Latest news with #federalgrants
Yahoo
24-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Columbia agrees to pay $200 million to restore funding cut by Trump administration
Columbia University will pay $200 million to the federal government to restore the majority of funding that was cut by the Trump administration over allegations it violated anti-discrimination laws. "This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty," acting university President Claire Shipman said in a statement. The Trump administration in March said it was canceling $400 million in grants to the school, accusing it of 'inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.' Columbia then agreed to a list of demands by the Trump administration, which some critics saw as a capitulation by the private university. President Donald Trump celebrated the agreement on Truth Social on Wednesday night and showed no signs that administration's pressure campaign on universities was over. "Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming," he wrote. Columbia said in the Wednesday statement that under the agreement 'a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 — will be reinstated and Columbia's access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored.' 'This includes the reinstatement of the majority of grants previously terminated by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, renewal of non-competitive grants, the release of overdue payments on active, non-terminated grants, and Columbia's restored eligibility to apply for new federal research funding in the ordinary course,' the university said. Columbia and other universities have been targeted by the Trump administration over student protests over the war in Gaza, which some Republican lawmakers have said were antisemitic. Another major Ivy League college, Harvard University, refused Trump's demands and has sued the Trump administration over threats to cut funding. That case is pending. "While Columbia does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement, the institution's leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed," the university said in Wednesday's statement. Columbia said the agreement will establish a 'a jointly selected independent monitor" — and that it will provide regular reports about its "continued compliance with applicable federal laws and regulations pertaining to admissions, hiring, and international students." It said the agreement also codifies changes it previously announced on campus safety, discipline and inclusion. The $200 million, termed a settlement by the university, will be paid to the government over three years. It will also pay $21 million to settle investigations by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the university said. Columbia Board of Trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Jeh Johnson said in Wednesday's statement that the agreement 'confirms the changes already underway at Columbia to meaningfully address antisemitism on our campus and allows the University to continue to undertake its transformative research and scholarship.' Student protests over the war in Gaza, which Israel launched after the surprise terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, took place on college campuses across the U.S., including at Columbia. Trump campaigned on attacking those protests, and since taking office his administration has sought to deport some students who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations by accusing them of sympathizing with Hamas. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called the Columbia settlement 'a seismic shift in our nation's fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.' Brian Cohen, executive director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life with Columbia/Barnard Hillel, hailed the agreement. 'This announcement is an important recognition of what Jewish students and their families have expressed with increasing urgency: antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students' sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights,' he said. Shipman, the Columbia president, said in a letter to the university community that Columbia remains independent. "No provision of this agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech," she wrote in the letter, quoting the agreement. "This was our north star, and we did not waver from it," Shipman wrote. "Columbia's governance remains in our control. The federal government will not dictate what we teach, who teaches, or which students we admit." This article was originally published on
Fox News
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Chicago Public Schools agrees to pay feds back $1 million over misallocated grants
FIRST ON FOX – The Chicago Public Schools district and the Department of Education (ED) reached an agreement to pay back over $1 million after issues arose when the district reported their Native Indian student population when applying for federal grants. Documents obtained by Fox News Digital show that the ED's Office of Inspector General found that Chicago Public Schools were counting South Asian students from Myanmar, Pakistan and Nepal as Native Americans to receive additional federal funding. The repayment of funds is not considered a fine because the amount owed by the school district resulted from an agreement between the school district and the ED. Chicago Public Schools officials received federal funding from the Indian Education Formula Grant, which provides educational and cultural programming to students of Native American and Alaska Native Ancestry. The American Indian Education Program, managed by Chicago Public Schools' Office of Language and Cultural Education, received an annual grant from the ED's Office of Indian Education – the program's primary subsidy. In order to obtain funds, the Office of Indian Education would allocate an amount based on the total number of students enrolled in Chicago Public School's American Indian Education Program. Students are required to be of Native American ancestry. The case first opened in 2021, when the ED Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed data from Chicago Public School's student database showing over 1,000 students who identified as Native American. The investigation highlighted that several students' surnames indicated that they were of South Asian ancestry, specifically natives of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. In 2024, the OIG investigation concluded the program manager and school district "intentionally" submitted and certified false information to the federal government for years. Chicago Public Schools' reporting of the information resulted in about $140,000 more federal funds than they were entitled to during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years. The ED investigation discovered further that hundreds of thousands of undeserved federal funding was granted to the district prior to 2022. The investigation estimated a total of more than $1.1 million in misallocated funds over the past decade. The Chicago Public School District is already facing enrollment struggles, budget woes, and had tensions with the teachers' union during their contract negotiations. The school district told Fox News Digital that at no point did CPS officials misidentify students by race or ethnicity. Contrary to what the OIG report states, CPS officials claimed there was no misclassification of South Asian students as American Indian. They also said they worked closely and cooperatively with the ED's Office of Indian Education to "review past practices and implement a stronger, more accurate system for collecting voluntary tribal enrollment information." "This includes clear protocols for verifying tribal membership through federally-recognized documentation from the student, parent, or grandparent through a voluntary process at each school," the spokesperson added. "The District is also enhancing training, data collection, and engagement efforts through the CPS Office of Multilingual-Multicultural Education (OMME), the Office of Family and Community Engagement (FACE), and other departments that work with Native families." CPS officials told Fox News Digital that ED's Office of Indian Education has commended them for "ongoing cooperation and for proactively addressing these issues." CPS said they will not apply for the American Indian Education grant for Fiscal Year 2026 to proceed with caution and to ensure full compliance in the future. "CPS has agreed to repay funds to the federal government because the District could not fully verify historical documentation related to the collection and submission of data confirming the identification of American Indian students as part of the District's application for the American Indian Education grant," the spokesperson said. However, an ED spokesperson who sent Fox News Digital the documents accused CPS of "knowingly submitting and certifying false information about their student population." Reacting to the CPS statement, the ED spokesperson doubled down, referring to the OIG investigation which "found that CPS's American Indian Education Program, at the direction of Program Manager (redacted), has continued to submit false program enrollment on federal grant applications in 2022, 2023, and 2024, even after OIG reported in 2021 that (redacted) and the AIEP have been significantly misstating program enrollment data on grant applications for several years."
Forbes
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Trump's Attack On Research Funding Hurt Your State University, Too
West Virginia University has lost $555,114 worth of federal grant funding since President Trump took office. getty While President Donald Trump's crusade against American higher education has focused on the Ivy League and other elite private schools, colleges of all types and in all 50 states have been hamstrung by his sweeping cuts to research funding. During the first six months of the Trump administration, federal agencies—primarily the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—canceled more than 4,000 grant awards worth an estimated $7 billion at over 600 colleges and universities. As intended, it has left universities in blue states bleeding, but a new report from the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress shows that red state schools have been hit nearly as hard. (The think tank used data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Government Efficiency's 'Wall of Receipts' to put together its numbers.) Looking only at dollar totals, California, New York, Massachusetts, Texas and Maryland have lost the most research funding to date. Agencies yanked $2.47 billion worth of awards from the five states, and $1.3 billion of that total was still unspent at the time the grants were canceled, the report shows. California colleges, with a combined 3.5 million students, have lost $294 million in grant funding, or about $150 per student. The University of California system, which includes the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Los Angeles, lost more grant money than any other state university system, according to the report. Massachusetts—home to Harvard University, Boston College, Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts system, all of which lost grants—has lost $252 million in remaining grant funding, or about $597 per student. The lone star state is also short billions in federal research funding. In total, federal agencies have canceled $524 million in grants to Texas universities, $315 million of which was still unspent. Of all state university systems in the United States, the Texas A&M University System has lost the third-most grant funding, $109 million, and the University of Texas System has lost the fifth-most, $92 million. The ten states that have lost the most funding per student are split—four red and six blue. Among them are South Dakota ($1,752 per student), South Carolina ($411 per student), Idaho ($565 per student) and Montana ($420 per student)—all traditionally Republican states that voted for Trump in the last election. South Dakota's huge loss is primarily due to the Department of Agriculture canceling an $86 million grant for South Dakota State University that funded research into expanding markets for 'climate smart' beef and bison. The money also helped farmers and ranchers implement climate smart practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The blue states that have lost the most research funding per-student are Hawaii ($1,660 per student), Massachusetts ($579 per student), Maryland ($451 per student), Delaware ($380 per student), and the District of Columbia ($374 per student). Five states had less than $30 per-student cut by the feds—West Virginia, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Maine and North Dakota. So far, West Virginia has only lost $555,114 worth of federal grant funding for the public land-grant West Virginia University, which amounts to about $2 per student. Public, land-grant universities have been hit especially hard by the grant cuts—nearly two-thirds have been targeted for grant terminations. Half of all historically Black colleges and universities have lost grants in the past seven months. Forbes These 26 Rich Private Colleges Just Got A Tax Cut From Republicans By Emma Whitford Forbes Here's What The Senate Budget And Tax Bill Means For Colleges By Emma Whitford Forbes Colleges Big And Small Issue Bonds Amid Political Chaos And Trump's Higher Ed Assault By Emma Whitford
Al Arabiya
22-07-2025
- Business
- Al Arabiya
Takeaways from AP's report about cuts to government grants for nonprofits
President Donald Trump's policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal government has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities. Since the 1960s, presidential administrations from both parties have used taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofits to take on social problems and deliver services. A vast and interconnected set of federal grants fund public safety programs, early childhood education, food assistance, and refugee resettlement services in every state. In January, the Trump administration sought to freeze federal grants and loans. Nonprofit groups immediately challenged the move and won a court-ordered pause. But in the six months since, the administration has cut, frozen, or discontinued many federal grant programs across agencies. An analysis by the Urban Institute provides a sense of the scale and reach of government support for nonprofits. Published in February, the data comes from the tax forms nonprofits file where they report any government grants they receive. In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, 'Instead of government largesse that's often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration is focused on unleashing America's economic resurgence to fuel Americans' individual generosity.' How much support does the government give to nonprofits? The Urban Institute found $267 billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of government – federal, state, and local – in 2021, the most recent year a comprehensive set of nonprofit tax forms are available. That figure underestimates the total funding nonprofits receive from the government. It includes grants but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare. It also excludes the smallest nonprofits which file a different abbreviated tax form. The data includes all tax-exempt organizations that file a full tax return, from local food pantries to universities and nonprofit hospitals. But government funding does not just go to the largest organizations. A majority of nonprofits in the dataset, across every sector from the arts to the environment to human services, report receiving government grants. In most places, the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without government funding. The Urban Institute cautions that just because a nonprofit would run a budget deficit without government funding, it does not necessarily mean the nonprofit will close. Even in wealthy areas, nonprofits would struggle without government support. In only two Congressional districts – one that includes parts of Orange County, California, and one in the suburbs west of Atlanta – would typical nonprofits not be in the red if they lost all of their public grant funding, the analysis found. However, funders in Orange County warn that nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency. Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers, said local nonprofits are seeing their budgets getting slashed by 50 percent or 40 percent. Last year, a large local foundation, Samueli Foundation, commissioned a study of nonprofit needs because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from $18.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $125 million in 2025. They found local nonprofits reported problems maintaining staff, a deep lack of investment in their operations, and a dearth of flexible reserve funds. The foundation responded by opening applications for unrestricted grants and to support investments in buildings or land. Against this $10 million in potential awards, they received 1,242 applications for more than $250 million, said Lindsey Spindle, the foundation's president. 'It tells a really stark picture of how unbelievably deep and broad the need is,' Spindle said. 'There is not a single part of the nonprofit sector that has not responded to these funds. Every topic you can think of: poverty, animal welfare, arts and culture, civil rights, domestic abuse.' Private donations can't replace government support. The nonprofit Friendship Shelter helps house and support 330 people in Laguna Beach, California, which falls within Orange County. Dawn Price, its executive director, said the organization has an annual budget of about $15 million, $11.5 million of which comes from government sources. Price said the government funding is braided in complex ways to support different programs and fill in gaps. Private donors already subsidize their government grants, which she said pay for 69 percent of the actual program costs. 'We are providing this service to our government at a loss, at a business loss, and then making up that loss with these Medicaid dollars and also the private fundraising,' she said. Even in a wealthy place like Orange County, Price said she does not believe private donors are prepared to give five, six, or eight times as much as they do currently if new cuts to government grants occur or programs are not renewed.
The Independent
22-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Takeaways from AP's report about cuts to government grants for nonprofits
President Donald Trump 's policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal government has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities. Since the 1960s, presidential administrations from both parties have used taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofits to take on social problems and deliver services. A vast and interconnected set of federal grants fund public safety programs, early childhood education, food assistance and refugee resettlement services in every state. In January, the Trump administration sought to freeze federal grants and loans. Nonprofit groups immediately challenged the move and won a court-ordered pause. But in the six months since, the administration has cut, frozen or discontinued many federal grant programs across agencies. An analysis by the Urban Institute provides a sense of the scale and reach of government support for nonprofits. Published in February, the data comes from the tax forms nonprofits file where they report any government grants they receive. In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, "Instead of government largesse that's often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration is focused on unleashing America's economic resurgence to fuel American s' individual generosity.' How much support does the government give to nonprofits? The Urban Institute found $267 billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of government — federal, state and local — in 2021, the most recent year a comprehensive set of nonprofit tax forms are available. That figure underestimates the total funding nonprofits receive from the government. It includes grants, but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare. It also excludes the smallest nonprofits, which file a different, abbreviated tax form. The data includes all tax-exempt organizations that file a full tax return from local food pantries to universities and nonprofit hospitals. But government funding does not just go to the largest organizations. A majority of nonprofits in the dataset across every sector, from the arts to the environment to human services, report receiving government grants. In most places, the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without government funding. The Urban Institute cautions that just because a nonprofit would run a budget deficit without government funding, it does not necessarily mean the nonprofit will close. Even in wealthy areas, nonprofits would struggle without government support In only two Congressional districts — one that includes parts of Orange County, California, and one in the suburbs west of Atlanta — would typical nonprofits not be in the red if they lost all of their public grant funding, the analysis found. However, funders in Orange County warn that nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency. Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers, said local nonprofits "are seeing their budgets getting slashed by 50% or 40%.' Last year, a large local foundation, Samueli Foundation, commissioned a study of nonprofit needs because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from $18.8 million in 2022 to an estimated $125 million in 2025. They found local nonprofits reported problems maintaining staff, a deep lack of investment in their operations and a dearth of flexible reserve funds. The foundation responded by opening applications for unrestricted grants and to support investments in buildings or land. Against this $10 million in potential awards, they received 1,242 applications for more than $250 million, said Lindsey Spindle, the foundation's president. 'It tells a really stark picture of how unbelievably deep and broad the need is,' Spindle said. 'There is not a single part of the nonprofit sector that has not responded to these funds. Every topic you can think of: poverty, animal welfare, arts and culture, civil rights, domestic abuse.' Private donations can't replace government support The nonprofit Friendship Shelter helps house and support 330 people in Laguna Beach, California, which falls within Orange County. Dawn Price, its executive director, said the organization has an annual budget of about $15 million, $11.5 million of which comes from government sources. Price said the government funding is 'braided' in complex ways to support different programs and fill in gaps. Private donors already subsidize their government grants, which she said pay for 69% of the actual program costs. 'We are providing this service to our government at a loss, at a business loss, and then making up that loss with these Medicaid dollars and also the private fundraising,' she said. Even in a wealthy place like Orange County, Price said she does not believe private donors are prepared to give five, six or eight times as much as they do currently if new cuts to government grants occur or programs are not renewed. ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit
