U.S. Government Demands Change in Elite Universities Through the Impoundment of Federal Funding

Writer: Isabelle Kim

Article Editor: Colin Garbutt

I. Introduction

For seventy-five years, the United States government has partnered with various universities, providing essential funding for health, scientific, and technological advancements through awarded grants given by federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH).¹ Once awarded, federal research grants are published to the federal register as mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which obligates funding for successful grant applicants.² Primarily through the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration announced an impoundment of billions of dollars from America’s wealthiest universities during the first year of his second term.³The funding freeze was a punitive measure for alleged antisemitism during on campus, pro-Palestinian protests and reflects the government’s discontent with universities’ failures to deter these protests.⁴ Eight prestigious schools⁵ were targets of the funding freeze, which amounted to $6.8 billion in total educational funds.⁶ Analysis of immediate and projected impacts from the funding freeze by Center of American Progress predicts the frozen funds created a wider range of consequences, impacting jobs and lives.⁷ This article asserts that the Trump administration’s action to freeze federal funding to universities constituted an unlawful circumvention of due process protections. Secondly, this article contends that because the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice Office Legal Counsel, and the Supreme Court all renounced the President’s right to impoundment of appropriations, these funding cuts did not meet narrow requirements under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.⁸

II. Constitutionality

The constitutionality of the Trump administration’s action to freeze over $6.8 billion in federal funding is an overstep of executive power and may result in future leniency of executive branch overreach. Federal funding appropriated and enacted into law should not be impounded once awarded without due process as universities are considered “government actors,” therefore entitled to Fifth Amendment rights.⁹ When universities responded to demands with letters of rejection, the Trump administration withheld funding within hours, failing to implement proper procedural law found in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,¹⁰ which requires the federal government to launch thorough investigations into universities and prove intentional discrimination or disparate impact. According to Rhode Island Democratic Senator John Pastore, removing federal funding was a provision intended as a measure of last resort, thus procedures prescribe a laborious process.¹¹ As established unanimously by Train v. City of New York (1975), the executive branch of the federal government is disavowed from refusing to spend funds that Congress has specifically allocated.¹² The Trump administration invoked Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, arguing Universities’ tolerance and failure to defend against antisemitism is a form of discrimination,¹³ consequently giving the government grounds for impoundment. Title VI prohibits discriminatory practices within schools receiving federal assistance to enforce equal disbursement of benefits. Pursuance of Title VI by the federal government against a federally funded entity that refuses to comply with requirements is subject to judicial review, which includes the right to due process.¹⁴ Utilizing the power of the federal purse, the U.S. government surpassed substantive procedures from the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and demanded policy changes from universities, leveraging billions in funding. 

III. Impoundment Control Act of 1974

The two legal channels of the Impoundment Control Act, which governs executive and agency power over federal budget funds, include deferrals and rescissions. Deferrals temporarily delay appropriated funds and are allowed for contingencies, savings, or a particular program. Procedural law requires a special message to Congress, followed by reviews from the Governmental Accountability Office, for a lawful deferral. All approved deferrals expire by the end of the fiscal year. Rescissions are cancellations of appropriated funds and can be proposed and temporarily invoked for forty-five days while Congress is in continuous session. Congress must approve the proposed rescission within the forty-five days or the funds become automatically reinstated.¹⁵ The Trump administration failed to formally propose a rescission or deferral to Congress and did not apply narrow standards to matters eligible for deferrals, rather, moving to impound funds immediately. Furthermore, the Impoundment Control Act specifically forbids the exercise of unilateral impoundment without the consent of Congress.¹⁶ Through the separation of powers, Congress has jurisdiction over federal funding but has not intervened. As established by South Dakota v. Dole (1987), in order for Congress to attach conditions to federal funds, such as a letter of demands, five standards must be met.¹⁷ Trump fails to satisfy the established standards, most strikingly the requirement that federal conditions may not be coercive.¹⁸ Threatening the withdrawal of federal funding is a restriction that induces universities to adhere to demands, thus a coercive measure. Additionally, these standards regard the ability of Congress to implement conditions in federal funding but there is no executive power to attach conditions.

IV. Harvard University’s Battles with the Trump Administration

Harvard University sued the Trump administration for the $2.2 billion of frozen federal funding. Harvard filed for civil action under the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to urge defendants from exceeding legal bounds of authority.¹⁹ Harvard’s protests occurred in late April and early May of 2024, following the escalation of the war in Gaza.²⁰ The federal government’s claim of antisemitism within universities is a blanket statement that negatively impacts various researchers and faculty who did not take part in protests. Conflicts between Harvard and the Trump administration rose on April 11, 2025 when the administration sent a letter of demands to Harvard’s President, Alan Garber, who responded with a rejection letter on April 14. Within hours of Harvard’s letter of refusal, the Federal Task Force announced a freeze on $2.2 billion in federal grant funding.²¹ The demands infringed upon the University’s independence and constitutional rights. Among others, the demands included abandonment of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, and disciplinary actions for pro-Palestinian groups wearing masks in protests.²² The imposition of intrusive demands upon institutions not only exerts improper expectations of control, but infringes upon the University’s academic freedoms. 

Academic freedom is an interpretation of the First Amendment that was introduced during the U.S. Civil War as individual protection for teachers and faculty which later extended to institutional academic freedom for universities. Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) is the first U.S. Supreme Court case to present the link between academic freedom and the First Amendment.²³ This case asserted the right to academic freedom based on the nature of academia, claiming that professors and faculty alike are entitled to freedom of responsible inquiry into social and economic dogma.²⁴ Twenty years later, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) established academic freedom as a “special concern of the First Amendment.”²⁵ The action to impound Harvard’s funding prohibits their ability to educate at the same capacity and imposes a requirement to dismantle hiring and admission structures impacts, which negatively impacts the efficacy of their educational goals. Before the freeze order was implemented, the Federal Task Force began to identify grants which were eligible for termination and drafted template termination letters. Grants that received termination letters lacked sufficient reasoning and correlation between antisemitism and the discontinued funding. These termination letters are arbitrary and capricious, lacking sufficient logical reasoning and explanation for termination of funding,²⁶ and they violate Harvard’s rights under the Administrative Protective Act.²⁷

V. Conclusion

The harmful impacts of revoking federal funding from institutions goes beyond the scope of education; it hinders the process of gathering valuable medical research and technological advancements by disrupting research flow. This diminishes the trajectory of not only the field of research, but the various economic sectors reliant upon that research. In an open letter sent by 110 biotech leaders, they issued a warning of the disastrous impacts of the funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.²⁸ The following six impacts were identified: workforce collapse, innovation paralysis, broken research pipeline, disrupted discovery, startup starvation, and supply chain blocks.²⁹ The frozen funding threatens to halt or force researchers to start from scratch in the middle of their studies after already utilizing millions of taxpayer dollars. Some scientists say that the months under the freeze already have caused disastrous effects and threaten to set back scientific studies by years; even nullifying the studies altogether.³⁰ Budget cuts from lack of federal funding have forced the hand of research departments to lay off, and rescind offers to valuable members of their department, such downsizing threatens to deter future talent from entering the field of research creating a period of “brain drain.”³¹ The Trump administration’s actions implicate others beyond just university leadership—those whose jobs are most threatened are actually faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in the science and clinical departments. Unable to withstand the funding freeze, many targeted universities made settlement deals with the Trump administration to recover their frozen funds. Consequently, universities are implementing strong plans to combat antisemitism within their disciplinary policy while remaining aligned with their values.³² However, conforming to the government’s demands may only set precedent for future executive overreach that is illegal under the U.S. Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

1. Jake Miller, A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science, Harv. Med. (Apr. 2025), https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/brief-history-federal-funding-basic-science. ↩︎
2. Adam G. Levin, Cong. Rsch. Serv, IF12924, Understanding Federal Agency Grant Disbursement (2025). ↩︎
3. Greta Bedekovics & Will Ragland, Mapping Federal Funding Cuts to U.S. Colleges and Universities, Ctr. for Am. Progress (Jul. 2025), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/mapping-federal-funding-cuts-to-us-colleges-and-universities/. ↩︎
4. Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Educ., U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitic Discrimination and Harassment (2025), https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-sends-letters-60-universities-under-investigation-antisemitic-discrimination-and-harassment. ↩︎
5. Id. Among these universities are Harvard University, Cornell University, Northwestern University, Brown University, University of California Los Angeles, Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania. ↩︎
6. Maanvi Singh, Trump Administration to Restore $6.8Bn in Education Funds After Multi-State Suit, The Guardian (Aug. 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/25/trump-administration-education-funding. ↩︎
7. Kennedy Andara, The Consequences of a Federal Funding Freeze in the States, Ctr. Am. Progress (Feb. 2025), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-consequences-of-a-federal-funding-freeze-in-the-states/. ↩︎
8. U.S. House Comm. on Appropriations, Background on Unlawful Impoundment in President Trump’s Executive Orders (Jan. 2025). ↩︎
9. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. ↩︎
10. Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964); Alvin Powell, Trump Administration Freezes $2.2 Billion in Grants to Harvard, Harvard T.H. Chan Sch. Pub. Health (Apr. 2025), https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/trump-administration-freezes-2-2-billion-in-grants-to- harvard/. ↩︎
11. Alex Kane, Trump’s Illegal Cuts to University Funding, Explained, Jewish Currents (June 2025), https://jewishcurrents.org/trump-cuts-university-funding-harvard-antisemitism-explainer. ↩︎
12. Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35, 44 (1975). ↩︎
13. Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism Announces Visits to 10 College Campuses That Experienced Incidents of Antisemitism (2025). ↩︎
14. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d (2018). ↩︎
15. Impoundment Control Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 682–88 (1974). ↩︎
16. Eric Rosen, Can the President Do That? Understanding Trump’s Threat to Freeze Harvard’s Funds, Dynamis LLP, https://www.dynamisllp.com/knowledge/understanding-trump-threat-to-freeze-harvard-funds. ↩︎
17. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 207–08 (1987). ↩︎
18. Id. ↩︎
19. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll. v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., No. 25-cv-10948 (D. Mass. filed 2025). ↩︎
20. Jay Ulfelder, Crowd Counting Consortium: An Empirical Overview of Recent Pro-Palestine Protests at U.S. Schools, Ash Ctr. (May 2024), https://ash.harvard.edu/articles/crowd-counting-blog-an-empirical-overview-of-recent-pro-palestine-protests-at-u-s-schools/. ↩︎
21. Id. ↩︎
22. Letter from U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs. to Alan M. Garber, President, Harv. Univ. (Apr. 2025) (publicly available and on file with the university). ↩︎
23. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). ↩︎
24. Rachel Levinson, Academic Freedom and the First Amendment (2007), Am. Ass’n of Univ. Professors (July 2007), https://www.aaup.org/academic-freedom-and-first-amendment-2007. ↩︎
25. Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978); Emilie Kraft, Academic Freedom, Free Speech Ctr. (Aug. 2023), https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/academic-freedom/. ↩︎
26. Id. ↩︎
27. 5 U.S.C. § 706 (1946). ↩︎
28. Glob. Biodefense, Biomedical Leaders Warn of ‘Catastrophic’ Fallout from Trump-Vance Research Cuts (July 2025), https://globalbiodefense.com/2025/07/03/trump-vance-research-cuts-biotech-w arning-2025/. ↩︎
29. Id. ↩︎
30. Associated Press, Scientists Sue NIH, Saying Politics Cut Their Research Funding (Apr. 2025), https://apnews.co m/article/nih-funding-trump-dei-research-094ed2abe5ba529cdb74f7e0b429c4f3. ↩︎
31. Bridget Balch, How Uncertainty Around Cuts to Scientific Research Is Impacting the Future Biomedical Research Workforce, AAMC News (Apr. 2025), https://www.aamc.org/news/how-uncertainty-around-cuts-scientific-research-impacting-future-biomedical-research-workforce. ↩︎
32. The White House, Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Secures Major Settlement with Columbia University (July 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-major-
    settlement-with-columbia-university/. ↩︎