TALLAHASSEE, Florida — President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape higher education in a conservative mold aren’t just targeting Ivy League elites. They’re stripping millions from Florida universities — and the state’s Republican governor is happy to help.
While institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University are taking heat from the Trump administration, colleges all across the country — including deep red Florida — are feeling the squeeze of sweeping federal research cuts. Florida universities this year saw more than 90 grants terminated across key federal agencies.
Some states are suing the federal government to push back on the downsizing. But Florida, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, has the state’s government accountability DOGE team auditing university research projects and even recommending grants for termination.
“The Trump administration is working hard to get some of the rot out of higher education, the intellectual rot, the ideological rot,” DeSantis said last month during an event in Jacksonville.
Evolving federal policy is poised to shake up what professors are researching through new Trump-era guidelines restricting grants on topics like diversity, equity and inclusion, climate, and misinformation. These wide-ranging shifts are being fought tooth and nail in courts and on Capitol Hill as critics fear Trump’s plan to slash billions in research spending has the potential to stifle American innovation.
The wholesale grant terminations, numbering in the thousands across agencies like National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency and Agriculture Department, set the tone for what’s possible to come for colleges. The White House is pushing to slash funding for a list of research topics, from climate to clean energy, “woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences,” and other programs deemed in “low priority areas” of science. For the EPA, as an example, Trump’s spending proposal would “put an end to taxpayer funded programs that promote divisive racial discrimination and environmental justice grants that were destined to go to organizations that advance radical ideologies.”
Florida’s terminated NIH and NSF grants eclipse $170 million in total federal funding over recent years, although the projects were targeted at various stages, with some never getting off the ground and others scoring partial cash, according to data compiled by the Grant Witness database and the agencies. At least $80 million in obligated but unspent money is estimated to be lost by Florida toward these grants, the data shows.
In some cases, research projects that were celebrated by schools have gone by the wayside.
The University of South Florida, as one example, in January touted a $14.9 million EPA grant meant to bring “life changing improvements” to an underserved neighborhood of about 10,000 residents near Tampa. But this project was one of many canceled by the Trump administration, labeled as “radical” environmental justice pushed by former President Joe Biden.
Part of an effort to “reduce pollution and increase community climate resilience,” the grant was meant to help extend water service to 50 multifamily complexes still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. These facilities are running on well water and septic systems that may be contaminated due to polluted stormwater ponds, according to the university.
The agency advised USF to tweak the grant proposal by scrapping words like “disadvantaged,” “climate change” and “minority,” yet it was still terminated by the EPA for not being part of the agency’s new priorities. The school is appealing and searching for private industry partnerships to keep the project going.
“If that’s not your priority, then what is your priority?” said Christian Wells, a professor and director of the Center for Brownfields Research & Redevelopment at USF who is leading the project.
At Florida A&M University, the Department of Agriculture canceled a $4.9 million grant to help expand the markets for “climate-smart” industrial hemp throughout Alabama and Louisiana. In canceling these grants, part of a $3 billion Biden-era program, the USDA argued not enough of the funding was reaching farmers.
“Secretary [Brooke] Rollins has made it clear that all USDA programs, including our research programs, will now put American farmers and ranchers first instead of promoting woke DEI initiatives or far-left climate programs,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement.
FAMU has also been fighting to keep other projects, such as a $16.3 million pharmacy grant targeted by NIH. School leaders are optimistic some grants can be salvaged after they were able to protect some student scholarships that were initially on the termination list.
“We’ve taken it in stride,” G. Dale Wesson, interim dean and associate vice president for research with the FAMU College of Agriculture & Food Sciences, said about the changes in federal priorities. “We do the best we can to solve problems they’re interested in solving.”
Across the country, there is a labyrinth of legal battles playing out in opposition of the federal research changes, including a lawsuit brought by 16 Democrat-led states fighting the NSF.
Officials and researchers are challenging the grant terminations, as well as other Trump policies like a proposed cap on research overhead costs shelled out by the federal government. In certain cases, like a California lawsuit and the overhead costs challenge, opponents have been successful in blocking the Trump administration and recouping grant dollars, at least for now. A recent ruling, however, allows the NSF to continue withholding research funds as the lawsuit from Democrats in states like New York, Hawaii, California, Colorado and Connecticut plays out.
Conversely, Florida, under DeSantis, is majorly supportive of the federal efforts to reshape education, many of which mirror the state’s conservative policies. In at least one instance, Florida’s own DOGE team recommended a grant to NSF for cancelation at the University of West Florida. This grant went toward scholarships for teachers completing projects on water quality sampling methods and aspirin synthesis, according to school officials, but got singled out due to “social justice” language UWF contends was not incorporated.
“I think what the Trump administration is doing on both K-12 and higher education is trying to hold the line for sanity and restoring sanity to our education system,” DeSantis said at his Jacksonville event.
Researchers, meanwhile, face “significant disruption and uncertainty,” as University of Florida officials noted in a May memo to faculty detailing how the school lost more than 70 federal grants, eclipsing $35 million.
In response, Florida’s flagship school has made attempts to lessen the blow on researchers and students.
UF signed an agreement with faculty allowing them to attach an addendum to their performance reviews explaining how funding upheaval has affected research, which is supposed to be considered by evaluators. The school also is helping graduate research assistants land assistantships funding to “continue their degree pursuits.” It’s possible other Florida schools adopt similar policies.
Some researchers, meanwhile, are picking up their projects’ tabs themselves.
That’s how it’s playing out for Florida International University professor Terrence Peterson, who is writing a book on the 70-year history of the Rivesaltes internment camp in southern France. The researcher had received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities earlier this year to examine how “internment camps became and remain a central tool for states to manage human movement,” only for it to be canceled. Peterson is “hustling to scrape together funds” and is planning to visit the country for “smash and grab” research — photographing as much as possible to study later.
“A lot of that expense, I’m just going to shoulder it myself,” Peterson said. “For folks in the sciences, or colleagues in psychology that are conducting studies, they can’t do that research on their own budget.”
Agency leaders and conservative-leaning organizations like the National Association of Scholars say the Trump administration’s new priorities will ensure grant funding is doled out according to “scientific merit, and not based on racial or gender preferences.”
“While the U.S. National Science Foundation will continue to focus on Administration priorities such as artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, and translational science, we remain committed to awarding grants and funding all areas of science and engineering to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity and welfare and secure the national defense,” a spokesperson for NHS said in a statement.
But with more 1,600 NSF grants canceled nationwide this year, academics are concerned about the long-term implications to research, and the scores of scholarships that could be lost, particularly benefiting minority students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
One lawsuit challenging the NSF grant cuts contends the changes are already having a profound effect on schools, such as a University of Oregon project that “will deprive an estimated 20,000 students of computer science learning experiences.” Elsewhere, schools have stopped work on projects in a host of key subject areas like geosciences, computer sciences, atmospheric sciences, cryospheric sciences and aquatic sciences, the lawsuit alleges.
“When you try to control what experts in scientific fields are researching, then you undermine the entire scientific enterprise,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, a national organization that is a plaintiff in an NSF lawsuit.
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