to advance research that has a direct impact on our community, state, country, and world.
A few weeks ago, President Cauce visited Washington D.C. to meet with members of the Washington congressional delegation. During these meetings, President Cauce discussed the overall state of the institution as we close down FY24 and previewed the university’s priorities for the following year. She also had the opportunity to thank our delegation for being champions of higher education, science, and research. We look forward to working together alongside our delegation to continue to lead Washington state to the forefront of cutting edge research and quality education.
President Cauce also had the wonderful opportunity of attending the EDGE Consortium Fall Summit where members spoke on the importance of investing in the next generation of scientists and engineers, focusing on women and underrepresented groups in the engineering and STEM workforce. Senator Cantwell spoke and met with President Cauce as they work together towards creating a more inclusive STEM workforce.
By clearing the last four bills yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee has reported out all 12 spending bills for a fiscal year for the first time in five years. The committee reported out favorably yesterday the following FY2024 spending measures: Labor-HHS-Education; Defense; Interior and the Environment; and Homeland Security. Unlike the situation in the House, where the leadership had to pull the Agriculture spending bill from a floor vote because it lacked enough support even among the Republicans, the committee process in the Senate yesterday was very bipartisan. The Interior bill passed by a vote of 28 – 0, the Defense bill was approved 27 – 1, the Labor-HHS bill was adopted 26 – 2, and the vote was 24 – 4 on the Homeland Security legislation.
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
The Senate legislation would fund the National Institutes of Health at a total of $47.8 billion, an increase of $943 million above the current level. The total includes $1.5 billion for ARPA-H, which represents level funding under the Senate version of the bill. Within the NIH, the bill would increase, among other programs, mental health and Alzheimer’s research by $100 million each and while cancer research would see an increase of $60 million.
The legislation proposes to fund the Title VII Health Professions programs at a total of $529 million, an increase of $20 million.
At the same time, the Title VIII Nursing programs would see a total of $302.5 million, a $2-million increase over this year.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
USGS
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Under the committee-approved bill, defense basic research would be see an increase of 10.5 percent for a total of $3.22 billion.
Both chambers are now in recess until after Labor Day.
In a much awaited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that the admissions practices at both Harvard University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill are unconstitutional because of how race is in their decisions.
The entirety of the ruling is available here.
Examples of initial analyses of the ruling are available here, here, and here.
The Office of Federal Relations is hosting a Virtual Town Hall on June 1st at 11am-12pm PST. The Town Hall will address ongoing federal legislation, appropriations, UW priorities, and other federal updates followed by Q&A. The Town Hall is open to all members of the UW community. To join, please register here.