Latest news with #federalgrants
New York Times
18 hours ago
- Health
- New York Times
‘It Sounds Really Dire Because It Is Really Dire'
Recently, the roof started leaking in a shingled white house in Androscoggin County, Maine. The boiler also went out. There is nothing remarkable about this house, except that it shelters victims of human trafficking. At capacity, it has room for six. It is always at capacity. In years past, the organization that runs the house, Safe Voices, would have ponied up the $30,000 required to fix these issues. But the uncertainty unleashed by the Trump administration's policies made it difficult to make financial commitments like this. So all six residents and one dog piled into a minivan owned by Safe Voices and lugged their belongings in multiple trips to a 17-bed domestic violence shelter nearby, where they had to double up in rooms; the house now sits empty. The reason Rebecca Austin, the executive director at Safe Voices, could not immediately fix the roof or the boiler is that she had no idea what her organization's financial situation would be after Oct. 1 when the new fiscal year starts. Since President Trump took office, the group's federal grants have been briefly frozen, then unfrozen. Then the release of new grant applications was delayed for three months without explanation. 'No one seems to know the answers to what's going to happen and if money is actually going to come through,' she told me. Much of the federal infrastructure that supports domestic violence programs is damaged or gone. The director of the Office of Family Violence and Prevention Services was placed on administrative leave this spring. One domestic violence advocate told me her organization has gone through four points of contact at the Department of Justice since February. This chaos is happening throughout the country and is largely out of public view. While the enormous losses to science, education, development, arts, health and other areas dominate headlines, the local consequences — busted boilers, leaking roofs — are less visible. But they can be catastrophic for organizations that operate on shoestring budgets. It's what makes the Trump administration's approach to rooting out waste, fraud and diversity, equity and inclusion so maddening and brutish. Neil McLean, the district attorney in Lewiston, Maine, told me he employs one of his office's two full-time domestic violence prosecutors through a Safe Voices grant. This prosecutor is assigned to over 700 cases across one county. For context, this is more than 10 times the typical caseload of a local public defender. 'It's as bad as it sounds,' Mr. McLean said. 'This is not one of the areas where we need cuts.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CNN
7 days ago
- Business
- CNN
Trump administration is set to cancel federal contracts with Harvard worth some $100 million
Federal agenciesFacebookTweetLink Follow The Trump administration is poised to direct federal agencies to cancel their contracts – totaling about $100 million – with Harvard University, two senior Trump administration officials told CNN, the latest barb against the school as it refuses to bend to the White House's weekslong barrage of policy demands rooted in political ideology. The directive will be delivered Tuesday in a letter and also will order government agencies to look for new vendors to which they can redirect the federal funds, the officials said. The General Services Administration 'will send a letter to federal agencies today asking them to identify any contracts with Harvard, and whether they can be canceled or redirected elsewhere,' one senior Trump administration official told CNN. The New York Times first reported on the planned cuts. The nation's oldest and wealthiest university sued the Trump administration last month over its freeze of $2.2 billion in federal grants and contracts. The government since then has halted another $450 million to Harvard and canceled its ability to enroll foreign students, a move that's subject to a status conference Tuesday after a federal judge put it on hold. Trump further has threatened to cut off $3 billion more in Harvard's federal grant funding and pull its tax-exempt status. This is a developing story and will be updated.
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Trump considers redirecting US$3 billion in Harvard grants to trade colleges
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking US$3 billion of previously awarded grant money for scientific and engineering research away from Harvard University and giving it to vocational colleges. Advertisement His comments on his social media platform Truth Social come less than a week after his administration sought to block the Ivy League university from enrolling foreign students as part of Trump's extraordinary effort to seize some government control of US academia. Trump, a Republican, has frozen some US$3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, complaining that it has hired Democrats, 'radical Left idiots' and 'bird brains' as professors. Harvard, a private university, has sued to restore the funding, saying the cuts are an unconstitutional attack on its free speech rights, and unlawful. Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at vocational colleges, known in the US as trade schools. Advertisement It was not clear whether Trump was referring to Harvard grants his administration has already frozen. Harvard has said it was told that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked earlier in May, in a series of letters by the NIH, the US Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defence and other agencies.
Fast Company
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
Trump threatens to redirect $3 billion in Harvard research grants to trade schools
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money for scientific and engineering research away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools. His comments on his social media platform Truth Social come less than a week after his administration sought to block the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students as part of Trump's extraordinary effort to seize some government control of U.S. academia. Trump, a Republican, has frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, complaining that it has hired Democrats, 'Radical Left idiots and 'bird brains'' as professors. Harvard, a private university, has sued to restore the funding, saying the cuts are an unconstitutional attack on its free speech rights and unlawful. Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at trade schools. It was not clear whether Trump was referring to Harvard grants his administration has already frozen. Harvard has said it was told that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked earlier in May, in a series of letters by the NIH, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and other agencies. The letters each said the grants were being suspended because they 'no longer effectuate agency priorities.' Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The White House did not respond to questions about the specific funds Trump wants to repurpose or how it could be reallocated to trade schools under the law. On Friday, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, a policy the university said was part of Trump's broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to 'surrender its academic independence.' The order provides temporary relief to thousands of international students, who were faced with potentially having to transfer under a policy that the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts called a 'blatant violation' of the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws. It said the move would have an 'immediate and devastating effect' on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders. Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, representing 27% of total enrollment and a significant chunk of its revenue from tuition fees. The move was the latest escalation in a broader battle between Harvard and the White House, as Trump seeks to compel universities, law firms, news media, courts and other institutions to align with his agenda. Trump and fellow Republicans have long accused elite universities of left-wing bias. In recent weeks, the administration has proposed ending Harvard's tax-exempt status and hiking taxes on its endowment, and opened an investigation into whether it violated civil rights laws by discriminating against 'white, Asian, male, or straight employees' or job or training program applicants.
Washington Post
20-05-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Trump administration pulls $60M in Harvard grants in third round of cuts
The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, the latest escalation in the Trump administration's efforts to force change at some of the nation's most prominent universities. The Trump administration again cited antisemitism for its decision to pull funding, with HHS posting Monday on X that its decision to terminate multiple multiyear grants stems from the school's 'continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination.'
