On Wednesday, November 20th, 2019 Dr. Cliff Mass from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences will testify before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The hearing is titled A Task of Epic Proportions: Reclaiming US Leadership in Weather Modeling and Prediction. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2:00 EST, and you can watch it here.
News and updates
What We’re Reading this Week (November 12th-15th, 2019)
Below is a selection of articles the Federal Relations team has read this week.
House Begins Public Impeachment Hearings: On Wednesday the House Intelligence Committee began public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The former US Chargé d’affaires in Ukraine Bill Taylor and the former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affiars George Kent were the first to testify. Former Ambassador to Ukraine and career Senior Foreign Service Officer Marie Yovanovitch will testify today. More at CNN.
NIH Expanding Data Sharing Requirement: A new rule proposed by the NIH would require all investigators to make their data sets publicly available, not just those above a dollar threshold. Comments are open through January 2020, and NIH hopes to finalize the rule in the next year. More at Science Magazine.
Appeals Court Rules Against Sacred Heart University: The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that creditors can sue to have tuition returned when parents or guardians file for bankruptcy. Previously, lower court rulings were mixed and some opted to protect colleges. Now, creditors can seek payment directly from colleges when someone pays a tuition bill and then goes bankrupt. More at Wall Street Journal.
Italy Declares Emergency Over Venice Flooding: Flooding has caused significant damage in Venice, Italy, damaging historical structures and cutting power. The flooding is higher than normal, leading PM Giuseppe Conte to declare an emergency. More at BBC.
Secretary DeVos Narrowly Avoids Subpoena: The Department of Education handed over documents to the House Education Committee just hours before Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) was set to issue a subpoena. The House Education Committee asserts that they have been asking for documents since 2018. The documents are related to the Department of Education’s continued collection of loan payments from students who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges. This is the latest development in the saga which has been unfolding since last year. More at NPR.
Don’t Forget, the Current CR Expires Next Week
While a large swath of Washington is preoccupied with the public impeachment hearings, which started earlier today, senior appropriators met yesterday to figure out a path forward on how to keep the government open past next Thursday. The current continuing resolution, which has kept the federal government open since October 1, expires at midnight, November 22.
It appears that at least the top appropriators– in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle– have agreed to push for a second CR that would last through December 20. The assumption is that such an agreement would buy Congress enough time pull together packages of spending bills for the rest of FY2020 before adjourning for the year. the wildcard is the Trump White House and its insistence on funding for a border wall as well as the possible impact of impeachment on spending negotiations.
At the end of the day, funding for most parts of the government would run out next Friday without any further action by Congress and the White House. Read more about the situation here.
Opposing the EPA “Transparency Rule”
On November 13th, UW signed onto a letter circulated by the Michael J Fox Foundation to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The letter opposes the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule, which would require raw data to be made publicly available when it is used to formulate new regulations. UW is joined by over sixty other higher education institutions, associations, and research organizations in opposing these rule changes. There are many instances, especially in the health sciences, when making raw data publicly available would be infeasible or harm the confidentiality of research subjects. Therefore, this rule could limit the quality of data used in the regulatory process, as only data which could be made publicly available would be utilized.
SCOTUS Hears DACA Today
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear oral arguments for Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (18-587). Consolidated with similar cases, the Court will hear arguments related to the Administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Considered one of the major cases of this term, the arguments before the justices will concern two key issues;
- Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and
- Whether DHS’s decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.
While the Court will hear arguments today, a decision is not expected until the Spring of 2020. To hear the oral arguments, SCOTUS posts the audio file each Friday following the arguments. The audio may be accessed here.
For a deep dive round up of how the case might be argued and rule, the SCOTUS blog has a round up here.
Federal Relations is monitoring the progress of the case and the federal responses on DACA closely and will continue to provide updates.