Confused Senator Rages That Self-Driving Cars Are Woke

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) believes that topics as diverse as solar eclipses and self-driving cars are "neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda."

According to a database he released this week, as NPR reports, just over $2 billion of the National Science Foundation's $9 billion budget went to "left-wing ideological crusades masked as 'academic research.'"

It's an absurd claim that highlights president Donald Trump's baffling attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the US government, which has involved stamping out mentions of women's achievements, threatening federal workers with "severe consequences" for failing to tattle on their peers, and even directing NASA employees to take down pride flags.

Further illustrating the emptiness of these pointless attacks on science, the "woke" database includes things ranging from the benign to the downright puzzling, like solar eclipse experiments and research on how to make self-driving vehicles safer.

The explanation may be just as dumb as you'd expect. The self-driving vehicle study's description predicts that advanced driving systems will "reduce mobility barriers for older generations or people with disabilities" — meaning the word "disabilities" may have triggered it to be flagged, given the Trump administration's crusade against accessibility efforts, which has been grouped in with his anti-DEI executive orders.

A different item, flagged as "GENDER" in the spreadsheet, was meant to provide opportunities for women in the electric vehicles industry.

"It's ludicrous," University of Maryland biologist Joshua Weitz, who has previously received NSF grants, told NPR. "[Cruz] is using his position as a senator to make a big noise about fundamental research and mis-categorizing what's going on in the research and technology sector in this country."

"If one looks at this list, you find things that we should absolutely be proud of funding," he added.

In a statement, Cruz claimed that "DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans."

It's a bafflingly initiative, aimed to politicize extremely basic and important scientific research. As such, it has researchers dumbfounded.

"The radical work that is being attacked is students walking around in their community, collecting temperature data or looking at maps and identifying a local issue of heat," San Jose State University professor of science education Tammie Visintainer, who was personally singled out by Cruz' investigation for her work to study heat islands and their effects on racially diverse communities, told NPR.

"There's nothing political about wanting students to learn," Miami University ecologist Kylea Garces, whose grant is also on ice, told the public broadcaster "That's not social justice. That is simply giving all students an opportunity to get a good grade and be able to succeed in their future career."

Apart from attacking scientific education grants, the Trump administration has also aimed its sights at the Education Department. Billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency ripped through data on the American education system this week, notifying those who previously worked on it that they had been fired.

"The inmates are running the asylum, and the goal is chaos and the goal is destruction," former Obama-era education secretary Arne Duncan told the Washington Post. "We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetime."

More on anti-woke: Trump Orders NASA to Purge All Mentions of Women in Leadership On Its Websites