WEEK OF JAN 6, 2025

What’s Ahead

An orientation sign for new members of Congress.

Aaron Schwartz / Sipa USA via AP

Congress to juggle new priorities and overdue budget tasks

Republicans opened the 119th Congress last week by reelecting Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as House speaker and with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) assuming the role of Senate majority leader. Johnson and Thune have said they plan to pass energy, security, and tax measures in the coming months by using the reconciliation process, which allows them to bypass the Senate’s filibuster. Johnson is pushing for everything to be rolled into one bill, while Thune has called for two: the first dealing with energy and security and the second focused on tax reform. Trump has said he is open to Thune’s plan but prefers a single bill.

Congress also faces immediate pressure to finalize the federal budget for the current fiscal year, which began last October. Lawmakers passed a stopgap measure in late December that staved off a government shutdown, but efforts to pass the appropriations bills for fiscal year 2025 now may overlap with the budget process for 2026. The president’s budget request is due the first week of February, though that deadline is routinely missed, especially right after a change in administration.

Several major science bills that advanced last year failed to make it across the line before the 118th Congress ended. These included bills to reauthorize NASA, update the National Quantum Initiative, and establish AI programs at the Department of Energy and other agencies. Many of these bills are likely to be reintroduced in the new session but will again have to compete for attention in a crowded calendar.

The new Congress has brought with it changes to many committee leadership positions, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans gained control of the chamber. Republican committee assignments for the Senate are posted here and the Democratic assignments are posted here. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is taking over the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who is now the ranking member. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is the new chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) is the new ranking member. In the House, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) is the new chair of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) returns as the ranking member. The top Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committees in both chambers are unchanged from the previous Congress.

Trump compliments H-1B program amid high-skill immigration debate

Over the last two weeks, some of President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers have advocated for increasing the number of visas available for highly skilled workers, such as by expanding and reforming the H-1B visa program. Elon Musk wrote on X, “There is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.” He later added that the H-1B program is broken and needs major reform, including raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for companies. Musk’s posts garnered support from David Sacks, who is Trump’s AI policy czar and will chair the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Meanwhile, other conservatives argued against expanding high-skill immigration in recent statements.

Following Musk and Sacks’ posts, Trump told the New York Post that he has always been in favor of the H-1B program, though he has expressed vastly different views on the program over the course of his first administration and recent campaign. During his first term as president, Trump instated policies that made it more difficult to hire workers using H-1B visas. However, during his second presidential campaign, Trump proposed in an interview to automatically give green cards to any graduate from a U.S. college, though his campaign later walked back the statement.

Biden administration announces major CHIPS R&D awards

The Biden administration announced yesterday that the third and final flagship CHIPS R&D facility will be located at the Arizona State University Research Park and will focus on advanced packaging of semiconductors. The two other flagship facilities were announced in late 2024 and will be located in New York and California. The three facilities are centerpieces of the National Semiconductor Technology Center. Separately this month, the Department of Commerce awarded the Semiconductor Research Corporation $285 million to establish a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute headquartered in North Carolina that will develop virtual models of semiconductor technologies. The Department of Energy also awarded $179 million for three Microelectronics Science Research Centers in late December, which will draw from research across several national labs. The MSRCs were authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act but are not directly funded by it, in contrast to the NSTC program and the Manufacturing USA institute.

Pentagon spotlights S&T in China’s military ambitions

The Department of Defense’s latest annual report on China’s military capabilities highlights the country’s plans to leverage emerging technologies, including AI and quantum. The Chinese government is working to reduce reliance on foreign capabilities and components for these technologies, such as by developing new materials and design concepts for next-generation semiconductors as well as specialized refrigerators for quantum computing research, the report states. The government also announced plans to build more state labs for research on photonics, nanoelectronics, network communications, robotics, and new energy systems, the report adds. It also highlights how China’s military-civil fusion approach cross-pollinates basic research across military and civilian initiatives, promotes the sharing of scientific resources, and expands the institutions involved in defense research.

Also on our radar

PCAST will meet on Friday to consider approving recommendations to the president on “future opportunities for science and technology to impact the nation” as well as a report on using social science to improve policymaking.
NASA will hold a press briefing Tuesday about the status of its Mars Sample Return mission, for which it has been considering new mission architectures.
President Biden announced the latest recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation last week. Biden also awarded the Medal of Freedom to several high-profile public figures, including physicist Ash Carter (posthumously), science communicator Bill Nye, and conservationist Jane Goodall.
Late last month, DOE and EPA awarded around $850 million to reduce methane emissions across 43 projects involving oil and natural gas companies, universities, and Tribal groups.