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DENVER (CN) — The organization supporting the nation’s leading atmospheric research lab sued the National Science Foundation on Monday, looking to block cuts to funding and programs made in retaliation for Colorado’s prosecution of Trump supporter Tina Peters and support of mail-in voting.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, based in Boulder, Colorado, employs 800 scientists and engineers advancing not just weather modeling, but supercomputing and observational systems, driving hurricane forecasting and wildfire modeling, in support of federal agencies from the Department of Defense to NASA.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR, named the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget as defendants in its lawsuit to block what it argues are retaliatory funding and program cuts.
“Because Colorado refuses to relinquish to the federal government powers reserved to it by the Constitution, the agencies have undertaken a series of retributive actions designed to coerce and punish Colorado,” UCAR says in the 47-page lawsuit.
Besides multimillion-dollar funding cuts, UCAR claims the federal government has imposed additional bureaucratic burdens, issued a gag order, and angled to remove NCAR’s control of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing center, which it has run for over a decade.
The goal, UCAR says, “is to destroy NCAR entirely.”
The moves, according to UCAR in the complaint, “risk directly undermining the Trump administration’s expressed goals of retaining the country’s position of leadership in weather forecasting and continuing the tradition of American innovation and modernization, particularly in space weather modeling and forecasting."
According to the lawsuit, federal cuts to NCAR were driven by Colorado officials’ support of mail-in voting as well as the state’s prosecution of Tina Peters, a former clerk and recorder for Mesa County who is serving a 9-year jail sentence on charges associated with bringing an unauthorized observer in during a voting machine update.
Both actions, however — running elections and prosecuting state criminal offenses — are duties delegated to the state, the plaintiffs argue.
In addition to cuts to NCAR, Colorado has been tasked to recertify SNAP recipients, been denied emergency disaster relief, and seen U.S. Space Command’s headquarters moved from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.
The state of Colorado filed its own lawsuits opposing these moves this past October, and scored a victory from Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson on Monday. In a 52-page preliminary injunction, Jackson blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from forcing the state to recertify recipients of SNAP benefits in the five most populous counties within 30 days as the agency had demanded.
“The short answer is this: the pilot project plainly violates the statutes and regulations governing SNAP, the Constitution, and is contrary to reasoned and reasonable agency decision-making,” Jackson wrote in his order.
A spokesperson for the National Science Foundation declined to comment on the pending litigation.
UCAR is represented by attorney Michael Purpura of Hueston Henningan LLP in Los Angeles, California.
Claiming violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, UCAR asks the court to block the federal government’s restrictions and funding cuts.
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