Win Some/Lose Some - Lose Some/Win Some

From The Guardian: The Trump administration scored its most significant legal victory in its sweeping effort to reshape American higher education when a federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by faculty groups over the government’s cuts to Columbia University’s federal funding.

The lawsuit concerned the Trump administration’s cuts to $400m worth of federal funding to Columbia on the grounds it tolerated antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Columbia largely accepted the government’s terms for restoring funding – in an agreement widely panned as a capitulation of its own academic freedom – several days before the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sued the Trump administration over the cuts.

The judge in the case, Mary Kay Vyskocil of the southern district of New York, ruled that the faculty unions had no “standing” to bring the suit and had not clearly indicated how the administration had broken the law...

Full story at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/trump-administration-columbia-lawsuit-dismissed.

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From SFGATE: 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's decision addresses only a fraction of the hundreds of NIH research projects the Trump administration has cut — those specifically addressed in two lawsuits filed separately this spring by 16 attorneys general, public health advocacy groups and some affected scientists. A full count wasn't immediately available. While Young said the funding must be restored, Monday's action was an interim step as the ruling could be appealed...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/judge-rules-some-nih-grant-cuts-illegal-saying-20380192.php.