Judge blocks NCAR breakup, lets UCAR keep control of supercomputer

BOULDER — A federal judge has moved to block the Trump administration’s breakup of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, allowing the Boulder-based nonprofit University Center for Atmospheric Research to keep control over the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne.

In issuing the preliminary injunction Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard Brooke Jackson, who had been appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled that the move was unlawful and linked to President Donald Trump’s disdain for Colorado over the conviction and imprisonment of Tina Peters, an allegation made by UCAR when it sued in March to stop the dismantling of NCAR.

Jackson’s ruling came the same day that Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, walked out of prison after having her sentence commuted by Gov. Jared Polis last month. Peters had been sentenced to nine years behind bars for her role in allowing unauthorized access to her county’s election equipment in an attempt to uncover what she alleged was election fraud.

UCAR, a nonprofit consortium of 129 colleges and universities that conducts research and training in Earth sciences, manages NCAR, which operates out of the iconic Mesa Laboratory at 1850 Table Mesa Drive that opened in 1967 and overlooks south Boulder.

Russell Vought, a chief architect of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Trump term and currently director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced in December 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.” 

According to UCAR’s lawsuit, Polis had originally refused to grant clemency to Peters, and Vought’s action came a day after Trump called Polis “weak and pathetic” for not releasing “our wonderful Tina.”

Jackson’s ruling called 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.

Jackson also cited part of a Feb. 12 letter from the NSF blocking NCAR and UCAR from making any public comment on the restructuring without preapproval from an NSF program officer, noting that the action may infringe on First Amendment rights.

“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.”

Jackson wrote that, “even considering the administrative record as a whole, there is no evidence that NSF has ever expressed dissatisfaction with UCAR’s stewardship, identified performance deficiencies, or otherwise articulated concerns regarding UCAR’s management justifying a change of this magnitude. This omission is particularly striking given NSF’s stated commitment to ‘providing world-class infrastructure for weather modeling, space weather research and forecasting,’ which UCAR already does.”

The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center supports and advances Earth sciences by providing “world-class computing environments, data services and research in computational science,” according to its website. It’s relied upon around the world for weather forecasts and data, providing resources to more than 1,500 users at more than 500 universities and research institutions every year.

The Trump administration also announced in December that it would cancel $109 million in transportation grants that had been awarded to Colorado for environment-related projects. Two of the five grants targeted directly affected Fort Collins, including $11.7 million to electrify that city’s fleet of vehicles and expand its charging infrastructure, and $10.7 million to build a transit station and roundabout at West Elizabeth Street and South Overland Trail as part of Transfort’s bus-rapid-transit expansion plan. 

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