Trump pauses UPenn funding over trans athlete policy

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The Trump administration is pausing $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its transgender athlete policies, the White House announced Wednesday in a post on X.

The post said the Ivy League university's policies are "forcing women to compete with men in sports" and ended with the Trump tagline, "Promises made, promises kept."

A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania said that it is aware of media reports about the suspension but that the university has not received any official notification or details.

"It is important to note, however, that Penn has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams," the spokesperson said in an email. "We have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions."

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in female sports.

The order, which referred to trans women as men, said having trans women and girls compete in women's sports "is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports."

The order also stated that "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."

Penn made national headlines in 2022 when a transgender student athlete, Lia Thomas, competed on the women's swim team and went on to become the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship.

The Trump administration's announcement Wednesday follows investigations it opened last month into the University of Pennsylvania over Thomas' participation and San Jose State University over a player's participation on the women's volleyball team. The San Jose State student has never publicly commented on the controversy or confirmed that she is transgender.

A senior White House official told NBC News that the Trump administration paused the funds due to Thomas' participation, referring to Thomas as male and condemning her access to the locker room. However, the official said the federal funding pause is not the result of the Title IX investigation launched by the Education Department and that the funds were paused by the departments of Defense and Health and Human Services.

The official described the funding pause as an "immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams to those universities." The official did not clarify what the discretionary funding is for or why it was being paused if not due to an alleged Title IX violation.

I think it has happened in certain cases where certain male athletes have cheaply become trans to compete in Womens' sports in what is tantamount to Fraud.

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