Overview

• Two senior White House officials said the administration is developing a system that would award a competitive advantage in federal research grants to schools that publicly affirm specified compliance positions.
• Part of the proposal would ask universities to attest that race is not considered in admissions, reflecting the Supreme Court’s ban, though officials allege some schools rely on proxies to retain diversity goals.
• The White House said all institutions would remain eligible for funding, with details on how the new approach fits into traditional peer review still to come and a launch targeted within months.
• The administration plans to continue investigations and funding actions against individual universities, even as critics including Ted Mitchell and Erwin Chemerinsky warn the approach risks violating the First Amendment and undermining academic freedom.
• The initiative follows months of pulled grants and mixed outcomes in court, alongside settlements restoring funds to Penn ($175 million with terms on transgender athletes), Columbia (over $1 billion restored plus more than $200 million paid), and Brown ($50 million over a decade).