{"id":409766,"date":"2026-07-23T18:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/409766\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T18:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:57:10","slug":"white-house-used-keyword-screening-to-kill-billions-in-california-research-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/409766\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Used Keyword Screening to Kill Billions in California Research Grants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The researchers\u2019 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\u2019ll happen is scheduled for Oct. 20.<\/p>\n

The federal agencies made the admission about the keywords in signed stipulations filed in federal court last week in a case called Thakur v. Trump that\u2019s been ongoing since last spring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stipulations in the court filing show the agencies \u201cdid not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant\u201d and instead used \u201cgeneral criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award\u2019s compliance, or performance,\u201d the lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote.<\/p>\n

\"\"U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House on July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Saul Loeb\/Pool – Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the UC professors now contend that the admission proves three wide-ranging constitutional violations:<\/p>\n

By using keyword searches to review hundreds of grants and terminate them en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits, the Trump administration targeted research it found politically disfavorable, which is a First Amendment violation.
\nIn terminating 283 Department of Energy grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and leaving untouched hundreds of grants that went to \u201cred\u201d states, the Trump administration wrongly punished researchers for merely living in states the White House politically opposed.
\nAnd by terminating billions of dollars in grants, and never rerouting that money to other grant opportunities, the Trump administration violated the constitution by not spending money in ways Congress specifically required through laws it passed on how research funds should be used.<\/p>\n

CalMatters emailed the U.S. Department of Justice, which acts as the legal defense for the federal agencies, on July 16 to ask whether it agrees that the federal grant-making agency stipulations mean the Trump administration violated the constitutional rights of researchers. A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn\u2019t respond by publication time.<\/p>\n

History of lawsuit<\/p>\n

The judge in this case, Rita F. Lin, has repeatedly sided with the UC professors and issued several preliminary injunctions forcing the federal agencies to restore the grants while she reviews the full merits of the case.<\/p>\n

This includes the restoration of hundreds of grants at UCLA that the Trump administration sought to suspend over its allegations<\/a> that the university tolerated antisemitism and permitted transgender women to compete on women\u2019s sports teams.<\/p>\n

Those allegations were also the subject<\/a> of a demand from the White House for UCLA to pay $1.2 billion or experience an additional cascade of research freezes. However, months before Trump sought that settlement UCLA took steps to address antisemitism on campus, including commissioning a task force to recommend ways to create a more welcoming environment for Jewish students.<\/p>\n

\"\"People walk on the plaza outside Royce Hall, the site of 2024 pro-Palestinian protests, on the UCLA campus on July 30, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Lin, a Biden appointee, faulted the administration for disregarding those efforts by UCLA in a preliminary injunction for a different but related lawsuit. The Trump administration\u2019s justification for terminating the grants did not \u201cmention the remedial steps UCLA had already taken to address the issues described,\u201d Lin wrote.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for professors in the Thakur case now want Lin to make a final ruling ordering the grants to be restored, rather than a preliminary one. Even if that were to happen, the federal agencies could decide to appeal Lin\u2019s ruling to a higher court.<\/p>\n

The stakes \u201care huge,\u201d lawyers for the professors in the Thakur case wrote. If the White House is \u201callowed to terminate this funding, the researchers, graduate students, and program staff that relied on the grants to pursue their lives\u2019 work will all suffer significant damage to their reputations and careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawyers warn of lifesaving cures that will never be developed, new understandings of diseases that will go unexplored, and the decline in the country\u2019s global standing as an international juggernaut in publicly funded research.<\/p>\n

Using keywords to target disfavored grants<\/p>\n

The agencies admitted to using keywords in various ways, according to a CalMatters review of the new court filings.<\/p>\n

The Department of Transportation identified<\/a> six grants for projects worth about $42 million to terminate because they sought \u201ctransportation equity,\u201d prioritized \u201cdisadvantaged communities,\u201d or focused on \u201cdiversifying the transportation workforce\u201d and \u201cequity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The termination of three of those grants led by a UC Davis professor resulted in 77 researchers abandoning 79 in-progress projects. Lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote that the project leaders were also forced to lay off or scramble to replace funding for more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.<\/p>\n

\"\"Students rally in front of Sproul Hall at the University of California, Berkeley on Nov. 15, 2024, to demand a livable future during president-elect Donald Trump\u2019s next term. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The National Institutes of Health admitted to using an internal search tool to flag UC grants that mentioned \u201chealth equity,\u201d \u201cwork force diversity,\u201d \u201cstructural racism,\u201d and \u201csexual orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NIH alone suspended or cancelled more than 1,000 UC grants, including nearly 700 at UCLA, related to vaccines, cancer research and disparities in health outcomes. That figure is newly disclosed in a court filing \u2014 last year, UCLA indicated that closer to 500 NIH grants were terminated.<\/p>\n

The health research agency also declared that it\u2019s possible that DOGE, the short-lived<\/a> federal office that billionaire Elon Musk led in 2025, used AI to target grants for termination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The researchers\u2019 legal team is now asking the judge in the case to skip a trial and formally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-409766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}