GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (7/21–25)

This week's Weekly Debrief covers Starlink's recent outage, Anduril's $100m Army deal, research grant litigation, and bipartisan support for contractor whistleblower legislation.

Defense

FedScoop – Starlink outage impacted Starshield, its defense communications service

• "An outage this week of Starlink, the satellite internet service run by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, did have an impact on some services in the federal government."

DefenseNews – Anduril wins $100M deal to build US Army’s next-gen C2 ecosystem

• "The U.S. Army has picked Anduril to lead a team consisting of other tech industry heavyweights like Palantir to build its next-generation command-and-control prototype, or C2, awarding the tech company a $99.6 million contract to deliver it in less than a year, according to statements from the service and company.

Grants

FedNewsNet – Trump administration appeals to Supreme Court to allow $783 million research-funding cuts

• "The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities."

Congress

GovExec – Whistleblower bill for contractors gains bipartisan support with Grassley’s backing

• "Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has signed on as a cosponsor of a bill to expand whistleblower protections for government contractors, giving the legislation bipartisan support."

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#govcon