The Trump administration said on March 19 it will withhold $175 million in funding that was previously earmarked for the University of Pennsylvania — seemingly putting its money where its mouth is after threatening to defund schools that failed to comply with the anti-trans executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
“He has threatened to rip federal funding away from any university that defies his executive order banning biological males from infiltrating women’s sports — and he is doing it,” said a Fox News anchor during a breaking news update posted to the administration’s Rapid Response account on Twitter.
A senior administration official told Fox “that this is just a taste of what could be coming down the pipe for Penn,” the anchor explained.
She called the move a “proactive punishment” as the administration revoked discretionary funds from the Department of Defense and Health and Human Services.
“The university is still at risk for losing all its federal funding,” she said, due to an ongoing investigation launched by the Department of Education on Feb. 6 — which targeted UPenn and two other institutions that previously made national headlines over trans-inclusive approaches to sports. A press release cited bogus Title IX violations as the reason for the investigations, naming trans athlete Lia Thomas’s spot on the school’s 2021-2022 women’s swim team as UPenn’s offense.
At the time, UPenn and Thomas remained in compliance with all trans-specific policies dictated by the governing bodies that oversaw the school’s participation in intramural athletics.
A senior White House official told Politico that the funding cut was not related to the investigation, explaining it as an “immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams to those universities.”
UPenn responded to Politico in a statement explaining that the university has not received any official notification or details regarding the funding cut yet. The statement also underlined that the university has now changed its approach to trans-inclusion in sports to comply with rule changes.
“It is important to note, however, that Penn has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams,” UPenn’s statement continues. “We have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions.”
Following Trump’s executive order, the NCAA — a governing body that oversees the most competitive divisions of college athletics in the US — changed its 2022 policy, in which individual sports created their own policies regarding trans-inclusion based on national, international, or Olympic standards. This permitted trans women to compete with and against cisgender women in some sports while revoking access in others.
The new policy, which went into effect immediately — on the day following Trump’s executive order, allows trans women to practice with cis women but forces trans women to compete in men’s or mixed gender categories only.
“It is ridiculous to imagine that any person, team, league, institution could be punished for following the rules that were in place years ago,” said Chris Mosier, a trans athlete who advocates for trans-inclusion in sports, about the move to defund UPenn retroactively.
Losses in federal funding recently led to major job cuts at Johns Hopkins University and pauses in important research at Columbia. Similar issues and other negative outcomes — including to student support services — could emerge at UPenn, which is already facing significant financial challenges.
K-12 schools also face potential risks right now. Maine, for instance, was just ordered to ban trans girls from participating in girls’ sports competitions. The state has been threatened with federal prosecution if it does not comply. Recently, the governing body that oversees Pennsylvania’s high school sports changed its policy to comply with Trump’s EO. New Jersey took the opposite approach as its governing body reaffirmed a commitment to trans athletes by stating it would not amend its own policy.