Trump wanted ‘more action against universities.’ His staff scrambled to punish San Jose State

President Donald Trump had already cut hundreds of millions to Columbia University over antisemitism accusations and put other colleges on notice when word came down to staff that he required to punish more campuses Can we get something going on Twitter in a short bit Senior Initiative Strategist May Mailman petitioned several members of the White House communications club in an email late in the day on March Stephen request added Mailman who works closely with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller POTUS wants to see more action against universities Mailman wrote Administration leaders raced to make it happen She cc d Federal Acquisition Function Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum on the email chain which included Communications Director Steven Cheung and Deputy Communications Directors Alex Pfeiffer and Kaelan Dorr under the subject line Funding yanked from San Jose State UPenn The administration had launched investigations into both campuses over trans athletes past participation in sports One of those investigations concluded in April finding the University of Pennsylvania in violation of Title IX NOTUS reviewed the full email chain which surfaced in court documents in a scenario targeting the Department of Establishment Efficiency s funding freezes The internal communications detail a push fueled by a desire to get media attention as senior authorities rushed to coordinate with various federal agencies the DOGE teams within them and Fox News to deliver on the president s wish The emails also show that the administration targeted San Jose State in a previously unreported effort to punish the campus even before the Title XI inquiry into it had concluded We specifically focused on San Jose State and U of Penn at the advice of particular of the agencies involved in live investigations and the guidance that it was best to have ongoing investigations and incidents as rationale for the stop work which is only at these two universities right now Gruenbaum wrote in the email chain Administration functionaries were attuned to the possibility of bad optics particularly when funding cuts touched national prevention and general robustness If you all deem we should turn this back on we can do that directly given criticality it s just a simple email given we didn t terminate Gruenbaum wrote at one point But ultimately those concerns did not outweigh the White House s desire to punish the schools which it did within hours of Mailman s first note The White House and San Jose State University did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the email chain and the funding cutoffs A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson directed NOTUS to the campus past population statements In the following weeks and months the White House would strip hundreds of millions of dollars from Brown Cornell Northwestern and Princeton The impacts of the administration s pressure campaigns are ongoing Harvard which has seen billions of federal dollars withheld is seemingly going to settle Trump reported on Saturday Last week Penn joined Columbia University in caving to the Trump administration s demands banning transgender athletes from participating on women s sports teams as well as a series of other concessions including a personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer In return the administration unfroze the almost million in funds it had pulled a White House official ratified to NOTUS Secretary of Training Linda McMahon called the resolution the Trump effect in action The epicenter of the trans athlete debate Two of these funding freezes began March with two bullet-pointed draft social media posts sent to the White House communications company In contemporary times we have paused ALL grant awards to San Jose State which continued to play a male athlete on the female volleyball club including access to intimate overnight spaces read the first draft post Mailman passed along according to the internal email chain reviewed by NOTUS San Jose State had become the epicenter of the trans athlete debate after an online magazine outed Blaire Fleming a member of the women s volleyball unit prompting teams to forfeit matches against the university and lawsuits that targeted her eligibility to play Trump had taken an interest in the dispute during his campaign At an all-women Fox News town hall he brought up a viral video in which Fleming an outside hitter spiked a ball into an opposing competitor I never saw a ball hit so hard he marveled vowing to just ban trans athletes from campus sports altogether Anti-trans rhetoric had become a focus of his campaign Keira Herron the San Diego State participant on the receiving end of the ball later reported The New York Times Magazine that It was fine Everyone gets hit in volleyball Fleming commented the season was the darkest time in my life In December NCAA President Charlie Baker testified to senators that out of a few NCAA student-athletes less than were transgender Mailman s second draft post mirrored the first this time announcing the pause of tens of millions from UPenn for having permitted a trans athlete to compete on the women s swimming company years prior The university receives roughly billion annually in federal funding The authorities held significantly less leverage over San Jose State Mailman noted that ending all awards to the campus meant k of EPA funding and required Gruenbaum to confirm if it was paused or revoked Gruenbaum from his perch inside the agency that directs federal contracting acted as the White House s point person between various agencies He was a more than willing partner Gruenbaum left his post at a global expenditure firm to join the Trump administration calling the president s poll and the formation of DOGE this coming of everything I ve been trying to put together in a profile that ran in Jewish Insider just a meager days before the White House accelerated its war against higher guidance institutions In it he reported he was brimming at the prospect of using the federal regime s leverage to combat antisemitism along with cutting lower-hanging fruit of selected things in the DEI category or in the surroundings and sustainability category The White House company peppered him with questions about the funding cutoffs Are these from every single agency Pfeiffer petitioned What are the deets Once approved we can get a story in a major outlet Pfeiffer himself had worked as a White House correspondent for The Daily Caller during Trump s first year in office landing the role at just and replacing Kaitlan Collins before serving a four-year stint as a producer for Tucker Carlson at Fox News Gruenbaum explained that there was just one grant that would be paused at San Jose State and it was for healthy drinking water so up to you guys if you want to trumpet that He added that it was an Environmental Protection Agency grant and that the agency was concerned having their name in media but defer to you all if going to print that will just give them a heads up so Imk Half an hour later he wrote that he Unveiled another MM for San Jose St stand by By then it was almost p m Administrators were growing impatient Josh Mailman wrote back per Stephen we need to get this on social media IN THE PRESENT DAY Please no more piecemeal emails Just one with clear bullet points on what s being frozen paused and from which agency THANK YOU Yep you got it Gruenbaum replied I didn t want you guys tweeting San Jose first before I cleaned up DHS and DoD hence the piecemeal but understood Gruenbaum Mailman and Miller are all involved in the administration s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism which directed the stripping of million from Columbia and launched investigations into the University of California system and Harvard University Over an hour later Gruenbaum returned with the details of the funding cuts across the two universities the specifics of which are released here for the first time At San Jose State all federal awards had been halted under stop-work orders including a Department of Defense contract and the healthy drinking water survey A third award this one with the Department of Homeland Prevention raised red flags The contract was for the terrorist and serious criminal database patronage But exempting those funds from the stop work Gruenbaum pointed out would drop the San Jose State total from million to around Nobody on the email chain took him up on the offer to reverse the freezes There was however a obstacle with Gruenbaum s math The figure was a theoretical maximum Only had veritably been obligated to the university and of that had already been used federal records show The campus theoretically lost out on a maximum of but the real number was likely closer to Ultimately the total punishment amounted to little more than a rounding error for a campus with a nearly half-billion-dollar annual budget At Penn seven contracts were terminated Six of them worth a collective million had been awarded by the Defense Department and deemed non-mission critical Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had approved Gruenbaum noted The remaining award was a million Department of Wellbeing and Human Services IDIQ contract a type of open-ended contract that other orders are drawn from At the time of termination only one task order had been drawn from the massive pool of money an animal infectious syndrome assessment according to Gruenbaum Penn President J Larry Jameson would later say that terminating the funds would impact research on preventing hospital-acquired infections drug screening against deadly viruses quantum computing protections against chemical warfare and apprentice loan programs Jameson had officially been Penn s president for only a scarce days at that point after serving as interim president Early action In early February three former Penn swimmers filed a federal lawsuit against the university and the NCAA for having allowed Lia Thomas a transgender scholar to compete years earlier The following day Trump signed the executive order Keeping Men Out of Women s Sports The day after the bill signing Trump s Department of Guidance opened its Title IX investigations into Penn San Jose State and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association despite the college athletes at the center of the administration s ire having concluded their final seasons long before The administration gave Fox News the special This is NOT the impact of the Title IX study Mailman wrote to Pfeiffer in March UPenn and San Jose State are still at liability of losing all of their federal schooling effort funds because of those investigations This is immediate action to review discretionary funding streams to those universities Early action Versions of that comment attributed to an unnamed official would later appear in coverage of the funding pause Pfeiffer replied he would get this out shortly The focus he stated would be on Penn since it is a nice big number There were still concerns about canceling the DHS grant at San Jose State Mailman petitioned about San Jose State s absence from the draft If the premise is we want to show we are on top of it I think the big million number to a known university will make that splash Pfeiffer wrote I can get San Jose State out separately post UPenn Pfeiffer pushed the announcement to the following morning to avoid an already crowded news cycle The staffers wrapped their work a little after p m less than five hours after Mailman first pinged the communications band San Jose State didn t get media attention like Penn At a m on March Fox Business part of Pfeiffer s old stomping grounds flashed a urgent news alert The president s desire for more action became a reality President Trump has promised to protect female athletes he has threatened to rip federal funding away from any university that defies his executive order banning biological males from infiltrating women s sports and he is doing it Fox Business Hillary Vaughn declared on air We are the first to summary Vaughn continued looking down to read from her phone as she spoke President Trump has paused million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania over its controversial policies The language largely mirrored the communications crew s draft report LATEST The Trump Administration has paused million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania over its policies forcing women to compete with men in sports Promises made promises kept pic twitter com o yiiqtH d Rapid Response RapidResponse March The word approximately which appeared in the administration s draft comment to couch the fact that the White House had veritably paused million did not make it onto Fox The majority other major outlets would also document the million total without any such caveat UPenn is still at hazard of losing all of their federal tuition operation funds because of those investigations the White House draft comment read The university is still at menace of losing all its federal funding as a effect of the ongoing Title IX inquiry Vaughn stated on air After she wrapped various Fox personalities took turns lauding the decision The announcement entirely blindsided Penn The campus that day stated it was aware of media reports that it had just lost out on million but had not yet received any official notification or any details Penn insisted it has consistently followed NCAA and Ivy League policies An hour after it aired Pfeiffer passed along the Fox Business segment to Gruenbaum attaching the clipping posted to the White House s Rapid Response X account and a post from Mario Nawfal one of Elon Musk s favorite news aggregation personalities on X who had shared the clip with his more than million followers Awesome stuff Gruenbaum wrote back On standby if you guys need more actions Two days later Gruenbaum pinged the email thread again Per May we are good to go on SJSU announcement that we paused ALL federal grants he wrote to Pfeiffer But a post never arrived After two weeks of inaction Gruenbaum conceded in an email to other personnel that The likelihood of press only for SJSU is low During this back and forth Gruenbaum forwarded the entire email thread to the four authorities with whom he had been coordinating across DOD DHS and EPA Three of the bureaucrats Kyle Schutt and -year-old Adam Hoffman at DHS and Kathryn Loving at the EPA were not traditional staffers or careers as Loving would refer to them in other emails They were members of DOGE embedded within those agencies The same day the Fox Business segment aired a coalition of six cities and nonprofits sued Trump and Musk as part of an effort to restore millions in federal funding through grants DOGE had cut By April tens of thousands of pages of internal EPA records had been uploaded to the court s website as part of the scenario s discovery process One email swept up in the discovery process sent exactly a month prior by Gruenbaum to Loving and others contained a notable attachment The full Funding yanked from San Jose State UPenn thread allowing the citizens and press a chance to peel back the curtain of the Trump White House Last month the administration gave an on-the-record comment exclusively to Fox News for a story it wrote targeting San Jose State and Fleming who had long since left the campus The message was boilerplate Trump would continue speaking and taking action against campuses that allowed trans athletes to compete There was no mention of the fact that the White House had already axed federal funding to San Jose State for that very reason The punishment remained a secret This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS a publication from the nonprofit nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute and NEWSWELL home of Times of San Diego Santa Barbara News-Press and Stocktonia