White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants

Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities. 

It’s an admission that lawyers for the research professors say is proof that the agencies illegally cancelled nearly $2 billion in grants. And that’s a major development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration to permanently get their grants back. The researchers’ legal team is now asking the judge in the case to skip a trial and formally declare that the White House repeatedly violated the constitution, including the First Amendment. A court hearing on whether that’ll happen is scheduled for Oct. 20.