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From the Sacramento Bee: A sudden $12 million federal funding cut last year forced a UC Davis transportation research center and its partners to halt dozens of projects, disrupt student research and scramble for replacement money — setting off a legal fight that has left the center’s future uncertain more than a year later. The National Center for Sustainable Transportation quickly suspended research already underway and delayed projects scheduled to begin.

“Except for the Great Recession we haven’t had anything like this,” said Fraser Shilling, whose project modeling how traffic light and sound affects nearby wildlife was halted. “It was kind of like an administration-imposed recession on academia.”

The center was one of multiple university programs affected when the Trump administration canceled $54 million in previously awarded grants for programs that used “woke” terms in their applications, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation news release. The cut began a more than yearlong scramble to rearrange projects, seek private donations and fight for the funding in federal court as part of Thakur v. Trump, said center director Susan Handy. Although a judge ordered the funding restored late last year, the center’s work and employees have remained in flux as the lawsuit continues and the possibility remains that the money could disappear again...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article316689358.html.