Editorial: Judge acted rightly in blocking Trump’s attacks on NCAR

Our constitutional government depends on a balance of powers, a system of checks and balances among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. When one branch exceeds or abuses its authority, it’s incumbent on the other branches to intervene.

For more than a year, Colorado has found itself at the center of multiple disputes with the Trump administration. Those conflicts have included efforts to rescind funding for clean-energy initiatives, eliminate transportation grants, deny support for water projects and pursue other actions affecting the state. Yet Congress has shown little inclination to challenge the administration’s actions, leaving the courts as the primary venue for resolving questions about executive authority.

That makes U.S. District Court judge Richard Brooke Jackson’s June 1 ruling involving the National Center for Atmospheric Research especially significant.

Jackson blocked the administration’s efforts  to dismantle the Boulder-based NCAR and remove the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research as the managing entity of NCAR and its assets, including the supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a chief architect of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Trump term in December announced that the National Science Foundation would immediately move to shut down NCAR, which he branded in a post on X as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

UCAR sued in March, arguing that the dismantling violated due process and was retaliation for the jailing of election denier Tina Peters.

Jackson agreed, calling the Trump administration’s decision “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion” under the Administrative Procedure Act because the National Science Foundation hadn’t explained the decision and ignored its own public comment process.

“Without an injunction, UCAR will have no choice but to proceed with NSF’s directives to facilitate the transfer process at the expense of its regular operations,” Jackson wrote in his 38-page opinion. “It will also continue to lose critical employees — including scientists, engineers, and systems administrators — that are essential to the continuous and proper functioning of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center.”

Even Trump’s staunchest supporters could scarcely deny that Colorado has been in the president’s crosshairs. (In addition to the slights mentioned above, he’s also ordered the relocation of U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Alabama.)

With Congress largely absent from this debate, the judiciary fulfilled its constitutional role. Judge Jackson’s ruling was not a victory for a particular ideology, but it is a reminder that even the most powerful administration must follow the law.

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