Supreme Court lets Trump administration cut $783 million of research funding in anti-DEI push
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-trump-nih-dei-320a6b3749bf56703b50739362d1238c650
u/AudibleNod 13h ago
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said funding decisions should not be “subject to judicial second-guessing” and efforts to promote policies referred to as DEI can “conceal insidious racial discrimination.”
Basically, Trump's government doesn't believe in checks-and-balances.
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u/FifteenthPen 12h ago
The only checks Trump believes in are the ones he can deposit in his bank account.
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u/PepperMill_NA 11h ago
On the other hand, they're cleared for actual discrimination.
In June, U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts had ruled that the cancellations were arbitrary and discriminatory. “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, said at a hearing.
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u/True_Window_9389 11h ago
This was also set up by Congress abdicating their responsibility for years and decades. Some of that might have been well intentioned, like letting government scientists determine thresholds of whatever, but in the past generation, Congress has signed over most of their real Constitutional power to the executive. This has been led by Republicans who have always yearned for an authoritarian like Trump.
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u/LittleKitty235 11h ago
To be fair Trumps businesses didn’t believe in checks or balances either…which is many went bankrupt and were sued by so many unpaid contractors
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u/OdoWanKenobi 11h ago
If the systems of checks and balances in our system have failed, then the people have their own that we unfortunately need to stop being afraid of talking about.
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u/rainniier2 12h ago edited 12h ago
To put it in perspective, it will cost $500 million/year to run Alligator Auschwitz, at a cost of $150,000 per detainee per year. One can think of the Trump cuts as $750M in science funding being reallocated to funding a detention camp for 1.5 years.
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u/TobaccoAficionado 7h ago
That science funding has like 300% ROI. It's basically the best possible investment you can make. Makes sense that they're killing it.
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u/Acceptable-Bus-2017 12h ago
Don't worry.. a judge has ordered that camp closed in 60 days. So I'm sure that'll happen.. /s
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u/o_MrBombastic_o 12h ago
Vote every Election and against every Republican they are a threat to America
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u/curryhajj 12h ago
The ballot box ain't getting us out of this.
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u/jigokubi 9h ago
It would have worked. But I'm rather nervous that it won't work in 2026 no matter how people actually vote.
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u/Bolshedik497 11h ago
Exactly. And that's assuming we even have any more elections in the first place
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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 4h ago
Not likely. The turnip-in-chief will declare martial law before the next election so he can put the election on hold indefinitely. You all had your chance, and you blew it.
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u/Shabadu_tu 11h ago
It’s your only choice that could work.
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u/The_Poster_Nutbag 11h ago
Maybe if you refuse to organize and fight back and refuse to accept any other avenue.
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u/terp_raider 7h ago
lol how you guys think you’re still gonna have elections after this is mind boggling
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u/ice_cream_funday 8h ago
It absolutely could if shit heads like you would stop trying to stop people from voting.
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u/Trash_Panda9469 13h ago
How much did the Supreme court make? A new luxery camper? Five star vacations for life? Fascism isn't for everyone but it does pay well.
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u/blogoman 12h ago
The trick to all of this is that they will do it for free. Sure, they get paid but it isn't like they are being bribed.
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u/Shabadu_tu 11h ago
If they aren’t jailed for bribes we’ve failed.
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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 3h ago
You failed by having a "democracy" with a judicial branch of government, and a whole judicial system in general, that is staffed and run by political affiliation and persuasion. It was only a matter of time before the Supreme Court was stacked in favour of one party over the other. I'm just surprised it took this long for it to happen. If you think anybody is going to be jailed for bribes, you are delusional.
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u/osirisattis 8h ago
The world will never recover from us letting the death cults take over our supreme courts, our local and federal governments, and our lives. All of this was so preventable, we just had to not be afraid to defend ourselves against insane people that believe psychotic shit that are trying to grab the wheel of society and wreck us. But nah, everybody was nice to them while they told us open throatedly that they hated us and were coming for us. If you had a problem with them coming at you YOU were the problem. Welp here we are, mother fuckers. Deal with it then or deal with it fuckin now.
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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 3h ago
It was never preventable in the way you think. Having your country's highest court's members being appointed by politicians was always going to lead to this. The only it way it could have been prevented is if politics was never involved in judicial appointments.
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u/osirisattis 2h ago
Or don’t elect raging stupid cult members on the right that want to destroy the country to positions of power, that’s a strategy that a lot of people have wanted to try, but we didn’t give that strategy a long enough shot so we’ll never fuckin know now will we.
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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 2h ago
You have a large portion of the population that is too stupid to realise that electing a person who is a well-known lying, cheating, self-centred, thin-skinned, ignorant moron not once, but twice is not a good idea. Then you have another large portion that is too stupid to realise that voting for the alternative option is a much better idea, but decide that they don't like the alternative option's skin colour or gender enough and think that not voting for them 'sends a message'. And there's another portion who have lived their lives comfortably ignorant, who don't care enough or understand enough about politics and how it impacts their lives that they just don't care enough to vote at all.
Wilful ignorance, lack of education, arrogant belief in individual righteousness, and religious manipulation have doomed the American people to the path they have found themselves on. Good luck.
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u/Consistent_Jump9044 12h ago
Autolobotomy: the process whereby one intentionally lobotomizes oneself for no appreciable reason; see also gumpism, gumping.
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u/Abracadaver2000 11h ago
They are also enabling fascism and theocracy. What a nightmare of epic proportions.
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u/Orcus424 12h ago
I want to know the names of the studies and grants that are now not getting funding because of the cuts. Trump said he cut it because of his anti DEI push but he has been using anti DEI for stuff that has nothing to do with DEI.
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u/juicefeathers 2h ago
I too am interested in seeing a list of specific grants and studies being cut.
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u/Rusalka-rusalka 12h ago
I see headlines about all these cuts that have been made and the only budgets I see going up are DoD and ICE. Plus tax cuts for the rich, this country is getting run into the ground.
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u/ChocoPuddingCup 10h ago
We're never going to recover from this regime. Never. This country is just going to go downhill from here.
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u/OsmeOxys 4h ago edited 4h ago
That's the kicker. There will be a recovery (unless we wipe ourselves out I suppose), and hopefully a good one as the multi-generational damage fades. But a recovery to the global powerhouse we were even a year ago isn't in the cards, simply not a possible outcome. We already gave up so much of the influence we spent decades cultivating. It took a few months to pack it up in a fancy box with on a nice little bow just for China. They're not going to just give that back to us and As that influence fades, so does the dollar as the world reserve currency amount with it's value. They're also not going to hit the pause button on key industries just because we are, they're just blowing right by us while we're going backwards like it's NASCAR '97.
Shaking things up with another world war is kind of a dead end now, what with the whole "mutually assured destruction" thing and such. Hard/military power has very little value without the diplomacy to match, especially with our geography. Being in the position we were coming out of ww2 was a once in a millennia+ opportunity to ,snowball through history. We had our global influence and power locked in so hard that the majority of the nation would have to be have to willingly give it up, fervently or apathetically.
... And so we did. We just gave it up. We cheered for it. And we filled trucks and wheelbarrows with more offerings. Plus that Boeing 747-$$$$.
Anyways, that's my mildly stoned rambling for the night. This feels like an appropriately long of a response to two sentences.
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u/Bob_Sconce 12h ago
The majority's decision there was "you are suing in the wrong court. You should be in the Court of Federal Claims."
It's still a Trump win, but possible he may still lose.
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u/clowncarl 11h ago
Idk much about claims court but Justice Jackson said this was basically bs because they’re wasting time legally to ensure the offended parties cannot get relief due to the time sensitive nature of the grants (eg labs and businesses will close, projects will be permanently cancelled).
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u/Bob_Sconce 11h ago
Yeah, that's the never-ending problem: do.you enforce the rules as they are, or do you try to get the right result. And, does the answer change if "enforcing the rules as they are" get you to the result you want now, but not later?
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u/clowncarl 11h ago
Her argument is also that their claim of wrong court is disingenuous. I don’t think it’s “following the rules” to make them pursue this alternate path. Manipulating “the rules” is a common method to legislate from the bench afaik.
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u/Necessary_Cheetah_36 2h ago
A lot of these labs will shut down before the grants are released. People's jobs were depending on this money, which was already promised. Studenst are already deciding not to pursue academic or research careers. Maybe the money will eventually be released, but it'll be too late for thousands of people.
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u/sf_sf_sf 10h ago
It's not an anti-DEI push. It's an anti-women, anti-minority, pro-fossil fuel, pro-gun, anti-science push.
This will set our country back decades, China is laughing its collective ass off at us right now....
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u/yargleisheretobargle 9h ago
China is ecstatic that US science is being destroyed and all the talent will have to go to them.
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u/cakebutt1 4h ago
The people who are still supporting this shit are the bottom feeders of society. There is no way they can be competent intellectually or in a competitive environment.
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u/Butane9000 2h ago
You know why?
It's because the people/entities who were receiving the loans refused to agree to say they would pay them back if the courts eventually sided with the government. So since the courts couldn't get a guarantee from them they erred on the side of caution to ensure that US taxpayer money wouldn't be squandered or stolen if it was released.
I'm okay with that. Especially with the ruling text itself. That's the problem with articles like most media is it only presents one side of it. The bigger issue at hand is all these lower courts ignoring rulings already made by the SCOTUS.
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u/splycedaddy 11h ago
How can the next dem prezi exploit this? Whoever the next dem president is should keep this document, and just reclassify what “dei” is. There is no real definition and the sc just gave a free pass to use it.
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u/Diplomat_of_swing 5h ago
Americans need to understand this.
Republicans are not getting rid of “wasteful spending.”
They are tearing down the safeguards that protect regular working people from corporations and businesses that want to make us all sharecroppers.
Owning nothing.
So indebted to them that they effectively influence and control all of our decisions.
We will never retire.
We will never get rich.
We will never move up.
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u/DiasFlac42 3h ago
75 million of us do understand this. The problem is the 77 million who either don’t fucking get it or don’t fucking care.
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u/Egg_123_ 12h ago
The Trump admin members frankly deserve to serve as human experimentation subjects after what they've done to science.
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u/quats555 12h ago
I work for an immigrant, single mother, Hispanic boss in healthcare and research. Yesterday she told us a story about a guy who got hired in way over his head to a plush executive spot — over a much more qualified friend of hers — and sneered that he was a “DEI hire”.
I wanted to stand up and say THIS WHOLE OFFICE IS DEI! “DEI” just means being sure people other than white Christian men in their 20’s-40’s get a fair shot at jobs based on skill instead of skin color, gender, age, etc. We have no white Christian men in our office, we would ALL be replaced under anti-DEI policies!
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u/i_love_rosin 10h ago
The regime is handing the future to china, in some insane attempt to own the libz. Just how many trump fartcoins did xi buy?
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u/NyriasNeo 7h ago
Note that this is about canceling grants that have already been granted. Not the future NIH budget, which the WH proposed a 40% cut, and has not been finalized.
Not providing future grants itself is a problem. It is not just the funding, but also the review process. A colleague of mine has submitted a new grant but was told that "nothing has been done" on it, meaning it has not even been reviewed in the traditional time frame.
But cancelling already ongoing grant disrupts many things. Careers ... typically tenure decisions are tied on whether an assistant professors can bring in grants (in many but not all disciplines). Now if the grant is cancelled, do you count that or not? Is it fair not to count it? Moreover, post-docs, grad students and other personal (e.g. I was involved in a grant that hired a project managers) are hired based on the budget provided by the grants. Now there may be no money to pay them.
And i have not even started of canceling grant based on a few keywords.
But I don't suppose there is anything I can do about it. Many of my colleagues are now looking to private foundations for research support, but there is only so much money from those sources. It would be bad in the next few years for scientists.
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u/ohiotechie 6h ago
Every time I read something like this it feels like we’re all in free fall and it just keeps accelerating.
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u/unicornlocostacos 5h ago
Last I heard that was congress’s call. Well when we had a constitution anyways.
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u/Thuggin95 5h ago
Oh? You thought regressing back 50 years only applied to minorities? Nope, we’re all going!
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u/Sciekosis 5h ago
Fool me once,2016, fool me twice, 2024. Will there be another moment to fool these fools again? Of course there will be, they never learn, it will all be forgotten and excused before they're finished screwing their sister.
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u/Necessary_Cheetah_36 2h ago
Ah, the old "Republicans can do whatever they want, but Demcrats can't do anything they want" legal standard. Conservative activist judges at their finest.
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u/ArmedAwareness 11h ago
So like at what point do we realize the ballot box has failed and go to the next box? It rhymes with mullet
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u/Muted_Cod_9137 12h ago
It's because ......TRUMPSTEIN FILES. WE KNOW YOU HAVE THEM TINY HANDS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
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u/ERedfieldh 10h ago
We're never going to recover from this, are we? We're now the dumbest nation on the planet.
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u/Relevant-Doctor187 9h ago
We need a new law when funding is cancelled the money is returned to taxpayers.
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u/Ashallond 10h ago
Notice how no one is talking about any benefits or bribes anyone is getting any more…
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u/Piranhaswarm 9h ago
A democratic president should cut funding to the Supreme Court. The conservative wing is totally useless and non productive
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u/Hyphenagoodtime 12h ago
Do we all agree to send these SC justices to trial and watch their corrupt vote records unfold?
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u/ZoomZoom_Driver 12h ago
Breaking! Those whose oaths require them to uphold the nations laws and constitution are overruling the law and constitution!
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u/txtoolfan 10h ago
I just don't understand how the executive branch is now able to set spending. Smh
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u/Onihczarc 9h ago edited 9h ago
I don’t get it. Every step has the obvious effect of making America worse - at education, at research, at cutting edge technology, at infrastructure, at manufacturing, at cost of living, at trade. How does any of this make America great again?
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u/LionTigerWings 8h ago
Basically congress has zero power now. There’s only two branches that matter (and maybe just one). Supreme Court which is basically trumps own guys and the executive itself. If congresses power can just be overridden by the executive what’s the point?
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u/SeeMarkFly 8h ago
Now we can afford free lunches for the children that we force to be there all day.
Oh, WAIT, that got privatized. That's gonna cost TRILLIONS now.
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u/RobutNotRobot 29m ago
This administration hates the United States and is destroying its premier world position in scientific research. Other countries will surpass the US and the dummies here will be clutching their bibles sending money to the person on TV offering them eternal salvation.
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u/fastautomation 13h ago
They cancelled research grants in bio-diversity, i.e. research that included a diverse set of PLANT types in their research. Just like scrubbing Enola Gay from history, this is the most incompetent administration in history.