Washington Update

Reconciliation Update 
Senate Democrats yesterday shared that the Senate Parliamentarian found some education provisions of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee reconciliation bill impermissible because they primarily have a policy, not budgetary, impact (also known as the “Byrd bath.”) Senate Republicans must eliminate or revise these provisions before the Senate floor, or they would be subject to a point of order requiring 60 votes to pass, instead of a simple majority under the rules of reconciliation.  

While the bill’s core provisions impacting public research universities remain intact, the Parliamentarian’s rulings could significantly affect the budgetary savings from the bill. In particular, per Senate Budget Committee Democrats, the Parliamentarian ruled that the bill’s changes to student loan repayment plans are impermissible for current borrowers, thus eliminating substantial savings. 

As a result, if Senate Republicans are unable to make changes to satisfy Byrd requirements, it’s possible they may look to find additional savings from other sources. As drafted, the Senate bill saved around $300 billion across the HELP Committee Provisions. APLU compiled a chart of the Parliamentarian’s rulings on HELP provisions so far, with budgetary estimates based on the CBO score of the closest equivalent provisions in the House bill.   

Additionally, APLU’s Office of Governmental Affairs analyzed overall provisions with the greatest direct impacts on public research universities and developed a comparison of the House-passed bill and the bills released by each Senate committee. This resource will be updated as the Senate unveils its final package. 

Go deeper: On June 13, APLU sent a letter to Senate Appropriations leadership outlining deep concerns with the House’s approach to accountability, cuts to both Pell Grant eligibility and the maximum award size, as well as the elimination of both Graduate PLUS loans and subsidized undergraduate loans. The legislation will create barriers in the path of students earning their degrees, drive up student debt, and create highly unusual roles for the U.S. Department of Education relative to state institutions. 

APLU sent a letter to Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) expressing appreciation for the number of areas in which the Senate measure is a marked improvement from the House’s counterpart measure and offers recommendations for further refinements the association believes will meet shared goals. Of note, APLU is deeply concerned with annual loan limits for graduate students given the bill’s elimination of Grad PLUS and believes the House’s overall annual limits are preferable if the options are binary. 

On June 23, Cooperative Extension and the Association of SNAP Nutrition Education Administrators (ASNNA) shared a letter with Senate leadership on the proposed elimination of SNAP-Ed in the reconciliation bill under consideration. Under the current version of the bill, the majority of proposed SNAP cuts would not go into effect until FY28 while SNAP-Ed funding would be zeroed out beginning in FY26. The letter requests that cuts to SNAP-Ed go into effect on the same FY28 timeline as the other proposed SNAP cuts. This change will give states, universities, and other SNAP-Ed implementers time to adjust. It also offers policymakers a chance to address any programmatic concerns related to SNAP-Ed through a Farm Bill.  

Favorable Judgment in APLU’s NSF Case  
On June 20, 2025, Judge Indira Talwani of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs APLU, AAU, ACE and 13 research universities in their joint lawsuit challenging caps on F&A reimbursement rates. Judge Talwani vacated and declared invalid, arbitrary and capricious, and contrary to law the NSF’s 15% indirect cost rate and the agency’s policy notice implementing it. The court ordered that NSF provide notice of the decision to all grant recipients within 72 hours. 
 
APLU maintains a webpage compiling legal updates on its cases challenging the 15% caps on F&A reimbursements at the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Department of Defense. 

State Department Social Media Screening for Student Visas 
On June 18, the State Department issued a cable directing consular officers to screen social media and online presence of all foreign nationals applying for student visas. Visa applicants will be screened for “any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States”, any “advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security”, and “support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence.” None of the factors specified in the cable would immediately result in ineligibility to receive a visa under U.S. law. However, discovery of such online content would trigger additional review. 

The cable directs consular officers to resume scheduling F, M, and J nonimmigrant visa appointments. It also advises staff to consider the effect this new guidance will have on workloads, stating they may need to schedule less visa cases than previously. Officials are asked to prioritize interviewing physicians applying for a J-1 visa for educational exchange and students looking to “study at a U.S. university where international students constitute 15 percent or less of the total student population”.