From the American Sociological Association, July 27, 2026

"Dear Colleagues,
 
"We are writing with important information about the ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), which has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the past six years.

"After learning that we will not be receiving our next funding increment from NSF, we are suspending the ASA DDRIG program and will not be opening the 2027 application cycle. This does not affect any student who currently holds an ASA DDRIG.

"Over six application cycles, the ASA DDRIG program awarded 153 grants to students at 62 institutions. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all the reviewers who have made the program possible and to all the students, both applicants and grantees, whose work has inspired us. We are actively seeking other funding opportunities and will be back in touch with the sociology community if funding becomes available in the future.

"In the meantime, we encourage you to write to your representatives in Congress to let them know how the cancellation and suspension of research funding impacts you, your students, and your colleagues. Please visit ASA Action Center to view our current action alerts on this matter. Feel free to customize your message if you received an ASA DDRIG or NSF DDRI and share how the program helped shape your trajectory.

"Thank you for your understanding and continued support of ASA's efforts to promote the work of sociologists and the discipline of sociology. ASA DDRIG Program Team"

(See the recent DCSS news item on 2026 DDRIG awards to DMV scholars.)

US civil rights agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years

Associated Press, July 21

"How many women hold executive-level positions at top U.S. companies? What is the racial and ethnic breakdown of those roles? What is the gender and racial breakdown of the lowest-paid roles at those companies?

"The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know, moving to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.

"The EEOC’s Republican majority voted 2-1 Tuesday to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. The proposal is a quiet but profound salvo in President Donald Trump’s shake up of civil rights enforcement, ending a practice that has endured through 10 Republican and Democratic administrations."

Comment on the proposal

The Federal Register notice announcing and inviting comments on the proposed change is online here. Comments are due by August 24, 2026.

SUMMARY: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC" or  "Commission") is issuing a proposed rule to rescind and remove the requirements for the filing of the EEO-1, EEO-2, EEO-3, EEO-4, EEO-5, and EEO-6 reports, and the recordkeeping and record preservation requirements related to these reports, under 29 CFR part 1602 because it has preliminarily determined that the reports are inconsistent with equal employment opportunity law and potentially unconstitutional. It further finds the data collected is not narrowly tailored, is unnecessary to enforce anti-discrimination laws, and at a minimum, that any marginal benefits are outweighed by the substantial burdens imposed on both employers, who must submit these reports annually regardless of any specific allegation or indication of a potential violation of the statutes the EEOC enforces, as well as the Commission. As part of this proposed rule, the Commission also reminds stakeholders that, in a notice of proposed rulemaking issued on November 21, 2024, the Commission proposed incorporating into part 1602 references to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. In the interest of efficiency, the Commission currently intends to include these previously proposed part 1602 revisions in the final rule issued at the conclusion of this rulemaking.

SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the Harmful 2025 Republican Reconciliation Law Is Implemented

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 21

"The harmful Republican reconciliation law enacted July 4, 2025, poses great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger. It makes deep cuts to federal funding for food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), shifting significant new costs to states. It dramatically expands SNAP’s already harsh and ineffective provision taking away people’s benefits for not meeting a work requirement. And it ended eligibility for many people with a lawful immigration status. 

"We estimate that SNAP participation nationwide fell by more than 4.5 million people (11 percent) between the law’s July 2025 enactment and April 2026, based on the latest month of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and data from the Georgia Department of Human Services provided in an open records request. This estimate uses state data for Georgia due to anomalies in USDA data."

Read the complete report on the Center's website

Homeland Security Limits How Long International Students Can Stay in U.S.

Inside Higher Ed, July 16

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday scrapped a long-standing policy that allowed international students to stay in the U.S. until they finish their program of study. The new rule will limit their stay in the country to just four years unless they receive an extension, as well as restrict students’ ability to change majors and institutions once they’ve arrived.

"International education leaders and experts have argued that four years is not enough time for a significant number of students to complete their degrees; almost all Ph.D. programs are longer than four years, while the average undergraduate takes more than four years to complete their bachelor’s degree."

"The increasing availability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools has raised important questions about how these technologies are being adopted by individuals and how they affect daily activities across work and non-work domains. Despite the rapid growth of AI applications, there are currently no federal surveys that link individuals' use of AI to a detailed record of their activities.

"The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is uniquely positioned to fill this gap. By pairing new AI questions with the ATUS time diary, the collection will allow researchers and policymakers to understand when, how, and for which tasks people use AI tools. No other national survey provides this level of behavioral insight; existing federal surveys may collect limited information on technology use, but none provide activity-level detail or link AI use to a continuous 24-hour record.

"Office of Management and Budget clearance is being sought for a new module to the ATUS with a set of questions regarding AI. These questions will provide the first nationally representative data linking AI use to detailed, activity level time use information. The AI items will supplement the ATUS by identifying:

• Whether individuals have used AI tools;
• The tasks for which individuals use AI;
• How AI use varies across demographic and occupational groups; and
• How AI use relates to time spent in work, education, household production, and leisure.

"The information collected will allow BLS and external researchers to examine how AI interacts with individuals' daily activities, analyses that cannot be conducted using any existing federal data sources. The data will be used to produce public-use microdata files, tabulations, and technical documentation.

"The proposed AI questions will be fielded beginning in January 2027 for a two-year period, allowing BLS to capture early patterns of adoption during a time of rapid technological and behavioral change."

Read the complete Federal Register notice and submit comments by September 8, 2026.

[Articles cited here may require a subscription]

“The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) told multiple grant recipients last week they won’t receive continuing funding for previously awarded projects, cutting off dollars for ongoing efforts to improve America’s health-care system through research and training for new scientists and clinicians. The agency cited the ‘best interest of the federal government.’” (“An Agency That Supports Health-Care Improvement Cuts Off Grant Funding” Inside Higher Ed, July 19)

“Trump administration ends dozens of grants for studying patient care” (Science, July 17) “Nonaward” notices discontinue grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality whose annual funds had been stalled.

“Another Round of Grant Terminations at AHRQ” Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (July 23) “The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has suffered yet another round of grant terminations. Over the past year and a half, AHRQ has lost nearly all extramural grants staff, halted peer review panels, failed to obligate any awarded funds, and has not released any new Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs).”

"On June 4, 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued Department Administrative Order 216-26, which limits the disclosure avoidance methods that may be used for Census Bureau and BEA statistical products, identifies coarsening as the preferred approach for protecting confidentiality, and prohibits differential privacy and other forms of noise infusion. This is a departure from previous practice, which left those decisions primarily to the statistical agencies themselves. Several professional associations—including the Association of Population Centers, APDU, COPAFS, ICPSR, and the Population Association of America—issued a joint statement raising concerns about the order and calling for it to be rescinded.

"We created the Disclosure Avoidance Explorer, a new interactive tool that lets you compare six disclosure avoidance methods side by side. Apply each method to a hypothetical census table and see how different approaches balance confidentiality protection with data utility."

Read the complete blog post from the Population Reference Bureau, "What Does 'Coarsening' Look Like?" (July 15, 2026)

See the previous DCSS news item on this topic.

[Update, July 12] Stand Up For Science has an extensive action center, including tips for submitting a comment. Important: Personalize your comment to make it count! You may comment anonymously, and your comment need not be lengthy.

"Comments Flood OMB Proposal to Cement Political Control of Grants" (Inside Higher Ed, July 7) "The White House Office of Management and Budget has so far received 90,000 public comments on its plans as scientific and other groups rally against them. ... The input might lead the White House to alter its proposal. But, even if that doesn’t happen, opponents say the comments could still slow implementation of the changes because the OMB must reply to them. And a monsoon could persuade Congress, which has repeatedly rejected Trump’s previous proposals to gut research funding, to use its power to stop these changes. Comments also put into the public record objections that, if the government doesn’t address them, could be raised again in lawsuits to stop the changes."

"Trump administration stands by controversial OMB proposal despite growing resistance" (Chemistry World, July 2)

From 27 UNIHTED, NIH Alumni Action Network advancing the future of biomedical research for human health. Not gov. affiliated. "Political control of NIH is about to become the law, but you can stop it" (June 29)

"Read our short guide on the "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," learn how you can leave an effective comment, and other actions you can take"

The deadline to submit comments is July 13.

You may submit comments anonymously. The link for comments is https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001

For background, see the previous DCSS news items:

"Further updates on Trump Administration attempt to politicize federal grantmaking" (June 28)

"Updated: White House Aims to Establish Political Oversight of Federal Grants; Comments Needed" (June 4)

You may also view the video recording of a July 1 webinar from the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), "Guidance on OMB’s Proposed Rule" (recorded July 1)

New NSF policy would ban almost all collaborations with Chinese scientists

Science, July 10, 2026

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to ban collaborations between every U.S. scientist it funds and nearly all Chinese research institutions and their employees. The new policy abandons NSF’s earlier attempt to balance the potential risks and benefits of such collaborations. But it puts the agency in step with actions taken earlier this year by the much larger Department of Defense (DOD) and with congressional Republicans, who assert that any interactions with China threaten national security.

"The new policy, posted on Wednesday and still being digested by university administrators, relies on lists of so-called restricted entities maintained by DOD and other federal agencies. The lists contain the names of hundreds of leading Chinese universities, national laboratories, and other research institutions. Any interactions with “the employees of such restricted entities” is taboo, the NSF policy notes. There are a handful of notable omissions, however, including Tsinghua University, which last week announced it had hired away the 2025 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Omar Yaghi, from the University of California, Berkeley."

Read the complete article on the journal website.

"ASA is pleased to announce Cohort 53 of the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP). These talented PhD candidates were chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants to receive financial support and professional development opportunities as they write their dissertations, as well as lifelong fellowship with the 500+ MFP Fellows.

"Deonté M. Hughes is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests broadly focus on family sociology, race, racism, stress, and health. His dissertation, titled Familial Bonds, Black Families, and Well-Being: Three Essays on the Utilization of Familial Bonds in Black Families Across Social Contexts, quantitatively examines how the effectiveness of kinship bonds as a source of strength on the health and well-being of Black families is influenced by social contexts created by structural racism over time. Hughes’s research has been supported by the University of Maryland Graduate School and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. His work has been published in the Journal of Family Issues and The Handbook of Social Psychology. Hughes earned his BA in sociology at Longwood University, and his MA in sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Outside of research, Hughes enjoys attending poetry slams, playing video games, and spending quality time with his loved ones."

See the complete list of fellows on the ASA website.