The Supreme Court on Thursday, on a 5-4 vote, allowed the National Institutes of Health stop $783 million in grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The cuts are part of a larger estimated $1.8 billion in NIH grant terminations, affecting over 1,700 research projects nationwide. The NIH is a major funder of biomedical research, and has projects at universities, hospitals, and research institutions, including in Alaska.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks and Anchorage campuses receive NIH funding for programs like the Alaska Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, which conducts biomedical research that usually focuses on health disparities in Natives. These could be classified as DEI-related due to their focus on equity.
The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium also receives NIH grants for research on Alaska Native health, including studies on chronic diseases, behavioral health, and infectious diseases, with an eye toward social determinants that may lead to health disparities. That may fall under the DEI umbrella.
In an unsigned order, the justices sided with the Trump Administration’s request to pause a ruling by Massachusetts Judge Angel Kelley, a Biden appointee, who said the policy was needlessly reckless and likely would cause damage to vital medical research.Kelley had ordered the government to continue spending money on the grants. NIH, the world’s largest public funding source for biomedical research, had argued that it should not be forced to continue the programs while litigation proceeds.
In the same decision, also by a 5-4 margin, the Court left intact another part of the judge’s ruling, which had struck down internal NIH guidance documents that set out the agency’s DEI-related policy priorities.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast the decisive vote in both decisions. She sided with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh in allowing the grants to be terminated. On the separate issue of the guidance documents, she joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — in preserving the lower court’s ruling.
Well if it’s truthful and necessary research I’m sure they’ll fund them just explain it’s not DEI related it’s actual research
Trump is just AWESOME! He’s going after the Democrat dragon and slaying it piece by piece, until it is completely dead and carved up into little bits. The Marxist machine is fading quickly.
A good start.
These DEI program funds never end up where they’re intended. They’re nothing more than a money laundering scheme. All these millions, if not billions, out the door and unaccounted for. No measures to determine if said programs and research are conducted and the results. The gravy train is coming to a halt.
Bingo!
Trump is literally killing people with his anti-science, Christian nationalist monarchy! 😱
First, he came for our National Public Radio, now he’s pulling funding from scientific research at our woke universities!
Who will manufacture our daily consumption of B.S. without them?!?!
Who gonna fund la-la land?
DEI was put into place by Obama/Biden and is against white men and white boys. Isn’t that called discrimination and had been previously ordered to be stopped as Affirmative Action by the Supreme Court? Our experience over the past decades is that Marxism marches on just renaming itself the actions. We need to pray for a reawakening of America’s use of the rule of law, Ten Commandments, Bill of Rights and other Founding documents.