Updates July 3, 2025

No rest for the busy work of cancellation

Separate post on reconciliation bill coming.

Federal

• Executive

  • Research

    • Although the grant terminations (above) have been deemed illegal, and NIH announced it will halt future terminations, NIH is still directing its staff to screen new grants under the same criteria (no DEI, no LGBTQ health, no environmental justice).

    • NIH rescinded its earlier notice that awardees may not conduct DEI activities or boycott Israeli companies.

  • Higher Education

    • University of Pennsylvania settled with the Dept. of Education, in which the Office of Civil Rights accused Penn of Title IX violation by allowing a trans-woman athlete to compete on its swim team. Penn will strip alumna Lia Thomas of her swimming records, issue a formal apology to other team members. The administration had frozen $175M in federal funding to Penn researchers as a move to extort concessions.

    • University of Virginia president James Ryan will step down, following a Dept. of Justice investigation into claims that UVa had not terminated its DEI efforts.

    • The Dept. of Justice announced a new investigation into the University of California system, claiming initiatives to advance faculty diversity constitute racial and sex-based discrimination.

    • The Dept. of Justice has sued multiple states, most recently Minnesota, over allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition to attend public universities (others include Kentucky and Texas).

    • Students for Fair Admissions is suing the Depart of Education Hispanic Serving Institution program for discrimination. The Minority Serving Institutions programs support services for universities enrolling designated populations, including HBCUs, HSI, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving (AANAPISI), with also substantial low-income student populations.

  • Immigration

    • The State Department will re-start interviews for international student visas but with more in-depth scrutiny of applicants’ “online presence,” further underscoring the restrictions on international students’ rights.

    • ICE raids: You may have heard about some things going down in LA. Asians have been fastest growing undocumented population in the U.S. in the last 30 years.

    • Denaturalization: In echoes of the Bhagavat Singh Thind case, the Dept of Justice will pursue denaturalization of immigrants with U.S. citizenship.

• Judiciary

  • SCOTUS

    • Ruled that parents can have their children opt out of class when course material conflicts with their religious beliefs, in a case in which a group of parents sued against a school board decision to introduce LGBTQ+ inclusive books.

    • Ruled that Medicaid can exclude Planned Parenthood or any other provider that offers abortion care, even if Medicaid is not funding those services.

    • Ruled that lower courts may not impose nationwide injunctions, thus leaving challenges to birthright citizenship open— and paving the way to overturn the precedent established in the Wong Kim Ark case. The ACLU has filed a class-action lawsuit against the executive order.

  • Federal District Courts

    • William Young of the US District Court for Massachusetts ruled that NIH grant terminations targeting LGBT and minority health research were illegal- but currently only applied to the 16 states engaged in the suit.

    • Myong Joun of the US District Court for Massachusetts ruled that the Dept. of Education must re-instate laid off staff from the Office of Civil Rights (over half of the staff were RIF’ed and all seven regional offices were closed).

    • Melissa DuBose of the US District Court for Rhode Island has ruled that the Dept. of Health and Human Services layoffs were likely unlawful and ordered a halt those announced in March and any future RIFs.

  • Counter-Actions

    • Asian Americans Advancing Justice filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for the termination of the Anti-Hate Crimes grant program (part of the broader elimination of violence prevention grants in April).

Updates June 5, 2025

Federal

• Immigration

  • The administration announced a new series of travel bans and restrictions, including travel from Afghanistan, Laos and Myanmar. (Presumably, this also affects students and trainees).

  • Back in early May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement introduced two policy changes that expand terminations under Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS), including “evidence of failure to comply” and State Department revocation (for which there is no option to challenge in court). This policy teed up the State Department to conduct investigations of Chinese students.

• Higher education accreditation:

  • The Department of Education has issued a notice to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, declaring that due to Title VI violations, Columbia University is no longer eligible for accreditation. Without accreditation, universities cannot receive federal student financial aid.

• Research

  • In testimony for the lawsuit over the cancellation of funds for research on gender affirming care, NIH officials confirmed receiving orders from DOGE to cancel awards, including all research on gender identity, and new requirements for DOGE review for all new awards prior to release (i.e. submissions already passed through scientific and administrative review, and selected for funding).

Federal: Congressional Reconciliation Bill

TBD, expect major reductions in Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and federal financial aid

Federal: Department of Health and Human Services Detailed Budget for 2026

Forthcoming

Updates May 25, 2025

(Congressional budget is a hot mess, budget-specific update TBD)

Federal

• Anti-Chinese/Sinophobic actions:

  • The State Department is planning large-scale effort to revoke existing Chinese student visas, drawing parallels to the Red Scare, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and actions within the CCP itself against students. The administration also attempted to block Harvard’s admission of international students, also claiming the university’s ‘collaboration’ with the CCP as part of its justification (in addition to ongoing unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism).

• International students

• The State Department has paused interviews for all new international students applying for visas as they plan to require social media vetting. This applies to student F, vocational training M, and J-1 exchange visitors, including professors, research scholars, teachers and medical residents and fellows). The current action against Harvard admission of international students has been blocked in court so far.

• Civil Rights

• The Department of Justice created a new unit, the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, to launch False Claims Act cases against universities for DEI, antisemitism and transgender sports participation. Furthermore, the administration is encouraging private citizens to file similar cases, to which they are entitled to a portion of the proceeds in the event that the institution is found guilty and required to return funds to the federal government.

• Higher Education Accreditation

• Extending from the Executive Order re: higher education accreditation, and the Department of Education's push to foster new accreditors:

  • The Liaison Committee on Medical Education voted to remove Element 3.3, which covered diversity standards for medical school accreditation. While previously criticized for its limited specificity, school admissions and DEI leaders also noted that the standards nevertheless offered a key path towards reforms. (As noted last time, ACGME already suspended their standards for another year.)

• The WASC (Western Association of Accredited Schools and Colleges) announced a temporary suspension of DEI accreditation standards.

• After instituting bans on affirmative action (effective July 11), Arkansas also enacted new legislation forbidding schools from providing diversity information to accreditation bodies, or allowing accreditation bodies to make decisions based on schools' diversity information.

• To further remove itself from external accountability, the University of North Carolina is proposing to form its own accreditation agency.

• Research

• The administration issued an Executive Order "Restoring Gold Standard Science," justified in part by claiming DEI in science as 'politicized science,' (as well as other examples, e.g. COVID-19 guidance) calling for agency heads to implement the listed standards in practice and use for employee evaluation.

• HHS Secretary RFK Jr announced that he may bar government scientists and those receiving federal funds from publishing in journals  including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Lancet, setting the stage for restricting publication in any journal with which it disagrees. HHS may also create its own in-house publications.

• American Indian/Native American/Alaska Native Rights

• The heads of the Small Business Association, Health and Human Services (re: Indian Health Service), and the Dept. of the Interior confirmed that anti-DEI executive actions do not apply to AI/AN and/or Native American groups.

States (included because some federal actions are following state examples, eg Arkansas)

• Faculty

• In a newly emerging strategy that could undermine faculty equity, UNC Board of Trustees has paused awarding tenure this year for all faculty except for health sciences faculty.  

• Academic Freedom

• Texas has proposed legislation for medical schools not only banning race, ethnicity, gender and national origin considerations in admissions (which it already had banned a while ago) but also (1) schools must prioritize standardized test scores,(2) Use letter grades A-F, and (2) curricular and admissions changes must be submitted to the state legislature in addition to the state board of education for approval.

• Transgender rights: The administration threatened to withhold funding from California, state interscholastic federation quickly changed its rules, and the Justice Department launched an investigation into whether the state rules allowing transgender girl participation in sports discriminates against cisgender girls.

Updates May 18, 2025

Federal

• Student financial aid

• The current bill would increase credit requirements for Pell grants: estimates of 1/2 to 2/3 of recipients may have their funding reduced or eliminated.

• Immigration

• A federal District judge tentatively grants a motion against ICE from taking actions against international students whose records were temporarily deleted from SEVIS.

• NIH

• Through grant terminations, RIFs, and many steps to block or slow down processes, NIH has released $2.7B less in funding (35%), compared to the same period in 2024-- ahead of any budget cuts. NIH released a list of funding opportunities that are being terminated early, including health equity grants on: community level interventions to improve minority health, factors that contribute to maternal mortality, research support for resource-limited universities, HIV, and Native American Research Centers for Health. By delaying release of funds, members of Congress can claim order funds appropriated to NIH for 2025 to be returned (rescission), and argue for reductions in future NIH budgets .

• NSF

• Eliminated the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM as part of ending all 37 divisions, terminated over half its grants, and cancellations disproportionately affected women (58% of cancelled PIs vs 34% of all NSF-funded PIs), and Black PIs (17% of those cancelled vs. 4% of all PIs) (no reporting on Black women, alas). 

• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

• Issued a commissioner charge (ahead of investigation) against Harvard citing the decline in white male faculty as evidence of discrimination in Harvard's hiring practices against white, Asian, male and heterosexual faculty-- this is consistent with what the administration has proposed for other civil rights cases.

• Higher education accreditation

  • Of the three agencies specifically noted, the American Bar Association has suspended Diversity and Inclusion standards in accreditation for the rest of the year, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education still has diversity standard but  replaced race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity with socioeconomic status and "demographics," and replaced 'diversity' with 'diverse,' e.g. "diverse learning environment," and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has suspended its diversity requirements until board discussion in June.

  • The Dept of Education announced it's making it easier for colleges to change accreditors and approve new accrediting agencies, to comply with the April 23 Executive Order against DEI in accreditation. So far the Western Senior College and University Commission (UCD accreditor) has only stated they are reviewing the EO. The handbook still lists DEI as part of its standards.

• Department of Justice

• The capacity to enforce civil rights protections will be largely undercut as 70+% of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice leave.

• The Dept. of Justice notified Harvard that it is conducting an investigation into admissions under the False Claims Act, arguing Harvard’s admissions policies are secretly discriminatory and thus the university is defrauding the federal government.

There’s a lot in the House budget, check back for a separate budget breakdown.

Resource: the Chronicle of Higher Education administration actions in higher education tracker

Updates: May 8, 2025

Federal

• Despite agreeing to federal demands for reforms and oversight, Columbia University has not had its funding restored and will start larger scale layoffs.

• The Department of Education has notified Harvard University that it will receive no new federal grants .

• Congress is holding more hearings with university leaders about campus antisemitism- of note, this round includes Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, signaling their intention to examine beyond the Ivy League and go to public universities.

• The White House released its proposed budget, signaling its priorities to Congress. Congress authorizes the final budget. Items proposed due to DEI and/or environmental justice concerns, or DEI implications, include:

• Elimination 

• Higher Education-Related

  • State Department Educational and Cultural Exchanges to support international students

  • TRIO and GEAR UP programs supporting low income and first generation college students

  • Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (allocated through schools for students with exceptional financial need)

  • Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education programs, which include grants for: campus basic needs programs, research infrastructure for Minority Serving Institutions (UCD has 2 designations), centers for veteran student success, and open textbook programs, among others

  • Child Care Access Means Parents in School: subsidizes childcare for parents in college

• Health-Related

  • Health Resources and Services Administration: scholarship and loan repayment programs for health workforce students and trainees, maternal and child health grants, Ryan White HIV/AIDS programming,

  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): funds research on healthcare, criticized for supporting research "pushing radical gender ideology" and "wholly unrelated" climate change impacts on healthcare systems

  • Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS): Office of Women’s Health, Office of Minority Health

  • CMS Program Management: “ending unnecessary DEI and support contracts. It eliminates health equity focused activities and Inflation Reduction Act-related outreach and education activities”

  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Environmental Justice program

• Institute for Museum and Library Sciences: includes grants to libraries and library sciences

• AmeriCorps

• National Endowment for the Arts

• National Endowment for the Humanities

• DHS Shelter and Services Program

• Major reduction in funds:

• Higher Education-Related

  • Federal Work Study (81%)

  • Office of Civil Rights (35%), "to refocus away from DEI and Title IX cases"

  • Howard University ($64M)

  • NASA (53%) : Reduction in Space Science, elimination of Office of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Engagement for "woke STEM programming and research that prioritizes some groups of students over others"

  • National Science Foundation (56%): reduction due to past grants on "woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences," elimination of nearly all Broadening Participation programs

• Health-Related

  • National Institutes of Health (37%), including elimination of: National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, Fogarty Center, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institute of Nursing Research

  • EPA: Office of Research and Development (46%)

  • Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (39%): eliminates programs labeled as "DEI" or unnecessary: injury prevention, environmental health, chronic disease, global health, public health preparedness

  • Department of Justice: -$1B in grants on violence prevention, tracking

  • USDA: National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) research grants (30%), Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service

  • Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) (15.7%)

  • Non-Disaster Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Grant Programs (-$646M)

  • Dept of Housing and Urban Development:

    • Housing assistance for low-income, elderly, persons with disabilities: -$26B

    • Elimination: Lead Hazard Reduction and Healthy Homes, Fair Housing Grants Community Development Block Grants, grants for state and local government housing programs, Native American Programs and Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant, Homeless Assistance Program, Self-Sufficiency Programs, Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) Housing,

• Other cuts cited for DEI/environment

  • Department of Justice: FBI: (-$545M); (-$193M) including Civil Rights Division, Environmental and Natural Resources Division

  • Department of Commerce: (-$624M) Economic Development Administration

    (EDA) and Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)

  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): 24%, nearly 100% of Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and national climate data initiatives

  • Department of Labor: Education and job training programs

• Additional health-related cuts, not cited for DEI/environmental justice reasons:

  • Department of Health and Human Services

    • Eliminates Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Hospital Preparedness Program

    • Sexual Risk Avoidance and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs

  • Environmental Protection Agency:

    • Reduces Clean Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds by 89%

    • Eliminates Diesel Emissions Reduction Grants, Categorical Grants, Hazardous Substance Superfund, and Atmospheric Protection

• Additional proposed budget cuts, not cited for DEI reasons:

  • Department of Energy: Office of Research (14%), Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (57%)

  • US Geological Survey Research (33%): grants to universities

Updates: April 25, 2025

Federal

• The NIH issued a notice that they will issue no new, renewal or continuation awards to entities (e.g. universities) that "operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws" or "engage in a discriminatory prohibited boycott,"  in which "discriminatory prohibited boycott" means a boycott of Israeli companies.

• The NSF has frozen all new awards and is cancelling awards related to DEI and research on mis/disinformation. Revised guidance on the NSF priority #7 (broadening impact, by increasing participation of women and minorities in STEM) has been revised to state this is not a priority relative to #1-6, and proposed activities for #7 can only be included if there are no preferences or exclusions related to those groups. Related NSF award terminations were issued today.

• The Department of Justice has canceled grants on violence prevention, opioid deaths, and anti-Arab, anti-Jewish, and anti-Asian hate crimes. These grants were primarily to community organizations and local governments, but also included subawards to researchers.

• The administration will discontinue DOJ regulations on disparate-impact liability, which has historically been used to target discriminatory policies, programs and behaviors, by demonstrating disparate impact on marginalized groups. For example, if a plaintiff wanted to demonstrate how some practices, e.g. faculty promotion, produce racial discrimination, without explicitly stated racial discrimination, they could demonstrate disparate impact by illustrating statistically different outcomes by race and ethnicity.

• The administration issued an Executive Order that the Secretary of Education will monitor, suspend or terminate higher education accreditation agencies that conduct discrimination, through DEI. The order specifically names accreditation for law and medical schools and training programs. It also establishes new principles including that accreditors require institutions to measure student outcomes without reference to "race, ethnicity or sex."

• Harvard is resisting federal government actions taken against it, arguing that the administration's requests threaten First Amendment rights, academic freedom, and Title VI authority. These include: instituting "merit-based" admissions and faculty hiring; auditing of faculty, students, staff and courses for "viewpoint diversity," reforms of student discipline policy, audit and reform specific schools for past anti-semitism, in addition to ending all DEI programs. This suggests the administration's stance that it would prefer for other universities.

Updates: April 11, 2025

Federal

• The Department of Education published FAQs on the Dear Colleague letter that orders education institutions to cease DEI activities or lose federal funding, with more detail on how the SFFA decision will be interpreted across nearly all education programs, not only admissions, and also how they will assess for racial discrimination in programs and policies that are race neutral.

• The Department of Justice launched an investigation of UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine and Stanford, claiming violation of SFFA ruling and racial discrimination in admissions.The Dept of Education sent a memo to State Education Agencies to certify compliance with Title VI and eliminate DEI programs in K-12 or lose federal funds. So far 10 states have refused to sign and California may also.

• NIH U54 grants for faculty diversity recruitment (FIRST) programs were terminated. In addition, R25, T34, T32, KL2 programs have been terminated, and some individual K01/K08, K99/R00 grants also cancelled.

• International students and scholars had their records deactivated from SEVIS

State

• The Regents of the University of California ordered the end of required statements of contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in recruitment and hiring. This decision originated from the regents, not UC Office of the President, nor advised by Faculty senate.

Updates: April 5, 2025

Federal

• The Department of Education published FAQs on the Dear Colleague letter that orders education institutions to cease DEI activities or lose federal funding, with more detail on how the SFFA decision will be interpreted across nearly all education programs, not only admissions, and also how they will assess for racial discrimination in programs and policies that are race neutral.

• The Department of Justice launched an investigation of UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine and Stanford, claiming violation of SFFA ruling and racial discrimination in admissions.

• The State Department is continuing to track, detain and deport deport non-citizen students and faculty.

• The Department of Health and Human Services experienced major staffing cuts and also continued to terminate grants, and particularly, training programs. Many R25, T34, F31, T32, K01, and K99/R00, including many within NGIMS, have been terminated early (i.e. unlawfully) or not renewed. This will require laying off staff and ending programs across entire pathways from undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral fellows, to our junior faculty.

State

• The University of California Board of Regents ordered the UCs to end required standalone statements of contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in recruitment and hiring (not all campuses required statements, either). Although they did not ban the option of voluntary statements outright, the revised application system has made eliminated the possibility of candidates uploading a statement, even if a candidate wishes to do so. During interviews, search committees and interviewers are not allowed to directly ask about a candidate’s contributions, either. The decision at UC is notable because unlike targeted Ivy League institutions, or public universities in schools with bans on DEI, the University of California has not been singled out by the Administration for this practice, nor has it been moved by state legislation.

Updates: March 21, 2025

Federal

• Continued cancellation of already-awarded federal funding, for programs/institutions supposedly supporting “illegal DEI”. Most actions appear to be unlawful but have continued despite judicial rulings. 

• Elimination of most of the Department of Education staff, planned transfer of functions to other agencies.

• Immigration detention and deportations from university communities: to impose new federal restrictions on academic freedom.

• Continued removal of civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals: Accompanied by rise of violent threats and doxxing.

• Restrictions on public service loan forgiveness: no longer eligible for applicants working for organizations that commit "illegal DEI"