PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program
161 comments
·October 27, 2025aspir
numbsafari
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.
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zitterbewegung
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
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
PSF money does not really go into development. Some inner circle members have been sponsored to do maintenance work, but Python would be largely the same with zero donations.
flufluflufluffy
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
That's a bad idea. Grant fraud is illegal. It'd be easy to use AI to find simple euphemism treadmills, and also to check if the published papers aren't related to the grant that funded them.
This will eventually escalate to large scale prosecutions of academics. And, they will lose, because they are very openly boasting about how they are ignoring the law and even court orders. It was recently discovered that one college had claimed they'd shut down their DEI office but had actually just moved it to a restricted area. This kind of blatant lying is biting the hand that feeds them and will have severe consequences.
pavon
Its not fraud. The grant proposal accurately describes the research occurring, and people evaluating the grant will have no misconception about what they are funding. The problem is that political appointees have been applying dumb keyword searches which block research that has nothing to do with the issues they object to. Like using privilege in the computer security sense. Or bias in the statistical sense, unrelated to political leaning.
takluyver
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.
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dangus
[flagged]
philipallstar
> 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.
trehalose
Would you still be the best person for your current role if you'd been excluded from your education and training/previous roles based on your ethnicity/sex?
didibus
The issue is more complex.
If groups of people are disadvantaged from birth and then throughout their life, it's unlikely they will be the best at anything.
But you could imagine that the person with the best potential was part of that group.
In effect, an unjust society that doesn't allow fair equal opportunities from birth and throughout life is sub-optimal at yielding the best candidates for any given role, as it artificially restricts the pool.
The other complexity is the inherent bias in the assessment process. How people assess who is best qualified has tons of bias. Again, that means the selection is sub-optimal at finding the actually best candidate.
It becomes hard to talk of meritocracy when most people's performance derive from circumstances like birth, wealth, connections. Someone else might have performed even better had they'd been given the same circumstances.
Finally, you have the problem of not maximizing everyone's potential even if they're not going to be the best.
Obviously we can't have the best at every job. Only one company will have the real best at any given role. Most jobs will be done by the average performer. That's a mathematical truth.
Thus raising the average has tremendous lift in raising quality of work accross the board.
In order to raise the average, you have to give everyone what they need to max out their potential, even if one's potential is lower. That might mean some need more than others, disabled people are a good example, they'll need lots of compensating equipment and what not to maximize their potential and raise their overall effect to society.
To me, those are the basis problems that people were trying to solve. Obviously, a lot of the solutions to these became performative dances, but I think the problem statement aligns well with what you have too.
The idea being that the person right now that we seem best qualified is truly the best isn't true unless we achieve a better system at maximizing people's potential.
Thus true meritocracy demands accepting diversity, equity, inclusion and fair equal opportunities.
Without it, you're only circumstancially demonstrably the best, and you never know if you truly are the better one.
ajross
> 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 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".
dangus
> This "if you're not for us you're against us" is a very broken way of thinking.
This is the paradox of tolerance is invoked.
The people in the present administration have been blowing white supremacist and pro-violence dog whistles for over a decade now.
If you are “with that” then yes, you are against us.
This is not to say that I am intending to be hostile and unwelcoming to those who have been deceived by this regime. Germany had to go through the deprogramming process at the end of World War II. They didn’t just throw every single ordinary person who ever supported the Nazi party in jail or socially shun them for life, they went through a healing process.
k1rd
Isn't the opposite of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by de Morgan law homogeneity or inequity or exclusion?
drstewart
I am going to going even further than you and suggest if you are an American do not support America First, that means you instead support America Last.
If you believe that, you should think about what other countries and groups support those kinds of things, and what kind of company supporting terrorist groups puts you in.
No, there isn't a legitimate reason not to want America First.
Yes, it's important we call out anyone and stand against people who want to tear down America and fully pursue all applicable laws that apply to this destructive behavior.
dangus
America first I assume now means “South America First” in regard to financially bailing out Argentina in exchange for political favors.
politician
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
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
> 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.
philipallstar
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
The PSF isn't asking for a "scientific" grant but let's ignore that.
No it doesn't harm everyone in the long term. Elimination of DEI makes the world a better place. DEI is an immoral, hate based and anti-truth ideology. Requiring the PSF to dump DEI if they want the money is good for everyone, because DEI is bad for people. The PSF should not have DEI programmes in the first place, but if they are so fanatical they cannot stop themselves being racist and sexist - the part that actually violates federal law - then preventing public money going to them is a good thing.
This sort of thing has another upside. It's a signal to investigate such orgs to see if they're illegally discriminating against white males. They just announced they'd rather give up millions of dollars than not discriminate, and there have been dramas around DEI and the PSF before, which is a good sign they might be breaking the law.
japhyr
> 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.
phkahler
>> The talk proposal process has been standardized so identifying information is hidden in the first round of reviews
Making the talk proposal process blind seems more like meritocracy than DEI. The people opposing DEI [claim to] want qualifications to matter and race/gender/whatever issues not to.
hn_shill_202510
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iseletsk
PSF made their own choice based on their own politics and optics. Note that requirements had nothing against diversity or fairness. It was fairly specific: "discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
DEI was weaponized in the USA, where in quite a few instances, people couldn't get promoted or hired because of their race (typically white or asian). It was about preferential treatment, where you would get hired because of your race, and not merit.
I am all for diversity, I am all for fairness, and I don't think we should exclude people based on the color of their skin or their socioeconomic status. Yet, that is exactly what DEI did, and I have seen it firsthand many, many times.
PSF is just being stupid (or pragmatic) about it.
epistasis
> 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-...
bilekas
This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you run your business ?
> “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.”
Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated reason to a government grant?
I applaud them for taking a stand, it seems to be more and more rare these days.
rectang
Anti-DEI forces, once in power, turn out not to favor putative “diversity of opinion” after all.
iseletsk
No one takes them to jail; companies and organizations can run however they want, unless they break laws. It doesn't mean that the government that runs and wins on an anti-DEI agenda should give them money.
dragonwriter
> Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated reason to a government grant?
On the surface, it is simply a requirement that the grantee comply with existing non-discrimination laws coupled with a completely fictional example of a potential violation (“discriminatory equity ideology”) provided as an example that happens to have an initialism collision with a real thing. This is legal and (but for the propaganda example) routine.
But... the text viewed in isolation is not the issue.
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__alexs
> discriminatory equity ideology
Isn't that when you let your mates buy into your corrupt private investment vehicles for cheap?
lingrush4
I have no idea what point you think you're making, but this happens all the time. Do you really think you should be obligated to let strangers buy into your private business?
__alexs
Ah yeah you're right. What they actually mean is that DEI is when you build so many equity preference multiples into your term sheets the employee option pool becomes entirely worthless.
calmworm
And do really think they think that?
justin66
I understand what you're driving at but at this stage of the game it's quite American.
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mc32
I think people defend anti discrimination or are against it depending on how the anti discrimination policy discriminates discrimination.
We always discriminate. We have to. But only some discrimination is allowed and some are not allowed. The difference is what kind of discrimination people feel is fair and unfair.
rectang
I agree that humans discriminate inherently, although I would argue that what differentiates us is whether we struggle against that impulse.
On some level, the idea that we all discriminate has the potential to help us move beyond the "racist/not-racist" dichotomy. (I prefer the formulation "we all discriminate" over the dubious alternative "we're all racist".) But I'm not sure it will ever achieve mass acceptance, because it activates the human impulse to self-justify.
I dream that one day someone will come up with version of this idea that is universally acceptable.
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ksynwa
> Is that even legal to
Does it matter for the Trump administration what is legal and what isn't?
paloblanco
1.5M is a laughably small number compared to the value that financial institutions extract from just having PyPi available. I know my company, not financial but still large, has containers hitting it every day. How do we get these groups to fork over even just a small amount?
arusahni
The PSF and several other organizations that provide public package registries wrote an open letter [1] announcing a joint effort to make this situation more sustainable. I'll be interested to see where it goes.
[1]: https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-n...
paloblanco
Thanks! I want to bring this up as a discussion point when I get the chance at work.
I can't find a date on this letter - is it recent?
coloneltcb
Get your company to take the Pledge: https://opensourcepledge.com/
di
It says "September 23, 2025" right at the top.
abnercoimbre
I'm rather baffled at the spike in HN folks missing obvious dates. You're not the first..
fn-mote
The date is at the top of the letter and in the url...
September 2025.
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djoldman
> These terms included affirming the statement that 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.”
(Emphasis mine)
I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." If so, one might argue that a "DEI program" was not in violation of a Federal anti-discrimination law.
Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this likely would be an unacceptable risk.
wrs
If it was simply an agreement that the recipient won’t violate Federal law, it wouldn’t need to be stated (how could the intention be otherwise?). So I read it as an agreement to an interpretation that doing those things would violate the law.
dragonwriter
> If it was simply an agreement that the recipient won’t violate Federal law, it wouldn’t need to be stated (how could the intention be otherwise?).
Statements about not breaking specific existing laws are common in government contracts in the US (at all levels), functionally, they make violating the law a breach of contract. This enables the government to declare a breach and cancel the contract without the litigation that would be required for even a civil penalty for breaking the law, forcing the contractor to litigate for breach of contract (claiming that they did not breach the contract so that the government cancellation was itself a breach) instead.
Using a fantasy (“discriminatory equity ideology”) with an initialism collision with a common inclusivity practice (DEI), combined with recent practice by the same Administration, is clearly a signal of where the government intends to apply the guilty-until-proven-innocent approach in this case.
pavon
Or more specifically a warning that the administration intends to interpret the law in that manner, whether it is true or not. PSF could easily spend more than $1.5M in a lawsuit to challenge that interpretation if their grant was clawed back, so financially it isn't worth taking the money.
politician
> I read it as an agreement to an interpretation that doing those things would violate the law.
The Executive branch can make any claim it wants, but the Judiciary branch has the authority to decide what a reviewable claim means.
fn-mote
The GP's point is that it puts recipients in the position of having to argue that something they agreed to is invalid. This presumably places a higher burden of proof on the company.
In the absence of such a statement, the first claim would need to be "the DEI program your company runs is against federal law", which could then be tested in the courts.
rck
Not a lawyer, but the NSF clause covering clawbacks is pretty specific:
> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.
A "prohibited boycott" is apparently a legal term aimed specifically at boycotting Israel/Israeli companies, so unless PSF intended to violate federal law or do an Israel boycott, they probably weren't at risk. They mention they talked to other nonprofits, but don't mention talking to their lawyers. I would hope they did consult counsel, because it would be a shame to turn down that much money solely on the basis of word of mouth from non-attorneys.
dragonwriter
I don't think you are misunderstanding the surface requirements, but I think you are mistaking “would eventually, with unlimited resources for litigation, prevail in litigation over NSF cancelling funds, assuming that the US justice system always eventually produces a correct result” with “not at risk”.
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di
For some context on the scale of this grant, the PSF took in only $1M in "Contributions, Membership Dues, & Grants" in 2024: https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/
faefox
God, it is so humiliating to be an American these days. :(
theschmed
Read to the end. Ways to financially support this important work can be found there.
kristjansson
Step One: get them to a better payment processor than PayPal! I waded through it, but that's a high friction funnel.
danbrooks
I made a donation. Props to the PSF for standing up.
sega_sai
Great job from PSF ! Taking the stand rather them submitting themselves to dictatorial/thought-policing terms.
pbronez
Regardless of how you feel about the specific issues here, it’s a good example of why public policy works best when it targets one issue at a time.
If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking cybersecurity payments to social issues reduces how much cybersecurity you can get. Sometimes you can find win-win-win scenarios. There are values that are worth enforcing as a baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.
Anyway, I signed up to be a PSF member.
talawahtech
Thanks for posting this. I just made a donation to the PSF.
NeutralForest
That's what we like to hear! Read to the end and donate!
etchalon
Donated, and happy to.
It's shocking how fast this administration has gotten institutions to abandon their beliefs, and ones that don't should be rewarded.
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 entire state of modern scientific research is at risk.
Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI," imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in the long term.