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Dive Brief:
The National Institutes of Health has temporarily restored the University of California system’s research funding it abruptly revoked under President Donald Trump, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice said in court filings this week.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction last month ordering NIH, along with the U.S. departments of Defense and Transportation, to reinstate the canceled funding for the university system and its researchers while a related lawsuit proceeds.
Trump administration officials said Monday the three agencies were complying but reported some administrative difficulties that would take until mid-October to resolve.
Dive Insight:
Researchers and faculty from the University of California’s Berkeley and San Francisco campuses filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration in June, alleging its mass termination of research grants was illegal and jeopardized U.S. advancement. At the University of California, Los Angeles alone, NIH reportedly cut some 500 research grants worth over $500 million.
In September, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin temporarily ordered three agencies to reinstate the grants and barred them from making further cuts en masse against the system for the duration of the court case.
NIH has now restored the bulk of that funding to comply with the order. But the agency is running into issues verifying if the grants it canceled are held by University of California researchers who work at institutions outside of their home system, federal officials told the court on Monday.
In total, NIH identified 61 grants that likely meet this parameter, all but nine of which have been reinstated.
Officials are trying to verify that the researchers on the remaining nine grants are still employed by the University of California, a process challenged by potentially out-of-date agency files, court documents said.
As of Monday, NIH anticipated completing that work by the end of the week, though the shutdown of the federal government has likely altered that timeline.
The Defense Department also declared a successful return of funds to University of California institutions. But the agency reported administrative difficulties on behalf of its components, such as the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the branches of the military.
Simply identifying relevant awards issued through those groups has been a challenge, officials said, “because of the number of DoD Components and the variety of grants systems involved.”
“Reinstatement has been particularly complicated, as a fiscal matter, where funding has already been deobligated,” the court filing said. “In most cases, DoD Components have contacted UC institutions so that they can work together to modify awards and restore funding.”
Prior to the government shutdown, the Defense Department gave an estimated completion date of Oct. 10.
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Dive Brief:
Harvard University could lose access to all federal grants and contracts under proceedings initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday.
The agency’s Office for Civil Rights has referred the university for suspension and debarment, the process by which the agency can cut off entities from federal grants and contracts if it determines that wrongdoing renders them “not responsible enough to do business” with the government.
The move represents the latest federal effort to bend Harvard to the Trump administration’s will through financial pressure. The administration has sought to use multiple federal agencies to gain increased influence over the higher education sector, singling out Harvard as a prime target.
Dive Insight:
On Monday, HHS’ OCR recommended excluding Harvard from federal funding, arguing the move would protect the public interest. The agency cited its June notice that formally accused Harvard of being in “violent violation” of Title VI by being “deliberately indifferent” to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its campus.
Title VI forbids institutions that accept federal funds from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.
HHS can pursue the debarment process when an entity — in this case Harvard — does not voluntarily agree with the agency’s terms to return to compliance with Title VI,according to Paula Stannard, director of HHS’ OCR. HHS and three other federal agencies on the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism in June called for Harvard to “institute adequate changes immediately”but did not publicly detail what those changes should be.
Stannard said Monday that Harvard has the right to a formal hearing during the suspension and debarment process.
“An HHS administrative law judge will make an impartial determination on whether Harvard violated Title VI by acting with deliberate indifference towards antisemitic student-on-student harassment,” Stannard said.
Harvard has 20 days to request the hearing. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Suspension and debarment applies to all federal grants and contracts, not just those from HHS. And agencies across the federal government can initiate suspension and debarment proceedings. If sustained, debarment is not permanent and typically lasts under three years, according to a 2022 HHS report.
Monday’s announcement is unrelated to HHS’ joint civil rights investigation with the U.S. Department of Education into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review.The agencies opened the probe in April,citing allegations of “race-based discrimination permeating the operations” of the student-run journal.
Months before HHS formally determined Harvard had violated Title VI, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force froze over $2.2 billion of the university’s grants and contracts.
The halt cameafter Harvard President Alan Garber publicly rebuked the Trump administration’s call for increased federal control of the institution. Its demands includedthat the university hire a third party to audit the viewpoints of Harvard students and employees,halt all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,and reduce the power of certain faculty and administrators involved in activism.
A federal judge ruled in early September that the Trump administration violated the university’s First Amendment rightsand didn’t follow proper steps when it suspended the funding. No evidence indicated that “fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard,” the judge wrote.
The judge’s decision barred the Trump administration from cutting off Harvard’s federal funding in retaliation for the university exercising its free speech rights or without following the procedural requirements of Title VI. However, the judge noted that her ruling didn’t prevent the Trump administration from “acting within their constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority.”
Trump administration officials appealed the decision and said it would keep Harvard “ineligible for grants in the future.”
Speaking at the Labour Party conference, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson announced the (limited) return of student maintenance grants by the end of this Parliament:
I am announcing that this Labour government will introduce new targeted maintenance grants for students who need them most. Their time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends.
As further details emerged, it became clear that these would be specifically targeted to students from low-income households who were studying courses within the same list of “government priority” subject areas mentioned in plans for the lifelong learning entitlement. As a reminder these are:
computing
engineering
architecture, building & planning (excluding landscape gardening)
There will be further details on the way the new grants will work, and on the detail of the levy, in the Autumn Statement on 26 November. This is what we know so far – everything else is based on speculation.
Eligibility
A whole range of questions surround the announcement.
How disadvantaged will a student have to be – and will it be based on family income in the same way that the current system is? Imagine if entitlement was set at below the current threshold for the maximum loan – disadvantaged enough to get the full loan, not enough for a grant.
If it’s set anywhere near the current threshold – £25,000 residual family income since 2007 – there’s a lot of “disadvantage” going on above that figure. If it’s set above that figure, that will beg the question – why assume a parental contribution in the main loan part of the scheme?
Will it be on top of, or simply displace some of the existing loan? If it’s the latter, that won’t help with day to day costs, and as the Augar review noted – those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are least likely to pay back in full anyway, which would make the “grant” more of a debt-relief scam.
The distribution in the apparent hypothecation will be fascinating. It does mean that international students studying at English universities will be funding grants for English domiciled students wherever they are studying. Will devolved nations now follow suit?
If international student recruitment falls, will that mean that the amount of money available for disadvantaged student grants falls too or is the Treasury willing to agree a fixed amount for the grants that doesn’t change?
Restricting grants to those on the lowest incomes does mean that the government intends to relieve student poverty for some but not others, based on course choice. Will that shift behaviour – on the part of students and universities – in problematic ways?
With the LLE on the way, will grants be chunked up and down by credit? See Jim’s piece from the weekend on the problematic incentives that this would create.
The hypothecation also raises real moral questions about international student hardship being exacerbated to fund home student hardship relief – if, as many will do, universities put fees up to cover the cost of the levy. The possibility of real resentment from international students, who already know they’re propping up the costs of lower and subsidised fees, is significant.
For LLE modular tuition fee funding, under OfS quality proposals Bronze/Requires improvement universities will have to apply for their students to access it – they will need to demonstrate that there is a rationale for them doing IS-8 courses. Will that apply for these grants too?
Phillipson’s speech also referenced work– students’ time at college or university should be “spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends”. By coincidence, Jim worked up some numbers on how much “work” the current loan scheme funds earlier. Whether we’ll get numbers from Phillipson on what she thinks “every hour god sends” means in practice, and how many hours she thinks students should be learning or training for, remains to be seen.
We might also assume that the grant won’t be increased for those in London, and reduced for studying at home in the way that the maintenance loan is now. And if this is all we’re going to get in the way of student finance reform, all of the other myriad problems with the system may not get touched either.
The levy
There’s a certain redistributive logic in using tuition fee income from very prestigious universities to support learners at FE colleges or local providers, though it is unlikely that university senior managers will see it in quite those terms.
A six per cent levy on international fee income in England for the 2023–24 financial year would have yielded around £620m, with half of that coming from the 20 English providers in the Russell Group. Of course, this doesn’t mean that half of all international students are at the Russell Group – it means that they are able to charge higher tuition fees to the international students they do recruit.
Of course, the levy applies to all providers – and, as we saw back when the idea was first floated there are some outside of the Russell Group that see significant parts of their income come from international fees, and would see their overall financial sustainability adversely affected by the levy. In the main these tend to be smaller specialist providers, but there are some larger modern universities too. Some universities don’t even have undergraduate students, but will still see their fees top-sliced to fund undergraduate-level grants elsewhere.
There has been a concerted lobbying effort by various university groups aimed at getting the government to abandon the levy plan – as it appears that this effort has failed you would expect the conversations to turn to ensuring the levy is not introduced at six per cent as the Home Office previously modelled, or mitigating its impact for some or all providers. Certainly, as Phillipson chose the same speech to remind us she had taken “the decisive steps we needed on university finances” it would feel like it is not her intention to add to the woes of higher education providers that are genuinely struggling.
DfE has said that the new grants will be “fully funded” by an international student levy. It’s worth noting that this is not the same as saying that all the levy money will go towards the grants.The tie between the grants and the levy is politically rather astute – it will be very difficult for Labour backbenchers to argue against grants for students on low income, even if they are committed to making arguments in the interests of their local university. But legislatively, establishing a ring fence that ensures the levy only pays for these grants will be very difficult – other parts of government will have their eye on this new income, and the Treasury is famously very resistant to ringfencing money that comes in.
It also opens up the idea of the government specifically taxing higher education with targeted levies. It is notable that there has been no indication that the levy will be charged on private school fees, or fees paid to English language colleges, where these are paid by non-resident students. DfE itself suggests that £980m of international fees go to schools, and a further £850m goes to English language training – why leave a certain percentage of that on the table when it can be used to support disadvantaged young people in skills training?
What would it achieve?
In the end, even grants at the maximum level of £3,000 a year that were recommended by the Augar review wouldn’t have made much difference to student poverty, and there’s been a lot of inflation since.
And a part of the idea of the levy was to reduce (albeit slightly) the number of study visas granted – if you recall, the Home Office report emerged in a month that everyone became concerned about students claiming asylum. If that part of the plan works (if that was ever really the plan, rather than a fortunate coincidence) then surely there would be less money to play with for maintenance – and any future government that attempts to reduce international higher education recruitment would be accused of taking the grants away from working class students on priority courses?
The real value in the reintroduction of the grant is that it is politically totemic for Labour. But if it encourages more disadvantaged students to go into HE because of a perception of better affordability when they will still struggle, there will be both a financial and political cost in the long term.
A federal court order issued late Monday evening provides significant financial relief to the University of California, Los Angeles, restoring about $500 million in federal research grants amid an ongoing lawsuit with the Trump administration over alleged instances of antisemitism on campus.
The preliminary injunction, first reported by CalMatters and Politico, is temporary. But for now it reinstates more than 500 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor, allowing hundreds, if not thousands, of university researchers to resume their work. That’s on top of a previous order in August from the same court that unfroze about 300 grants from the National Science Foundation.
Between the two rulings, almost all of UCLA’s federal research grants have been restored.
The funds were first withheld in late July, less than a week after the Justice Department accused the university of tolerating discrimination against Jewish students, faculty members and staff, in violation of federal civil rights law. The Trump administration later said UCLA could resolve the situation by paying $1.2 billion and agreeing to lengthy list of policy changes.
But university researchers pushed back, using an existing broader lawsuit and injunction to challenge the grant freeze.
In the end, District Judge Rita F. Lin, a Biden appointee, ruled in favor of the faculty members, saying the indefinite suspensions of grants was “likely arbitrary,” “capricious” and a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Trump administration has made another move that historians say is an attempt to sanitize American history, but one the administration argued is necessary to ensure students have respect for the country.
On Wednesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlined a new plan for how her department would promote “patriotic education” by adding it to the list of priorities that can drive decisions for discretionary grants, including those that support programs at colleges and universities.
“It is imperative to promote an education system that teaches future generations honestly about America’s Founding principles, political institutions, and rich history,” McMahon said in a statement about the new proposal. “To truly understand American values, the tireless work it has taken to live up to them, and this country’s exceptional place in world history is the best way to inspire an informed patriotism and love of country.”
According to the proposal, which is open for public comment until Oct. 17, “patriotic education” refers to “a presentation of the history of America grounded in an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of the American founding and foundational principles”; examines “how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history”; and advances the “concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified.”
McMahon’s other priorities for grant funding include evidence-based literacy, expanding education choice, returning education to the states and advancing AI in education.
With this latest proposal, the department wants to focus “grant funds on programs that promote a patriotic education that cultivates citizen competency and informed patriotism among and communicates the American political tradition to students at all levels.” That could include projects geared toward helping students understand the “founding documents and primary sources of the American political tradition, in a manner consistent with the principles of a patriotic education,” according to the proposal.
‘Narrow Conception of Patriotism’
However, professional historians who have read the proposal told Inside Higher Ed that the department’s patriotic education push is a politically motivated power grab.
“I agree that American history should be presented with accuracy and honesty, based on solid historical evidence, and doing so does inspire people,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association. “But the department’s priority statement has a narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education.”
She said that’s especially evident given the Trump administration’s numerous other policy changes aimed at presenting a version of American history that downplays or ignores the darkest parts of the country’s past, such as race-based slavery, the disenfranchisement of women and African Americans, and codified racial segregation.
“That context tells us that the administration is interested in telling an uncomplicated celebration of American greatness,” Weicksel said. “Doing that flattens the past into a set of platitudes that are not rooted in the broader historical context, conflicts, contingencies and change over time that are central to historical thinking.”
In March, Trump issued an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” prohibiting federal funding for exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.” That prompted a review of all exhibits hosted by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, both of which have since removed multiple artifacts that don’t support Trump’s patriotic history push, including several that underscore the brutality of slavery.
And as the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding approaches, the government is in the process of planning commemorative civic education initiatives that advance its definition of patriotic history. To make that happen, it’s largely drawing on the input and expertise of conservative scholars and groups.
The Education Department recently awarded $160 million in American history and civics grants for seminars for K–12 educators and students related to the Declaration of Independence anniversary next year. The agency didn’t specify which institutions got the money but previously said it would give priority to colleges and universities with “independent academic units dedicated to civic thought, constitutional studies, American history, leadership, and economic liberty,” which critics describe as conservative centers.
In remarks at an event hosted by the Federalist Society and the Defense of Freedom Institute on Wednesday, McMahon criticized the state of civics education for students, citing a statistic that only 41 percent of young people say they love America.
“That means the balance doesn’t love America,” she said. “Why don’t they love America? Why aren’t they proud to be Americans? It’s because they don’t know America. They don’t know the foundations, they don’t know the real history of our country … It’s really important that we teach respect for our flag, that we teach respect for our country.”
While she did acknowledge that the Education Department can’t directly control curriculum, she noted that the department can use funding to encourage the types of education or programs it wants to see.
The Education Department also announced Wednesday that it’s launching a coalition of 40 groups—including the conservative Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College and the American First Policy Institute—to spearhead the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, which is “dedicated to renewing patriotism.” (McMahon chaired the American First Policy Institute before she became secretary.)
“We celebrate Lincoln for his greatness in recalling the nation to the principles of its birth, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful political document in history,” Hillsdale president Larry Arnn said in a statement about the coalition. “It is time to repeat his work and the work of Jefferson and the Founders. We will work together to learn those principles, and for the love of them we will have a grand celebration.”
‘Pure Politics’
But Weicksel with AHA said the government’s directives to omit parts of American history in classrooms, museums and other public spaces will undermine the public’s agency. “If citizens don’t have access to a historically accurate understanding of the past, how will they use that past to chart a new path for the future?”
David Blight, a professor of history and Black studies at Yale University, said he interprets the department’s emphasis on patriotic education as “pure politics.”
“It’s the politics of trying to use history to control people, including children, young people, the people who teach it, the people who write curriculum and the state legislatures that will design this stuff,” he said. “The government is trying to be a truth ministry.”
While there have been other movements to control how the country remembers its history—including by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—Blight said these moves by the Trump administration are more powerful.
“We’ve never had this come right from the White House, with the power of the executive branch and their control over so much money,” he said, urging educators to voice their opposition. “When federal money depends on pure ideology, we’re in very deep trouble, and that’s what they’re saying. That’s not even close to a democratic society.”
Families, educators and advocates of children and youth who are both blind and deaf are scrambling to reclaim abruptly canceled federal funding that they say is a “lifeline” for students’ educational and developmental progress.
A notice of noncontinuation from the U.S. Department of Education recently went to four deafblind projects in Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and a consortium of New England states including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. Advocates say the notice was sent Sept. 5, although a letter reviewed by K-12 Dive is dated Aug. 27.
The noncontinuation notice to Oregon’s deafblind project fiscal agent, for example, said continuing the project “would be in conflict with agency policy and priorities, and so is not in the best interest of the Federal Government.”
The notice quoted from the project’s 2023 grant application, which said the grant’s partners “are committed to working to improve strategies, interventions, processes to address inequities, racism, bias, and system marginalization of culturally, linguistically, or dis/ability groups.”
Combined, the four projects’ grants were to total about $1 million for the coming fiscal year, according to figures provided by deafblind advocates. The grants in those states serve about 1,365 children and their families, advocates said.
The projects are going into the third year of a five-year grant. The federal funding supports deafblind youth who attend public, private, and charter schools or are homeschooled. It is used for teacher training and professional development, family resources and training, educational materials and technology, and other activities.
The Education Department’s notice to the fiscal agent of Oregon’s deafblind project gave the grant manager seven days to request reconsideration.
The Trump administration has been eliminating programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion at the K-12 and higher education levels — and across the government. As such, the disability rights community has been concerned that those moves would also target efforts that support students and people with disabilities.
Moreover, education programs have been singled out as the Education Department under President Donald Trump has pushed to reduce federal red tape and bureaucracy by giving states more control over how they spend federal funds.
Serenity Elliott receives services at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., in March 2025.
Permission granted by Candice Elliott
Deafblindness and the DEI debate
According to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a national child count conducted Dec. 1, 2023, showed 10,692 children and young adults from birth to age 26 were eligible for state deafblind project services.
Deafblindness is a low-incidence disability, meaning it’s not considered common. The combination of hearing and vision impairments “causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that students cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness,” according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Deafblindness is one of the disability categories that qualify for IDEA services. The recent notices of noncontinuation of the IDEA Part D grants to state deafblind projects do not impact IDEA Part B and Part C services for developmental and educational supports to infants, toddlers, children and young adults with disabilities.
Most states have their own deafblind projects that receive federal funding through IDEA, although some states partner in a multistate consortium, according to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a federally funded technical assistance center.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids.”
Jill Underly
Wisconsin state superintendent
The Oregon DeafBlind Project had expected to receive $133,543 for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The state serves about 114 children and youth with deafblindness.
Project Director Lisa McConachie said the noncontinuance is “nonsensical,” especially since an annual report she submitted earlier this year had no mention of DEI. She said in 2023, at the time of the project’s application under the Biden administration, grantees were required to add language about DEI as part of the application.
McConachie is employed by Portland Public Schools, which is the fiscal agent for the grant. She said on Tuesday that she was planning to file an appeal for reconsideration to reinstate the grant.
“We’re just kind of stuck for a minute,” McConachie said.
Although the project is funded through September, she said she worries about what could happen to children if the grant doesn’t continue. “To stop support and services right during school is just so disruptive. It’s time that will be lost and never recovered.”
Portland Public Schools only became the state’s fiscal grant manager for the deafblind project in the last two years, even though the grant has been ongoing for decades. In that time, the school system and its partners have been building connections and developing more educator, student and family supports, McConachie said.
“We’ve made all these connections and started to really move the dial for folks, and now we’re going to be stopped,” she said.
In Wisconsin, state Superintendent Jill Underly blasted the grant termination.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids,” Underly said in a Tuesday statement. “Wisconsin had planned work with these funds that includes direct support for deafblind learners and their families and efforts to recruit and retain new special education teachers. We are asking for a reconsideration to protect these valuable projects.”
Underly said the state’s five-year grant totals more than $550,000 and helps serve 170 children and youth from birth through age 21.
In a statement to K-12 Dive, Savannah Newhouse, U.S. Education Department press secretary, said the department re-awarded over 500 IDEA Part D grants and did not continue fewer than 35 grants that do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Examples from the applications for grants that weren’t continued, according to Newhouse, include:
An early childhood technical assistance center that indicated itsframework must “address the systemic racism that permeates all aspects of society,” to be achieved by “enhancing equity content within early childhood preparation programs.”
A school for the blind that indicated it “must embed the values of diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.”
Embedding of ‘cultural humility’ as a significant aspect of all training provided to federally funded agencies supporting adults with disabilities.
“Many of these use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to,” Newhouse said. “The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
The Lydon family, from Dallas, Ore., pose for a photo in October 2024.
Permission granted by LB Photography Ink
Educational and family supports
Parent Candice Elliott said connecting with the close network of deafblind families, educators and experts in Oregon was “life-changing” when she adopted her daughter Serenity seven years ago. Serenity, now 12, has deafblindness and other medical challenges. She was also the only deafblind student in her school district.
“Our deafblind kids have a lot of problems, and you just don’t meet other people who have issues like this,” Elliott said. She said her family benefited from experts who helped her communicate with her daughter and also connected her with other families in the same situation. Those parents lean on each other for expertise and emotional support, she said.
Now, Elliott is the one mentoring new families. She was working with others to organize an annual family weekend in October that would bring families from across the state together to hear from national experts, learn about high school transition services, and gain parent-to-parent advice and support.
Because the funding is ending, the project canceled the parent weekend. However, Elliott said, parents are organizing one on their own.
“What’s really important is that we learn,” Elliott said about the family weekend. “We have an education we get. We learn about how to support our kids. We learn about just how to help each other.”
Audra Lydon lives in rural Dallas, Oregon. She was a police and fire dispatcher and a single mother when she brought her daughter, Aingelise, home from the hospital 20 years ago. In addition to being deafblind, Aingelise is quadriplegic and has multiple, complex medical needs.
“I had no experience, really, with anything related to either her medical needs or her communication needs, and specifically the deafblindness,” Lydon said.
After connecting with the state’s deafblind project, she learned strategies for communicating with Aingelise and what supports work best for her daughter. The project also helped her connect with other families who could understand and empathize with the joy and challenges of raising Aingelise.
Lydon said she worries that the sudden stop to funding will cause Aingelise’s teacher to move away. Deafblind teachers are highly specialized to work with students with deafblindness who require supports in communication, access and literacy.
The loss of funding will harm the development of many children, Lydon said. “You can’t just pull services for two years from kids. And I think what people also don’t understand is developmentally, if kids lose out for two years during a really important developmental stage, recouping that for any child is difficult,” but would be especially challenging for students with deafblindness, she said.
Lydon added, “Pulling services without notice or plan is entirely unethical and frankly speaks to the deep lack of understanding of the deafblind community.”
“The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
Savannah Newhouse
U.S. Education Department press secretary
In Washington state, parent Lanya Elsa said the IDEA Part D grant has been vital, because children with deafblindness have complex and individualized needs.
“There’s just no way for a school district to have the qualified personnel and knowledge needed for something that’s so rare, because they may only have one child in that district” with deafblindness, she said.
Elsa, parent to two sons ages 26 and 17 with deafblindness, is a special education researcher and former director of the Idaho Project for Children and Youth with Deaf-Blindness. Because of the supports her sons and her family received, she said, her older son, Conner, is employed at a major company, and her younger son, Dalton, is a high school senior preparing for college.
“I look at my kids and what they’ve been able to accomplish, ” said Elsa, adding that she worries about families newly adjusting to a deafblindness diagnosis. “What if these families don’t have the same opportunities that our family had? I can’t even imagine, because we have nothing else.
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Dive Brief:
A federal judge on Wednesday declined to restore more than $1 billion in research grants cut by the National Science Foundation over research related to diversity, equity and inclusion while a lawsuit against the agency goes forward.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb concluded that the court didn’t have the jurisdiction to temporarily restore the grants and that plaintiffs failed to show they would experience “irreparable harm” from the agency’s new anti-DEI policies while the case proceeds.
Cobb cited in part a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that universities and researchers facing mass federal agency cuts must pursue their monetary claims in a separate federal court that handles economic and contractual disputes with the U.S. government.
Dive Insight:
In April, NSF issued a new statement of priorities asserting that grant awards “should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.”
“Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities,” the agency added. NSF also noted grants related to environmental justice and the study of disinformation would also fall short of the agency’s objectives under the Trump administration.
Mass cancellations of previously awarded grants followed. In June, a group of unions and higher education associations — including the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Association of University Professors — sued NSF.
They counted 1,600 canceled grants amounting to over $1 billion funding, including many that aimed at broadening participation of women, underrepresented groups and those with disabilities in scientific and technical fields.Commonly appearing typos and boilerplate language in many of the termination notices to researchers showed the mass, automatic nature of the cancellations.
“NSF afforded recipients of terminated grants no advance notice, and indeed no process whatsoever, before the terminations,” the complaint stated.
Plaintiffs argued that NSF’s anti-DEI directive and cancellations violated the law as well as the constitutional principles of separation of powers and due process. Among other things, plaintiffs said the grants carried out NSF’s “statutory directive to support an increase in the participation of underrepresented populations in STEM fields, including women, minorities, and people with disabilities.”
In her ruling Wednesday, Cobb, a Biden appointee, wrote that her court likely had jurisdiction to decide if NSF’s anti-DEI policies could be applied to future grants. But retroactively restoring the grants that had been canceled, as the plaintiffs had requested, would likely need to be handled by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Among other precedents, she cited last month’s Supreme Court ruling in a case against the National Institutes of Health over similar DEI-related grant cancellations at that agency. While the top court declined to block a district court’s order that struck down the NIH’s anti-DEI guidance, it said the plaintiffs must seek relief for the canceled grants in federal claims court.
Critics of the decision — including justices in the liberal minority — said that the ruling would add new complications and delays while research projects and laboratories suffer.
Cobb further concluded that plaintiffs’ argument that their constitutional rights were violated was unlikely to succeed, finding that their claims were instead statutory in nature. There again Cobb cited a recent case against the Trump administration, this one brought by the Global Health Council over mass cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, called Cobb’s decision not to block NSF’s terminations disappointing and “a loss for American innovation and excellence.”
“This case is not over and we are eager to defend the important role the NSF plays in the daily lives of Americans,” the group said in a statement.
The U.S. Department of Educationis ending funding to several grant programs for minority-serving institutions, calling them racially discriminatorybecause colleges must enroll certain shares of underrepresented students to qualify for the awards.
In fiscal 2025, the department had been expected to award $350 million in grants to benefit institutions serving large shares of Alaska Native, Asian American,Black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students.The agency said on Wednesday it will redirect the funding to other programs “that advance Administration priorities.”
The announcement quickly drew criticism from college leaders, lawmakers and higher education organizations, who argued that cutting the grants would harm students and damage colleges that rely on the funding.
Dive Insight:
The cut grants have supported myriad initiatives at MSIs, such as purchasing laboratory equipment, improving buildings and classrooms, supporting student services like tutoring, and establishing endowment funds.
Eliminating the funding will irreparably harm students, Mildred García, chancellor of the California State University system, said in a Wednesday statement. She panned the move, noting that all but one of the CSU system’s 22 universities are Hispanic-serving institutions.
“Without this funding, students will lose the critical support they need to succeed in the classroom, complete their degrees on time, and achieve social mobility for themselves and their families,” García said.
Higher education leaders also said the funds benefit all students.
“The funds granted to HSIs have never supported only Latino students,” David Mendez, interim CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, said in a statement on Wednesday. “These funds strengthen entire campuses, creating opportunities and resources that benefit all students, especially those pursuing STEM fields, as well as enhancing the communities where these colleges and universities are located.”
University of Hawaiʻi President Wendy Hensel voiced concernsspecifically about the impact the move would have across the public 10-campus system.
“It will affect all of our students, the programs that support them and the dedicated staff who carry out this work,” Hensel said in a Wednesday statement.
However, the Education Department took issue with the eligibility requirements for colleges to receive grants.
For instance, to be eligible for grants for the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program, colleges must have student bodies where at least 25% of learners are Hispanic. For grants under the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement program, which is meant to encourage underrepresented students to enter STEM fields, colleges must have student bodies where 50% of learners belong to underrepresented racial or ethnic minority groups.
“To further our commitment to ending discrimination in all forms across federally supported programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement on Wednesday.
McMahon said the department wants to work with Congress to “reenvision these programs to support institutions that serve underprepared or under-resourced students without relying on race quotas.”
The Education Department’s decision Wednesday targets some of the very grants over which it is currently being sued by the state of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group that successfully sued to end race-conscious admissions at colleges.In a lawsuit filed in June, the plaintiffs argued that grants for HSIs are discriminatory due to their eligibility requirements.
In a July memo, the U.S. Department of Justice said it would not defend the grant programs. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the agency determined that they violated the constitutional right to equal protection under the law.
The Education Department said it will still disburse roughly $132 million in grant funding for fiscal year 2025 that Congress has mandated to be spent for MSIs. “The Department continues to consider the underlying legal issues associated with the mandatory funding mechanism in these programs,” the agency added.
The Education Department did not answer Higher Ed Dive’s questions Thursday but cited a Wednesday article from online news publication RealClearPolitics.
A senior administration official told RealClearPolitics that the changes would not impact historically Black colleges and universities.The federal designation of HBCU does not include any enrollment criteria. Instead, a college must have been established prior to 1964 and have a principal mission that “was, and is, the education of Black Americans,” according to federal statute.
The university has vowed to honor financial commitments made to M.F.A. and Ph.D. students.
Brown University will give money to some of its graduate students whose federal research grants were cut by the Trump administration, The Brown Daily Herald reported.
“We want to make sure that we’re able to give each of you all of the attention and support that you need to get through comfortably [and] well supported,” Janet Blume, interim dean of the graduate school, said at a Graduate Student Council meeting Wednesday. She said the university will honor the financial commitments of M.F.A. and Ph.D. students who lost their grants.
The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies have terminated thousands of academic researchers’ grants—including many at Brown—that don’t align with the Trump administration’s ideological agenda.
Blume said Brown is also reducing its graduate student admissions target this year to allow “time to work out issues of the federal financial landscape and also shifts in the job market.”
In addition to canceling research grants, numerous federal agencies have put forth plans to cap the amount of money they reimburse universities to cover indirect research costs, which universities say will hurt their budgets and slow innovation. Brown is among the institutions suing the government over its changes to indirect cost reimbursement rates, which are on pause during ongoing litigation.
Brown, which had a $46 million deficit before President Trump took office in January, has also faced targeted scrutiny from the Trump administration. The university implemented a hiring freeze in March. In April, the government froze $510 million of Brown’s federal research dollars in retaliation for the university’s alleged failures to address antisemitism on campus.
In June, administrators warned of the potential for “significant cost-cutting” measures amid the “deep financial losses” resulting from grant cuts, increased endowment taxes and threats to international student enrollment.
The following month, Brown and the government came to an agreement, and the frozen grant money is coming back to the university. However, the deal did not restore the grants of researchers whose funding was terminated as part of the broader ideologically driven policy changes.
