WEEK OF SEPT 23, 2024

What’s Ahead

Mike Johnson CR Vote — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks with reporters about negotiations over stopgap budget legislation for fiscal year 2025.

Angelina Katsanis / POLITICO via AP Images

Congress Set to Pass Three-Month Budget Stopgap

Congress will vote on stopgap legislation this week that funds federal agencies at current levels through Dec. 20, averting a government shutdown that would otherwise begin at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Both the House and Senate will then head on recess next week and not return until after the election on Nov. 5. The stopgap legislation punts decisions on the final budget for fiscal year 2025 to right before Christmas, adding pressure to wrap up negotiations ahead of the holiday break and before the new Congress convenes in January. However, negotiations may still drag out into the new year.

NDAA Waiting in the Wings; DOE Visitor Screening Proposal Narrowed

Another key remaining item of legislative business is to finalize the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which in recent years has been a vehicle for enacting significant science policy changes that extend well beyond the Department of Defense. The House passed its version of the bill in June and the Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version in July. Committee leaders released a package of amendments last week that they intend to propose during the final negotiations with the House. Amendments on the table include:

Revising the Department of Energy’s approach to screening national lab visitors who are not U.S. citizens;
Creating new disclosure requirements for outbound investments in advanced semiconductors, AI, quantum information technology, hypersonics, satellite-based communications, and networked laser scanning systems;
Directing DOD to establish an “advanced computing infrastructure program”; and
Prescribing the scope of the State Department’s recently created Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology.

Notably, the provision on DOE lab visitor screening does not include an earlier proposal that would have barred citizens of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba from visiting labs unless they had legal permanent residence status or secured a waiver.

Other Science Bills Also Advancing

Lawmakers are hustling to pass dozens of other bills in the hopes they will make it into law before expiring at the end of the year. Among them, the House is scheduled to vote this week on the NASA Reauthorization Act, which endorses various NASA programs already underway. The House will also take up bills focused on advanced nuclear fuel, pipeline R&D, mathematics education, semiconductor manufacturing, commercial Earth observation imagery, and research ship cybersecurity.

The House Science Committee will also meet Wednesday to consider advancing bills focused on DOE’s role in AI research and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s role in tracking AI security risks as well as bills that would support small modular reactor demonstrations and renew the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. Also on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will consider the Risky Research Review Act, which would create a new oversight board for life sciences research that poses risks to public health or national security.

DOE Advisers to Discuss Basic Energy, Fusion, and Computing Research

In the wake of a 2021 study that found the U.S. is losing ground in the field of basic energy sciences, a panel of advisers to the Department of Energy will meet Tuesday and Wednesday to consider approving a follow-on report that recommends changes to DOE’s approach to steering research programs in the field. A subpanel of the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee wrote the report at the request of the DOE Office of Science. Among its recommendations, the draft report suggests the Office of Basic Energy Sciences improve its use of data to inform its R&D priorities by working with publishers, industry, and AI-powered tools. It also recommends that BES funding be assessed for “investment balance” among recipients such as national labs and academia.

Separately, the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee will meet Thursday and Friday to discuss a new charge to review the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, the results of a basic research needs workshop on quantum computing and networking, and the status of the National AI Research Resource, which launched in pilot form in January. Next Monday, the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee will meet to review the progress of a panel that is reassessing its decadal plan and to receive updates on the forthcoming U.S. Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap.

Also On Our Radar

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote Wednesday on whether to advance the nomination of Kristen Sarri to lead the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.
Artificial intelligence will be the primary focus of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s fall advisory committee meeting this week. The committee will discuss the challenges of designing AI suitable for scientific uses, including for the highly influential scientific assessments (HISAs) made in the National Climate Assessment.
The Space Weather Advisory Group will roll out its user-needs survey conducted in response to the PROSWIFT Act at a meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. Separately, the National Academies Committee on Solar and Space Physics will also meet Tuesday through Thursday.

The annual Golden Goose Awards, which recognize seemingly obscure research projects that went on to have profound impacts, will be announced at a ceremony on Tuesday.
The National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation have just awarded $20 million each for two new AI institutes focused on astronomical sciences.