HOUSE and SENATE

The House and Senate were in recess this week and will return next week.

ADMINISTRATION

The President signed a $4.6 billion emergency border relief package into law. The bill provides $2.9 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of migrant children from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection before releasing them to family members or other sponsors. It also includes $1.3 billion to improve conditions for immigrants detained in Department of Homeland Security facilities, including $112 million for food, clothing, diapers, air conditioning, medical care, shower units, hand-washing stations and more.

The Department of Education (ED) published in the Federal Register a final regulation action that repeals the gainful employment (GE) regulation effective July 2020. However, the regulatory action permits early implementation of the rescission of the GE rule (as early as July 1, 2019) by allowing institutions to end reporting GE information to ED and by allowing them to end making student disclosures required by the GE rule.

ED published a final rule (and provided the ability to submit comments for 30 days) in the Federal Register making mostly technical changes to rules for how States, districts, and schools spend Title I funding. The rule, in seeking to comply with the 2017 Trinity Lutheran Supreme Court decision, also eliminates language barring religious organizations from providing some educational services to low-income students in private schools.

ED extended until September 23, 2019 the deadline for  institutions to submit a letter of  interest for participating in the Federal Work-Study experiment under the Experimental Sites Initiative (ESI), in order to allow more institutions to participate.

The Treasury Department published proposed regulations to implement the excise tax on private universities’ endowments created as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The draft regulation details how to determine whether a school is subject to the tax, what specific categories of earnings can be taxed and how to calculate the tax liability for a school.

The U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. Justice Department announced that the 2020 Census forms will not include a question on citizenship status after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Administration’s justification for including such a question was not adequate.

OTHER NEWS

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue case, which centers on whether a tax credit scholarship program in Montana violated a state constitutional provision prohibiting the legislature from appropriating public funds to aid religious schools.

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES 

Penn Hill Group provides a list of grant opportunities and summaries for select grants. Please visit our website for more information.