The dispute started when school leadership refused to comply with President Trump’s order to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration will freeze $175 million of federal funds to the University of Pennsylvania. According to a White House post on X, the decision comes after the University failed to comply with Trump’s order keeping transgender athletes out of collegiate women’s sports. The President signed the executive order on Feb. 5, two weeks after announcing it as part of his Jan. 20 inauguration speech. A White House spokesperson confirmed that the decision does not relate to an ongoing Title IX investigation at Penn.
The unnamed official said that the decision was an “immediate proactive action to review federal funding streams to universities.” He added that Penn “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team.” The funds will come from longstanding contracts between the University and the Department of Defense, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services. A Penn spokesperson acknowledged reports of the $175 million in frozen funds but said in a statement that the federal government had yet to share an official notification or details with the University. The spokesperson further defended Penn’s decision to allow the aforementioned transgender male to compete on the women’s team, saying they have “always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies” and did not have any individual policy on the matter.
The executive order signed by President Trump drew criticism from some for its language referring to transgender women as men, as well as its threats to withdraw federal funds from institutions that failed to comply with the order. While Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has frozen federal funding to some universities for other reasons, Penn is the first directly impacted by the new executive action.
“It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy,” the executive action states.
Penn had previously been in the news in 2022 when transgender athlete Lia Thomas competed on the school’s women’s swimming team and became the first trans woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. The trophy drew widespread media attention and controversy, including from some of Thomas’ teammates. Three former members of the women’s swimming team filed a lawsuit last month under federal Title IX regulations that accused the Ivy League and NCAA of sex-based discrimination. This came after Trump, a 1968 graduate of Penn’s Wharton School of Business, opened an investigation into several universities for the inclusion of a transgender athlete on a collegiate women’s volleyball team.
Penn had recently announced plans to cut back on spending and curb hiring in response to Trump and DOGE’s efforts to cut federal costs, and Columbia University recently had $400 million of federal funds cut in response to persistent anti-Israel protests.
