NCAR court fight headlines Nature's daily science briefing

The universities that manage the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have sued the Trump administration over plans to dismantle NCAR and transfer parts of it to other public and private institutions.

• Main action: The universities are suing the Trump administration and challenging actions by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) that would hand off pieces of NCAR, including a supercomputing center in Wyoming, as well as parts of its aeroplane fleet, space-weather studies and climate-modelling teams; the administration has characterized NCAR as a source of “climate alarmism”.
• Background and context: The suit contends the NSF is moving too quickly and without authority; the report frames this as the start of a broader, ongoing legal and policy battle over NCAR’s future. Other items in the briefing include Elsevier joining a class-action suit against Meta over AI training on copyrighted works, a ransomware breach affecting thousands on the Canvas platform, and features on sleep and genomic regulatory research.