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The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding
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4 min read
Court filings in a lawsuit brought by University of California researchers show that the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Defense Department and National Endowment for the Humanities used keyword searches and general criteria to identify grants for termination, rather than individually assessing every award. The agencies said grants were cut when projects expressed, or were presumed to express, viewpoints disfavored by the Trump administration. The searches focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, climate, green-energy and related subjects. NSF drew its terms from a 2024 report by Sen. Ted Cruz and searched hundreds of words, including “injustice,” “ally,” “prejudice,” “discrimination,” “minority” and “traumatic.” NIH used terms including “workforce diversity” and “health equity,” plus permutations. The Defense Department searched for terms such as “pay equity,” “LGBTQ,” “neurodiversity,” “climate change,” “decarbonization” and alternative-energy sources including solar, wind and geothermal. NEH flagged terms including “environmental justice,” “transgenderism” and DEI variants. NIH canceled at least $2.6 million in funding for projects that used “structural racism,” among other targeted terms, and canceled additional awards that had diversity supplements. NIH also suspended more than $500 million in UCLA funding, which a court later ordered restored. UC researchers contend the terminations violated the First Amendment, and have obtained two preliminary injunctions blocking form-letter grant cancellations across several agencies.