What to Know About Trump’s Strategy Targeting Colleges’ Grants and Contracts

Trump and his advisers have signaled their intent to crack down on “woke” higher education but haven’t said how they will do so. Instead, a cadre of conservative policy analysts plotted how to leverage other agencies and sources of funding, beyond access to the $130 billion distributed annually in federal student loans and Pell Grants.

But efforts to send colleges and universities into “an existential terror,” as [Chris Rufo, an influential anti-DEI advocate and a member of the Board of Trustees at New College of Florida] put it, have required the Trump administration to move at a dizzying pace and leverage multiple mechanisms that most higher education lawyers, policy analysts and officials say are incredibly novel.

A large part of what makes the Trump administration’s current push to crack down on colleges and align their actions with his agenda so unprecedented, experts say, is its sheer magnitude, from the amount of money at risk to the number of investigations involving various agencies.

At least four departments beyond Education—Justice, Defense, Energy and Health and Human Services—have also been involved, cutting off scientific research grants, which are typically considered immune from political attacks.

Adding to the difficulty for colleges, the Trump administration is largely ignoring regulatory standards and procedures when it cuts funding.

For instance, cabinet members have broadly used the term “investigation” to describe the ways they are cracking down on colleges. But in most cases, the review process has lasted only a few days and resulted in little to no evidence of the alleged violation. Often, universities have been presented with a list of ultimatums or policy changes they must make in order to avoid a funding freeze or restore their funds.

Generally, the only people who have authority to take contract-based actions on behalf of the United States are contracting officers or agreements officers, said Jayna Marie Rust, a partner at Thompson Coburn LLP. But under the Trump administration, it’s often unclear if this is the case, especially with the Department of Government Efficiency reviewing contracts and grants and touting decisions to cancel millions in agreements.