Judge slams NIH grant cuts as racist, “appalling”; White House attacks judge

The Trump administration has locked horns with a federal judge who ruled on Monday that more than $1 billion in DEI-fueled cuts to federal health research clearly discriminated against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people.

In what The New York Times dubbed a “damning assessment” of Trump’s motives, Judge Williams G. Young ruled from the bench that the cuts were “void and illegal,” saying it was his “duty” to immediately order funding restored.

“I would be blind not to call it out,” Young said, declaring that in 40 years, he has “never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

“This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” he said. “That’s what this is.”

Back in March, Trump terminated what researchers estimate was more than $3 billion in grants. Some of those grants supported research into health equity, racial disparities, vaccine hesitancy, and maternal health in minority communities, the NYT noted. Soon after, a coalition of Democratic-led states, as well as a group representing researchers and unions, sued, warning that canceling grants “jeopardized scientific progress” and put vulnerable populations at risk.

At the trial, Young asked Justice Department lawyer Thomas Ports what justification Trump had for eliminating the congressionally-appropriated funding, particularly pushing back on claims that such funding is “often used to support unlawful discrimination,” Politico reported.

Ports apparently failed to persuade Young that “it is an improvement to eliminate” programs “based on gender identity” that he alleged are “often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore rather than seriously examine biological realities.”