Late last week, the Senate confirmed Nasser Paydar as Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education. He is the chancellor emeritus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and executive vice president at Indiana University.
A statement about his confirmation from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is available here.
After a marathon series of votes on amendments over the weekend, the Senate cleared by a vote of 51-50 a version of the reconciliation budget package. With all 50 Democrats supporting the measure and all 50 Republicans voting against it, Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote. Because the measure isa reconciliation bill, which provided it procedural protections, it could move forward in the Senate with a simple majority vote.
The House is currently scheduled to take it up on Friday.
We will provide further details about the bill in the near future.
At a ceremony earlier today, President Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act.
Additional background documents are available here.
It had been previously reported that Dr. Arati Prabhakar was the leading candidate to take over as the head of the White House OSTP. Today, the White House officially announced that President Biden intends to nominate her to become the next Director of OSTP. She previously served as the head of NIST under President Clinton and the director of DARPA under President Obama. If confirmed, she will also assume the position of Chief Science Advisor for Science and Technology to the President.
Earlier today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved by voice vote the nominations of David Applegate to be Director of the USGS and Evelyn Wang to be Director of ARPA-E.
Both nominations now head to the full Senate for its consideration.