Monday, July 14, 2025

I. Policy Intelligence and Education News

• Sharing impacts of Administration’s withholding of education state grant funds – I’m hearing from some Senate staffers that there are many Senate offices (and presumably House offices) with many questions about the impact on their constituents of the Administration’s decision to withhold of $6.9 billion of formula state grants for education that should have been released on July 1. CEF wrote a letter to Congress on July 2 and sent each Senator on Appropriations the Department of Education’s state funding page that highlighted the programs and funding total being withheld for that state. I know many CEF members have been advocating full tilt to get the funding released. I urge you to add direct outreach to Congressional offices if you haven’t done that already, sharing examples of what this funding supports and what is happening now or in the near future if states don’t receive this funding.

• Reaction protesting the education funding being withheld –

• 24 Democratic states and DC sue the federal government today to order that the funding be released

• Senate Democratic caucus letter to the Department of Education and the Office of Management and Budget on July 11

• House Democratic caucus letter on July 11 (signed by 150 Democrats)

• New York delegation letter on July 10

• House Appropriations Committee Democrats press release on July 2

• Appropriations this week –

• Rescission bill -The Senate is planning to take a vote on the House-passed bill to implement the President’s requested recission of $9.4 billion in already enacted appropriations. If the Senate doesn’t pass the bill this week, the 45-day period for congressional consideration will close and legally, the Administration will be required to release the enacted funding. Democratic Senators will oppose the bill and while several Republican Senators have objected to some of the proposed funding recissions, it’s not clear if four Republicans will vote no.

• Senate Appropriations Committee markups of FY 2026 bills – Last week the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its bipartisan Agriculture bill unanimously and its Legislative Branch bill with only one no vote. However, the markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science was suspended after disagreement over the Administration’s plan to move the FBI building to another building in DC (counter to years of planning to move it to Maryland), and there’s no schedule yet for it to resume. This Thursday the Committee is scheduled to mark up the Military Construction-VA bill. The Committee has not yet released its subcommittee allocations – the “302(b)” allocations or a schedule for other markups.

• House Appropriations Committee markups this week – The House Appropriations Committee this week will be marking up five bills in subcommittee and two bills in full committee. The updated press release of the schedule still shows the Labor-HHS-Education bill planned for July 1 in subcommittee and July 24 in full committee, but it’s not on the Committee’s schedule page. The House Committee has also not released the 302(b) allocations except for the five bills already approved by the Committee. The House is planning to start debate tomorrow on the Defense appropriations bill, which is only the second to reach the House floor this cycle.