The Trump administration has promised to droop $175 million in funding to the College of Pennsylvania over the controversy involving trans-identified swimmer Lia Thomas, a male athlete the college allowed to compete on the ladies’s swim group in 2022.
The White Home’s fast response account shared a Fox Information article on social media Wednesday, stating that the choice was because of the college’s “insurance policies forcing girls to compete with males in sports activities.”
In an e-mail supplied to CBS Philadelphia this week, White Home officers confirmed that the college’s dealing with of the state of affairs with Thomas was linked to the choice.
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“UPenn infamously permitted a male to compete on its girls’s swimming group, overturning a number of information hard-earned by girls and granting the absolutely intact male entry to the locker room. That is NOT the results of the Title IX investigation launched by the Division of Training,” wrote an unnamed senior White Home official within the e-mail.
A White Home official mentioned that it’s an “rapid proactive motion to overview discretionary funding streams to these universities,” in keeping with CBS. The paused funding got here from the Division of Protection and the Division of Well being and Human Providers.
Thomas, born with the primary identify Will, competed for 3 seasons on the Penn males’s swim group earlier than competing on the ladies’s group throughout the 2021-2022 season. After the athlete began figuring out as feminine, he went on to win the ladies’s 500 freestyle last on the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championship in Atlanta.
The state of affairs sparked outrage from girls’s sports activities advocates, particularly after Thomas’ former teammate Paula Scanlan opened as much as the media about having to alter in a locker room with the male athlete.
Based on Scanlan, Thomas nonetheless had all of his male genitalia, however the faculty reportedly compelled the feminine swimmers to maintain quiet about any emotions of discomfort relating to Thomas being on their group.
“They continued to inform us that our opinions had been mistaken and if we had a difficulty about it, we had been the issue,” Scanlan mentioned in a 2023 interview with The Day by day Wire, a conservative information outlet. “[A]nd it is horrifying, and your future job is on the road.”
In a press release to The Related Press, a Penn spokesperson claimed that the college had not obtained any official notification or particulars relating to the suspension of federal funding.
“It is very important be aware, nonetheless, that Penn has all the time adopted NCAA and Ivy League insurance policies relating to pupil participation on athletic groups,” college spokesperson Ron Ozio advised the AP.
“We’ve got been prior to now, and stay at present, in full compliance with the rules that apply to not solely Penn, however all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer establishments.”
The College of Pennsylvania didn’t instantly reply to The Christian Publish’s request for remark.
Final month, the U.S. Division of Training introduced an investigation into Penn and several other different universities the day after Trump signed an government order to forestall male athletes from taking part in girls’s sports activities. After Trump signed the order, the NCAA unveiled a brand new coverage that prohibits trans-identified males from competing on girls’s sports activities groups.
“President Trump’s Government Order ‘Conserving Males Out of Girls’s Sports activities’ is a promise to girls and ladies: this administration won’t tolerate the mistreatment of feminine athletes,” Appearing Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor mentioned in a Feb. 6 assertion.
“The Division is taking swift motion to research three entities for suspected Title IX violations: San Jose State College, the College of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation.”
Trainor claims the Biden administration “trampled the rights of American girls and ladies — and ignored the indignities to which they had been subjected in bogs and locker rooms — to advertise a radical transgender ideology.”
“That regime ended on January 20, 2025,” he said.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Publish. She will be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Comply with her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
