President Trump’s administration has swiftly sought to advance major changes across higher education, such as eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campuses; punishing individuals and institutions over allegations of antisemitism; and laying off thousands of employees in the Education Department.
The Chronicle is tracking executive orders, statements from Trump, and agency actions that affect higher education, plus legal challenges directed at those measures. The tracker focuses on four areas: civil rights, research, policy, and immigration.
Newest Updates
International students in court: A federal district judge in Atlanta issued a temporary restraining order pausing any efforts by the Trump administration to deport 133 students who had visas revoked. Separately, a new lawsuit filed by five students from China and India seeks to halt any deportations of foreign students who are in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Puerto Rico. The complaint alleges the government’s efforts are overreach and a violation of students’ due-process rights. See more in Immigration.
Loan payments resume: Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the department will again seek to collect money from an estimated five million borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans. Efforts to collect on loan defaults have been paused for five years. See more in Policy.
Fulbright in trouble: An internal Trump-administration memo recommends cutting the State Department’s budget by half and eliminating all money for educational and cultural programs, such as the Fulbright Program. See more in Immigration.
Trump Actions We're Tracking
- Civil Rights
- Immigration
- Policy
- Research
| Civil Rights | The Trump administration has threatened colleges’ federal funding over alleged violations of civil-rights laws. |
Antisemitism task force reviews Harvard’s federal grants and contracts
Last updated: April 21, 2025 | Initial event: March 31, 2025
The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration announced plans to review more than $255.6 million in contracts that Harvard holds with the federal government and $8.7 billion it receives in federal grants. A government news release cited “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination.”
LatestLawsuit | April 21, 2025Harvard University sued the Trump administration, arguing that the First Amendment prohibits the government from freezing government contracts over a particular ideological agenda and that the administration has not identified “any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, and other research it has frozen.”
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | April 20, 2025The Trump administration is reportedly planning to freeze an additional $1 billion in health-research grants to Harvard because it is angry the university made a list of government demands public.
Read: The Wall Street Journal
New Details | April 19, 2025The administration is now demanding detailed information on the university’s own antisemitism task force, including a copy of a report that was originally scheduled to be released in the fall of 2024, any draft materials of the report, and the names of anyone involved in preparing those documents.
Read: The Free Pres
New Details | April 18, 2025White House officials acknowledged that a list of demands for oversight of Harvard was sent in error.
Read: The New York Times
Agency Action | April 17, 2025The Education Department announced that it is looking into the accuracy of the university’s disclosures of foreign gifts and contracts and has requested numerous sources of information related to those transactions.
Read: Education Department
Agency Action | April 17, 2025The Department of Homeland Security threatened to revoke the university’s ability to enroll foreign students unless it turns over the disciplinary records of international students and information on their activity in protests.
Read: The Harvard Crimson
Congressional Action | April 17, 2025The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the university’s refusal to accept the Trump administration’s demands to provide oversight of multiple areas of campus operations.
Read: The Harvard Crimson
Agency Action | April 16, 2025The IRS is considering whether it should rescind the university’s tax-exempt status based on allegations that the university may have violated the requirements of charitable organizations, such as engaging in political activity.
Read: The Washington Post | The Chronicle
Agency Action | April 14, 2025The White House’s Joint Task Force on Antisemitism announced it was freezing more than $2 billion in grants and contracts after the university said it would not give in to government demands to allow oversight of multiple areas of campus operations.
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | April 14, 2025Harvard University's president said the university would not comply with an updated list of demands from the Trump administration.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | April 11, 2025The American Association of University Professors and its Harvard University chapter filed a lawsuit challenging the government’s authority to freeze federal money to the university and arguing that the action violates the First Amendment.
Read: The New York Times
Agency Action | April 3, 2025Trump’s antisemitism task force sent a letter to Harvard University demanding it eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, remove race as a factor in admissions and hiring, and cooperate with orders from the Department of Homeland Security, or risk losing its federal funding.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | March 31, 2025Three federal agencies announced they would review $255.6 million in federal contracts with Harvard University and $8.7 billion in federal grants to the university over concerns that the institution hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism.
Read: The Chronicle
House Committee investigates Northwestern U. legal clinic
Last updated: April 16, 2025 | Initial event: March 27, 2025
Congressional Republicans announced an investigation into a Northwestern University legal clinic over its representation of pro-Palestinian protesters, alleging that the clinic’s clients had engaged in “illegal, antisemitic conduct.” The House’s Committee on Education and the Workforce requested records for all of the university’s legal clinics, but focused its scrutiny on the Community and Civil Rights Clinic.
LatestNew Details | April 16, 2025After an emergency hearing in federal court, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce withdrew its request for information on the university’s legal clinic, which had represented pro-Palestinian protesters.
Read: Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Lawsuit | April 9, 2025Two Northwestern University law professors sued the House education committee over a request to turn over records from their respective law clinics, accusing Republican members of Congress of targeting political opponents.
Read: Daily Northwestern
Inciting Action | March 27, 2025The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued a request to a legal clinic at Northwestern University, requesting details of their work representing pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested after blocking traffic to O’Hare airport.
Read: Reuters
Dear Colleague letter directs colleges to dismantle DEI
Last updated: April 11, 2025 | Initial event: February 14, 2025
The Education Department issued guidance to higher-ed institutions offering an expansive interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard. The letter said virtually all race-conscious policies and programming violated the law in the Trump administration’s eyes.
LatestAgency Action | April 11, 2025The State of Illinois has suspended its use of a scholarship program for racial minorities seeking to become faculty members. Several colleges in Illinois have also suspended their participation in the program. The U.S. Department of Justice had notified the colleges and the state that it found the program unconstitutional.
Read: The College Fix | Justice Department
Court Order | April 9, 2025The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Education Association reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education in their lawsuit challenging the Dear Colleague letter that tells colleges to end all DEI programs. The department is prevented from enforcing the directive and a related certification requirement until at least April 24.
Read: American Civil Liberties Union
Agency Action | April 9, 2025U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would consider noncitizens’ “antisemitic activity” on social media in making decisions on immigration-benefit requests. A government news release noted this would affect noncitizens applying for green cards, foreign students, and noncitizens affiliated with “educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity.”
Read: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Agency Action | March 27, 2025The Department of Justice announced investigations into allegedly race-conscious admissions practices at Stanford University and the University of California’s Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Irvine campuses.
Read: Justice Department
Agency Action | March 14, 2025The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced Title VI investigations into 45 colleges over their partnerships with the PhD Project, a nonprofit that supports underrepresented doctoral students. OCR also placed six institutions under investigation for allegedly awarding race-based scholarships, and one for allegedly maintaining a program that segregated students based on race.
Read: Education Department
Lawsuit | March 5, 2025The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Education Association filed a lawsuit challenging the Dear Colleague letter, arguing that it violated the First and Fifth Amendments and misinterpreted the Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard decision.
Read: American Civil Liberties Union
Agency Action | March 1, 2025The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released a guidance document clarifying which types of DEI programs it might consider illegal.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 25, 2025The American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association sued to stop the Education Department from enforcing the Dear Colleague letter, arguing it is an overreach of the department’s authority and misapplies the Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard decision.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | February 14, 2025The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights put colleges on notice in a Dear Colleague letter, telling them to stamp out all race-conscious policies and programming immediately or risk losing federal funding.
Read: The Chronicle
Trump administration goes after Columbia’s federal funding
Last updated: April 10, 2025 | Initial event: March 3, 2025
The Departments of Health and Human Services and Education and the General Services Administration jointly announced a review of more than $5 billion that Columbia University receives in federal grants. The review was initiated by President Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
LatestAgency Action | April 10, 2025News outlets reported that the Trump administration may ask a federal judge to oversee any agreement it comes to with Columbia University over the institution’s federal funding.
Read: The Wall Street Journal
Agency Action | April 9, 2025The Trump administration indefinitely froze all National Institutes of Health grants for Columbia University, preventing new funding from being awarded and requiring investigators on existing projects to get approval for payments.
Read: Science
New Details | March 28, 2025Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, abruptly stepped down and was replaced by Claire Shipman, co-chair of the university’s board.
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | March 21, 2025Columbia agreed to the Trump administration’s demands, announcing that it was appointing a senior vice provost to review Middle Eastern studies, had banned masks not used for health and religious reasons, and had hired 36 special officers with arrest powers.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | March 13, 2025Officials from the three federal agencies sent a letter to Columbia University laying out a series of conditions for the institution to meet before the government would consider negotiating over the funding cancellation.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | March 7, 2025The Trump administration announced it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its “continued inaction” in the face of discrimination against Jewish students. The notice said additional cancellations would follow.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | March 3, 2025Three federal agencies announced a sweeping review into Columbia University’s funding due to allegations of antisemitism and said they would consider placing stop-work orders on $51.4 million it holds in federal contracts.
Read: The Chronicle
Federal government goes after more colleges' funding
Last updated: April 8, 2025 | Initial event: April 3, 2025
The Trump administration stepped up its crusade against the nation's big-name research universities, pausing large amounts of grant funding over alleged civil-rights violations. Scholars and education advocates criticized what they saw as blatant attempts to force colleges to bend to the government's will.
LatestAgency Action | April 8, 2025Two Trump administration officials said that the government froze more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University.
Read: The New York Times
Inciting Action | April 3, 2025A White House official said the government planned to freeze $510 million in federal funding for Brown University over its DEI commitments and handling of antisemitism.
Read: Associated Press
Trump signs order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports
Last updated: April 4, 2025 | Initial event: February 5, 2025
President Trump signed an executive order compelling schools and colleges that receive federal funding to exclude transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s sports — or else be found in violation of Title IX. The move was widely expected.
LatestAgency Action | April 4, 2025The Education and Justice Departments announced a Title IX Special Investigations Team to more quickly resolve a backlog of federal investigations and to protect students, especially female athletes, from “gender ideology.”
Read: Education Department
New Details | February 6, 2025The Trump administration announced federal investigations into potential Title IX violations at the University of Pennsylvania and San José State University, citing the participation of transgender athletes in sports.
Read: Education Department
New Details | February 6, 2025The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that transgender women will no longer be able to compete on women’s sports teams, citing Trump’s order.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | February 5, 2025Trump signed an executive order interpreting the gender-equity law Title IX as barring the participation of transgender women in women’s sports.
Read: White House
Trump targets Princeton’s federal funding
Last updated: April 1, 2025 | Initial event: April 1, 2025
Princeton University’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, wrote in an April statement that the university had received notice from several government agencies that dozens of research grants were suspended. The rationale for the freezes, he wrote, was not clear. Princeton had been under Education Department investigation for alleged antisemitism since 2024.
LatestInciting Action | April 1, 2025The Trump administration reportedly paused $210 million in federal funding to Princeton University — almost half of the sum it receives from the federal government — over its handling of antisemitism on campus. Princeton confirmed it was notified of dozens of frozen grants but did not verify their total amount.
Read: The Chronicle
Government freezes $175 million of Penn's federal funding
Last updated: March 25, 2025 | Initial event: March 19, 2025
The Trump administration announced that it had frozen more than $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania because the institution had allowed a transgender athlete to participate on a women's sports team. The pause affected funding from the Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense.
LatestNew Details | March 25, 2025The University of Pennsylvania announced that faculty members across seven schools received stop-work orders on research grants totaling about $175 million.
Read: University of Pennsylvania
Inciting Action | March 19, 2025The Trump administration announced a pause on $175 million in federal support for the University of Pennsylvania, citing its decision to allow a transgender athlete to compete on a women's sports team.
Read: The Chronicle
Education Department warns 60 colleges of potential enforcement actions over alleged antisemitism
Last updated: March 21, 2025 | Initial event: March 10, 2025
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent letters to five dozen colleges reminding them of their Title VI responsibilities to protect Jewish students. Letters to institutions — public and private, large and small, and from every region of the country — undoubtedly carried more force because they came almost immediately after Columbia University was stripped of $400 million over the same issue.
LatestNew Details | March 21, 2025None of the colleges that received the warning letter on antisemitism were willing to answer questions about how they would react to demands from the Trump administration to change campus policies and practices.
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | March 11, 2025Gov. Josh Green, Democrat of Hawaii, spoke with high-level White House officials to ensure the University of Hawaii-Manoa wouldn’t lose federal funding over a “misunderstanding.” He said the White House assured him the university would not be on the “chopping block.”
Read: Hawaii Governor’s Office
Inciting Action | March 10, 2025The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights sent letters to five dozen colleges reminding them of their Title VI responsibilities to protect Jewish students.
Read: The New York Times
Trump signs executive order aimed at combating campus antisemitism
Last updated: March 13, 2025 | Initial event: January 19, 2025
President Trump’s directive on combating antisemitism asked agencies to come up with strategies and threatened to deport international students who protested against the war in Gaza. The order also asked the secretary of education to submit a report with an inventory and analysis of complaints and investigations related to Title VI, the federal law barring discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including shared Jewish ancestry.
LatestAgency Action | March 13, 2025President Trump’s joint task force on antisemitism said it would travel to four cities “rocked by” antisemitism — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston — to meet with their mayors and ask about their responses to school and campus antisemitism.
Read: Justice Department
Agency Action | March 5, 2025The joint task force on antisemitism announced that the Department of Justice is investigating the University of California for potential violations of Title VII, which bars employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
Read: Justice Department
Agency Action | February 28, 2025The antisemitism task force announced that it would visit 10 college campuses — including Columbia University, George Washington University, Harvard University, and the Johns Hopkins University — where antisemitic incidents have recently taken place.
Read: Justice Department
Agency Action | February 3, 2025The Education Department announced investigations into Columbia, Northwestern, and Portland State Universities, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for their handling of reported antisemitic harassment.
Read: Education Department
Agency Action | February 3, 2025The Justice Department announced a task force on school and campus antisemitism, bringing together representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and other agencies.
Read: Justice Department
Inciting Action | January 29, 2025In an executive order, Trump told all agency heads to identify actions to curb campus antisemitism, signaling that he would be escalating enforcement efforts against higher education.
Read: White House
U.S. Department of Agriculture pauses $100 million in funding to University of Maine system
Last updated: March 12, 2025 | Initial event: February 22, 2025
Following a tense White House exchange between President Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, the Department of Agriculture announced that it would review the University of Maine system’s compliance with an executive order barring transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. A few weeks later, the USDA temporarily froze more than $100 million in funds to the system.
LatestAgency Action | March 12, 2025The USDA restored funding to the University of Maine system after Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, spoke to members of the Trump administration.
Read: News Center Maine
Agency Action | March 10, 2025The University of Maine system was forwarded an email that appeared to have been sent by a USDA official saying that the department had paused $100 million in funding to the University of Maine system over potential civil-rights violations.
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | February 25, 2025The University of Maine system told the USDA that its sports teams complied with Title IX and with new National Collegiate Athletic Association policies aligned with Trump’s executive order.
Read: University of Maine
Inciting Action | February 22, 2025The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a compliance review into the University of Maine system, saying the state was “openly disregarding” Trump’s executive order blocking transgender girls and women from playing girls’ and women’s sports.
Read: Department of Agriculture
Trump calls for DEI to end in public and private sectors
Last updated: March 10, 2025 | Initial event: January 20, 2025
President Trump signed an executive order aiming to ban federal contractors from maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The order also directed agencies to investigate private organizations with DEI offices and programs; for the Education Department, that could include up to nine colleges with endowments over $1 billion.
LatestNew Details | March 10, 2025The federal judge who issued a preliminary injunction against Trump’s DEI executive orders clarified that the injunction applied across the executive branch.
Read: U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
Court Order | February 22, 2025A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking Trump’s DEI executive orders, finding they were likely unconstitutionally vague.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 3, 2025The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the American Association of University Professors sued Trump over his anti-DEI orders, arguing that the directives were vague and exceeded the president’s authority.
Read: The Chronicle
Executive Order | January 20, 2025Trump signed an executive order targeting diversity offices and programs, indicating that he’d wield the power of federal funding to force colleges to end DEI.
Read: The Chronicle
| Immigration | The Trump administration has come after the thousands of international students and scholars who study and teach in the United States. |
Federal authorities cancel international students’ visas en masse
Last updated: April 19, 2025 | Initial event: April 4, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security expanded its efforts to push international students to leave the United States. College administrators nationwide said they learned through proactive checks of a federal database that some of their students’ immigration documents had been terminated, sometimes without notice.
LatestCourt Order | April 19, 2025A federal district judge in Atlanta issued a temporary restraining order affecting 133 students who had visas revoked, pausing any efforts by the Trump administration to deport them.
Read: CNN
New Details | April 14, 2025In a court filing, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that eliminating a foreign student’s record in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System does not actually terminate their student-visa status. Colleges have already notified hundreds of students that they can no longer study at their institutions.
Read: The Intercept
Lawsuit | April 14, 2025International students from several states have filed a lawsuit to stop the government from cancelling their visas and deporting them. The students argue the government violated their due-process rights.
Read: 11 Alive
Lawsuit | April 11, 2025Attorneys general from 19 states are suing the federal government to stop the cancellation of an estimated 700 international students’ visas.
Read: USA Today
Lawsuit | April 11, 2025The ACLU of Michigan filed a lawsuit seeking to preserve the student-visa status of four international students and prevent their deportation. The suit was filed on behalf of students from India, China, and Nepal who attend the University of Michigan and Wayne State University.
Read: Detroit Free Press
New Details | April 8, 2025Nearly 300 international students across the country had their legal status terminated in less than a week, per campus announcements and media reports.
Read: The New York Times
Lawsuit | April 7, 2025An unnamed international student sued the Trump administration, arguing that revoking a visa, which gives a student the ability to enter the country, does not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to also revoke their record and legal status.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | April 4, 2025The Department of Homeland Security began revoking entry visas of international students who did not appear to have participated in pro-Palestinian protests; in a break from precedent, the department also terminated their legal-residency status, affecting their ability to remain in the country.
Read: Associated Press
Trump threatens to deport international students who protested
Last updated: April 18, 2025 | Initial event: January 29, 2025
President Trump signed an executive order that outlined plans to combat antisemitism and took aim at international students who participated in Gaza protests. In an accompanying White House fact sheet, Trump said that international-student “agitators” will be jailed or deported.
LatestLawsuit | April 18, 2025A lawsuit filed by five students from China and India seeks to halt any deportations of foreign students who are in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. The complaint alleges the government’s efforts are overreach and a violation of students’ due-process rights.
Read: The New York Times
Agency Action | April 14, 2025Mohsen Mahdawi, co-founder of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union, was taken into custody in Vermont at a federal office building when he arrived for a naturalization meeting. Mahdawi is a permanent U.S. resident.
Read: Politico
New Details | March 31, 2025The Cornell University activist, Momodou Taal, voluntarily left the United States days after a judge declined to pause his deportation case.
Read: CBS News
New Details | March 27, 2025Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration has revoked about 300 student and other visitor visas, citing little-used State Department authority to rescind visas for foreign-policy reasons.
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | March 25, 2025A judge temporarily blocked the deportation of Yunseo Chung, the Columbia University student whose home was searched by ICE.
Read: CNN
Agency Action | March 25, 2025Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University, was arrested by plainclothes ICE officers; Ozturk had penned an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza.
Read: CBS News
Agency Action | March 21, 2025The Justice Department told a Cornell University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist, Momodou Taal, to turn himself into ICE. Taal had filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over executive orders prohibiting international students from participating in political speech against the United States.
Read: CNN
Agency Action | March 17, 2025A Georgetown University researcher from India, Badar Khan Suri, was arrested by ICE for “spreading Hamas propaganda.”
Read: Associated Press
Agency Action | March 13, 2025Immigration and Customs Enforcement searched the home of Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student who holds a green card and has lived in the United States since she was a child, after Chung was arrested during a Gaza protest at neighboring Barnard College.
Read: The New York Times
Agency Action | March 11, 2025A Columbia University student from India, Ranjani Srinivasan, voluntarily left the U.S. after receiving a notice that her student visa was revoked; Srinivasan said that she had been accidentally swept up in mass arrests at a 2024 protest and that her criminal case was dropped.
Read: The New York Times
Agency Action | March 13, 2025A Brown University professor from Lebanon, Rasha Alawieh, was deported — despite holding a valid visa and despite a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion.
Read: The New York Times
Trump Statement | March 4, 2025In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that colleges will lose federal funding if they allow “illegal protests” and that international-student protesters would be “imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
Read: The Chronicle
New Details | January 30, 2025The White House released a fact sheet with a warning to international students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests: “We will find you, and we will deport you.”
Read: White House
Inciting Action | January 29, 2025President Trump signed an executive order aimed at curbing antisemitism that directs colleges to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.”
Read: White House
State Department indefinitely pauses study abroad and international grant funding
Last updated: April 14, 2025 | Initial event: February 12, 2025
A 15-day pause to review State Department-funded grants expired in late February. Funds still haven’t been reinstated, threatening study-abroad programs and grants, including major Fulbright and Gilman scholarships.
LatestNew Details | April 14, 2025An internal memo recommends cutting the State Department’s budget by half and eliminating all money for educational and cultural programs, such as the Fulbright Program.
Read: The Washington Post
New Details | February 27, 2025Funding toward international programs was not immediately reinstated after the State Department’s 15-day pause expired.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | February 12, 2025The State Department began a 15-day pause on grant payments, freezing the flow of funding to study-abroad programs and international scholarships.
Read: The Chronicle
ICE arrests a Columbia U. graduate student who led Gaza protests
Last updated: April 11, 2025 | Initial event: March 8, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who helped organize pro-Palestinian protests there last spring, was arrested in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his university-owned apartment. Khalil’s lawyer told reporters that Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian refugees, was a legal permanent resident. Trump had promised to deport noncitizens who protested for Palestinian rights.
LatestCourt Ruling | April 11, 2025A federal immigration-court judge in Louisiana ruled that Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. The judge said she had no authority to overrule the U.S. Secretary of State’s determination that Khalil violated a Cold War-era law and threatened the nation’s foreign-policy goals. Another federal judge, in New Jersey, has ruled that Khalil cannot be deported pending a ruling on his lawsuit that he was improperly arrested and detained.
Read: NPR | Reuters
Court Order | March 20, 2025A federal judge, ruling on Mahmoud Khalil’s lawsuit, ordered Columbia University not to turn over student names or disciplinary records stemming from pro-Palestinian campus protests to lawmakers.
Read: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Court Order | March 19, 2025A federal judge denied the Trump administration’s attempt to proceed with deporting Mahmoud Khalil and said his case should be moved from Louisiana to New Jersey.
Read: Reuters
Lawsuit | March 13, 2025Mahmoud Khalil and seven unnamed students sued Columbia University to keep it from providing the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce with disciplinary records related to 11 campus incidents, most of them protest-related.
Read: The New York Times
Inciting Action | March 8, 2025Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist, at an apartment owned by the university.
Read: The Chronicle
Trump lifts policy that limited ICE activity on college campuses
Last updated: March 8, 2025 | Initial event: January 20, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security rescinded a 2011 policy designating schools, churches, and hospitals as “sensitive” spaces where immigration authorities would not operate. Since then, colleges have had to prepare for the possibility of ICE agents coming to campuses.
LatestAgency Action | March 8, 2025In a first for the Trump administration, immigration authorities entered Columbia University housing to arrest Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student and green-card holder who led pro-Palestinian protests.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | January 20, 2025The Department of Homeland Security rescinded a longstanding precedent on “sensitive” locations, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to proactively pursue deportations on college campuses.
Read: Department of Homeland Security
| Policy | The Trump administration has sought to crack down on colleges while also slashing Education Department staffing, programs, and contracts. |
Education Department Resumes Loan Collections on Student Borrowers
Last updated: April 21, 2025 | Initial event: April 21, 2025
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the department will again seek to collect money from an estimated five million borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans. Efforts to collect on loan defaults had been paused for five years.
LatestInciting Action | April 21, 2025The department will begin notifying borrowers who are in default that they must resume payments or enroll in an income-based repayment plan. Beginning May 5, the department will begin referring borrowers to collections.
Read: NPR
Education Department dramatically shrinks its work force
Last updated: April 4, 2025 | Initial event: February 12, 2025
President Trump’s desire to close the Education Department would require Congress to act, but the agency has already tried to make itself a lot smaller. As of March, layoffs and buyouts have eradicated about half of the department’s staff.
LatestLawsuit | April 4, 2025The Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Association for Education Finance and Policy filed a lawsuit against the Education Department seeking to restore the staff and programs that were cut from the Institute for Education Sciences, an independent branch of the department that collects and analyzes data.
Read: IHEP
Lawsuit | March 12, 2025Attorneys general from 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued seeking to halt the Education Department’s mass layoffs, arguing the move was so severe that it amounted to abolishing the agency.
Read: Reuters
Agency Action | March 11, 2025The Education Department laid off 1,300 employees across all divisions, mostly concentrated in offices that manage student aid, civil rights, and data collection.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | March 10, 2025About 300 Education Department employees accepted an offer to resign their positions in exchange for $25,000.
Read: Business Insider
Inciting Action | February 12, 2025The Education Department laid off some civil servants, many of whom were on probationary status because they had been on the job for less than a year; the exact number wasn’t immediately clear.
Read: Politico
Education Department takes aim at student-loan forgiveness
Last updated: April 3, 2025 | Initial event: February 21, 2025
The Trump administration was widely expected to take a less friendly approach to loan forgiveness than former President Joe Biden, who made a series of unsuccessful attempts to cancel some borrowers’ debt. The first sign came in February, when Trump’s Education Department temporarily shut off all income-based repayment plans.
LatestAgency Action | April 3, 2025The Education Department announced it is conducting a new round of negotiated rulemaking to make changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and two plans that allow students to repay their federal loans based on their income.
Read: Higher Ed Dive | Education Department
Agency Action | March 26, 2025The Education Department reopened its application for income-driven repayment plans; federal officials said the February court order had required revising the form.
Read: Associated Press
Lawsuit | March 19, 2025The American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration, seeking to force the department to restore the online application portal for income-based repayment plans.
Read: ABC News
Executive Order | March 7, 2025President Trump directed the Education Department to restrict eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the program allowing some public-sector workers and nonprofit employees to have their student loans forgiven after 10 years of payments.
Read: White House
Inciting Action | February 21, 2025The Education Department stopped accepting or processing any applications for income-based repayment of federal student loans, after a court order blocked one such plan created by the Biden administration.
Read: Inside Higher Ed
DOGE goes after education funding as part of cost-cutting campaign
Last updated: April 1, 2025 | Initial event: February 3, 2025
President Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the office overseeing dramatic reductions in the size of the federal government, started scrutinizing education funding in early February. Its first target was education research.
LatestNew Details | April 1, 2025DOGE called for sweeping cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities, suggesting as much as 70 to 80 percent of its staff could be laid off.
Read: The New York Times
Court Order | March 24, 2025A federal judge, ruling on the AFT’s lawsuit, extended a block on DOGE’s access to student information, saying staffers had been combing through loan data “for purposes of destroying” the Education Department.
Read: Associated Press
Court Order | February 24, 2025A federal judge, ruling on the AFT’s lawsuit, temporarily blocked DOGE staffers from accessing student data.
Read: American Federation of Teachers
Court Order | February 17, 2025A federal judge, ruling on the UC Student Association’s lawsuit, declined to block DOGE staffers’ access to student data.
Read: Higher Ed Dive
New Details | February 11, 2025DOGE eliminated at least 169 contracts representing hundreds of millions of dollars with the Institute of Education Sciences, an independent agency within the Education Department that collects data on student outcomes.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 10, 2025The American Federation of Teachers sued the Education Department on behalf of a group of student-loan borrowers, arguing that DOGE staffers had violated federal privacy laws by accessing their data.
Read: Associated Press
Lawsuit | February 7, 2025The University of California Student Association sued the Education Department, alleging that DOGE had “unlawful ongoing, systematic, and continuous” access to private student information. The department agreed to suspend DOGE’s access until February 17.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | February 3, 2025Around 20 DOGE staffers set up workstations at the Education Department and began looking for cuts to spending and staff.
Read: The Washington Post
Trump says student loans will be managed by the Small Business Administration
Last updated: March 21, 2025 | Initial event: March 21, 2025
President Trump said the federal student-loan program would be moved to the Small Business Administration, which had just been decimated by layoffs. Higher-education experts said the move would require approval by Congress, and some Republican lawmakers are skeptical of the idea.
LatestInciting Action | March 21, 2025President Trump said the federal student-loan program would be overseen by the Small Business Administration. The remarks come a day after an executive order that aims to close the Education Department but also promises the agency will continue to perform its core functions.
Read: The Chronicle
Trump pushes to close the Education Department
Last updated: March 20, 2025 | Initial event: February 4, 2025
Shortly after President Trump took office, his advisers began working on a plan to dismantle the Education Department. Actually eliminating the department would require congressional approval.
LatestExecutive Order | March 20, 2025President Trump signed an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the department, without eliminating any of its core functions.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | March 3, 2025On her first day, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote an email to staff describing what she saw as the department’s “final mission”: “the elimination of bureaucratic bloat” at the agency and restoring “the rightful role of state oversight in education.”
Read: Education Department
Inciting Action | February 4, 2025Shortly after President Trump took office, his advisers started working on a plan to dismantle the Education Department.
Read: The Wall Street Journal
| Research | The Trump administration has sought to shrink longstanding federal support for research by billions of dollars. |
NIH Bans Future Grants For Colleges With DEI Or Israel Boycotts
Last updated: April 21, 2025 | Initial event: April 21, 2025
The National Institutes of Health announced that it would no longer award research grants for scholars at colleges with programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion or institutions that have approved a boycott of Israeli businesses and investments. The new position expands the administration’s policy of restricting grants based on ideological views.
LatestInciting Action | April 21, 2025To receive future grants, researchers will now have to certify that their college does not have any DEI program or boycott businesses that operate in Israel. The new position expands the administration’s policy of restricting grants based on the ideology of the research topic.
Read: STAT News
National Science Foundation begins canceling grants over politics
Last updated: April 18, 2025 | Initial event: April 18, 2025
The National Science Foundation
announced plans to terminate “awards that are not aligned with agency priorities," including those on diversity, equity, and inclusion and misinformation and disinformation. The National Institutes of Health had previously begun applying ideological standards to grant-review processes.
LatestInciting Action | April 18, 2025The National Science Foundation said it had begun “terminating awards that are not aligned with agency priorities,” including those on diversity, equity, and inclusion and misinformation and disinformation.
Read: National Science Foundation
Justice Department probes journals' practices
Last updated: April 18, 2025 | Initial event: April 18, 2025
At least three medical journals received a letter from Edward R. Martin, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who alleged that the publications “are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates” and are advocating such positions on behalf of advertisers or sponsors.
LatestInciting Action | April 18, 2025The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia sent letters to the editors of three research journals, alleging the publications are advocating specific political positions through their advertisers or sponsors.
Read: MedPage Today
Department of Energy imposes 15% cap on indirect research costs
Last updated: April 16, 2025 | Initial event: April 11, 2025
The Department of Energy announced that it would start limiting its reimbursements for colleges' indirect research costs — which support administrative expenses and facility maintenance — to 15 percent. It's similar to a proposed policy at the National Institutes of Health that's been held up in court. The DOE provides $2.5 billion annually to more than 300 colleges.
Lawsuit | April 14, 2025Major associations representing research institutions and eight universities filed a lawsuit to undo the department’s cuts to indirect-cost reimbursements.
Read: The Cornell Daily Sun
Inciting Action | April 11, 2025The Department of Energy announced a 15-percent cap on indirect costs, and said that the change would save $405 million.
Read: Department of Energy
Science agencies throttle new and existing grants
Last updated: April 16, 2025 | Initial event: January 22, 2025
Though President Trump’s attempted funding freeze quickly became tied up in court, research funding continued to be affected. The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation postponed meetings that were required for reviewing and approving new grants and even stopped paying out some grants that had already been awarded.
LatestNew Details | April 16, 2025Program officers at the National Science Foundation are being asked to do an additional review of all previously approved grant proposals to ensure that they do not violate an executive order prohibiting research on a range of topics the White House has deemed inappropriate, such as climate change and diversity in the scientific work force
Read: Science
New Details | April 1, 2025Further layoffs across the NIH sparked concern about the institutes’ own research and ability to administer external awards.
Read: Nature
New Details | March 31, 2025The NSF awarded nearly 50 percent fewer grants during the first three months of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, a decrease of about $400 million.
Read: Science
Agency Action | March 20, 2025The NIH lifted a freeze on meetings of grant-review advisory councils, posting notices of early-April meetings to the Federal Register.
Read: Science
Agency Action | February 24, 2025The NIH said it would resume scheduling new study-section meetings after a weeks-long pause.
Read: Stat
New Details | February 20, 2025Weeks after a federal judge, ruling in the lawsuits against Trump's funding freeze, ordered the grant-approval process to resume, the NIH still wasn’t posting new study-section meetings in the Federal Register.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | February 18, 2025The NSF laid off nearly 170 staff members, stoking fears about the agency’s ability to administer external awards; about half were later reinstated after a court ruling on probationary employees.
Read: NPR
Agency Action | February 15, 2025The NIH laid off nearly 1,200 staff members as part of a restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services, raising concerns about the agency’s ability to administer external awards; some were later reinstated.
Read: Reuters
New Details | February 3, 2025A top NIH official told staff the agency would lift a pause on peer-review meetings after February 7, allowing some study sections to resume; around the same time, the NSF did the same.
Read: Science
Agency Action | February 2, 2025The NSF said existing grant funding would resume after the agency’s payment system had stopped disbursing money for five days; the stoppage occurred even though a federal judge, ruling in the lawsuits against Trump’s funding freeze, had ordered money to flow.
Read: NPR
Agency Action | January 27, 2025The National Science Foundation canceled already-scheduled peer-review meetings that are required for approving new grants, and temporarily stopped scheduling new ones.
Read: E&E News
Inciting Action | January 22, 2025The National Institutes of Health canceled already-scheduled peer-review meetings that are required for approving new grants, and temporarily stopped scheduling new ones.
Read: Stat
Massive cuts planned for arts and cultural funding
Last updated: April 10, 2025 | Initial event: April 1, 2025
President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency said that much of the staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supports research projects as well as many museums, archives, and libraries affiliated with colleges, would be laid off. The NEH also said it was canceling existing grants and would not dole out a new round of funding in 2025 as expected.
LatestAgency Action | April 10, 2025The National Endowment for the Humanities has begun firing employees, with union officials predicting that as many as 75 percent of staff will be cut. The agency had already put many workers on administrative leave and cancelled some 1,200 grants.
Read: The Washington Post
LatestAgency Action | April 3, 2025Millions of dollars in already-awarded NEH grants, for fiscal years 2021-2025, were canceled, and a senior official said that "no upcoming awards" would be made in fiscal year 2025.
Read: NPR
Inciting Action | April 1, 2025The National Endowment for the Humanities told its staff to expect sweeping layoffs, affecting as much as 70 to 80 percent of the small agency’s roughly 180 employees.
Read: The New York Times
NIH announces 15% cap on indirect costs
Last updated: April 4, 2025 | Initial event: February 7, 2025
The National Institutes of Health announced that all current and future research grants would be subject to a 15-percent cap on overhead costs, money that colleges say is essential for supporting administrative and maintenance expenses associated with labs. The move sparked an immediate outcry across higher ed as institutions feared losing millions of dollars overnight, and it was soon halted by a federal judge.
LatestCourt Order | April 4, 2025A federal judge, ruling in all three lawsuits challenging the NIH’s policy change, issued a permanent injunction — saying that the agency’s action was “arbitrary and capricious” and failed to follow rule-making procedures. The NIH appealed.
Read: Higher Ed Dive
Court Order | February 21, 2025A federal judge, ruling in all three lawsuits challenging the NIH’s policy change, extended a block on the 15-percent cap.
Read: The Chronicle
Court Order | February 10, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the Association of American Medical Colleges lawsuit, issued a temporary nationwide pause on the 15-percent cap.
Read: The Chronicle
Court Order | February 10, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the states’ lawsuit, granted a temporary restraining order, halting the funding cap in those states several hours after the attorneys general filed suit.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 10, 2025The Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and a dozen institutions sued over the 15-percent cap, calling it “a disaster for science” and “an affront to the separation of powers.”
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 10, 2025A coalition of medical organizations led by the Association of American Medical Colleges sued over the 15-percent cap, arguing that it would result in “fewer clinical trials, less fundamental discovery research, and slower progress in delivering lifesaving advances to the patients and families that do not have time for delay.”
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | February 10, 2025Democratic attorneys general in 22 states sued over the 15-percent cap, saying it was “arbitrary and capricious” and “contravenes Congress’s express directives in the appropriation acts governing the NIH.”
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | February 7, 2025The NIH announced a 15-percent cap on indirect costs for colleges, academic medical centers, and other recipients of federal grant funding.
Read: The Chronicle
Government applies ideological standards for research and scholars
Last updated: April 2, 2025 | Initial event: February 7, 2025
The National Institutes of Health and other scientific agencies have taken numerous measures to eliminate spending on research topics the Trump administration opposes, such as matters involving racial disparities, transgender health, climate change, and Covid-19. The agency has also sought to eliminate awards to scholars from underrepresented communities.
LatestLawsuit | April 2, 2025The American Public Health Association, the United Auto Workers union, and several scholars sued the Trump administration, alleging that it enacted an “ideological purge” of hundreds of grants, putting at least $2.4 billion at stake.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | April 2, 2025At least 20 NIH grant applications, some of which concerned transgender health, were removed from scheduled study sections as the agency conducted “a review of its research priorities.”
Read: The Chronicle
Trump Statement | March 26, 2025In a letter to the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Trump urged officials to “blaze a trail to the next frontiers of science” by accelerating research and development, cementing the United States’ “position as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies” like AI and nuclear technology, among other goals.
Read: FedScoop
New Details | March 25, 2025The Environmental Protection Agency canceled $1.7 billion in grants, including to academics working with communities on environmental issues, despite knowing it did not have legal grounds to do so.
Read: The Washington Post
Agency Action | March 25, 2025The Trump administration began terminating grants related to Covid-19 research, saying that the “pandemic is over” and that the government “will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
Read: Science
Agency Action | March 24, 2025Internal guidance indicated the NIH would no longer fund research on the health effects of climate change.
Read: ProPublica
Agency Action | March 24, 2025The NIH abruptly removed outside scientific advisers who consult on its intramural research, a group that included people from underrepresented populations and those who study topics like diversity and equity.
Read: Stat
Agency Action | March 17, 2025For the second time in as many months, the NIH withdrew early-career scholars’ applications for a prestigious grant that were submitted with a diversity notation, effectively disqualifying many early-career academics from underrepresented backgrounds.
Read: The Chronicle
Agency Action | March 7, 2025The Department of Defense canceled funding for social-science research, including for ongoing studies on climate change, extremism, and disinformation.
Read: Science
Agency Action | March 5, 2025The NIH began terminating already-funded grants that no longer met “agency priorities,” including projects on LGBTQ+ health and DEI in the scientific work force, Nature reported.
Read: The Chronicle
Inciting Action | February 7, 2025The National Institutes of Health withdrew researchers’ applications for a prestigious grant that were submitted with a diversity notation, effectively disqualifying many early-career academics from underrepresented backgrounds. (Days later, several affected scholars told
The Chronicle that the NIH had reversed course.)
Read: The Chronicle
OMB temporarily pauses trillions in federal funding
Last updated: March 6, 2025 | Initial event: January 27, 2025
The Office of Management and Budget announced a temporary pause on broad swaths of federal financial assistance, citing the need to make sure government spending aligned with President Trump’s priorities. The American Council on Education called the sweeping freeze, affecting billions of dollars in grants and loans to colleges, “institutional destruction.”
LatestCourt Order | March 6, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the states’ lawsuit, extended a block on the funding freeze.
Read: Associated Press
Court Order | February 25, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the Democracy First lawsuit, extended a block on the funding freeze.
Read: Associated Press
New Details | February 20, 2025Scholars said that despite the funding freeze being blocked in court, grant review at the National Institutes of Health remained essentially frozen because the agency stopped adding peer-review meetings to the Federal Register.
Read: The Chronicle
Court Order | February 10, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the states’ lawsuit, said that the government had violated his temporary restraining order by failing to release grant funding.
Read: The New York Times
Court Order | February 3, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the Democracy First lawsuit, extended her block on the funding freeze.
Read: The Washington Post
New Details | February 2, 2025The National Science Foundation continued to freeze money for at least five days after a judge ordered it unpaused.
Read: NPR
Court Order | January 31, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the states’ lawsuit, temporarily blocked the spending freeze.
Read: Associated Press
Agency Action | January 29, 2025OMB rescinded its memo pausing federal funding, though White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that Trump’s executive orders on how federal funding should be used “remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | January 28, 2025The attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia sued OMB over the funding freeze.
Read: CNBC
Court Action | January 28, 2025A federal judge, ruling in the Democracy First lawsuit, temporarily blocked the spending freeze minutes before it was scheduled to take effect.
Read: The Chronicle
Lawsuit | January 28, 2025A nonprofit legal organization called Democracy First sued OMB, saying the funding freeze would cause “catastrophic practical consequences.”
Read: The New York Times
Inciting Action | January 27, 2025The Office of Management and Budget announced that trillions in federal funding would be frozen for two weeks to ensure money was not supporting, among other things, “DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
Read: The Chronicle
Contributors: Dan Bauman, Sarah Brown, Jacquelyn Elias, Alissa Gary, Kate Hidalgo Bellows, Eric Kelderman, Brian O’Leary, Megan Zahneis
If you have tips or feedback, reach out to newseditor@chronicle.com.
