President Donald Trump has made good on his promise to strip funding from universities that did not obey the executive order he signed banning men from competing in women’s sports. On X, the White House revealed that the Trump administration has paused $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over the university’s insistence on allowing men to compete in women’s sports.
A senior administration official told Fox Business that the funding pause is a “proactive punishment” from President Trump that pulls back discretionary funding from the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services.
In 2022, transgender-identifying athlete Lia Thomas gained controversial notoriety for UPenn when he started competing on the women’s swimming team and eventually won a national championship title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event. Several of Thomas’ former teammates have spoken out after Trump announced he took funding away from the school.
Former teammates Grace Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski and Ellen Holmquist released a joint statement shared with Fox News Digital through the Independent Council for Women’s Sports (ICONS).
The women lauded Trump’s decision, stating: “We are so glad that Universities are beginning to see that there is a cost to openly harming female students on their campuses and we hope the pressure only increases. Penn and other universities within the NCAA, under NCAA policy and their own rogue leadership, have violated federal law and hurt women.”
National Review reports that the $175 million amount is only a fraction of the Ivy League school’s total federal funding. UPenn received over $1 billion in federal funding last fiscal year, the student-run Daily Pennsylvaniannewspaper reported. More than 80 percent of the funding came from HHS.
One day after Trump signed the executive order protecting women’s sports, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights launched investigations into UPenn, San Jose State University, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for apparent violations of Title IX, notes National Review. The 1972 law protects women from sex-based discrimination in federal funded educational institutions, ranging from elementary schools to universities.
I don’t think the federal government has any business funding universities other than the military academies. I challenge anyone to show me in the constitution where it authorizes such funding.
And on top of that they indoctrinate for the left instead of actually educating students.