Issue 18 (September 16)

On September 9, the House Appropriations Committee advanced its version of the fiscal year (FY) 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) Appropriations bill, which provides annual appropriations for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Education, Department of Labor, and other agencies. The Senate advanced its bill in July (see COSSA’s analysis).

The House bill is a mixed bag for the science agencies important to the COSSA community. Similar to the Senate bill, the Committee rejects the President’s proposals to reduce the NIH budget by 40 percent, cut CDC by more than half, and slash funding for the Institute of Education Sciences within the Department of Education. In addition, the bill rejects Trump’s plan to reorganize the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); the President’s FY 2026 budget request included an extensive reorganization of HHS introducing new entities (e.g., Administration for a Healthy America) and consolidating several agencies. However, the House bill gives a nod to the President’s “Make America Healthy Again Initiative” by including $100 million “to allow the [HHS] Secretary to invest in prevention innovation programs for rural communities as proposed in the fiscal year 2026 budget request,” and to support “telehealth resources for chronic care and nutrition services.”

Unlike the Senate bill, the House LHHS bill seeks to eliminate funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—which is not a new proposal—and zero‐out international education programs like Title VI and Fulbright‐Hays.

With the current fiscal year set to expire in two weeks, Congress turned its attention to averting a government shutdown. Lawmakers are currently debating the details of a continuing resolution (CR) that will keep the government funded beyond October 1. The jury is still out on whether Congressional Democrats will join Republicans to support the CR and avoid a shutdown. One thing is certain: the FY 2026 appropriations process is expected to continue for several more months and may extend into next year.  

Read on for COSSA’s analysis of the House LHHS appropriations bill and how it compares to the Senate bill, the President’s budget request, and current funding. Text of the bill is available here and the Committee report is available here.  

Stay tuned to COSSA’s coverage for the latest developments.  

On September 23, join COSSA for the next installment in the 2025 Headlines Webinar series. The COSSA team will be providing updates on recent policy and funding developments impacting the social and behavioral science community, discuss Congress’ plans for averting a government shutdown (or not), and analyze the latest actions taking by the Trump Administration. Join the conversation.

The webinar will be taking place on September 23 at 2pm EST. Register here.

Headlines is a webinar series available to COSSA member organizations. Watch for additional webinar announcements, and previous webinar recordings, on the COSSA website.

As the appropriations deadline rapidly approaches on September 30, both chambers of Congress remain far from completing their twelve annual spending bills. While individual appropriations bills continue to inch forward (see related article), attention in Congress has turned to drafting a continuing resolution (CR) to prevent a government shutdown in two weeks. Earlier today, the House Republicans released the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026, which, if enacted, would extend funding to November 21 to allow lawmakers additional time to finalize the fiscal year (FY) 2026 appropriations bills. In their release, Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) also included a section-by-section explainer on the proposed CR. The House vote is expected to take place later this week but is unclear if the Republicans will have the support needed to pass the bill.

In other news, the House Appropriations Committee advanced their Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) appropriations bill on September 9, and has since released the accompanying report and list of amendments. See featured article. In addition, the House Appropriations Committee also advanced the Commerce, Science, and Justice (CJS) bill on September 10 (see COSSA’s coverage).

Stay tuned for COSSA’s continued coverage on the appropriations process.

On September 4, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to address the President’s 2026 health care agenda. Several members of the Committee used the opportunity to question Secretary Kennedy on the recent termination of Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez and the Administration’s vaccine policy and recommendations, as well as their priorities for improving rural health.

In their opening remarks, Senator Crapo (R-ID), Chairman of the Finance Committee, expressed his support for Secretary Kennedy’s leadership of HHS, noting the Secretary’s commitment to ending “waste, fraud, and abuse in our federal health care programs.” On the other side of the aisle, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Ranking Member of the Committee, highlighted a recent report he released in cooperation with Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Costs, Chaos, and Corruption: 203 Days of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Disastrous Leadership. The report chronologically outlines recent actions taken by Secretary Kennedy, provides case studies that indicate the costs associated with these actions, and highlights several promises made during his confirmation hearing in order to get necessary votes that were broken once he was in the role. Wyden further raised concerns about the fate of vaccine policies under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, addressing the removal of the Senate-approved CDC Director and CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) (previous COSSA coverage). Senators from both parties joined this line of questioning, including Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), among others.

In his opening remarks, Secretary Kennedy claimed the recent terminations of CDC leadership was “absolutely necessary” and that it is “imperative to remove officials with conflicts of interest, catastrophically bad judgement, and political agendas” within the agency. Director Monarez, who was fired in August for allegedly clashing with Secretary Kennedy on vaccine policies, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal accusing him of pressuring her to accept vaccine recommendations from the newly appointed ACIP, despite her belief that the recommendations would “weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.” Secretary Kennedy denied the allegations and claimed Dr. Monarez was “untrustworthy.”

Later, Sen. Cassidy, who is the Chair of the Senate Health, Education, and Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) and a physician, submitted a peer-reviewed study disputing Secretary Kennedy’s claims that the terminated ACIP members had conflicts of interest (see previous COSSA coverage). In July, the Senate HELP Committee Democrats also launched an investigation into these unprecedented firings. With rising concerns about Secretary Kennedy’s commitments to preserving vaccine accessibility, the Senate HELP Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing with Dr. Monarez and Debra Houry, the Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at the CDC, who resigned in protest over Dr. Monarez’s termination (watch live here).

Follow COSSA’s continued coverage on CDC here.

Federal Agencies Issue Gold Standard Science Implementation Plans

As previously reported, President Trump issued an executive order (EO) in May on Restoring Gold Standard Science, which aims to address what the Administration sees as a “reproducibility crisis” caused by “falsification of data” and “highly misleading research.” As part of the order, federal science agencies were given until August 22 to develop implementation plans for ensuring compliance with guidance provided by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in June.

In response, federal science agencies have publicly posted their implementation plans. While each addressed the Gold Standard EO differently, they all include information on how the agency is already complying or plans to address the tenets included in the order.

You can find the Gold Standard Science implementation plans at the links below:

• National Science Foundation
• National Institutes of Health
• Department of Energy
• NASA
• U.S. Department of Agriculture

On September 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a downward revision of the jobs report. Ahead of the release of the jobs report, the Friends of BLS coalition released a Q&A about the job report, which details how the report is estimated and revised in a transparent and objective manner. However, the Administration published the article, BLS Revisions Show President Trump Was Right — Again, and again baselessly claimed that the jobs report was falsified. As a reminder, the Trump Administration fired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the last jobs report was released with similar findings (see previous COSSA coverage). On September 11, the Friends of BLS released a statement in support of the BLS mission and leadership, highlighting the burden of budget cuts and reductions in force (RIFs) on the agency.

Trump’s new nominee for BLS Commissioner, E.J. Antoni, has yet to be scheduled for his confirmation hearing. Follow COSSA’s continued coverage on BLS here.

On September 18, the Independent Census Scientific Advisory Committee (I-CSAC), of which COSSA Board Member Sara Curran from the University of Washington is a member, is set to meet for the first time. I-CSAC, which was founded following the unprecedented termination of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, is accepting public comments that will be shared during the meeting (see COSSA sign-on letter opposing the termination of the committee).

Comments can be submitted to CensusScientific@gmail.com until September 17 at noon ET. The agenda can be viewed here and the meeting will broadcasted live to the public here. 

The Board on Higher Education and Workforce (BHEW) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has released a report, Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies: Optimizing American Science. The report praises the success of the U.S. scientific research enterprise while acknowledging that, as science has become more applicable and useful across varying disciplines, there has been a dramatic increase in federal oversight. It cites estimates that U.S. academic researchers today spend more than 40 percent of their research time on administrative and regulatory compliance.  While federal regulations on scientific work can ensure research excellence, the current regulatory system can hinder research and place bureaucratic burdens on scientists, says the report.

The Committee looked at seven areas of research regulations with an eye toward harmonization across federal agencies and other sectors. The seven areas addressed in the report include:

• Grant proposals and management
• Research misconduct
• Financial conflicts of interest in research
• Protecting research assets (which includes research security, export controls, and cybersecurity and data management)
• Research involving biological agents
• Human subjects research
• Research using nonhuman animal

For each area, NASEM proposes several solutions to address flaws in the current oversight system. Further, unlike past Academies reports on these topics—of which there have been many—this report does not make specific recommendations designed to tackle these challenges. Instead, the report offers a menu of options that can be considered for reducing administrative burden, with pros and cons discussed for each. These solutions envision a more efficient and tailored regulatory system on the U.S. scientific enterprise.

NASEM hosted a webinar on the report that can be watched here.

This article was contributed by COSSA Intern Anne Tighe.

On October 23, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) will host the 22nd Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research. The annual lecture aims to illuminate the important role of research in advancing understanding of equality and equity in education. The 2025 lecture is titled, “Rethinking Brown When Diversity and Equity are Imperiled and Democracy Is Fragile” and will be delivered by James A. Banks, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies Emeritus and founding director of the Center for Multicultural Education (now the Banks Center for Educational Justice) at the University of Washington. AERA is a COSSA governing member organization.

Register for the event here.

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University is now accepting applications for residential fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year. Applicants should be scholars and thinkers who are tackling big questions with fresh approaches. CASBS especially appreciate scholars who value discussion across fields, unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries. An academic year at the Center provides fellows freedom to work on consequential projects, a location that affords them access to research and colleagues at Stanford and Silicon Valley, and a collaborative environment that encourages fellows to broaden their perspectives. The Center encourages those from diverse backgrounds, institutions, and countries to apply.

Online applications will be accepted on the Center’s website through October 31, 2025. For more information, guidelines, and application requirements, visit the website. CASBS is a COSSA member organization.