Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Finally! A Judge Who Understands

A judge is finally calls Trump's cuts what it really is discrimination! Racial discrimination and discrimination against us.
AP News
By  LAURAN NEERGAARD
June 16, 2025


A federal judge ruled Monday it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants, adding that the cuts raise serious questions about racial discrimination.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts said the administration’s process was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it did not follow long-held government rules and standards when it abruptly canceled grants deemed to focus on gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a hearing Monday on two cases calling for the grants to be restored, the judge pushed government lawyers to offer a formal definition of DEI, questioning how grants could be canceled for that reason when some were designed to study health disparities as Congress had directed.

Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, went on to address what he called “a darker aspect” to the cases, calling it “palpably clear” that what was behind the government actions was “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

After 40 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young added. He ended Monday’s hearing saying, “Have we no shame.”
Finally! A judge who sees what this DEI stuff is all about... bring back discrimination!

The Courthouse News Service reported that,
Young appeared sympathetic Monday, questioning government lawyers over letters that claimed DEI studies “support unlawful discrimination.”

“Where’s the support for that?” Young asked, begging the government for “any support, any rational explanation.” 

“Just saying it is not sufficient,” the judge continued.

[...]

“Point me to anywhere in the record where any particular grant or group of grants is being used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race,” the judge said. “From what I can see, it’s the reverse. But point it out to me.”

Justice Department attorney Thomas Ports Jr., who is representing the defendants in this case, said there was “nothing that I can point the court to” to bolster the claim.

“DEI is never defined” in the letters, Young noted. And while the Trump administration might take the “valid government position” to scrutinize affirmative action programs, “that’s not a license to discriminate,” the judge said. 
Trump often makes unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims of discrimination, which judges have consistently called him out on. Bio Space wrote...
“It is palpably clear these directives and the set of terminated grants here also are designed to frustrate, to stop research that may bear on the health–we are talking about health here–the health of Americans. Of our LGBTQ community,” Young said in remarks noted by ProPublica reporter Annie Waldman on Bluesky. “That’s appalling.”

“Is it true of our society as a whole, have we fallen so low, have we no shame?” Young added.
Echoing words that were said over 75 years by Joseph Welch during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954,  "Have you no sense of decency?"

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