President Donald Trump rescinded an order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal aid on Wednesday, delaying NYU’s potential loss of nearly $800 million in research funding.
Federal agencies are still expected to ensure that research programs receiving aid do not “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and Green New Deal social engineering policies,” according to the Trump administration.
“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt posted on X. “The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
Revocations to federal aid have already pulled funding from at least two NYU grants, with “likely” more to come, Provost Georgina Dopico and Chief Research Officer Stacie Bloom wrote in a Monday email. While the extent of federal agencies’ research cuts are not clear, Trump has promised to curtail funding for nearly all sciences, with the exception of artificial intelligence development.
The Trump administration has said that the pause on funding allotted federal agencies time to identify which grants and programs they would omit. However, after a federal judge delayed the order amid pending lawsuits from more than 20 Democratic senators, the White House canceled the freeze on Wednesday afternoon. Universities will now resume regular research operations — with the caveat that projects are subject to a stop-work order.
“We will continue to closely monitor developments, evaluate the announcements from the federal government, consult with the organizations that represent research universities to understand the full impact and work to keep our scholars and researchers apprised about developments as we learn more,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said in a previous statement to WSN.
NYU is ranked No. 1 among New York colleges and No. 12 nationally for its research spending, according to a survey from the National Science Foundation. The university’s national grants in 2023 amounted to $787 million, comprising over half of the $1.46 billion in total research funding it spent that year. Under Trump’s first administration, NYU received an average of around $200 million less annually in research funding.
The NSF, which provided NYU with $41 million in 2023, said in a Wednesday statement that it had returned to approving grants and was “working expeditiously” to review applications. Other agencies have not issued updates.
Contact Dharma Niles at [email protected].