The Trump administration stops $ 1 billion for Cornell, $ 790 million for the northwest, say the White House officials

The Trump administration has frozen more than a billion dollars in federal funding in Cornell and $ 790 million in the northwest, while the government is investigating alleged civil rights violations in schools, according to two White House officials.

“Monday, several Trump administration agencies froze around $ 790 million in federal funding and around $ 1.05 billion in federal funding from Northwestern and Cornell,” said a senior administration official in ABC News. “The money was frozen as part of several in progress, credible investigations and concerning title VI.”

The financing break mainly involves subsidies and contracts with the Ministry of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Social Services, according to managers of the White House.

Northwestern said in a statement in ABC that he had been informed by “media members” that the federal government planned to “freeze a large part of our federal funding. The university said that it had” received no official notification “.

“The federal funds that Northwestern receives stimulate innovative and vital research,” said the university. “This type of research is now in Jeopardy. The university has completely cooperated with surveys by the Ministry of Education and Congress.”

Cornell written in a declaration They received “more than 75 arrest working orders from the Ministry of Defense linked to deeply important research for American national defense, cybersecurity and health”.

“We are actively looking for information from federal officials to find out more on the basis of these decisions,” said Cornell.

“Assigned subsidies include research on new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large -scale information networks, robotics, superconductors and spatial and satellite communications, as well as cancer research,” continued the school.

The New York Times reported for the first time on the financing frost.

Legal experts question the Trump administration authority to suspend federal funding.

“This is completely without law, as far as I know, insofar as we do not even know about what legal provision on which the government is based,” said Geneviève Lakier, professor of law at the University of Chicago.

If the financing is justified by the civil rights law, as the White House officials said it to ABC News, Lakier said that the law required that there is a set of procedures followed and opinions.

“There must be an audience. You must give the members of the congress 30 days before doing so. You must give the school 30 days. You must authorize the right to appeal. None of this is followed,” said Lakier.

Michael Dorf, professor at Cornell Law School, echoed Lakier’s evaluation.

“There is a federal law that explains if the agencies and the government think that a funding beneficiary does not comply with her obligations in matters of civil rights, there are a whole set of procedures that they must follow before cutting them,” said Dorf. “The government has not followed any of these procedures.”

This decision comes as the administration doubles on the allegations of anti -Semitic conduct and harassment of elite universities.

The Ministry of Education and other agencies examine the University of Harvard for having pretended to favor anti -Semitism on its campus. The Administration has stripped the Columbia University of $ 400 million in subsidies earlier this month after an investigation by the working group said it had found inaction by the school to protect Jewish students.

In response to the journal, Harvard president Alan Garber published a statement saying: “We fully adopt the important objective of the fight against anti -Semitism, one of the most insidious forms of fanaticism.”