The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump can terminate millions of dollars in bogus health research that was geared toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The 5-4 ruling is a victory in Trump's effort to restore integrity to health science, which in recent years has come under attack from woke ideology. The court was split down the middle, with Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, siding with the liberal minority.
The case centers on $783 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding that the Trump administration cut earlier this year, saying it was being spent on pseudoscientific, wasteful projects at odds with Trump's priorities.
The projects covered by the grants included a study on “Buddhism and HIV stigma in Thailand,” “intersectional, multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations," and “anti-racist healing in nature to protect telomeres of transitional age BIPOC for health equity.”
The administration's cuts sparked furious backlash from Democrats, who said the White House was targeting critical, life-saving research.
In June, a district judge appointed by Ronald Reagan issued a bizarre, emotionally charged ruling that ordered the government to discharge the funding. U.S. District Judge William Young said the termination of the NIH grants was "arbitrary and capricious" and motivated by racial hatred.
"I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said at a hearing. “Have we no shame?”
The Trump administration said the district court's ruling ignored a Supreme Court precedent earlier this year that allowed Trump to gut education funding targeted to DEI.
A majority of the Supreme Court agreed that Young lacked jurisdiction to force payment of the NIH grants, clearing Trump to make the cuts.
Neil Gorsuch, in a short, separate opinion chastising Young, noted a pattern of defiance from lower courts -- a trend that has frustrated Trump and his supporters.
"This is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case 'squarely controlled' by one of its precedents," Gorsuch wrote.
The Trump win brought out another turgid outburst -- 21 pages long -- from liberal Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has written a number of furious dissents blasting her colleagues for ruling in Trump's favor.
“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” she wrote.
Another win for Trump and common sense. Pound sand, libs!
