WEEK OF DEC 16, 2024

What’s Ahead

Incoming House Science Committee Chair Brian Babin (R-TX), right, shakes hands with his predecessor, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK).

House Science Committee

Babin to chair House Science Committee

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) will be the next chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee when the new Congress convenes in January. In a statement on his selection last week, Babin said it is important for the U.S. to not fall behind in science and technology in light of the “growing threat posed by adversaries like Communist China.” He also expressed interest in scaling back regulations, stating, “We must ensure our nation is not tethered to Earth by red tape — industry should operate at the speed of innovation rather than the sluggish pace of bureaucracy.” Babin has previously advocated for NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other federal science agencies to rely more heavily on the private sector to achieve their mission goals.

Babin is taking over from Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), who is leaving after hitting the six-year term limit that House Republicans impose on their committee leadership. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) appears likely to remain the top Democrat on the committee. Meanwhile, in the Senate, another member of the Texas delegation, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), is on track to become the chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee when Republicans gain control of the chamber next year.

The leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the National Institutes of Health, will also turn over next year. Republicans selected Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) to replace Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who decided not to run for reelection. Guthrie currently chairs the panel’s Health Subcommittee and is likely to pick up McMorris Rodgers’ push to overhaul NIH. Guthrie has recently scrutinized the agency’s approach to matters such as lab safety, biosecurity, and research integrity.

US and China narrow scope of S&T cooperation agreement

The U.S. and China have signed a protocol to extend their bilateral science and technology cooperation agreement by five years but narrow it to only cover basic research, the State Department announced last week. The agreement explicitly excludes work related to developing critical and emerging technologies and includes “new guardrails for implementing agencies to protect the safety and security of their researchers,” the State Department said. The agreement also adds “newly established and strengthened provisions on transparency and data reciprocity.” The text of the agreement has not yet been made public.

The previous agreement lapsed in August 2023 amid a stalemate in negotiations and increased tensions between the two countries. Some Republican politicians have criticized the Biden administration’s negotiating posture and pushed to add new congressional oversight mechanisms to the process. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, condemned the extension last week, writing that “a renewal of the STA in the final days of the administration is a clear attempt to tie the hands of the incoming administration and deny them the opportunity to either leave the agreement or negotiate a better deal for the American people.”

Final NDAA includes funding for CHIPS Act tech hubs

The final version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act includes up to $500 million in additional funding for the Commerce Department’s Regional Tech Hubs program using proceeds from a future spectrum auction. The provision was advocated for by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, who was an architect of the CHIPS and Science Act and its Tech Hubs program. Though the act authorized $12.9 billion for the hubs over five years, Congress has only appropriated a small fraction of that amount so far. The NDAA will channel funding from an auction of the AWS-3 spectrum band by the Federal Communications Commission. Cantwell has previously proposed using spectrum auctions to generate funds for a broader range of programs authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act, including billions of dollars for the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NDAA is one of the last major pieces of legislation that Congress is expected to pass this year. The House approved the bill last week with a 281-140 vote, and the Senate is due to vote on the bill this week.

GMT and TMT still in limbo after external review

The future of the proposed Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii remains cloudy following the release of a report last week evaluating whether the National Science Foundation should progress either project to its final design phase. Written by a panel of external experts, the report concludes that receiving NSF funding is “critical to both projects” but warns that pursuing either project could dominate the agency’s limited facilities budget and damage other research areas absent a significant and sustained budget increase from Congress. Reacting to the report, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan stated that the agency agrees that “the success of the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope program hinges on securing the necessary resources from Congress.” (The ELT program is the vehicle through which NSF would fund one or both of the telescopes.) Panchanathan commissioned the report earlier this year to help guide his decision on whether NSF should proceed with one project, both projects, or neither project. The report does not express a clear preference for one project over the other. Emphasizing the gravity of advancing either telescope to the final design phase, the report observes, “Entering FDP is not a commitment by NSF to fund construction; however, the community expectation and the past precedent is that no project has entered FDP without ultimately being built.”

Also on our radar

The stopgap measure funding the federal government is set to run out on Friday night. Reports indicate that lawmakers are nearing a deal to extend the stopgap and avert a government shutdown, but negotiations have been complicated by efforts to include disaster aid and other priorities.
The Commerce Department plans to award up to $6.2 billion to Micron Technology to build new chip fabrication facilities in New York and Idaho and up to $275 million to expand its facility in Virginia.
DOE awarded $36 million last week through the RENEW initiative, which aims to expand opportunities at institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science research portfolio. The awards will fund 29 projects that provide traineeships for students and postdocs working on basic research in the physical sciences.
An NSF-sponsored report on “Understanding and Addressing Misinformation about Science” will be rolled out by the National Academies on Thursday.
The National Academies Roundtable on Global Science Diplomacy will hold a day-long meeting Tuesday on the future of international S&T cooperation. Focus areas include navigating geopolitical competition, balancing economic and security concerns, and reflecting on the diplomacy priorities of U.S. government and non-government science organizations.
Johney Green Jr. will be the next director of Savannah River National Lab. Green is currently the director for mechanical and thermal engineering sciences at the National Renewable Energy Lab.