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 assertions and put other colleges on notice when word came down to staff that he sought to punish more campuses Can we get something going on Twitter in a short bit Senior Program Strategist May Mailman questioned several members of the White House communications unit 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 agents raced to make it happen She cc d Federal Acquisition Amenity 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 matter 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 personnel 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 examination 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 currently Gruenbaum wrote in the email chain Administration administrators were attuned to the possibility of bad optics particularly when funding cuts touched national safety and inhabitants robustness If you all deem we should turn this back on we can do that right away 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 general 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 supposedly going to settle Trump revealed 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 validated to NOTUS Secretary of Development 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 The present day we have paused ALL grant awards to San Jose State which continued to play a male athlete on the female volleyball band 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 band prompting teams to forfeit matches against the university and lawsuits that targeted her eligibility to play Trump had taken an interest in the disagreement 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 athlete 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 athlete on the receiving end of the ball later described The New York Times Magazine that It was fine Everyone gets hit in volleyball Fleming noted the season was the darkest time in my life In December NCAA President Charlie Baker testified to senators that out of specific 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 crew years prior The university receives roughly billion annually in federal funding The establishment held significantly less leverage over San Jose State Mailman noted that ending all awards to the campus meant k of EPA funding and urged 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 referendum 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 limited days before the White House accelerated its war against higher schooling institutions In it he noted he was brimming at the prospect of using the federal leadership s leverage to combat antisemitism along with cutting lower-hanging fruit of specific things in the DEI category or in the weather and sustainability category The White House organization peppered him with questions about the funding cutoffs Are these from every single agency Pfeiffer urged What are the deets Once endorsed 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 Discovered another MM for San Jose St stand by By then it was almost p m Functionaries were growing impatient Josh Mailman wrote back per Stephen we need to get this on social media CURRENTLY 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 announced 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 assessment A third award this one with the Department of Homeland Measure raised red flags The contract was for the terrorist and serious criminal database promotion 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 challenge with Gruenbaum s math The figure was a theoretical maximum Only had in fact 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 Vitality 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 disorder survey 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 pupil 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 candidate 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 Tuition 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 sole This is NOT the aftermath of the Title IX inspection Mailman wrote to Pfeiffer in March UPenn and San Jose State are still at menace of losing all of their federal schooling project funds because of those investigations This is immediate action to review discretionary funding streams to those universities Early action Versions of that report 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 explained 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 sought 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 gang 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 emerging 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 disclosed on air We are the first to account 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 URGENT 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 announcement to couch the fact that the White House had genuinely paused million did not make it onto Fox Bulk other major outlets would also document the million total without any such caveat UPenn is still at danger of losing all of their federal teaching plan funds because of those investigations the White House draft announcement read The university is still at exposure of losing all its federal funding as a impact of the ongoing Title IX examination Vaughn noted on air After she wrapped various Fox personalities took turns lauding the decision The announcement comprehensively blindsided Penn The campus that day declared 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 unfailingly 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 authorities that The likelihood of press only for SJSU is low During this back and forth Gruenbaum forwarded the entire email thread to the four executives with whom he had been coordinating across DOD DHS and EPA Three of the administrators 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 event 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 masses and press a chance to peel back the curtain of the Trump White House Last month the administration gave an on-the-record announcement 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