Issue 21 (October 28)

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is seeking nominations for a planning committee that would be tasked with organizing a new workshop, Enhancing Scientific Integrity: Progress and Opportunities in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. The workshop seeks to address common questions and concerns, including:

• How can social and behavioral sciences continue to lead the way in advancing data integrity?
• What governance structures would ensure such efforts are fair, sustainable, and constructive?
• How can scientific journals support transparency and integrity while maintaining accessibility for researchers across diverse contexts; and more.

NASEM is looking for experts in a broad range of areas, including journal editors and publishers; behavioral and social science researchers; professional association leaders; legal/criminology expertise; AI expertise; and ethics. Nominations are due November 7 and can be submitted here.

On October 30, join COSSA for the next installment in the 2025 Headlines Webinar series. The COSSA team will be joined by special guest Dr. Erica Groshen to discuss the ongoing challenges facing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the broader federal statistical system (read recent COSSA coverage). The COSSA team will also discuss other timely developments. Register now and join the conversation.

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

Funding for most government activities expired at midnight on September 30. Since Congress has failed to reach an agreement to keep the government open, all federal agencies are now shut down.

The shutdown and lack of clarity on FY 2026 funding damages the ability of federal science agencies like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Institute of Education Sciences, and federal statistical agencies to meet their missions. Those harms are passed on to researchers who rely on support from the federal government.

Federal science and statistical agencies have already experienced destructive effects this year as a result of Trump Administration policies, including termination of thousands of research and training grants, program cancellations, mass layoffs, pauses or cancellations of important data collections, and elimination of federal advisory bodies, to name a few. The government shutdown only exacerbates these damages and further degrades U.S. scientific leadership by delaying grant competitions and award decisions, leaving current grantees without access to technical assistance from program officers, and causing issues with accessing already-obligated funds, among others.

Write to your Members of Congress TODAY to urge them to end the shutdown and work with their colleagues to complete the FY 2026 appropriations process without further delay.

COSSA is excited to announce its latest resource, COSSA 101: A Crash Course on the Federal Government. Through this series COSSA provides easy-to-understand information about the inner workings of the federal government and how they affect social and behavioral science research. The series begins with a brief on “What is a Government Shutdown?”

Additional topics will be added in the days and weeks ahead including: “What is Appropriations?”, “What is an Executive Order?”, and “What is a Continuing Resolution?”

Do you have a federal government topic you would like explained by COSSA 101? Send us your ideas.

Congress remains at a standstill as the government shutdown continues, with little progress having been made since our previous reporting. As the holiday season rapidly approaches, so too does the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) deadline of November 21, which has failed to pass several times in the Senate. Recent rumors suggest that the Republican-majority may seek to extend the deadline in their version of the bill past the holidays, or as proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), into December 2026 after the midterm elections. If that were to occur, the federal government would keep FY 2024 funding levels for an additional year. It’s unclear whether House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will call the House, has not been in Washington for weeks, back into session to restart negotiations with the Democrats; however, time is certainly running out on Capitol Hill to find a solution. In the interim, the House and the Senate are rumored to begin the reconciliation process for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after the Senate passed their version of the bill earlier this month (see related article). Other appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) bills which fund several federal agencies important to the social and behavioral science community, remain unsettled (see previous COSSA coverage).

In other news, amidst the government shutdown, the Trump Administration has continued to conduct reductions in force (RIF) across several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Earlier this month, approximately 1,000 employees were terminated at the CDC, but while some of the RIFs remained permanent, nearly half were rescinded, creating confusion amongst federal workers. According to the White House, these terminations had been the result of a “coding error.” Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has since vowed to conduct oversight of the situation; however, no official action has been taken. Further, President Trump and Speaker Johnson have both suggested that federal employees are not entitled to backpay following the end of the government shutdown. This would be a violation of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which was signed into law during Trump’s first term in 2019; however, Speaker Johnson has indicated that the law is vague and up for interpretation (see COSSA’s What is a Government Shutdown?). Earlier this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) quietly updated their Frequently Asked Questions During a Lapse to remove references to this law and indicated that only “excepted” employees would receive backpay.

On October 15, House and Senate Democrats, joined by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as the only Republican sign-on, sent a joint letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requesting that they “immediately clarify and update” their website to reflect the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, writing:

“Explicitly, the law guarantees back pay for all federal employees in the event of a government shutdown. ‘Each employee of the United States Government or of a District of Columbia public employer furloughed as a result of a covered lapse in appropriations shall be paid for the period of the lapse in appropriations, and each excepted employee who is required to perform work during a covered lapse in appropriations shall be paid for such work, at the employee’s standard rate of pay, at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates, and subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the lapse.’ The law requires that retroactive pay be required in the event of any government shutdown after December 22, 2018.”

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

In August, House Republicans passed their National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year (FY) 2026 along party lines. In an amendment, the House attached the SAFE Research Act, which would create extensive national security barriers to how the Department of Defense can fund research at universities. Among the bills’ provisions is a requirement for funding to be terminated for higher institutions and researchers that partner with “hostile foreign entities,” requiring these connections to be severed for at least five years before they become eligible for federal funding. A list of “hostile foreign entities” would be kept by the Department of Defense.

The Senate, which passed their NDAA earlier this month with bipartisan support, did not include the SAFE Research Act in their bill. As the House and Senate work to reconcile their two versions of the NDAA, several members of the research community have criticized the SAFE Research Act, including the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) who sent a letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees urging them to abandon the bill for concerns it would hinder research advancements and opportunity. Further, they suggested that the current framework of research security is sufficient in protecting the U.S. research infrastructure. Other notable critics of the amendment include House Science and Technology Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) who pointed to the Chips and Science Act’s research security provisions and requested the SAFE Research Act be amended to align with those standards.

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

Universities Reject Trump’s Higher Education Compact

As previously reported, nine of the nation’s leading research universities received letters from the White House earlier this month urging that they agree to the Administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. The Compact lays out several conditions that align with the President’s agenda and ideology. In exchange, universities that sign on would perceive preferential treatment for federal funding, including research grants. The original nine universities were given until October 20 to respond with feedback.

Since then, MIT was the first university to officially reject the offer, stating “In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence… Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

Six other universities provided similar feedback in their public statements and responses to the Administration, including Brown University, University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Dartmouth University, and the University of Arizona. Two of the nine universities have yet to publicly state whether they plan to sign the compact, including the University of Texas, Austin and Vanderbilt University. However, UT Austin is reported to be in discussion with the White House.

Earlier this month the White House opened the compact up to other higher education institutions, inviting sign on. As of this writing, only the New College of Florida, a small liberal arts college, has reportedly stated its intent to sign.

Last month, the National Science Foundation released the latest solicitation for its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), which is typically made available in July. The solicitation states that it still intends to announce awards in April, consistent with previous years, despite the delay in releasing the opportunity. The deadline for social, behavioral and economic sciences, STEM education and learning, and psychology is November 12.

The GRFP has seen its share of challenges over the years, most recently being the major reduction in awards in 2025 and greater emphasis on computer science among the awardees.

Several concerns have been expressed by the research community in response to this new solicitation. The first is the response deadline, which according to the NSF should be “a minimum of 90 days from NSF’s announcement…” The new solicitation provides about half that time for applications to prepare and submit their proposals. In addition, this year’s competition excludes second year students as eligible applicants, a change from past competitions. In an October 17 letter to NSF from Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Haley Stevens (D-MI) state: “While changing the eligibility requirements of the GRFP is within NSF’s authority, it is cruel and destabilizing to do so without at least a year’s warning to the graduate student community.”

Finally, while certain areas of study have been ineligible in the past, such as those in health-related and practice-oriented fields, the new solicitation now explicitly excludes clinical psychology. 

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University and Sage are now accepting nominations for the 2026 Sage-CASBS Award. Both CASBS and Sage are members of COSSA.

Established in 2013, this award recognizes exceptional contributions in the behavioral and social sciences that advance our understanding of pressing social challenges.

In addition to a cash prize, the winner will deliver a public lecture at CASBS in the spring of 2026. The deadline for nominations is December 19, 2025. More information can be found here.

This article was contributed by COSSA Intern Anne Tighe.

On October 23, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a COSSA governing member, hosted James A. Banks, professor and founder of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, as its 2025 annual Brown lecturer. The Brown Lecture aims to continue the legacy of the Brown v. Board decision by highlighting the role of research in advancing educational equality.

In his lecture, Rethinking Brown When Diversity and Equity Are Imperiled and Democracy Is Fragile, Banks discussed the recent attacks the Trump Administration has made on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and drew upon existing studies to offer several explanations for this resurgence of inequality. He detailed the scapegoating of Black citizens due to fears of financial instability and offered several solutions to challenge institutionalized racism that involve culture-based conversations in institutions of higher education. A recording of the lecture is available on AERA’s website.

This article was contributed by COSSA Intern Anne Tighe.