The Colorado Sun reports:

A federal judge in Denver on Monday blocked federal officials from breaking up Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research by handing over a renowned supercomputing center to the University of Wyoming, in a 38-page injunction raking the Trump administration for enacting political revenge on Colorado.

Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued an injunction because the National Science Foundation divesting the supercomputing center was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” according to the ruling. Jackson said his injunction was necessary because the lawsuit filed in March by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, or UCAR, was likely to succeed, and that too much damage had already been done to the supercomputing center’s operations.

The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center has “already lost significant number of experts in supercomputing, for example, with the chance of losing many more,” the judge wrote.

The National Science Foundation declined comment on the injunction late Monday, through head of media affairs Mike England.

UCAR, a consortium of more than 100 universities and the contracted manager of NCAR operations, “has made a showing of irreparable harm through the significant ‘brain drain’ that it is already experiencing as a direct result” of the National Science Foundation’s attempted transfer, the judge wrote. “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 NWSC.”

The original lawsuit and the injunction say the supercomputing center is a “pillar” of the nation’s atmospheric research. Judge Jackson agreed with the UCAR lawsuit’s claim that breaking off parts of NCAR, dismantling projects and potentially firing thousands of employees was intended by Trump and agency officials as direct political revenge. [Continue reading…]