A federal judge appointed by Reagan rules that many of Donald Trump's cuts to grants for the National Institutes of Health are now "void and illegal" and declares: "Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?"
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"I am hesitant to draw this conclusion, but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it - that this represents racial discrimination," said District of Massachusetts Judge William Young. "And discrimination against America's LGBTQ community. That's what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out."
Many of the cuts were aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion programs which the MAGA movement has condemned as "woke." In practice, the Trump administration is entrenching discrimination against people of color and the LGBTQ community - red meat for the white nationalists and Christian nationalists who helped elect him.
In total, Young has ordered the NIH to move forward with disbursement on funding for 357 grants that Trump was trying to kill.
Judge Young condemned the administration's racist agenda and stated that it's "palpably clear" that the grant terminations were "designed to frustrate, to stop, research that may bear on the health - we're talking about health here - the health of Americans, of our LGBTQ community.
"That's appalling," he added, stating that he'd "never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable."
"I've sat on this bench now for 40 years. I've never seen government racial discrimination like this ... I ask myself, how can this be?" he said according to Politico's Kyle Cheney.
Judge Young said that he is Constitutionally protected in speaking out against this discrimination but wondered if he would have stood "against all this" if those protections weren't in place.
"Would I have said, 'you can't do this?' You are bearing down on people of color because of their color," said Young. "The Constitution will not permit that," he said.
"Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?" he added.
