Members of the House science committee want to gain greater control of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) decision making process, in hopes they can influence how the federal agency awards its funds.

Earlier this month, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, authored the High Quality Research Act, a draft bill that would require the NSF to publicly certify that each project it funds, along with meeting the agency’s current standards of intellectual merit and broader societal impacts, meets three additional criteria:

1. [The project] is in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;

2. is the finest quality, is ground breaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and

3. is not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies.

The draft bill provides no clarification as to how a project should be judged by these criteria — there are no explanations as to what qualifies as “finest quality” or whether “duplicative” refers to the need to prevent the federal government from paying for the same research projects twice, or whether the committee believes any project that is similar to another, already funded project should not receive funding. And the bill doesn’t stop at politicizing the decisions of the NSF. It also goes on to state that, after it’s put in place, other federal science agencies should adopt the same standards.

In addition to authoring the legislation, Smith wrote a letter last week to the director of the NSF, expressing his concerns over specific projects funded by the agency and requesting access to the agency’s reviews of the projects. The letter drew the ire of Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), the science committee’s top Democrat. In a letter to Smith, Johnson asks that he withdraw his request for NSF review documents and cautions that “the moment you compromise both the merit review process and the basic research mission of NSF is the moment you undo everything that has enabled NSF to contribute so profoundly to our national health, prosperity, and welfare.”

This is not the first time that congressional Republicans have taken aim at the NSF’s funding process. Last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) attached an amendment to Senate legislation that banned the NSF from funding any political science projects in 2013 unless they promoted “national security or the economic interests of the United States.” The amendment was approved and the legislation, which kept the federal government running past March 27, was passed. Smith’s draft bill, along with Coburn’s — and other Republicans’ — historic skepticism of the NSF add evidence to an increasing number of voters’ attitudes that the party is anti-science.

Twenty five years after an amendment to the National Organ Transplant Act made it illegal for HIV-positive Americans to receive organ transplants from HIV-positive donors — or to even conduct research on such transplants — a bipartisan group of senators is hoping to reverse course.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act in the Senate on Thursday to “establish a regular review process in which the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary would evaluate the progress of medical research” into organ transplants between two HIV-positive people, with the eventual goal of eliminating the ban on such procedures entirely.

The amendment that led to the current ban was a consequence of the poor understanding of HIV/AIDS-related matters at the time. But as Coburn — who is a physician — said in a press release introducing the legislation, “Our scientific understanding of AIDS is much better than when this research ban was established. Those infected with HIV are now living much longer and, as a consequence, are suffering more kidney and liver failures. If research shows positive results, HIV positive patients will have an increased pool of donors.”

The number of HIV-positive patients successfully receiving liver, kidney, and heart transplants has been on the rise overall, as there is no formal law prohibiting HIV-positive patients from receiving organs from Americans who do not carry the virus. But the new push to end the ban on transplants between two HIV-positive individuals reflects the huge strides in HIV treatments and medical innovation over the last two decades, including the recent FDA approval of a once-a-day HIV treatment pill and vastly increased life expectancy for HIV-positive Americans.

Opening up avenues for organ transplants is especially critical given America’s unsustainable dearth of annually performed transplant operations, which leaves more than 70,000 Americans on transplant lists without the organs they need every year. “With so many lives at stake, it is time to end this outdated ban on research into organ donations between HIV-positive individuals,” Boxer said in the release. A concurrent bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA), a registered nurse.

As the Senate moves to a final vote on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), today 93 Senators endorsed an amendment to combat human trafficking. While opposing human trafficking is a fairly non-controversial subject, five far-right Republicans broke with the majority of their own caucus and opposed the bipartisan amendment.

The amendment, authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), strengthens VAWA by reauthorizing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The measure helps law enforcement investigative human trafficking and supports international efforts to stop the practice. Leahy noted that on the anniversary of President Lincoln’s birth, “we continue to fight human trafficking, which can amount to modern day slavery,” making the amendment a fitting tribute. “The United States remains a beacon of hope for so many who face human rights abuses. We know that young women and girls – often just 11, 12, or 13 years old – are being bought and sold. We know that workers are being held and forced into labor against their will. People in this country and millions around the world are counting on us.”

The amendment was opposed by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Lee also voted against even allowing the Senate to consider the Violence Against Women Act, based on his bizarre belief that the entire bill is unconstitutional.

Prior to his time in the Senate, Johnson famously opposed the bipartisan Wisconsin Child Victims Act, a bill to extend the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes. His objection was that it would be bad for business if employers who help cover up the crime could be “severely damaged, possibly destroyed, in a legitimate desire for justice.”

Leahy said of the the Trafficking Victims Protection Act:

This measure strengthens criminal anti-trafficking statutes to ensure that law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to effectively combat all forms of trafficking. It ensures better coordination among federal agencies, between law enforcement and victim service providers, and with foreign countries to work on every facet of this complicated problem. It includes measures to encourage victims to come forward and report this terrible crime, which leads to more prosecutions and help for more victims. We have included accountability measures to ensure that Federal funds are used for their intended purposes, and we have streamlined programs to focus scarce resources on the approaches that have been the most successful. A Senator asserted yesterday that trafficking programs have been wasteful and duplicative. In fact, the programs supported by this amendment have been carefully tracked and shown to be effective. Nonetheless, the amendment reduces authorization levels by almost a third from the levels in the last reauthorization because we are determined to ensure efficiency and respond to concerns. We have made similar efforts to streamline VAWA.

The offices of the five Senators were not immediately available to respond to questions about their rationales for opposing the amendment.