‘Proactive Punishment’: Trump Admin Pauses $175M to Penn

March 19, 2025 1 min read

Katherine Knott 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Trump administration is pausing $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, apparently because the college allowed a transgender woman to compete in women’s sports three years ago.

The funding pause, announced Wednesday via a White House social media post, is not related to any investigation. Instead, the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services stopped the $175 million as part of an “immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams,” a senior White House official said in a statement. The legality of the move isn’t clear, and officials didn’t specify what the paused funding was intended to be used for.

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