NIH’s Francis Collins: For Biden’s New Research Agency to Succeed, It Should Prepare for Some Projects to Fail
Francis Collins is ready for the National Institutes of Health to fail spectacularly. At least, he’s ready for a few of the agency’s potential new projects to go up in flames: the high-risk, high-reward pursuits that would come out of a new research wing that President Biden has proposed. The potential for earth-shattering successes makes the proposed new agency a risk worth taking, Collins said during an interview at STAT’s Breakthrough Science Summit. The potential new agency, which the Biden administration has dubbed the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, is central to the White House’s vision for expanding government-funded research and accelerating cures for diseases including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer. The new agency, however, has hit its first major snag. While the Biden administration had originally requested $6.5 billion to fund it, House Democrats this week unveiled a spending bill that would provide less than half that amount. ( STAT News - July 15, 2021)
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Scarce Flights, Visa Issues Snarl Students' Plans to Reach U.S.
Students from around the world are eager to study at U.S. colleges in the upcoming fall semester after the Covid-19 pandemic confined many of them to their home countries and left some attending virtual classes in the wee hours of the morning. Now, getting to campus is the hard part. In China, which accounts for a third of the roughly 1 million foreign students that flock to the U.S. in a typical academic year, the decline in available flights to American cities has been so severe that some students and their parents have resorted to lining up charter planes. Others, including from India, are caught up in visa purgatory because the State Department reduced personnel at embassies and consulates due to the pandemic. International students bring a worldly perspective to campuses and, crucially, often pay full tuition. Widespread deferrals would be a blow to colleges and universities, which dealt with a 16% decline in international student enrollment in this year’s spring term from the previous year because of the pandemic. ( Bloomberg - July 15, 2021)
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Biden Administration Assigns More Staff to Review DACA Applications as Backlog Soars
The Biden administration is assigning more immigration officers to review applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) deportation relief program in response to a soaring backlog of requests, according to information sent to Congress and shared with CBS News. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Congress that it will also stage public awareness campaigns to educate prospective DACA applicants about how they can reduce processing times, and remind program beneficiaries to renew their work permits and deportation deferrals, congressional officials said. As of May 31, USCIS had only adjudicated 1,900 of more than 62,000 first-time DACA applications submitted by undocumented immigrant teenagers and young adults since the program reopened in December 2020, according to government data shared with Congress. ( CBS News - July 13, 2021)
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Democrats Launch Immigration Reform Hail Mary
Exhausted by years of sputtering immigration talks with Republicans, Democrats plan to try their luck with the Senate's byzantine rulebook instead. Top Democrats, with the support of the White House, are planning to tuck a handful of immigration measures into their forthcoming $3.5 trillion spending bill. Taking that backdoor approach to immigration, which wouldn’t require a single GOP vote, could cast a chill over any future attempts at bipartisan reform. But those bipartisan talks have stalled out in the Senate after nearly a dozen meetings, and Democrats have perhaps their only opportunity at going around Republicans on the issue. The plan, still in the draft stage, would create a pathway to citizenship for certain undocumented groups, such as Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children . . . . ( Politico - July 15, 2021)
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Biden’s Nominees to Lead ICE and the Border Patrol Are a Sharp Departure from the Trump Era.
Ed Gonzalez, the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, made ending a partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement one of his first decisions on the job because, he said, the program encouraged “illegal racial profiling.” Chris Magnus, the police chief in Tucson, Ariz., has taken pride in his city “being welcoming to immigrants.” It is also home to one of the busiest sectors of the Border Patrol, an agency that is rarely praised for its hospitality. They have been tapped to run the federal government’s immigration enforcement agencies, an abrupt shift from hard-line immigration chiefs in the Trump administration. If they are confirmed by the Senate—Sheriff Gonzalez at ICE and Chief Magnus at Customs and Border Protection—they would be responsible for delivering on President Biden’s promise to return a measure of compassion to the immigration system after the roundups, zero tolerance, wall-building and family separations of the last administration. ( The New York Times - July 15, 2021)
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AAU, Associations Express Support for the Tax-free Pell Grant Act
AAU, AACC, and 21 other higher education associations and organizations sent a letter to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) expressing enthusiastic support for the Tax-Free Pell Grant Act. The legislation would eliminate the taxation of Pell Grants, eliminate the Pell Grant offset included in the American Opportunity Tax Credit formula, and expand the AOTC and the Lifetime Learning Credit to include essential student expenses such as dependent care and computers. The legislation, the letter noted, would help low- and moderate-income college students receive the full benefits of the Pell Grant program and the AOTC. “We urge all members of Congress concerned about helping less affluent and working students, as well as a substantial number of undergraduate students generally, to support this essential legislation,” the letter stated. ( Association of American Universities - July 14, 2021)
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Protections for LGBTQ+ Students
The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education made a clarification last month that many were anticipating —LGBTQ+ students are protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, meaning students cannot be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at institutions receiving federal funds. While the notice of interpretation aligns with the approach that many colleges and universities were already taking, it signals that OCR is open for business on these issues, and it is ready to hold institutions accountable. The department based its interpretation on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which said it’s impossible to discriminate against a person based on their gender identity or sexual orientation without discriminating against them based on sex, which is prohibited by Title IX. ( Inside Higher Ed - July 16, 2021)
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AAU, Associations Urge Swift Confirmation of Lisa Brown as ED General Counsel and James Kvaal as ED Under Secretary
AAU joined ACE and six other higher education associations in sending a letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC) expressing enthusiastic support for Lisa Brown’s nomination for the role of general counsel in the Department of Education. Brown has served as Georgetown University’s vice president and general counsel for the last eight years. The letter urged swift confirmation, noting: “As someone of impeccable judgment and vast experience, who understands the collaborative nature of engagement and decision-making in government and on campuses, Ms. Brown is ideally suited to advise the Department.” AAU also joined ACE and four other higher education associations in sending a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to bring the nomination of James Kvaal as under secretary of education to the Senate floor for a vote. In April, the Senate HELP Committee advanced Kvaal’s nomination with strong bipartisan support, but the nomination has stalled since then; no floor vote is currently scheduled. The under secretary of education oversees postsecondary education policy and manages issues such as student loan repayment and the administration of emergency relief programs. “Continuing to leave this role empty will necessarily have a detrimental, and long-lasting, effect on the ability of the Biden Administration to achieve their policy goals,” the letter stated. ( Association of American Universities - July 14, 2021)
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Biden Administration Drops Appeal of Legal Decision Granting Former Corinthian Colleges Students Debt Relief
A group of 7,200 former students of the defunct for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges will have their federal student loans canceled after the Education Department agreed Thursday to drop its appeal of a court order to clear their debts. The decision arrives more than a year after a federal judge ruled that the students in Massachusetts were entitled to a full discharge of their loans under a statute known as borrower defense to repayment. The Trump administration fought the order and brought the case to a standstill, but borrowers were hopeful the Biden administration would concede. It took several months, but on Thursday the administration did just that. ( The Washington Post - July 15, 2021)
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