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This isn't good for the PSF, but if these "poison pill" terms are a pattern that applies to all NSF and (presumably) other government research funding, the enti

• numbsafari 11mo ago
  The direction of political winds shift over time. An organization like the PSF cannot assume an open-ended liability like that. DEI today, but what tomorrow? As we have seen, political leadership in the US has shown itself to be unreliable, pernicious, and vindictive. US leadership is undermined by the politicization of these grants. That is something that members of this community, largely a US-based, VC-oriented audience, should be deeply, deeply troubled by.
  • deleted 11mo ago
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  • xeonmc 11mo ago
    I wonder, how likely do you think there would be a retaliatory threat of revoking PSF’s nonprofit status for a perceived snub in rejecting the offer?
    • elevation 11mo ago
      The IRS has withheld 501(c) status from the president’s perceived adversaries before[0]. But I haven’t heard of 501(c) status being revoked. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
      • mgraczyk 11mo ago
        "The FBI stated it found no evidence of "enemy hunting" of the kind that had been suspected, but that the investigation did reveal the IRS to be a mismanaged bureaucracy enforcing rules that IRS personnel did not fully understand. "
        • mikeyouse 11mo ago
          The sad irony is that the staff understood it perfectly, the organizations were not legitimate 501c groups (since at the time we had enforceable rules around political activity by nonprofit groups) but through extremely bad faith investigations where Congressional republicans literally forbade the IRS from reporting on their barring of climate and ‘progressive’ groups when investigating the ‘scandal’ so that even today people mischaracterize it as an example of IRS political targeting. https://thehill.com/policy/finance/154584-ig-audit-of-irs-actions-limited-to-tea-party-groups-at-gop-request/ https://thehill.com/policy/finance/154584-ig-audit-of-irs-ac...
        • potato3732842 11mo ago
          Even the people buried deep in the most podunk regulatory department you've never even heard of are smart enough to re-order the priority list on a change of administration. They don't need to be told and there is no paper trail. They just know what's good for their boss's boss's boss's boss^n is good for them and that kicking a potential hornet's nest is bad for them. And even if you personally want to hassle someone with friends in the right places, what are the odds every other leaf of every other part of the organization(s) does? There will always be someone who has no morals and wants to climb the ladder who's happy to read between the lines and drop the ball. It's just how it is. On some level, I'm not even sure this is a bad thing. If the executive can't change prioritization implicitly then the organization is either stupid or unaccountable.
      • rat87 11mo ago
        I don't think that's a good summary of what happened. From your wiki link > In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny. > The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's audit found (page 14): "For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles)."[11] Bloomberg News reported on May 14, 2013, "None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected." The IRS took some stupid shortcuts by trying to look at keywords (including those linked to liberal causes) for more scrutiny of if they met the criteria of a non profit. There's no evidence this was done based on partisanship and it did not cause any groups to be rejected
      • pbiggar 11mo ago
        The Trump administration is definitively coming after 501c3s. I run a nonprofit and all the movement around us has been preparing for this since these laws were first announced. Ironcically, the laws to investigate nonprofits were first proposed under the Biden administration to attack the Palestine movement, and like most things in the Palestine movement, they were quickly turned against the rest of the country. https://www.wired.com/story/the-trump-administration-is-coming-for-nonprofits-theyre-getting-ready/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-trump-administration-is-comi...
    • polski-g 11mo ago
      It could be revoked if they are found to engage in illegal discrimination-Solidified by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1983 case Bob Jones University v. United States. based on public comments made by board members, such evidence seems replete.
      • Starman_Jones 11mo ago
        [dead]
• zitterbewegung 11mo ago
  Also, I don't get that an Organization such as the PSF operates at a $5 million dollar budget which quite arguably provides Billions or even Trillions in revenue across the Tech sector.
  • aspir 11mo ago
    This is an unfortunate state of all open source. The entire economic model is broken, but PSF is one of the better operationalized groups out there. Not to completely change the topic, but to add context, the Ruby Central drama that has unfolded over the past few weeks originally began as a brainstorm to raise ~$250k in annual funds.
  • bgwalter 11mo ago
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    • VerminOctopus1 11mo ago
      Pretty bold statement with no evidence.
      • deleted 11mo ago
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      • lumpa 11mo ago
        Here's some evidence that he is, again, badmouthing the PSF without a good reason: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-psfs-2024-annual-impact-report-is.html https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-psfs-2024-annual-im...
        • bgwalter 11mo ago
          Surely you mean "they are badmouthing". Enough to be expelled from the PSF. Some official report from the PSF does not invalidate decades long observations. I see increasingly that programmers rely on PDFs from foundations and official statements from bureaucrats rather than look at the source code.
• flufluflufluffy 11mo ago
  They do apply, also for NIH funded research. I work in healthcare research and all the investigators I know have had to go to great lengths to whitewash their grant proposals (you can’t use the word “gender” for example, you must say “difference” instead of “disparity”, etc etc…) It’s absolutely bonkers. However most of the researchers I work with are operating under a “appease the NIH to obtain the grant, but the just do the research as it was originally intended” approach. It not like the federal government has the ability (or staffing - hah!) to ensure every single awardee is complying with these dystopian requirements.
  • qcnguy 11mo ago
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    • deleted 11mo ago
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    • takluyver 11mo ago
      The requirements the GP is describing are to avoid using certain words. It's not fraudulent to describe the same work without using the banned words.
      • qcnguy 11mo ago
        That's definitely not the requirement! The requirement is to avoid doing certain kinds of "research" that the government disagrees is valid research to fund, characterized by the principles underlying it. They may have started by using certain keywords to find examples of such grants to terminate, but the requirement itself has nothing to do with words and everything to do with the intentions.
        • convolvatron 11mo ago
          I know someone whose grant was cancelled for studying genetic diversity in animal populations.
• dangus 11mo ago
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  • philipallstar 11mo ago
    > I am going to add my own stronger language than yours: if you don’t feel positively about diversity, equity, and inclusion, then you are sending a message that you instead support homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. This "if you're not for us you're against us" is a very broken way of thinking. It excludes the many, many more people just don't care about diversity and want the best people in a role regardless of ethnicity or sex or anything else. That's not "pro homogeneity" - only someone whose perspective is entirely warped by this one factor would think that way.
    • ajross 11mo ago
      > It excludes the many, many more people Are these people actually attested? In my experience, virtually everyone I've ever seen make a strong argument against "DEI" ended up having some... unsavory attitudes more generally. Scratch hard in discussion or check post histories[1] and you end up at some variant of white nationalism or men's rights, almost every time. Basically no one goes to bat for "wanting the best people in a role". People get political when they feel aggrieved. "DEI mania" is always a response to "I think this is going to hurt people like me". [1] Edit: I did. And... well...
      • rowanG077 11mo ago
        men's right? I'm shuddering in my chair. Next you tell me they volunteer for a homeless shelter too.
      • machomaster 11mo ago
        > virtually everyone I've ever seen make a strong argument against "DEI" ended up having (...) men's rights So people who dislike a cultural type of discrimination also dislike practical discrimination against men? People who dislike what is going on in general, also have practical opinions how the situation could be improved in practice, how to make the situation more fair? This is akin to being surprised that people who are actively against animal abuse are also helping animal shelters.
• politician 11mo ago
  The requirement that grantees not violate existing laws is common in Federal grants. Taking umbrage with the DEI coloration on this entirely reasonable and standard requirement is absurd. There could be a long laundry list of such clauses that all have equally zero weight ("don't promote illegal drug trafficking", "don't promote illegal insider trading", ...).
  • takluyver 11mo ago
    If it has zero weight, why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it? I would guess it's much easier to enforce a particular interpretation of the law via a grant agreement than having to argue it in court.
    • politician 11mo ago
      > Why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it? I would humbly suggest that it mentions this particular example because the NSF administrator serves under the pleasure of the Executive and they have been tasked to demonstrate that they are following the orders of the Executive branch. However, the inclusion of this specific example confers no higher priority than any other possible example. It has no weight; it is inoperative.
      • takluyver 11mo ago
        OK, I accept that as a possible reason why it might be written there even if it has no weight. But it still seems very likely that it's easier to terminate a grant - and harder for the PSF to argue against that - than to actually prosecute DEI work and prove in court that it's illegal.
        • politician 11mo ago
          You say, paraphrasing, "It's harder to prove that a DEI program violates Federal anti-discrimination laws than it is to simply terminate a grant to an undesirable grantee." Ok. Suppose that's true. The government can terminate grants that don't include that language equally as easily -- and, indeed, I just found that there are multiple current cases against the government for doing exactly that: health grants [1], solar grants [2], education grants [3]. Is your point is that the inclusion of this inoperative language makes it easier than it already is for the government to cancel grants and to defend against the subsequent lawsuits until the plaintiffs are pressured into compliance from lack of funding? [1]https://coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-sues-hhs-kennedy-public-health-grant-cuts-4-1-25/ https://coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-sues-hhs-kennedy-publ... [2]https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/state-coalition-sues-trumps-epa-over-solar-for-all-grant-cuts https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/state-c... [3]https://www.k12dive.com/news/state-lawsuit-Education-Department-teacher-training-grants/741928/ https://www.k12dive.com/news/state-lawsuit-Education-Departm...
• philipallstar 11mo ago
  It would be very good for the PSF if it can get grant money without DEI things. Before you needed to have them to get much of a look-in. Now it can spend the money on important stuff like packaging. uv is amazing, but also a symptom of the wrong people stewarding that money.
• qcnguy 11mo ago
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  • epistasis 11mo ago
    > DEI is an immoral, hate based and anti-truth ideology. This is called getting high on your own supply. It was never any of those things, but lies like the ones you are spreading were perpetuated to push back against the idea of equal fairness for all. As proof that you are spreading further lies, one only has to look at the long string of court filings that shows that the administrations' policies fighting DEI are outright racism, words that are coming from conservative judges appointed long ago that operate based on truth rather than whatever misinformation cult has taken over so much of politics these days. Here's just one of many many many instances of blatant racism being perpetrated through Trump's politicization of science funding. > ‘My duty is to call it out’: Judge accuses Trump administration of discrimination against minorities—The Reagan-appointed judge ordered the NIH to restore funds for research related to racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/16/judge-rebuke-trump-nih-cuts-00409095 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/16/judge-rebuke-trump-...
  • japhyr 11mo ago
    > DEI is an immoral, hate based and anti-truth ideology. Much of the DEI work stems from people looking around a decade or so ago at tech conferences, and noticing that they were almost entirely comprised of men. There's way too much to address in a single comment, so I'll share one specific thing the Python community has done over the past ten+ years that's made a world of difference: The talk proposal process has been standardized so identifying information is hidden in the first round of reviews. That one change helped shift the dial from almost entirely male speaker lineups to a much more balanced speaker lineup. As a result, we get a much broader range of talks. There is nothing "immoral, hate based, and anti-truth" about efforts like this.
    • deleted 11mo ago
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    • hn_shill_202510 11mo ago
• JPKab 11mo ago
  The "poison pill" terms are not at all a new thing. They have existed for a long time, and were one of the main drivers of the highly aggressive "guilty until proven innocent" cancel culture within academia, where a PhD gets accused non-credibly, is blackballed from NSF funding, exiled from academia, and years later it's discovered they were innocent of the charges.
• GemesAS 11mo ago
  Prior to the current administration there's been a ratcheting up of political influence / social engineering on science grants as well. The last DoE Office of Science grant I applied to had a DEI requirement that was also used during screening. My preference would all this political influence be dialed down.
  • rs186 11mo ago
    Seems you comment agrees with the parent.
  • insane_dreamer 11mo ago
    Did it have a claw back clause? If not, then it's quite different than the current situation? Also, DEI in recruitment / screening can be important to ensure that the results of the study apply not just to the majority demographic. It's just common sense.
• chermi 11mo ago
  I'm not taking a stance, I just want to point out that the previous grant system (the "dei" one) could very easily and justifiably be seen as "imposing onerous political terms" on funding as well. You could say the pendulum motion has too large an amplitude.
  • insane_dreamer 11mo ago
    it never had a claw back clause -- that is the real problem here. And we've seen that the Trump admin is willing to actually claw back granted funds. not at all the same
• eadmund 11mo ago
  Is the restriction on grantees not violating federal law a new one, or has it been around for ages?