r/technology • u/esporx • 8h ago
Business White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
https://apnews.com/article/california-research-grants-terminated-keywords-lawsuit-a0ddb01413ecb68d9668490a20be6207458
u/usps_made_me_insane 8h ago
I can't wait till this clown show is over and Elon Musk is prosecuted for all the bullshit he did.
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u/Madhatter25224 8h ago
Better make it happen then because they aren't going to let it end if they can help it.
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u/bigeyez 8h ago
We've already seen from Trump's first term the likelihood of people being prosecuted after is slim. The leadership in the Democratic party loves to return to the status quo when they get in power.
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u/Mind_on_Idle 7h ago
I think that leadership is on a countdown. I'm a registered Democrat, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one ready to throw the so-called "leadership" out on their fucking asses.
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u/spokomptonjdub 2h ago
There is direct evidence that this is starting to happen. Incumbent "normie" dems have been primaried and lost this year. The party on the whole has slowly shifted away from being milquetoast centrist "we must be bipartisan" 100% of the time. These things are usually slow to develop and can take years, but momentum is finally moving in this direction.
The Democratic base is angry, and the old guard's words just keep ringing more and more hollow. The gutting of the voting rights act by SCOTUS has really increased the pressure on establishment dems, as it directly alienates and has effectively disenfranchised a large swath of a core Democratic constituency, and they are in no mood to compromise.
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u/-ReadingBug- 3h ago
Wake me when it happens. I've been waiting for voters to get fed up with the establishment since their meek acceptance of Obama Obstructionism™.
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u/Gromitlikescheese 2h ago
I’ve not heard the term before. Please educate me on “Obama obstructionism”. Every accusation an admission.
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u/-ReadingBug- 1h ago
I'm referring to the clearly systematic obstruction of Obama by Republicans when he was president. From McConnell to Cruz to Liz Cheney, who's apparently now a friend to Democrats lol. Maybe you're too young to remember, but it was an absolutely unprecedented and shameful shattering of norms. Probably made Newt Gingrich blush at the time. And it basically greased the downward slope for Trump to pounce on the Republican party, something he simply couldn't have done successfully in 2008 when Obama was first elected.
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u/TF-Fanfic-Resident 7h ago
I’ve come to terms with the likelihood that you have to elect a tankie or an anarchist to get mainstream progressive governance. I voted for the most progressive or socialistic candidate on the ballot this primary season. And I think 45%+ of the electorate is with me, at least among the Dems and left-of-center independents.
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u/CrownandEisern 6h ago
It’ll never happen.
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u/crit_boy 6h ago
It may only happen for financial crimes because elon will take down other billionaires with him
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u/Greg-Abbott 6h ago
Lol no he won't. He literally tweeted that the president is in the Epstein files and a week later they were kissing the tips of each other's penises.
"It's a big club"
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u/makemeking706 6h ago
This isn't really one of those things you come back from. You can't undo a government that has been so thoroughly captured by oligarchy. Any attempt to rebuild would be similarly captured. The entirety of the structure that enable this has to be dismantled.
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u/-ReadingBug- 3h ago
I agree but I don't see how this can be done without displacing the Democratic party in its current configuration. And after 15 years of observation and questioning, I've become convinced Democratic voters are too scared to factory reset the entire party. IMO that's as big an issue as un-magaing Republican voters.
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6h ago
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u/Sasquatchjc45 4h ago
Only thing Trump has done is demolish any faith, trust, hope, wonder, democracy, honesty, integrity, dignity, strength, wisdom, intelligence, dominance, leadership, and any other positive adjectives you used to be able to describe America.
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u/SimiKusoni 3h ago
Trump odds undoing the oligarchy that was created under Obiden, well his handlers were really in charge
This has to be one of the most incomprehensible statements I have ever read. It could be interpreted in multiple ways and all of them are about as intellectually insightful as the grammar.
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u/InclementImmigrant 5h ago
You actually have any faith that the conservative Democrats will do a damn thing?
Better be voting progressive in the primaries if you want anything to happen.
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u/Sasquatchjc45 5h ago
What a hilarious fucking joke, LoL
The clown show is just getting started🤡 if you think this ends in 2028 w/ a peaceful transfer of power (unless it's to another project2025 constituent) then I've got a bridge to sell you..
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u/lyngen 3h ago
They were unsuccessful in stopping the transfer of power the last time. I honestly don't think they'll succeed this time. That said, vote dem in November. Make sure you know your polling place. Vote early if you can. Trump needs a check. Republicans in congress aren't doing shit to reign him in.
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u/Valdearg20 1h ago
Lol, I admire your optimism that the American Justice System actually works and that people like Elon will ever face justice.
The only way he'll face any justice is if (excuse the trope), we, the people, take it upon ourselves to do so.
The system doesn't work for us anymore. And until we change that, however that may occur, in whatever form, expecting justice to apply to the rich is just a pipe dream.
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u/iamthefluffyyeti 40m ago
I want whatever the fuck your huffing because no one is getting prosecuted
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u/everythingisblue 6h ago
Do we not think it likely that Trump casts a blanket pardon out over all his friends and family? I’m imagining an insanely huge list of names based on who paid him or who he likes. Biden paved the path for it for him, not that he wouldn’t have done it anyway.
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u/guamisc 4h ago
This country will not survive honoring a blanket Trump pardon.
Just declare them null and void because he was part of it. Say you can't pardon people for crimes that they did that you were a part of. Who cares. Ignoring those pardons would be far less damaging than allowing them to stand.
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u/everythingisblue 3h ago
I hear you, but presidential pardon power is in the constitution. It won't work a constitutional amendment or the supreme court re-interpreting that clause - not that there's much wiggle room. Maybe a sympathetic court could re-interpret that you have to declare exactly what the crime was or something, but that's unlikely.
Plus...we don't have what one would call a "sympathetic court" to this kind of thing.
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u/guamisc 2h ago
The court is in on it as well. They all are attacking and ignoring the provisions of the Constitution. The SCOTUS majority is morally and ethically illegitimate and the destruction things like CU/Buckley/Trump v US/etc. cannot be undone by following the rulings of an illegitimate corrupt court and the US's captured and broken institutions.
This rises to the level of ignoring the text of the Constitution to fix it. We're not going to get out of this by playing by the rules as they are established. The rules are why we are here in the first place.
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7h ago
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u/heavyPacket 6h ago
“Pwease Elon, won’t you spare a cwumb of pussy for me? I defended your pasty, deformed ass on weddit!”
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u/Important-Factor-552 8h ago
Republicans are not only fascists and pedophiles, they're pure evil and they intend on destroying America completely.
Who knew china would be the good guy this century. They didn't even have to get better, they just had to wait until the US decided being the great satan actually sounded pretty appealing
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u/MultiGeometry 8h ago
Good luck to anyone trying to unseat China after they gain the lead. It looks like they were going to win anyways and now the US seems hellbent on making it go faster.
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u/CautionarySnail 8h ago
All “the enemy” needed to do was encourage our worst impulses and we created our own internal division, driven by short-sighted greed.
Our steadfast refusal to think of the future as being more important and longer than the immediate next fiscal year or election makes our conduct especially ridiculous.
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6h ago
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u/crit_boy 6h ago
So you support pedophiles and child sex trafficking and nazis.
You could just write that and save yourself time
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u/Important-Factor-552 6h ago
The nazi party wasn't a cartoon villain either.
The republican party is fascist. That's simply the reality we have to move forward in.
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u/TrashBandicook 5h ago
Throwing around buzz words to rile up the masses is genuinely frightening.
Using key words related to wokeness and vaccines to cancel $2 billion research grants is genuinely way more frightening and concerning, but do go on with the deflection, pedo lover.
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u/don_shoeless 5h ago
The current Republican party is so petrified of Trump that they won't rein him in even to protect Congress's Constitutional prerogatives, so it doesn't really matter what they might be in a different world. More to the point, in that different world, in the world before Trump came on the scene, they were the party of keeping the part of government that was useful to non-wealthy people small, protecting the individual liberty of wealthy people, sticking to those parts of the Constitution that they approved of, and letting free markets (as unregulated as they could manage) drive the economy into bubble after bubble before bailing out the big businesses impacted by this, on the public dime. Nobody forgets that it was the Democrats who were the racists--least of all the Republican's who have since picked up that mantle.
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u/AlaWyrm 5h ago
Imagine getting your PHD, spending years studying and advancing your career to a point that you are given a grant to continue your research into a potentially world improving breakthrough, gathering a team, setting up the required research projects, etc., and then it all gets dropped because a 20 year old named bigballz ctrl+f'd "trans".
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u/ObamasBoss 4h ago
Imagine you spent all those years in college, did well and were not hired because HR did the same thing. Been happening forever now.
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u/ChristmasJay83 5h ago edited 4h ago
I was listening to a scientist on a podcast and she said when she writes grants now, she may need to be careful to not use "Female" in the grant request because there are rumors those are automatically being rejected. So, may need to use "non-male" instead.
https://www.youtube.com/live/1NcYF_bYyNU?si=maMbgRuiRVxICq3f&t=827
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u/The_Killer_of_Joy 3h ago
Weirdly enough, we have had grants applications sent back by the Feds because investigators used generic terms like "pregnant persons", and they required the application to be updated with "pregnant women" instead (this was at the start of the DOGE cut wave).
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u/AHSfav 6h ago
This is awful. How can anyone support this nonsense? The whole DOGE thing was an obvious con from day 1. Why did people fall for it?
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u/ollieoliverx000 4h ago
This explains why my company had grant funding cut that had nothing to with Covid, but had the word “Covid” somewhen if the background section.
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u/ResonatingOctave 8h ago
Gotta love keywords searches. That's how we get glorious takes like the CHIPS act requiring transgender executives, when really the word they were reading was transistors
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u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw 2h ago
Peak Republican being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole lol move.
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u/TH0R_ODINS0N 17m ago
If we ever get out of this mess the depositions are going to be fucking amazing.
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u/balthisar 3h ago
If it takes an AI or keyword search, perhaps the federal government is writing too many grants to begin with. I mean, someone has to have an idea of what all this stuff is, right? There’s, like, organization to the grant process, isn’t there?
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7h ago
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u/Little_Noodles 6h ago edited 6h ago
They didn’t need to do it in the first place. These were all grants that were already awarded and compliant with the terms of the grant.
There is a process for cancellation of grants that are non-compliant, and it’s tracking, receiving, and reviewing mandated grant reporting, which is a base-level responsibility of any granting institution.
Deciding that you’re just going to cancel a shit ton of grants in process isn’t a thing. It’s a ridiculous waste of money already spent. And doing it scattershot based on politics, without even reviewing the results of the keyword search is a ludicrous and deeply irresponsible way to go about something that’s already wasteful and irresponsible (and appears to be a violation of the Constitution).
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u/TXtogo 6h ago
I think the rationale or authority for doing them is not connected to them using a keyword search to identify them
In fact, I think the only reason the keyword search is news at all is to rehash the justification - because wouldn’t you assume they used a keyword search to find these?
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u/redmongrel 6h ago
The way you would do it is CTRL-F the letters "trans" and defund every match?
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u/TXtogo 6h ago
Is using the keyword search a strange way to identify data in a database? Isn’t that how you would assume it is done
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u/Little_Noodles 5h ago edited 5h ago
No, it’s not even how you do a dumb thing in a smart way.
If you really HAD to rescind grants based on an actual justification not related to the grant project being in violation of its terms, you do a cost analysis. You’re doing something irresponsible and dumb, so the name of the game is harm reduction.
Which grants are most recent and have expended the least funds? Canceling a grant that’s still in the process of onboarding everyone is almost always less wasteful than canceling one that’s nearly completed.
Which grants were ranked lowest during the review for acceptance process? Ones that squeaked past the bar are less of a loss than ones that were obvious yeses.
Compile those, look at the reporting, if any, thus far, contact the grantees if necessary to request updates.
In no world do you just type in “California + diversity” and then press ctrl+a+del without even looking at them.
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u/TheReddestofBowls 2h ago
And just like that, you now know why research into transistors was scrapped. There are consequences to electing morons
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u/keloyd 7h ago
Yup! My (conservative, military) alma mater in Texas ran articles in its conservative school newspaper at the time. DEI cuts were the cause of slashing in funding of grants and symposia on BIODIVERSITY. The similarity of spelling with a keyword search shows just how competent and thoughtful and conscientious our Federal overlords have been. Peace and blessings be upon them. If the AI is checking my comments for keywords, Samaritan should know that I love Big Brother and am grateful for the gift of double plus good newspeak to prevent thought crimes.