“Qualified” good news in that there will be appeals, of course, but still, this is hopeful. From Reuters, with bold text by me:
BOSTON, June 16 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Boston on Monday said the termination of National Institutes of Health grants for research on diversity-related topics by President Donald Trump‘s administration was “void and illegal,” and accused the government of discriminating against racial minorities and LGBT people.U.S. District Judge William Young during a non-jury trial said the NIH violated federal law by arbitrarily canceling more than $1 billion in research grants because of their perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Young said he was reinstating grants that had been awarded to organizations and Democratic-led states that sued over the terminations. And the judge indicated that as the case proceeds he could issue a more sweeping decision.“This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” said Young, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan. “Any discrimination by our government is so wrong that it requires the court to enjoin it and at an appropriate time, I’m going to do it.”Referring to the termination of grants for research related to issues involving racial minorities, the judge said he had in four decades on the bench “never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable.”“You are bearing down on people of color because of their color,” the judge said, referring to Trump’s administration. “The Constitution will not permit that.”
I’m glad they keep losing in court. If you’ve forgotten what’s at stake here — it’s impossible to keep up with the lawlessness and the lawsuits — ProPublica put together a long story last week talking to the scientists impacted by NIH grant cuts. Some of these research projects are done for even if the funding eventually gets restored, because they involve perishable samples or other time-limited factors, like, you know, active clinical trials involving cancer patients. But hopefully some can be saved.
Open thread.
(Also, hello, I am back from the Podcast Hole. Thanks to everyone who protested over the weekend.)
prostratedragon
Written for college students, but I think we all can work through this list:
“Your summer homework: Fifty small acts to safeguard American democracy”
David_C
This is great news, with hopefully more good news to come. The hard part is that time is running short in the fiscal year and the NIH staff is short-handed.
Rusty
Finally, someone calling out the naked racism and bigotry of Trump and his administration. The press won’t do it, the editorial pages and pundits whitewash it all. The administration and their enablers in the senate, house, and reactionary judges along with the right-wing throng of think tanks and more are bigots, racists and more. All college educated, mostly religious, well spoken, successful people who are homophobes, misogynists, racists and bigots. A Reagan appointee judge speaks more truth than all of our mainstream media combined. What a world we are living in.
satby
I think the biggest risk even with restored funding is that a number of the researcher may already have, or are planning to, move on to saner countries where their work is valued. The EU, Canada, and China all have been actively recruiting them. And if I were one, I wouldn’t trust that this decision would hold. Welcome as it is.
prostratedragon
You’re going to need these huskies.
Betty Cracker
This is great news — thanks for sharing it.
I am also glad they keep losing in court. I recently read somewhere that courts have checked this lawless administration more than 200 times and counting.
Baud
They changed Oscars voice on Duolingo. So weird.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Leaving in the dust their old record of losing in court ~60 times when they were trying to reverse the 2020 election outcome.
tobie
This is encouraging news. My big concern is that whatever progress we make in district and circuit courts is then overturned by SCOTUS. SCOTUS like the media has failed us.
I would love it if ProPublica did a deep dive into how motions panels are selected for the court of appeals in DC. It seems that every month since Trump was inaugurated the 3-judge motions panel consists of two very pro-Trump judges, which is hard to fathom given that court has 7 judges appointed by Obama and Biden, 3 by Trump, and one (Henderson) by GW Bush. Right now, the panel is Rao, Katsas & Walker. They will swiftly overturn any decision hostile to the admin.
stinger
@Baud:
What language?
Baud
@stinger:
Español.
Another Scott
Good news is good.
Meanwhile, … ArsTechnica.com:
Interesting.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@Rusty: I’ve reached the point where, unless they have already demonstrated true allyship with all the rest of us, I simply do not listen to white men anymore.
Everyone you describe, the bigots and racists and misogynists and homophobes in power are all white men.
2/3 of white men voted for Trump, the remaining third hates the Black and Jewish and female led Democrats and demand to be put in control.
I know there’s some great white dudes out there, especially here in this place; but TBH, the vast majority are not to be trusted.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
Something something except for all the others.
I remember seeing Lani Guinier give her talk on her voting proposal – you would get as many votes as there are candidates and could distribute them as you want. It offended the “one person, one vote” people, and thus probably would be harder to implement, but I wonder if it would give “better” results than ranked choice, or make any difference at all.
It’ll be interesting to see how the NYC primary turns out. Here’s hoping enough New Yorkers take it seriously and do their best to pick the better candidates.
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I agree no system is perfect, but that excerpt doesn’t make much sense absent a comparison to other systems. Name recognition is a big deal in other systems as well.
Rusty
@Professor Bigfoot: As an older white dude, I can say you don’t lie. There is a reason I have remained in any contact at all with the guys from my high school class, they are almost all MAGA at this point. From college, there is a strain of liberal, but Kamala “really wasn’t qualified.” What does surprise me are those who is never would have guessed to be caring and empathetic. They turned out to be the best kind of people, but didnt look different feom any of the rest of us when we were younger. Gives me hope for myself.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: This is a whole area of study and the people who are really into it have pet proposals that would make your head spin. A simpler one I’ve heard of is approval voting: you just mark all the candidates you don’t mind, and there’s some elaborate counting system that takes it from there. Advocates argue that it’s less gameable than ranked choice, but I suspect some voters would find it frustrating because they can’t express relative preferences besides yes or no.
In some countries, ranked choice leads to less divisive campaigning because you start to get people lobbying to get second-choice votes or to recommend other candidates for second choice. But in our current environment I suspect we’d get Green types actively discouraging ranking other candidates because being a spoiler is the actual goal.
Princess
@Another Scott: NYC is not as liberal/progressive as it thinks it is (or at least, as my NYC friends think it is).
Relatedly — you know how we always think we’re close to flipping Texas? NY is my bet for Blue to Red flip. I can imagine enough of the left defecting completely to hand it over, and the liberals are pretty centrist apart from some identity issues.
Maybe I’m extra pessimistic because I’m in NYC right now and the rich poor divide seems bigger and bitterer than ever. There feels like no care for poor or mentally ill people, no support, no compassion. I’ve been harassed a few times by desperate crazy people.
I think Cuomo takes this in a walk, which makes me sad.
Baud
@Princess:
It wasn’t that long ago that NY state and city reliability election Republican executives.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I believe the administration loses over 90% of their court cases.
Professor Bigfoot
@Rusty: Like I said, I KNOW there are some really GREAT white dudes out there— I know a few of ‘em personally; intelligent, capable men with huge hearts— but it seems almost like a cultural marker: “Who’s the biggest bully? Who’s the roughest, toughest, meanest hombre in this saloon, eh?”
Dominance and hierarchy over anything else, themselves naturally belonging at the top of any hierarchy.
The “manosphere” is an abject lesson in those pathologies.
RevRick
Gov. Gavin Newsom had a killing retort to Rep. Jason Smith (Asshole MO.) on Twitter yesterday, when the Republican suggested that California was a crime-ridden hellscape. Newsom replied: Your state has a 117% higher homicide rate.
Newsom probably could have noted that by every measure, California does better than Missouri.
Geminid
@Another Scott: The system New York City replaced with Ranked-choice required a runoff between first and second if the first-place primary finisher did not exceed 40% of the vote.
This was in contrast to the system for Congressional elections, which are still decided by a simple plurality. In the 2022 cycle, I think Rep. Dan Goldman won his primary with less thsn 30%.
stinger
@Baud: Gracias!
Seonachan
Uhhh…..what?
And this would not be a problem in any other system…how, exactly?
Gretchen
@RevRick: he had the same exchange with Senator from Oklahoma. Guy smugly replied that CA has a higher number of murders. Since he doesn’t understand per capita, the point went right by him.
frosty
When you’re short and skinny in high school this attitude isn’t even conceivable.
Gretchen
Our city council has been working on a proposal to build a new city hall for four years and have had numerous meetings to weigh the various costs and proposals. Now that a decision has been made and they’re ready to start, an anti-tax group is agitating to hold a vote about it. They did a survey showing that half of voters hadn’t heard anything at all about the issue , but they still thought that they should be able to vote on it.
Jackie
Gov. Walz is relieved he doesn’t need to endure fake, insecure platitudes from someone he doesn’t want to talk to anyway.
hells littlest angel
I really enjoyed the takedown of the odious conman Sigmund Freud.
NightSky
@prostratedragon:
Thanks –A useful list to remind/challenge us all to act, even in small ways, not just read or talk. I’ll share with others who might be open to it.
So word is we need about 12 mil protesters (out of 330 mil Americans) to stop this autocracy. So can all the June 14 protesters (est’d 6 mil) encourage 1-2 more people to join us??? Hopefully before Trump, S Miller, Wiles, Noem, Vaught, Homan, Huckabee, et al create an unsolvable problem (e.g. nuking someone or completely tanking the economy).
BTW, if ICE/NGuard/Marines continue to harass folks in SoCal for months on end, it’ll sure squash our economy!!! Who dares to work, shop, eat out, drive downtown, etc with that unpredictable threat hanging over us. Husband is hesitant to eat at our favorite places in Little Tokyo or DTLA for our anniversary this year bc it’s close to the militarized zones. Geez guys, just cooperate with local PD gang units to identify and deport real criminals, but that would be too little hate and propaganda for Haters S Miller et al. MAGA-Christians clearly flunked the GOLDEN RULE. I’d like to see how they’d like being randomly grabbed off the street, handcuffed by hooded armed thugs and thrown into unmarked vehicles, in jail indefinitely, no lawyer, no due process, no nothing. They are beyond deplorable, beyond description.
Gretchen
@NightSky: I think the true count is probably much more than 6 million. They were counting a snapshot in time, but people were coming and going throughout the protests, meaning that much more than the official count attended at some point throughout the day.
The protest I attended lasted 3 hours. It was very hot, and we left after about 90 minutes, joining a stream of people leaving. But we met an equivalent stream of people just joining at the same time, who joked about being the second shift.