White House Admits Keywords Killed $2B in California Grants

Federal agencies have admitted in court filings that they used keyword searches — including terms related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID-19 — to screen and terminate more than a thousand research grants at the University of California worth nearly $2 billion. The admission, disclosed in signed stipulations filed in the case Thakur v. Trump, marks a major development in a lawsuit that accuses the Trump administration of unconstitutionally targeting research based on political viewpoints.

The Admissions in Court

Lawyers for the UC researchers say the stipulations prove that federal agencies “did not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant” and instead used “general criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award’s compliance, or performance,” according to reporting by AP News.

The National Institutes of Health admitted to using an internal search tool to flag UC grants that mentioned “health equity,” “work force diversity,” “structural racism,” and “sexual orientation.” The NIH alone suspended or cancelled more than 1,000 UC grants — including nearly 700 at UCLA — related to vaccines, cancer research, and health disparities. The health research agency also declared that it is possible that DOGE, the short-lived federal office led by Elon Musk in 2025, used AI to target grants for termination.

The Department of Transportation identified six grants worth approximately $42 million for termination because they sought “transportation equity,” prioritized “disadvantaged communities,” or focused on “diversifying the transportation workforce.” The termination of three of those grants led by a UC Davis professor resulted in 77 researchers abandoning 79 in-progress projects, with more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants losing funding.

Three Constitutional Claims

Lawyers for the plaintiffs contend that the admissions prove three wide-ranging constitutional violations. First, by using keyword searches to review and terminate grants en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits, the administration targeted politically disfavored research — a violation of the First Amendment’s protections against viewpoint discrimination.

Second, the Department of Energy terminated 283 grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while leaving hundreds of grants to “red” states untouched. The plaintiffs argue this amounts to unconstitutional punishment of researchers for living in states the White House politically opposed.

Third, by terminating billions of dollars in grants without rerouting the money to other grant opportunities, the administration violated the separation of powers by refusing to spend money in ways Congress specifically required through appropriations laws.

As the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote, the agencies “identified the viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched the grants they funded for those that expressed those viewpoints, and terminated those grants on that basis.”

A Pattern of Judicial Pushback

The case, originally filed in April 2025, has seen multiple rulings against the administration. Judge Rita F. Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has repeatedly sided with the UC professors, issuing preliminary injunctions that forced federal agencies to restore grants while the full merits of the case are reviewed. In August 2025, a Ninth Circuit panel refused to stay Judge Lin’s injunction, finding that the administration’s actions likely amounted to viewpoint discrimination.

Separately, on July 17, 2026, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration cannot use the “no longer effectuates agency priorities” clause — a single line of regulatory text — to terminate grants based on new priorities that differ from those at the time the grants were awarded. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led a coalition of 23 states in that challenge, said the administration had used the clause “as its sole justification to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to California” in “clear violation of the law.”

What Comes Next

The plaintiffs are now asking Judge Lin to skip a trial and issue a final summary judgment permanently restoring all terminated grants. A hearing is scheduled for October 20, 2026. The Environmental Protection Agency, one of the named agencies in the suit, is in the process of settling with the UC professors to avoid further litigation — a sign that some agencies recognize the weakness of their legal position.

Even if Judge Lin rules in favor of the researchers, the federal agencies could appeal to the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court. The stakes, as the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote, “are huge”: If the White House is “allowed to terminate this funding, the researchers, graduate students, and program staff that relied on the grants to pursue their lives’ work will all suffer significant damage to their reputations and careers.”

Broader Implications

The case raises fundamental questions about academic freedom, federalism, and the limits of executive power. A ruling for the plaintiffs would reaffirm First Amendment protections for academic research and could establish a powerful legal precedent limiting the executive branch’s ability to terminate research funding based on political priorities. The targeting of grants from blue states while leaving red state grants untouched also raises equal protection concerns that could reshape how federal funding is distributed geographically.

Beyond the legal questions, the termination of cancer research, vaccine studies, and health disparities research could have lasting consequences for public health and America’s standing as a global leader in scientific innovation. As the plaintiffs’ lawyers warned, the cuts threaten “lifesaving cures that will never be developed” and “new understandings of diseases that will go unexplored.”

For now, researchers across the University of California system wait for the October hearing — and for a final answer on whether the billions of dollars in grants that power their work will be permanently restored.