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Comment by elicash | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."

On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at minimum have the money clawed back, even if the claims are meritless, as the administration has done on Congressionally appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE efforts.

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Agreed. I think the buried lede here is actually the clawback clause. With that in the contract, this isn't a $1.5 million dollar grant, it's a $1.5 million dollar liability.

If you take the money and spend it on research and development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent.

A shame and a waste as it sounds like the project would have been beneficial outside of the Python ecosystem, had it been funded.

As treasurer of a similar FOSS org, this is the correct take.

An important responsibility of the people running a FOSS community's backing non-profit is to keep the org safe and stable, as the community relies on it for vital services and legal representation. A risk like that is unacceptable, even more than in commercial business.

Could the foundation take the money and sit on it in bonds or some other safe instrument? Call it an "endowment"?

$1.5M at 4% is nice.

But I suppose the "proposal" means these funds come with a distribution plan attached?

Typically in grant work you submit a complete proposal with milestones and roles defined, and receive payout over time to cover the costs in the plan, or some part of them. It's earmarked money.

In more established non-profit areas there's usually also quite some compliance overhead and audits to be passed, so this can be someone's fulltime job on the org side. FOSS backing orgs are typically smaller and less experienced, so donors have so far found ways to make things easier for them and give more leeway.

> If you take the money and spend it on research and development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent.

This is it. The conditions / circumstances of the clawback are irrelevant. If there's any possibility of a clawback, then the grant is a rope to hang your organization with.

I don't think an NSF grant should be a trade, wherein your org sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys influence.

> I don't think an NSF grant should be a trade, wherein your org sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys influence.

This is the whole reason the administration is implementing these policies. It's not just about political opposition to diversity programs, it's about getting hooks into science funding as a whole. With a clawback clause, the administration gets the ability to defund any study that produces results they don't like.

They'll use this to selectively block science across entire fields - mRNA vaccines, climate studies, psychology - I fully expect to see this administration cutting funding from anything that contradicts their official narratives.

The text is:

> we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."

There's some ambiguity in syntax as to whether or not "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws" attaches to "discriminatory equity ideology" or "any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology." Given the (improper) comma before the 'or', I'm inclined to lean towards an intended interpretation of the former. That is to say, the government intends to read the statement as affirming no advancement or promotion of DEI, regardless of whether or not they violate any US laws.

(The current administration also advances the proposition that advancing or promoting DEI itself is a violation of US laws, so it's a rather academic question.)

The best and brightest are not working on these matters.They put out work product with misspellings, misstatements, outright lies, and ChatGPT hallucinations. We have to assume any mistakes are unintentional. Maybe if you’re sued, the mistake gets you off the hook in front of a judge, but you should expect to be hassled no matter what the actual text says.

> We have to assume any mistakes are unintentional.

I assume they are intentional. The whole point is to make society less integrity based and more pay to play based. If you’re sufficiently influential, then it’s a mistake that is forgiven. If you aren’t, then you suffer the consequences.

It’s how it works in low trust societies. You haggle for everything, from produce to traffic tickets to building permits to criminal charges. Everything.

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"

its just that human beings aren't writing things using type safe memory checked languages, but i'll just say that they're trying to concatenate and distill a series of supreme court decisions into public policy.

It basically boils down to: A) Disparate Treatment is always in every case unlawful for any reason except "legitimate business need" B) "legitimate business need" is no longer including "diversity equity and inclusion", but preferencing Female Gynocologists is still going to be fine. C) "Disparate impact" claims are no longer valid, unless remedy a concrete discriminatory practice.

> On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."

EO 14151—the policy of which the rewriting of the standard anti-discrimination clause in this way is a part of the implementation—characterizes DEI entirely as illegal discrimination (but the new backformation “discriminatory equity ideology” is not found in the EO, that’s apparently a newer invention to avoid the dissonance of using the actual expansion of the initialism while characterizing it as directly the opposite of what it is.

Sure, but the executive order is not a law.

The executive order is direction to executive branch officials, including the ones who are responsible for applying the cancellation and clawback terms in the agreement at issue, as to how they are to perform their duties.

It is certainly relevsant to evaluating whether or not it is worthwhile to apply for the grant. That sufficient litigation might reverse an application of the policy in the EO that the agreement text clearly highlights the intent to enforce as inconsistent with the underlying law isn’t worth much unless the cost of expected litigation would be dwarfed by the size of the contract award, and for a $1.5 million grant application, that’s...not very much litigation.

You say that confidently like that's an obstacle to executive power in 2025.

Does it define what DEI is? It seems very loosely defined to me so it seems a bit crazy to talk about it in contact terms without defining it more precisely.

The point is to muddy the waters, to sow uncertainty. To have the ability to apply the law arbitrarily, as opposed to uniformly. The absence of a specific definition very much aids that use case.

The opinion of the current administration is that DEI is illegal, the language is intentionally implying that DEI is illegal discrimination, because that is the view they are trying to advance. Grants are even being terminated for being related to any sort of diversity topic.

Grants are terminated based on keyword matches.

they'd have to be extra careful with cpython, it's got a lot of include

Reality: the trump admin has shown that the law doesn't matter in the short term. If they think it's "DEI" they'll find a way to yank funding/make an example out of an organization agreeing to this. Even if they're legally in the wrong.

Years later courts may agree no federal anti discrimination laws were violated but it's too late-- the damage has been done.

If it’s not “DEI” then it’s “waste fraud and abuse”. And if it’s not that then it’s “terrorism” or “treason”.

“Anti-semitism” if it involves colleges in any way, don’t forget that!

The conjunction used is "or". It could mean either.

My reading in context is different: https://www.governmentcontractorcomplianceupdate.com/2025/08...

That's a different, non-governmental website?

That was labor lawyers interpreting a governmental memorandum about the same issue substantially or precisely.

Who, in 2025, is still giving the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the rule of law?

As I’ve said in the past: they need the benefit of the doubt on everything; they deserve the benefit of the doubt on nothing.

Roughly half of the country, give or take.

*Roughly 40% of the country, give or take. Don't be complacent.

Roughly 40% supports Trump, but they are often quite loud about putting other things above the rule of law.

Not sure why you think roughly 50% give him the benefit of the doubt on dedication to the rule of law.

From Democratic analyst David Shor back in March ( https://archive.is/kbwom ) : "The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]." So, not that it brings me any joy to say it but it would seem more like 55%?

If anyone has any polling data to the contrary, I'd love to see it.

“Registered voters” is not the same group as “people”.

Winning by 5% (even assuming no third party votes) is 52.5% (with 47.5% for the opponent) not 55%, if there are any third-party votes, that gets even lower.

A piece written in March 2025 discussing a hypothetical for the November 2024 election is not describing the state of the world in October 2025.

Unless the 40% number in your previous post was from October 2025, that's plainly moving the goalposts. And registered voters are the only people who matter since anyone else can't cast a ballot.

Beyond that, the August 2025 (since October's aren't available yet) poll numbers don't seem that much better. That the Democratic Party approval is neck and neck with the Republicans despite the Republicans' blatant corruption and incompetence speaks volumes about how unpopular the Democratic Party is. They need to reform drastically before the midterms next year.

> registered voters are the only people who matter

This right here is moving the goalposts.

A non-trivial amount of people in this thread, sadly. Many of which are leaving comments like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727967

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