The Trump White House just said the quiet part out loud in a series of signed stipulations in the federal court case, Thakur v. Trump, a class-action lawsuit launched last spring by University of California researchers that accuses the Trump Administration of mass-killing billions of dollars in federal research grants based on political motivation.
Their new stipulations submitted to federal court all but prove that.
The Trump Admin’s court filing argued that federal agencies ” did not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant.” Instead, it utilized “general criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award’s compliance, or performance.” In that filing, the Trump White House admitted to using keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID-19 to screen projects, ultimately gutting any that didn’t align with Donald Trump’s platform and priorities.
Lawyers for the UC professors were quick to note that, instead of serving as a defense for their actions, the Trump Administration’s legal team essentially served them their proof of at least three massive Constitutional violations on a silver platter: