Skip to content
News and updates

News and updates

Trump Signs Orders on Admissions and Grantmaking

Posted on

On Thursday, President Trump signed two new executive orders relating to admissions and federal grantmaking. See summaries and links below.

 

Ensuring Transparency in Higher Educations Admissions

EO here and Fact Sheet here

“ENSURING ACCOUNTABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Education to require higher education institutions receiving Federal financial assistance to be transparent regarding their admissions practices.

  • The Memorandum directs the Secretary of Education to revamp the online presentation and data collection of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to make it efficient, easily accessible, and intelligibly presented for parents and students.
  • The Memorandum instructs the Secretary of Education to expand the scope of required reporting for institutions’ admissions data in order to provide adequate transparency as determined by the Secretary of Education.
  • The Memorandum further instructs the Secretary of Education to increase accuracy checks for data submitted by institutions through IPEDS and take remedial action if institutions fail to submit data in a timely manner or submit incomplete or inaccurate data.”

 

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

EO here and Fact sheet here

Sec. 3. Strengthening Accountability for Agency Grantmaking. (a) Each agency head shall promptly designate a senior appointee who shall be responsible for creating a process to review new funding opportunity announcements and to review discretionary grants to ensure that they are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest. For the avoidance of doubt, this process shall not guarantee any particular level of review or consideration to funding applicants except as consistent with applicable law.

Sec. 4. Considerations for Discretionary Awards. (a) Senior appointees and their designees shall not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others in reviewing funding opportunity announcements or discretionary awards, but shall instead use their independent judgment.

(b) In reviewing and approving funding opportunity announcements and discretionary awards, as well as in designing the review process described in section 3(a) of this order, senior appointees and their designees shall, as relevant and to the extent consistent with applicable law, apply the following principles, including in any scoring rubrics used to assess grant proposals:

(i) Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.

(ii) Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate:

(A) racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation;

(B) denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic;

(C) illegal immigration; or

(D) any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.

(iii) All else being equal, preference for discretionary awards should be given to institutions with lower indirect cost rates.

Sec. 6. Implementation and Termination Clauses. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, each agency head shall review the agency’s standard grant terms and conditions and submit a report to the Director detailing:

(i) whether the agency’s standard terms and conditions for discretionary awards permit termination for convenience and include the termination provisions described in 2 CFR 200.340(a), including the provisions that an award may be terminated by the agency “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities” or, in the case of a partial termination by the recipient, if the agency “determines that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the purposes for which the Federal award was made”;

(ii) whether the agency’s standard terms and conditions for discretionary foreign assistance awards permit termination based on the national interest; and

(iii) the approximate number of active discretionary awards at the agency, as well as the approximate percentage of funding obligated under those awards that contains termination provisions allowing for termination under the circumstances described in subsection (i) of this section.

Recission Package Passes

Posted on

Much like the reconciliation bill earlier in the month, the Senate amended the Administration’s recission package and sent it back to the House for final approval. The measure, H.R.4 – Rescissions Act of 2025, has passed the House and is now headed to the President’s desk for signature.

The Administration proposed $9.4 billion in funding already appropriated to claw back claw back $1.1 billion previously allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with $7.9 billion dollars earmarked for international efforts to combat famine and disease.

The House approved the Administration’s proposal. The Senate amendment, which was led by Senator Eric Schmidt (R-MO), would preserve the following funding from cuts:

  • The amendment removes PEPFAR ($400 million) from the rescissions bill.
  • Protects funding for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition (including polio) within the Global Health account;
  • Protects funding for countering PRC Influence Fund;
  • Protects funding for aid to Egypt and Jordan; and
  • Protects funding for the administration of U.S. commodity-based food aid, namely Food for Peace the McGovern-Dole.

The House passed the amended proposal.

The final bill is now waiting the President’s signature.

Student Loan Changes

Posted on

After a marathon of overnight voting and intense intra-party negotiations, the Republican-controlled Congress has passed the long-anticipated “Big, Beautiful Bill” championed by President Trump. The sweeping legislation, signed into law on July 4, introduces significant changes across key policy areas—including taxation, defense, immigration, healthcare, and education.

One of the bill’s most consequential changes involves a complete restructuring of the federal student loan system, aimed at curbing government spending to offset substantial tax reductions. Although initial proposals varied between the House and Senate, lawmakers ultimately reached a compromise that is now law.

New Borrowing Limits (Effective July 1, 2026):

  • Graduate students: $20,500 annually, $100,000 lifetime cap
  • Professional students: $50,000 annually, $200,000 lifetime cap
  • Parents (combined per student): $20,000 annually, $65,000 lifetime cap
  • Lifetime borrowing cap for all students: $257,000
  • Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS programs: Eliminated
  • Undergraduate annual borrowing limits: Unchanged

Repayment Changes: Starting July 1, 2026, all existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans will be discontinued for new borrowers. Instead, two new plans will be introduced:

  1. Standard Repayment Plan: Payment periods range from 10 to 25 years, depending on the original loan balance
  2. Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP): Payments set at 1% to 10% of income, with remaining balance forgiven after 30 years

Current borrowers can remain on existing repayment plans through July 1, 2028, after which they will be transitioned to RAP or a revised version of the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan.

See the table below for more:

OBBBA Student Loan Chart

OBBB Signed Into Law

Posted on

President Donald Trump signed his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” into law during the July 4th picnic on the White House grounds, enacting a sweeping multitrillion-dollar legislative package that reflects the core of his policy agenda. The measure passed with near-unanimous Republican support in both chambers of Congress following months of negotiations and intense pressure from the president and GOP leadership.

The legislation extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and boosts funding for immigration enforcement and national defense. To balance the increased spending, the bill imposes substantial reductions to domestic programs, slashing Medicaid and food assistance by $1.2 trillion and cutting billions from federal higher education funding. According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will increase the national deficit by $3.3 trillion over the next decade and result in 11.8 million additional people losing health coverage.

Despite internal dissent and unanimous Democratic opposition, Trump succeeded in pushing the massive reconciliation bill through Congress in time for the July 4th deadline.