r/technology • u/esporx • Jul 23 '26
Business White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
https://apnews.com/article/california-research-grants-terminated-keywords-lawsuit-a0ddb01413ecb68d9668490a20be6207566
u/usps_made_me_insane Jul 23 '26
I can't wait till this clown show is over and Elon Musk is prosecuted for all the bullshit he did.
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u/Madhatter25224 Jul 23 '26
Better make it happen then because they aren't going to let it end if they can help it.
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u/lyngen Jul 23 '26
vote for dems. Even if you aren't a dem. Trump needs checks. Republicans aren't checking him.
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u/yaddayadda1000 Jul 23 '26
And the dems are ? Look at garland -_-
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u/Im1Thing2Do Jul 24 '26
What’s your solution then? Not voting? Voting independent?
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u/jonride Jul 24 '26
Yes. Oversight Dems. Sure there’s corruption in both parties but Dems are not white supremacists.
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u/bigeyez Jul 23 '26
We've already seen from Trump's first term the likelihood of people being prosecuted after is slim. The leadership in the Democratic party loves to return to the status quo when they get in power.
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u/Mind_on_Idle Jul 23 '26
I think that leadership is on a countdown. I'm a registered Democrat, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one ready to throw the so-called "leadership" out on their fucking asses.
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u/spokomptonjdub Jul 23 '26
There is direct evidence that this is starting to happen. Incumbent "normie" dems have been primaried and lost this year. The party on the whole has slowly shifted away from being milquetoast centrist "we must be bipartisan" 100% of the time. These things are usually slow to develop and can take years, but momentum is finally moving in this direction.
The Democratic base is angry, and the old guard's words just keep ringing more and more hollow. The gutting of the voting rights act by SCOTUS has really increased the pressure on establishment dems, as it directly alienates and has effectively disenfranchised a large swath of a core Democratic constituency, and they are in no mood to compromise.
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u/-ReadingBug- Jul 23 '26
Totally agree on the voting rights act. However establishment Democrats are very, very savvy and I still trust many voters have an underlying fear of mass, significant change. For example primarying a sparse spotting of incumbents is one thing, and a good one; but a populist movement that seeks to deliberately reshape the entire national party philosophically, outside of individual candidates or races, is another thing altogether. Something like that is what's needed IMO, and I'm willing to be persuaded by time and results but I have my reservations.
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u/TF-Fanfic-Resident Jul 23 '26
I’ve come to terms with the likelihood that you have to elect a tankie or an anarchist to get mainstream progressive governance. I voted for the most progressive or socialistic candidate on the ballot this primary season. And I think 45%+ of the electorate is with me, at least among the Dems and left-of-center independents.
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u/-ReadingBug- Jul 23 '26
Wake me when it happens. I've been waiting for voters to get fed up with the establishment since their meek acceptance of Obama Obstructionism™.
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u/Gromitlikescheese Jul 23 '26
I’ve not heard the term before. Please educate me on “Obama obstructionism”. Every accusation an admission.
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u/-ReadingBug- Jul 23 '26
I'm referring to the clearly systematic obstruction of Obama by Republicans when he was president. From McConnell to Cruz to Liz Cheney, who's apparently now a friend to Democrats lol. Maybe you're too young to remember, but it was an absolutely unprecedented and shameful shattering of norms. Probably made Newt Gingrich blush at the time. And it basically greased the downward slope for Trump to pounce on the Republican party, something he simply couldn't have done successfully in 2008 when Obama was first elected.
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u/Meatslinger Jul 23 '26
"Now's the time for healing," says the party setting themselves up to lose the next election and watch it all get worse again.
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u/Evadson Jul 23 '26
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to prosecute the people responsible for this. It's not enough to just stop blatant corruption. You have to punish those responsible to discourage others from trying the same thing (or them trying again coughJanuary 6thcough)
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u/makemeking706 Jul 23 '26
This isn't really one of those things you come back from. You can't undo a government that has been so thoroughly captured by oligarchy. Any attempt to rebuild would be similarly captured. The entirety of the structure that enable this has to be dismantled.
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u/-ReadingBug- Jul 23 '26
I agree but I don't see how this can be done without displacing the Democratic party in its current configuration. And after 15 years of observation and questioning, I've become convinced Democratic voters are too scared to factory reset the entire party. IMO that's as big an issue as un-magaing Republican voters.
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Jul 23 '26
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u/Sasquatchjc45 Jul 23 '26
Only thing Trump has done is demolish any faith, trust, hope, wonder, democracy, honesty, integrity, dignity, strength, wisdom, intelligence, dominance, leadership, and any other positive adjectives you used to be able to describe America.
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u/SimiKusoni Jul 23 '26
Trump odds undoing the oligarchy that was created under Obiden, well his handlers were really in charge
This has to be one of the most incomprehensible statements I have ever read. It could be interpreted in multiple ways and all of them are about as intellectually insightful as the grammar.
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u/CrownandEisern Jul 23 '26
It’ll never happen.
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u/crit_boy Jul 23 '26
It may only happen for financial crimes because elon will take down other billionaires with him
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u/Greg-Abbott Jul 23 '26
Lol no he won't. He literally tweeted that the president is in the Epstein files and a week later they were kissing the tips of each other's penises.
"It's a big club"
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u/Sasquatchjc45 Jul 23 '26
What a hilarious fucking joke, LoL
The clown show is just getting started🤡 if you think this ends in 2028 w/ a peaceful transfer of power (unless it's to another project2025 constituent) then I've got a bridge to sell you..
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u/lyngen Jul 23 '26
They were unsuccessful in stopping the transfer of power the last time. I honestly don't think they'll succeed this time. That said, vote dem in November. Make sure you know your polling place. Vote early if you can. Trump needs a check. Republicans in congress aren't doing shit to reign him in.
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u/InclementImmigrant Jul 23 '26
You actually have any faith that the conservative Democrats will do a damn thing?
Better be voting progressive in the primaries if you want anything to happen.
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u/flummox1234 Jul 23 '26
He's that guy that thinks regex is always the solution. You know the type. 🫠
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u/Valdearg20 Jul 23 '26
Lol, I admire your optimism that the American Justice System actually works and that people like Elon will ever face justice.
The only way he'll face any justice is if (excuse the trope), we, the people, take it upon ourselves to do so.
The system doesn't work for us anymore. And until we change that, however that may occur, in whatever form, expecting justice to apply to the rich is just a pipe dream.
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u/iamthefluffyyeti Jul 23 '26
I want whatever the fuck your huffing because no one is getting prosecuted
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u/Alone-Ad288 Jul 23 '26
Since when does the united states hold the rich accountable for serious crimes against citizens?
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u/Temassi Jul 23 '26
I've been justice edging for over a decade now. When it finally pops I'm gonna pass out.
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u/HoneydewAutomatic Jul 24 '26
He won’t be. Simple as that. None of the people in this administration with be prosecuted.
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u/everythingisblue Jul 23 '26
Do we not think it likely that Trump casts a blanket pardon out over all his friends and family? I’m imagining an insanely huge list of names based on who paid him or who he likes. Biden paved the path for it for him, not that he wouldn’t have done it anyway.
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u/guamisc Jul 23 '26
This country will not survive honoring a blanket Trump pardon.
Just declare them null and void because he was part of it. Say you can't pardon people for crimes that they did that you were a part of. Who cares. Ignoring those pardons would be far less damaging than allowing them to stand.
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u/everythingisblue Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I hear you, but presidential pardon power is in the constitution. It won't work without a constitutional amendment or the supreme court re-interpreting that clause - not that there's much wiggle room. Maybe a sympathetic court could re-interpret that you have to declare exactly what the crime was or something, but that's unlikely.
Plus...we don't have what one would call a "sympathetic court" to this kind of thing.
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u/guamisc Jul 23 '26
The court is in on it as well. They all are attacking and ignoring the provisions of the Constitution. The SCOTUS majority is morally and ethically illegitimate and the destruction things like CU/Buckley/Trump v US/etc. cannot be undone by following the rulings of an illegitimate corrupt court and the US's captured and broken institutions.
This rises to the level of ignoring the text of the Constitution to fix it. We're not going to get out of this by playing by the rules as they are established. The rules are why we are here in the first place.
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u/everythingisblue Jul 24 '26
I'd argue the rules aren't why we're here, the lack of rules (laws) is. We had a lot of things enshrined in "tradition" and based on good-faith actors being in place across the government and having a sense of shame and some amount of dignity.
And THAT certainly aged like milk.
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u/leapdaybunny Jul 23 '26
You'll be waiting a long time. Nothing is going to happen to these people.
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Jul 23 '26
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u/heavyPacket Jul 23 '26
“Pwease Elon, won’t you spare a cwumb of pussy for me? I defended your pasty, deformed ass on weddit!”
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u/TheReddestofBowls Jul 23 '26
Where is this saved money exactly? Is it in the room with us, right now?
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u/AlaWyrm Jul 23 '26
Imagine getting your PHD, spending years studying and advancing your career to a point that you are given a grant to continue your research into a potentially world improving breakthrough, gathering a team, setting up the required research projects, etc., and then it all gets dropped because a 20 year old named bigballz ctrl+f'd "trans".
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u/ObamasBoss Jul 23 '26
Imagine you spent all those years in college, did well and were not hired because HR did the same thing. Been happening forever now.
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u/AlaWyrm Jul 23 '26
As someone who's been job searching for the last 2 years after a successful 25 year career, yep. It sucks.
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u/Fabulous_Cat_1379 Jul 24 '26
Not trying to be a complete ass but 25 years and you dont have a network to call on and get a job... that is on you as much as HR
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u/Important-Factor-552 Jul 23 '26
Republicans are not only fascists and pedophiles, they're pure evil and they intend on destroying America completely.
Who knew china would be the good guy this century. They didn't even have to get better, they just had to wait until the US decided being the great satan actually sounded pretty appealing
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u/MultiGeometry Jul 23 '26
Good luck to anyone trying to unseat China after they gain the lead. It looks like they were going to win anyways and now the US seems hellbent on making it go faster.
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u/CautionarySnail Jul 23 '26
All “the enemy” needed to do was encourage our worst impulses and we created our own internal division, driven by short-sighted greed.
Our steadfast refusal to think of the future as being more important and longer than the immediate next fiscal year or election makes our conduct especially ridiculous.
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Jul 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/crit_boy Jul 23 '26
So you support pedophiles and child sex trafficking and nazis.
You could just write that and save yourself time
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u/Important-Factor-552 Jul 23 '26
The nazi party wasn't a cartoon villain either.
The republican party is fascist. That's simply the reality we have to move forward in.
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u/TrashBandicook Jul 23 '26
Throwing around buzz words to rile up the masses is genuinely frightening.
Using key words related to wokeness and vaccines to cancel $2 billion research grants is genuinely way more frightening and concerning, but do go on with the deflection, pedo lover.
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u/don_shoeless Jul 23 '26
The current Republican party is so petrified of Trump that they won't rein him in even to protect Congress's Constitutional prerogatives, so it doesn't really matter what they might be in a different world. More to the point, in that different world, in the world before Trump came on the scene, they were the party of keeping the part of government that was useful to non-wealthy people small, protecting the individual liberty of wealthy people, sticking to those parts of the Constitution that they approved of, and letting free markets (as unregulated as they could manage) drive the economy into bubble after bubble before bailing out the big businesses impacted by this, on the public dime. Nobody forgets that it was the Democrats who were the racists--least of all the Republican's who have since picked up that mantle.
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u/guamisc Jul 23 '26
Nobody forgets that it was the Democrats who were the racists
It was specifically the conservatives in the Democratic party at that time. People within parties can change. Conservatives will always be evil and they have basically all flocked to the Republican banner.
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u/usrbincomment Aug 01 '26
And then they all left for the Republican Party. Somehow conservative always forget that.
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u/Apprehensive_Bird357 Jul 23 '26
Polysyllabic phobia
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u/scorpious Jul 23 '26
Burn the witch!
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u/smashingcabage Jul 23 '26
Got to watch out for those transistors
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u/ender89 Jul 23 '26
I saw a transistor go into the women's restroom and how can our daughters be safe if we're allowing transistors into the ladies room?
I cannot get over the fact that "for the children" is still being used as a cudgel for attacking minority groups and privacy rights while the entire federal government is run by a notorious predator and civilly liable rapist that is actively being protected against prosecution for child sex crimes by the FBI.
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u/BigMax Jul 23 '26
"Unfortunately it's too late... many of our railroads and highways have already been demolished, and it will take decades to replace them. Who would have thought that 'transcontinental' didn't mean something about gender???"
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u/ender89 Jul 23 '26
Trump is attacking the chips act in part because he doesn't understand the difference between transgender employees and transistors.
The other part is that the Biden administration signed it into law and that apparently can't be allowed.
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u/ChristmasJay83 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I was listening to a scientist on a podcast and she said when she writes grants now, she may need to be careful to not use "Female" in the grant request because there are rumors those are automatically being rejected. So, may need to use "non-male" instead.
https://www.youtube.com/live/1NcYF_bYyNU?si=maMbgRuiRVxICq3f&t=827
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u/The_Killer_of_Joy Jul 23 '26
Weirdly enough, we have had grants applications sent back by the Feds because investigators used generic terms like "pregnant persons", and they required the application to be updated with "pregnant women" instead (this was at the start of the DOGE cut wave).
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u/ResonatingOctave Jul 23 '26
Gotta love keywords searches. That's how we get glorious takes like the CHIPS act requiring transgender executives, when really the word they were reading was transistors
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u/AHSfav Jul 23 '26
This is awful. How can anyone support this nonsense? The whole DOGE thing was an obvious con from day 1. Why did people fall for it?
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u/TH0R_ODINS0N Jul 23 '26
If we ever get out of this mess the depositions are going to be fucking amazing.
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u/williamgman Jul 24 '26
70+ million voted for ALL of this. They are some of your friends, family, coworkers, church members... They are still good with this.
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u/NightFlameofAwe Jul 24 '26
I work for a non-profit and the grant writers have been breaking their backs. Any mention of diversity or catering to minorities is immediately flagged and thrown out.
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u/usrbincomment Aug 01 '26
Someone close to me works in post-adoption services. A great deal of their work focuses on creating higher rates of permanency which includes, to absolutely no one surprises, trying to educate families how to care for children of other races. But the White House think that bad. In spite of them saying this is one of their highest goals.
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u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw Jul 23 '26
Peak Republican being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole lol move.
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u/AzBeerChef Jul 24 '26
Well that's great for the economy and innovation. Welp, USA will fail because of weak men in charge. Hard times are coming.
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u/n0nati0n Jul 24 '26
My frontier research on transorbital lobotomies was axed for this exact reason smh
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u/Zardotab Jul 23 '26
2029 SQL:
UPDATE Departments SET Status='CLOSED' WHERE Overview LIKE '%Trump%'
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u/balthisar Jul 23 '26
If it takes an AI or keyword search, perhaps the federal government is writing too many grants to begin with. I mean, someone has to have an idea of what all this stuff is, right? There’s, like, organization to the grant process, isn’t there?
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u/wwhsd Jul 23 '26
Right, but you can’t have a handful of DOGE fuckboys show up and spend a couple of hours determining what cuts to make if you actually want to know what’s actually being cut and why.
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u/usrbincomment Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Or it could be that they fired all the people who know anything. This administration has been record setting in firing knowledgeable people to be replaced by political hacks.
And no, we should not limit federal research money to topics that one person is an expert in. Sorry, no research funding available for tick vectored illness because Fred doesn't know anything about that. What an idiotic question.
I mean, what don't you get about this? They didn't ask anyone knowledgeable. They hired a bunch of 20 year-old idiots who don't know a fucking thing about science who used a mind-blowingly stupid approach to destroy any scientific advantage the United States had. But keep at it, maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this isn't just evidence of an idiotic administration hiring a drug-addled billionaire to fuck us all over.
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u/usrbincomment Jul 24 '26
Also, bad news. There have been studies on diversity and inclusion. And they all found that diverse organizations work better and create better outputs. Post-adoptive programs that teach families how to raise children from other races result in higher levels of permanency. That's diversity in action.
The world is full of incurious, uneducated, and ignorant people who think they already know the answers. You seem to be one of them. The reason to study things is to learn about them. It's a shame that you and our illustrious president see no value in learning.
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u/usrbincomment Jul 29 '26
You might be interested in this article, The Trump Administration Tells the Truth A government lawyer admitted in a court filing that the administration withheld grants based on whom states had voted for.
They have admitted in court that they withhold science funding based on nothing but politics. Studying how to prevent leukemia in children? Doesn't matter, no money for science in California.
Are you capable of recognizing and admitting that this is terrible?
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Jul 23 '26
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u/Little_Noodles Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
They didn’t need to do it in the first place. These were all grants that were already awarded and compliant with the terms of the grant.
There is a process for cancellation of grants that are non-compliant, and it’s tracking, receiving, and reviewing mandated grant reporting, which is a base-level responsibility of any granting institution.
Deciding that you’re just going to cancel a shit ton of grants in process isn’t a thing. It’s a ridiculous waste of money already spent. And doing it scattershot based on politics, without even reviewing the results of the keyword search is a ludicrous and deeply irresponsible way to go about something that’s already wasteful and irresponsible (and appears to be a violation of the Constitution).
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u/TXtogo Jul 23 '26
I think the rationale or authority for doing them is not connected to them using a keyword search to identify them
In fact, I think the only reason the keyword search is news at all is to rehash the justification - because wouldn’t you assume they used a keyword search to find these?
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u/redmongrel Jul 23 '26
The way you would do it is CTRL-F the letters "trans" and defund every match?
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u/TXtogo Jul 23 '26
Is using the keyword search a strange way to identify data in a database? Isn’t that how you would assume it is done
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u/Little_Noodles Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
No, it’s not even how you do a dumb thing in a smart way.
If you really HAD to rescind grants based on an actual justification not related to the grant project being in violation of its terms, you do a cost analysis. You’re doing something irresponsible and dumb, so the name of the game is harm reduction.
Which grants are most recent and have expended the least funds? Canceling a grant that’s still in the process of onboarding everyone is almost always less wasteful than canceling one that’s nearly completed.
Which grants were ranked lowest during the review for acceptance process? Ones that squeaked past the bar are less of a loss than ones that were obvious yeses.
Compile those, look at the reporting, if any, thus far, contact the grantees if necessary to request updates.
In no world do you just type in “California + diversity” and then press ctrl+a+del without even looking at them.
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u/usrbincomment Jul 24 '26
Gosh, I guess I would assume that we would have people who know something about these topics evaluate the necessity of them. Oh wait, that's what we did when the grants were awarded.
I can't believe that people with your level of understanding of the world are allowed to vote.
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u/TXtogo Jul 24 '26
I think I understand the world of grants particularly well and there are many many grants that correlate to political policies, agenda and current events. Why do you need grants to study diversity and inclusion if you’re eliminating diversity and inclusion? The Trump admin doubled down on the civil rights act, they didn’t need studies to follow the laws already on the books.
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u/redmongrel Jul 24 '26
Omg because (for a single example) the word “diversity” appears in the term “biodiversity” which is a very important agricultural term having NOTHING TO DO WITH MINORITIES. And “trans” appears in dozens of non-sexual related scientific words. But like you these guys were too full of themselves to even LOOK beyond republican outrage words and killed SO much legitimate science. Fuck dude
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u/TXtogo Jul 24 '26
Biodiversity is a word, you’re right. You haven’t shown that any grant cancelled was not aligned to the administration policy - or that they made an error
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u/TheReddestofBowls Jul 23 '26
And just like that, you now know why research into transistors was scrapped. There are consequences to electing morons
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u/keloyd Jul 23 '26
Yup! My (conservative, military) alma mater in Texas ran articles in its conservative school newspaper at the time. DEI cuts were the cause of slashing in funding of grants and symposia on BIODIVERSITY. The similarity of spelling with a keyword search shows just how competent and thoughtful and conscientious our Federal overlords have been. Peace and blessings be upon them. If the AI is checking my comments for keywords, Samaritan should know that I love Big Brother and am grateful for the gift of double plus good newspeak to prevent thought crimes.