In court documents, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and others shared which words they used to target grants. As part of a lawsuit filed by University of California researchers, a handful of federal agencies confirmed earlier this month in court documents that they cut grants if researchers’ projects “expressed, or were presumed to express, viewpoints disfavored by the [Trump] Administration.” Federal agencies relied heavily on keyword searches when terminating grants held by UC researchers, court documents revealed. While the searched terms varied across agencies, they focused on initiatives facing significant conservative opposition, such as DEI and green energy.
Of the four agencies, NSF used the most keywords by far. It told the court it pulled its search terms list directly from a 2024 report released by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, which alleged the Biden administration had politicized science at the agency. The report shared hundreds of terms it used to screen grants to determine whether they were related to DEI, including “injustice,” “ally,” “prejudice,” “institutional,” “discrimination,” “historically,” “minority,” and “traumatic.” NIH worked off of a shorter but similar list, which included “workforce diversity” and “health equity.” The agency noted that it also used “various permutations” of each keyword.
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