Washington Week in Science - July 31, 2026

 

A Weekly Update of Policy News and Select Funding Opportunities Compiled by Van Scoyoc Associates View this email in your browser July 31, 2026

Health   Senate HELP Committee advances Trump’s CDC, ASPR, Labor secretary nominees The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on Thursday voted to advance President Trump’s nominees to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The committee voted 12-10 to move forward with Erica Schwartz’s nomination to serve as the next director of the CDC and 12-11 for Sean Kaufman to serve as the next administrator of ASPR. Trump’s nomination of Keith Sonderling to serve as Labor secretary also advanced 12-11. At the start of the session, HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) voiced his intentions to support all the nominees before the committee Thursday. Cassidy had taken issue with Kaufman during his confirmation hearing due to his past comments criticizing the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. Read more:  The Hill   Fauci faces contempt vote after invoking Fifth Amendment in Senate hearing Anthony Fauci, who led the nation's infectious disease efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, invoked the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday and declined to answer questions from a Senate committee investigating the origins of the coronavirus. Homeland Security Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the committee will vote on a contempt resolution against Fauci next week. Read more:  Axios   Leadership shakeup at CDC's Ebola response team Amid the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the CDC has relieved the two top leaders of its Ebola response team of their positions. Incident manager Satish Pillai, MD, MPH, and deputy incident manager Peggy Honein, PhD, MPH, were replaced by Henry Walke, MD, MPH, who is the director of the CDC's Office of Readiness and Response, a CDC spokesperson confirmed to MedPage Today. Sources inside CDC said the leaders and at least one chief of staff were removed because of suspicions that one of them leaked information to Rolling Stone magazine for a story on 13 American citizens being detained while trying to return from Congo. Read more:  MedPage Today   State Department will dispense $600M for vaccines RFK Jr. held up, Collins says The State Department will dispense the $600 million Congress appropriated to an international partnership helping developing countries buy and distribute vaccines, Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said Tuesday. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine safety skeptic, has held up the funding for months because he believes the partnership, Gavi, uses outdated and dangerous shots. Read more:  Politico   FDA expert panel recommends against approval of Capricor’s Duchenne drug A group of outside experts convened Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration concluded clinical data for a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy from Capricor Therapeutics did not provide “substantial evidence” of efficacy. The vote was 9-3, sending to the FDA a recommendation that the Capricor treatment, called deramiocel, should not be approved. Read more:  STAT News   National Security   Pentagon weighs eliminating civilian tenure at military academies and reviewing all curriculum The Defense Department is considering its most sweeping remake of military higher education, according to an unreleased draft memorandum obtained by CBS News that would abolish civilian tenure and overhaul course offerings at the military service academies and senior war colleges that educate future military officers. The memorandum, labeled "Refocusing the Military Service Academies and Senior Service College on Warfighter Education," would direct institutions like the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to eliminate the granting of tenure to civilian faculty. It would also launch a comprehensive review of the curriculum taught at all service academies and war colleges. The memorandum has not yet been approved by top Pentagon officials. Read more:  CBS News   Senate confirms Hurst as Pentagon comptroller after 1.5-year vacancy After a year-and-a-half without a confirmed Pentagon controller, Thursday the Senate voted 50 to 47, as part of a larger en bloc package, for Jules “Jay” Hurst to officially take on the role, along with greenlighting key Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) nominees. Hurst, who performed the duties of comptroller from August 2025 until May when the White House appointed him to take over the role full time, will now slide back into the role overseeing defense budgets and spend plans once sworn in. During his mid-July confirmation hearing, he vowed to focus on three main priorities if confirmed — passing a clean audit by 2028, constructing budgets that align with the ongoing evolutions in warfare while also expanding the industrial base, and improving financial management systems and processes. Read more:  Breaking Defense   Pentagon launches review that could reshape US military presence in Europe The Pentagon this week launched its planned review of the U.S. military mission in Europe, a move that could pave the way for a major overhaul as Washington shifts more of NATO’s defense burden to allies. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top strategist, announced the start of the review, which he said will be “designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe taking primary responsibility for its conventional defense.” “The outcome of this Review will be an acceleration of NATO’s transition to a stronger, more equitable, and sustainable alliance,” Colby said in a series of posts on X late Monday. Read more:  Stars and Stripes   Pentagon briefs senators as reconciliation teeters Senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, briefed GOP members of the Senate Armed Services, Budget and Appropriations committees on Wednesday night as Republicans try to coalesce around a defense-heavy reconciliation package. Plenty of Senate Republicans want to at least double the $60 billion envisioned for the Pentagon in the House-passed budget resolution, even as Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said his chamber lacks the votes to proceed right now. Read more:  Punchbowl News   Bipartisan headwinds buffet $1B ‘anomaly’ for Trump battleship As Congress acts on a stopgap funding bill to keep the government operating beyond Oct. 1 at current levels, unless specified otherwise, it must decide whether to grant exceptions — potentially including $1 billion to start procuring parts for the first of a new line of proposed Trump-class battleships. But three GOP-majority defense committees have already said the funding would be premature, given that the ship is not yet fully designed. The House passed a stopgap spending bill last week that would continue federal funding at current levels into fiscal 2027 with very few of the exceptions known on Capitol Hill as anomalies. Read more:  Roll Call   House-passed defense bill includes controversial US-Israel tech measure The House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act last week, leaving in place a controversial provision that would encourage co-development and co-production between the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases. The House’s version of this provision, known as Section 219, proposes further integration between the U.S. defense industrial base and Israel’s. It comes amid a dramatic shift in U.S. public opinion about military aid to Israel. Both the House and Senate versions of the provision would shift the model of security cooperation the U.S. and Israel now employ. Read more:  Defense News   Trump, Zelensky discuss Patriot deal and reviving talks with Russia U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday discussed ​reviving peace talks with Russia and plans for Ukraine to produce Patriot missile interceptors, then attended the funeral of a U.S. senator who had been one of ‌Kyiv's most vocal backers. Zelenskiy met Trump privately in the Oval Office before a service honoring Senator Lindsey Graham in the afternoon. He also held talks with Finnish President Alexander Stubb at a Washington hotel and met with U.S. senators at the U.S. Capitol. The whirlwind visit offered Zelenskiy a chance to shore up U.S. military support for Ukraine when relations are warmer than they have been in months. Read more:  Reuters   Netanyahu praises first meeting with Trump since launching the Iran war Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had an “excellent” meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, their first sit-down since launching a joint war against Iran and it offered Netanyahu a chance to smooth out strains in their relationship. The closed-door meeting lasted nearly an hour and a half and was “positive and productive,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump, in a social media posting several hours after the talks, called it a “very good meeting” where “many important subjects were discussed” but offered no further details. Read more:  AP News   Pentagon moves recent KIA numbers from Iran war into ‘Overseas Operations’ category The Pentagon on Sunday altered the way it has reported casualties since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel first launched military strikes against Iran. In its updated accounting method, the Defense Casualty Analysis System’s category labeled “Overseas Operations (OO) Casualty Summary” lists U.S. casualties suffered in the conflict since July 7 — effectively removing the totals from those associated with Operation Epic Fury. The new page comes in the wake of criticism that the Pentagon had dropped the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded in the war with Iran. Read more:  Military Times   Energy   Department of Energy announces multi-billion-dollar investment in McCracken County Portions of the Department of Energy Paducah Site will be redeveloped into a data center, constituting an investment of over $100 billion, the DOE announced Wednesday. The DOE announced it will partner with Brookfield, NextEra Energy, Big Rivers Electric Power Corporation, Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative and Paducah Power System for the project, which is slated for completion by 2031. According to a news release from DOE, the project is expected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs. Read more:  WPSD   Senate Dems push Trump to restore blue-state grants canceled for partisan reasons A group of 39 Democratic senators on Thursday told the Trump White House to restore grants for their states that the administration itself admitted were canceled for purely political reasons. In a court filing earlier this month, attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that decisions about canceling grants for a series of renewable energy projects were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.” Read more:  Common Dreams   US Department of Energy shortlists five states for nuclear sites The US Department of Energy (DOE) said Tuesday it has selected five potential host states for what it calls “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses” in an effort to strengthen and modernize the nation’s full nuclear fuel cycle. The agreements with Tennessee, Utah, Louisiana, Idaho and Oklahoma represent significant progress in a decades-long effort to find a home for almost 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear power-plant fuel. Read more:  Mining.com   Space   NASA fuels its next-gen Roman Space Telescope for August launch NASA announced on Tuesday it has officially fueled-up the Roman Space Telescope — a magnificent new observatory expected to generate over 500 terabytes of cosmic data per year. By comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope, in its 35 years of service, has created over 400 terabytes in total. At present, the Roman Space Telescope's launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to occur on Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). And considering the project is sort of the gold-standard for telescope-building, as the team says it's nine months ahead of schedule and under budget, hopes are high that this launch date will stick. Read more:  Space.com   US agency proposes accelerated approval for commercial space missions The U.S. aviation regulator on Tuesday proposed new rules to speed up approval of commercial space missions like ​SpaceX's rocket and satellite launches by no longer requiring them to follow ‌provisions of 13 environmental and other laws. The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday said its proposed rule would allow the agency to waive requirements under laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Air ​Act in a bid "to simplify and expedite commercial space licensing." Read more:  Reuters   Mission to save NASA spacecraft runs into trouble in orbit A first-of-its-kind mission to rescue a NASA space telescope has encountered a major setback after the spacecraft sent to save it began spinning in orbit. Katalyst Space Technologies' LINK spacecraft experienced attitude-control problems over the weekend, causing it to spin and communicate intermittently with ground controllers, NASA said in a blog post Tuesday. A preliminary investigation found that two of LINK's three reaction wheels are not operating. Read more:  Yahoo! News   Science and Technology   Trump administration bans new Chinese humanoid robots The Trump administration on Tuesday announced a ban on new foreign-made humanoid robot imports to the US over "unacceptable risks" to America's national security. The move applies to advanced robots - including humanoid and four-legged machines. Many of them are made in China, which is competing with the US to develop robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also banned imports of power inverters - devices used in data centers and solar panels - which it said could also pose a risk to the US economy. Read more:  BBC   Fundamental Science and Engineering   NSF announces awards to advance AI and cybersecurity education and workforce development This week the U.S. National Science Foundation's Directorate for STEM Education announced the inaugural awards under the CyberAICorps Scholarship for Service (CyberAI SFS) program, representing a major expansion of NSF's longstanding Scholarship for Service initiative. The awards support colleges and universities that are preparing the next generation of professionals to address emerging cybersecurity challenges in an era in which artificial intelligence is transforming both cyber defense and cyber risk. The CyberAI SFS program expands the traditional scope of cybersecurity education to reflect the increasingly interconnected relationship between AI and cybersecurity. Read more:  NSF   NSF partners with universities and industry on pilot initiative for four-year Ph.D. model The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced a $47 million investment over five years, along with additional financial commitments from nearly three dozen universities and private industry, to launch a pilot of a new four-year Ph.D. model that will provide more than 250 doctoral students nationwide with hands-on experience in industry research and development as part of their graduate education. Designed as a scalable model, the pilot establishes a foundation for broader participation and has the potential to expand as additional partners invest in and help shape the program over time. The pilot delivers on key recommendations in Science: A New Golden Age, a report to the president released last week by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. Read more:  NSF   NSF deploys $108M for materials science at 6 research centers The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $108 million in six advanced research centers. NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers will conduct frontier research to understand and develop materials with unique properties and applications, from 3D printing living tissue for medical treatments to more efficient mineral extraction. Each center will receive $18 million over six years. Read more:  NSF   Oceans and Atmosphere   NOAA report finds Gulf of Maine warming slowed for now, but ecosystem remains unstable Maine’s fishing ports are doing well for now, but climate change is destabilizing the Gulf of Maine, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest “State of the Ecosystem” report for New England waters. Federal scientists presented the report to the New England Fishery Management Council in April, and published it online last week. They found that some Maine fishing ports are growing busier, likely driven by the high price of lobster. Read more:  AP News   NOAA refuses petition for right whale migration corridor The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration turned down a petition to designate ocean waters along the U.S. East Coast as a “primary historic migration corridor of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.” The petition filed in late March 2025 by Save Long Beach Island, a New Jersey community group, sought to have the waters from Maine to Georgia recognized as “critical habitat” under the federal Endangered Species Act, and exclude offshore wind energy projects. NOAA rejected the petition July 2, with a lengthy explanation “that the petition does not present substantial scientific information indicating a revision to North Atlantic right whale critical habitat may be warranted.” Read more:  National Fisherman        Environment        EPA says power for data centers can sidestep pollution laws Power sources providing electricity only to data centers and not the public grid may not be subject to federal pollution laws, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on ‌Monday. The EPA said if the power plants are not supplying electricity to the grid then they would not be subject to the federal Clean Air Act's Acid Rain Program, which has been key to the dramatic reduction of smog and soot pollution from industrial ⁠facilities. Read more:  Reuters   Interior Department asks Congress for $10 million more in funding for Freedom 250 Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) blasted the Trump administration over its request for an additional $10 million in federal funding to cover the costs incurred by various Freedom 250 events on the National Mall. The Interior Department asked for more money to reimburse the National Park Service for its work during the Rededicate 250 prayer event, the 16-day Great American State Fair, and the July Fourth fireworks show, Merkley revealed in a letter sent to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “It is unacceptable to ask the American people to bail out Freedom 250,” Merkley wrote in the letter on Wednesday. Read more:  Washington Examiner Wyoming archaeologists take BLM to court over Native sites, human remains On July 24, the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists filed a lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming and Colorado offices. The lawsuit argues that the boundaries of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act had been expanded far beyond what Congress had intended. The case revolves around six particular sites: Shute Creek, Wardell Bison Trap, Upper Muddy Creek Village, Studhorse Butte, 48UT920 and Eagle Rock Shelter. Read more:  WyoFile   Agriculture   USDA to fund Arizona facility to fight New World screwworm Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday her department will invest $25 million toward opening a new sterile fly dispersal facility in Arizona to combat New World screwworm. During a visit to the Grand Canyon State, Rollins joined Arizona GOP Reps. Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani and Eli Crane to tout the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) containment work ahead of the reopening of the southern cattle port in Douglas, Ariz. “The sterile insect technique is the only proven method to eradicate New World screwworm, and we will continue expanding this critical tool to protect America’s livestock and food supply,” Rollins wrote on the social platform X. Read more:  The Hill   86 Nebraska counties facing drought approved for USDA emergency loan assistance U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has approved another disaster declaration for 13 Nebraska counties due to drought, bringing the total number of counties covered by a USDA declaration for drought conditions this year to 86 of 93 counties. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced Rollins’ latest approval Wednesday, one day after she approved it. A secretarial designation frees up loan assistance for Nebraska farmers impacted by drought for up to eight months after the declaration is issued. Read more:  Nebraska Examiner   Senate GOP to add ethanol legislation to farm bill Senate Republicans will include language to permanently allow year-round sales of E15 fuel in the farm bill they plan to mark up next Thursday, according to two people familiar with the plans. The E15 language that senators are planning to attach to their package is a scaled-back version of the bill the House passed in May. The House bill narrowed exemptions for certain small refiners, a provision that became a sticking point for some GOP senators. Read more:  Politico   USDA union leaders rally against proposed D.C. downsizing A group of current and former USDA are calling on the Trump administration to halt the mandated relocation of more than 2,500 employees from its Washington, D.C., headquarters to five regional offices across the country. In an online briefing hosted by federal union leaders Thursday, speakers said the reorganization process Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has led will amount to widespread layoffs, as many workers will choose not to relocate across the country. Rollins’ effort, launched one year ago Friday, would move department staff away from the nation’s capital. Read more:  Successful Farming   USDA announces $35 million to combat feral swine on agricultural lands in Florida USDA announced it is making $35 million available to combat feral swine on agricultural lands, according to a press release on Tuesday. USDA said it is making the money available for partnerships “to respond to the threat feral swine pose to American agriculture, landscapes and human and livestock health.” “These invasive species cause more than $3.4 billion in damage each year, including damage to agricultural landscapes,” National Resources Conservation Service Chief Colton Buckley said. Read more:  WFLA