Tag: United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists planning to attend conferences or meetings in the United States have told Nature that they are experiencing significant delays in obtaining short-term visas. Last August, Collins wrote a letter to the more than 10,000 US institutions that it funds, stating that the agency was concerned that “some foreign entities” were interfering in the funding, research and peer-review of NIH-supported projects. Then, last week, Collins said that investigations at 55 US universities had found some “egregious” breaches of rules governing the agency’s grants — including grant recipients not disclosing foreign government money or diverting intellectual property from their US institution to other countries such as China. “If students are told they cannot do cutting-edge research at US institutions, they are going to go elsewhere,” Mowery says. What about visas? Pan told Nature that he has missed two conferences in the United States this year, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, at which he was to have collected the prestigious Newcomb Cleveland Prize for an outstanding paper published in the journal Science, because he was not granted a visa in time. Several major scientific conferences in the United States have also reported visa delays for Chinese nationals. An official at the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, who asked not to be named owing to the sensitivity of the situation, said the embassy is aware that increased numbers of Chinese students and academics have been unable to obtain US visas for China–US student exchange programmes, conferences and meetings over the past 12 months. Are the tensions affecting science in China? Universities need to be more vigilant against foreign interference in research, Smith says, but also to balance that with the need for academic openness and international collaboration.

A coalition of 16 US states led by California has launched legal action against Donald Trump’s administration over his decision to declare a national emergency in order to fund a wall along the Mexico border. The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the US district court for the northern district of California after Trump invoked emergency powers on Friday when Congress declined his request for $5.7bn to help create his signature policy promise. His move aims to let him spend money appropriated by Congress for other purposes. “Today, on Presidents Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power,” California attorney general Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the Office of the Presidency is not a place for theatre,” added Becerra, a Democrat. In a budget deal passed by Congress to avert a second government shutdown, nearly $1.4bn was allocated to border fencing. Earlier, Trump had said he knew that he did not need to declare an emergency to build the wall, a comment that could now undercut the government’s legal argument. “Presidents don’t go in and claim declarations of emergency for the purposes of raiding accounts because they weren’t able to get Congress to fund items,” Becerra said on MSNBC. Play Video 1:43

Congressional negotiators revealed Monday evening that they've reached "an agreement in principle" on border security funding that includes more than $1.3 billion for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. When asked if they had an agreement that President Trump would approve, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters: "We think so. We hope so." Sources tell Fox News the $1.3 billion can be used only for new construction that would cover approximately 55 miles of border territory in the Rio Grande Valley. The White House had requested $5.7 billion for the border wall and the administration had dangled the possibility that Trump would declare a national emergency and divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, but that move almost certainly would be challenged in Congress as well as in the courts. Talks nearly collapsed over the weekend after Democrats pushed to reduce funding for detention beds to curb what they've called unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Shelby told reporters Monday night that the bed issue had been worked out, but declined to give details. With that in mind, sources tell Fox News the total number of beds could go as high as 52,000, though there is no technical limit on the amount. At a campaign-style rally Monday night in El Paso, Texas, Trump said he was told lawmakers were making progress in their bid to avert another shutdown. However, the president told his staff that he didn't want to hear about it and that it was important to speak "to my people from Texas" first.

A bill filed in the Senate to protect residential vegetable gardens from local bans now has a House companion. The goal: Facilitating “the development of sustainable cultivation of vegetables and fruits at all levels of production, including for personal consumption.” A request for comment from Fetterhoff is pending. Bradley, now Senate Appropriations chair, sponsored the measure last Session when it cleared the Senate 36-1. However, it later died in the House without a hearing. The issue attained statewide prominence when a Miami Shores couple sued for the right to plant a vegetable garden in their front yard. While they had cultivated their garden for two decades, local code enforcers made their move. Indeed, a recurrent debate in the Capitol is one of pre-emption versus home rule. When asked about potential concerns that state law would abrogate local control, Bradley noted that “home rule is not a blank check to stomp on the fundamental rights of citizens. “Whether it’s a hobby or a way for a cash strapped family to save money without sacrificing their nutrition, government at any level has no business telling Floridians they cannot grow their own food because of where they live,” she said. “Just today, I toured a garden in my district that is being set up to help educate and empower our community through self-sustainability practices like gardening.