The Trump administration said Wednesday it would suspend about $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its approach to transgender athletes, according to a White House social media account that trumpeted the pause. The move would intensify the government’s campaign against transgender people’s participation in public life and escalate a clash with elite colleges.
The White House’s rapid response account on X said the decision was based on Penn’s “policies forcing women to compete with men in sports.” A person familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had not formally announced the pause, confirmed the suspension and cited Penn’s past embrace of Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, as a member of its women’s swim team.
In a statement, Penn said it was “aware of media reports suggesting a suspension of $175 million in federal funding to Penn” but that it had not “received any official notification or any details” from the government. The university added that it had been, and remained, “in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our N.C.A.A. and Ivy League peer institutions.”
Penn, President Trump’s alma mater, is the second Ivy League university in two weeks to be so explicitly targeted by the administration. The administration announced on March 7 that it was pausing about $400 million in contracts and grants involving Columbia University. Last week, U.S. officials sent Columbia a list of demands that they said needed to be met before negotiations about the canceled funding could begin.
Dozens more schools are facing federal inquiries and are being squeezed by the administration’s broad efforts to cut federal spending.
The administration’s move against Penn, which was first reported by Fox Business, came about three years after Ms. Thomas won the National Collegiate Athletic Association title in the 500-yard freestyle. Before her victory, more than a dozen members of Penn’s swim team complained, in an anonymous letter to the university and the Ivy League, that Ms. Thomas enjoyed “an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category.”
Ms. Thomas was a talented athlete, they acknowledged, who had been a top-tier swimmer in the Ivy League. But they insisted that her achievements in women’s competition were “feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”
Ms. Thomas graduated soon after, and a decision from swimming’s international governing body kept her from competing for a spot on the United States’ Olympic team. She could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
But the acrimony over her Penn career has lingered, stoked, in part, by Mr. Trump’s decision to make the participation of transgender people in sports a signature rallying cry during last year’s campaign and once he returned to power.
In February, one day after three former Penn swimmers sued the university and others over Ms. Thomas’s participation, he issued an executive order that declared it to be “the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
The next day, the Department of Education said it would investigate whether Penn had violated Title IX. The department’s announcement quoted a Penn swimmer, Paula Scanlan, saying she had been “forced to compete against and share a locker room with a male athlete.”
The Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper, reported that Penn’s athletic department removed a website about diversity, equity and inclusion, which had included the university’s policy about transgender participation, soon after.
Mr. Trump’s executive order also led the N.C.A.A., which sponsors competition for more than 500,000 college athletes, to decide that transgender women would be forbidden from competing in women’s events.
Penn, like many other universities, had already been bracing for a financial storm. A threatened change involving National Institutes of Health funding, the university has warned, could cost it about $240 million a year. If other federal agencies adopt similar formulas, the toll could rise to roughly $315 million annually, according to Penn.
The university said this month that it was imposing freezes on hiring and midyear salary adjustments, as well as starting reviews of capital spending and faculty hiring.
“The scope and pace of the possible disruptions we face may make them more severe than those of previous challenges, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the Covid pandemic,” Provost John L. Jackson Jr. and Craig R. Carnaroli, Penn’s senior executive vice president, wrote in an open letter announcing steps like the hiring freeze.