Policy Watch: Republicans revive warnings about US-China research partnerships

Republican lawmakers flag China-US research connections

Republicans in Congress are raising renewed concerns about collaborations between scientists in the US and China, a push reminiscent of the “China Initiative,” which targeted scientists for not disclosing connections with China on federal grant proposals during President Donald J. Trump’s first administration.

Last week, lawmakers introduced a bill (PDF) that would prevent US scientists from using federal funds to work with groups on an exclusion list, sent a warning letter to nine US colleges and universities about influence from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and released a report (PDF) on how NASA may have violated a ban on bilateral research with China.

US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), along with Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Jim Banks (R-IN), sent letters to Bryant University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Portland State University; the University of Arizona; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Irvine; the University of Minnesota Twin Cities; and the University of Texas at Arlington asking for information on institutional donations. Citing Department of Education data on foreign gifts and contracts worth $250,000 or more, the group warns that the CCP is gaining access to scientific research and threatening national security via gifts and donations. “Sensitive research and technology must stay out of the hands of our adversaries,” the letter says.

Regarding the bill to prevent collaboration with excluded groups, Moolenaar says, “Departments across the government and our universities must step up and make sure they are not working with Chinese researchers on dual-use technologies that could one day be used against our country.”

According to a press release from the House Select Committee on the CCP, “research collaboration” includes “joint research projects, co-authorship, data sharing, personnel exchanges, and other forms of cooperation ensuring that all avenues of potential technology transfer are covered.” If the bill passes, all recipients of federal research funding, including universities, national laboratories, and private companies, would be subject to the law.

The CCP Committee also released a report on NASA’s enforcement of the Wolf Amendment, saying that the agency may have disobeyed the amendment’s ban on using federal funds to work with China without specific authorization from Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Hundreds of NASA-supported or funded publications” came from collaborations between US and Chinese coauthors and institutions and should be further investigated, the report says.

—Leigh Krietsch Boerner

HHS begins converting senior ‘policy-influencing’ staff to at-will employment

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has begun the process of converting hundreds of senior career staff to Schedule Policy/Career employees, a new employment classification that removes many civil servant job protections.

The new classification, which could apply to 50,000 federal employees in “policy-influencing positions” governmentwide, according to the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), essentially transforms these staff into at-will employees with limited due process protections, such as the right to appeal firings or suspensions.

President Donald J. Trump created the new employment classification through an executive order he issued in January 2025. The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized the Schedule Policy/Career rule just over a year later, despite receiving over 40,000 comments, the vast majority of which opposed the proposal.

In an FAQ document provided to agencies (PDF), the OPM said that Trump created the classification because the “civil service did not possess adequate tools to ensure accountability for employees’ performance or conduct.” As a result, “the President determined that principles of good administration necessitated the exemption of certain career positions of a policy-influencing character from statutory unacceptable performance and adverse action procedures.”

But Democrats, science advocacy groups, and others disagree with the administration’s justification. Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a recent statement that removing job protections for these civil servants “diminishes their ability to speak candidly about scientific research and findings without fear of political retaliation.”

She adds, “When scientists fear political consequences for doing their jobs, communities lose access to the best available evidence to protect their environment, health and safety.”

It’s unclear who exactly will be reclassified as Schedule Policy/Career employees at the HHS or other agencies, if they decide to follow suit, but the final OPM rule states that “some positions in scientific grantmaking” could be eligible. But it adds that just because a position is eligible for Schedule Policy/Career doesn’t mean a position “will actually be moved into that Schedule.”

—Krystal Vasquez

NSF to funnel $1.5 billion to independent technology research collaborations

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) plans to spend $1.5 billion over the next decade to build and support independent research collaborations, to be known as NSF X-Labs, the agency announced on May 14.

Grants for X-Labs will be awarded to “institutionally independent organizational structures” that don’t require oversight from a parent institution, according to the funding opportunity notice. The initial round of funding, which the NSF says will take the form of large multiyear awards, will go toward groups proposing projects on quantum information systems and scientific instrumentation for sensing and imaging. Proposals are being accepted through May 2028. More topics will be announced in the next few weeks, the agency says.

The announcement cites as motivation a September White House memo outlining the administration’s scientific priorities (PDF), including artificial intelligence, quantum information, and semiconductors and microelectronics. The NSF initiative, originally called Tech Labs, was launched in December.

The program, which equates to an average of $150 million a year, or about 2% of the NSF’s $8.75 billion fiscal year 2025 budget, is an important step in diversifying the ways science is federally funded, says Jenn Gustetic, director for metascience and research and development policy at the Institute for Progress, and a former NASA senior technology adviser.

“There’s no single ‘correct’ way to do science,” Gustetic wrote in an email to C&EN.

The X-Labs initiative was informed by work from sources including science policy experts, think tanks, congressionally chartered study commissions and the broader scientific community, she notes.

On social media, some researchers expressed concern that the move will largely exclude university researchers and enable the NSF to sidestep peer review and regulatory oversight.

The program is starting up as Congress considers cuts to the agency’s budget: the House Appropriations Committee last week approved a fiscal year 2027 appropriations bill that would cut the NSF’s budget by 20%. In April, the Donald J. Trump administration requested a 55% cut and, weeks later, dismissed the entire National Science Board, the NSF’s governing body.

—Laura Dattaro, special to C&EN

HHS withdraws controversial plan to amend vaccine committee charter

The US Department of Health and Human Services has walked back a plan to change the charter of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a panel that plays a key role in shaping the US immunization schedule.

In a notice published to the Federal Register on Tuesday, the HHS formally withdrew an earlier notice of committee charter renewal for the ACIP, citing an administrative error. The department now plans to reestablish the charter, saying that “re-establishment of the ACIP is necessary and in the public interest in connection with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) performance of its duties.”

ACIP was effectively disbanded in March after a US district court judge ruled that HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointments to the committee, and decisions the committee had made, were illegal. The previous June, Kennedy had dismissed all 17 members of the committee and remade it with his own appointees, many of whom were inexperienced in infectious diseases; the new appointees are now gone, per the court ruling. The decision also stopped the ACIP from holding further meetings until it could be reconstituted.

The charter renewal notice (PDF) that the HHS withdrew had sought to weaken the ACIP before it could be remade. Instead of requiring that members be “knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health,” as the previous charter had, the new one suggested that members could be knowledgeable in a variety of areas, including “recovery from serious vaccine injuries,” in keeping with other HHS actions that have raised doubts about vaccines.

—Rowan Walrath

US wildlife agency OKs continued atrazine use pending new restrictions

The US Fish and Wildlife Service this week released its final biological opinion on the herbicide atrazine (PDF), concluding that the chemical can remain in use if the US Environmental Protection Agency imposes new mitigation measures.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which helped spur the court-ordered review of atrazine amid years of legal challenges under the Endangered Species Act by it and other environmental groups, said in a May 18 statement that by ignoring the well-documented harms of atrazine, officials behind the opinion are effectively pushing some species to the brink of extinction.

Atrazine, used primarily to disrupt broadleaf weeds in corn and sorghum, is among the most heavily applied herbicides in US agriculture. The synthetic herbicide has faced decades of scrutiny over endocrine disruption, groundwater contamination, amphibian reproductive effects, and possible cancer risks and is banned in around 60 countries. In 2021, the EPA said atrazine was “likely to adversely affect” more than 1,000 endangered species, which helped trigger the intensified federal review that resulted in the FWS’ recent decision.

A spokesperson for the US Department of the Interior, which oversees the FWS, tells C&EN that the opinion included “updated data, exposure modeling, and proposed mitigation measures” using the EPA’s “science-driven review process,” and was “based on the full record, not advocacy claims or worst-case assumptions.” The FWS will reopen consultation on atrazine if monitoring shows incidental take thresholds are exceeded, if new information reveals previously unconsidered impacts to protected species or habitat, if the action is modified in ways that create new effects, or if additional species or critical habitats potentially affected by the action are later listed or designated, the spokesperson explained.

The mitigation measures designed to protect endangered species and included in the final biological opinion center on runoff-control requirements and geographically targeted areas with pesticide-use limitations, where additional restrictions would apply near vulnerable habitats. The agency also acknowledged that atrazine may still cause reduced reproduction, growth, and other “sublethal” ecological effects but concluded that the herbicide would not legally jeopardize the survival of any protected species. C&EN asked the EPA press office how aggressively the agency will enforce the new restrictions but did not receive a response before publication.

—Joe Beeton, special to C&EN