How Trump’s Pocket Rescissions Could Affect Higher Ed

Advocates for international education warn that the Trump administration’s latest attempt to cut millions in federal funding could be a devastating blow to the nation’s pipeline of foreign language specialists and dramatically hinder the country’s ability to respond in times of crisis.

The administration said Friday that it plans to claw back nearly $70 million for domestic grant programs at the Education Department’s Office of International and Foreign Language Education and roughly $25 million for migrant students. Over all, the president is planning to rescind $810 million across several agencies as part of a maneuver known as a “pocket rescission.” (The U.S. Government Accountability Office has called this action illegal on multiple occasions.)

In a news release, the White House described the rescission as a “historic action to eliminate wasteful and harmful spending.”

IFLE, a long-standing office that was gutted in spring 2025 as part of mass layoffs at the department, has historically overseen more than half a dozen grant programs designed to strengthen the nation’s foreign language capacity, improve its diplomatic efforts and provide a competitive boost in international business. But now, with millions of dollars on the line for the second year in a row, experts fear that many IFLE-funded programs at colleges across the country could be compelled to close.

“This isn’t just nice to have; it’s necessary,” said Fanta Aw, the CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. “There are critical languages that this country needs.”

Continuing to defund foreign language programs in an increasingly interdependent economy isn’t going to make this country safer, stronger or more prosperous, she added. Rather, it’s going to be “incredibly disruptive.”

Aw and others noted that after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the government was grappling to find multilingual staff for its intelligence agencies, IFLE-funded programs helped individuals become fluent in Urdu, Farsi and other critical languages. More recently, she said, they have been key in responding to the Russia–Ukraine war.

Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, described the decision as “inexplicable.”

Earlier this summer, the Education Department launched a grant competition for the Centers Aligned with Areas for National Need, a revamped version of the office’s domestic programs that effectively consolidated IFLE programs down to one. The competition opened June 12, and institutions had 25 days to apply. ED expected to award about 50 grants.

“The administration launched an interagency agreement between the Departments of Education and State, fundamentally redesigned the programs to their priorities, launched a competition, asked institutions to compete and get support from their states, only to pull the rug out from underneath everyone in the final days of the fiscal year,” Lindwarm said. “The justification of the action is a fundamental mischaracterization of the immense importance and value of the program to the nation.”

‘Going to Be Nonexistent’

By the end of Wednesday, about $69.6 million of the $70.4 million that Congress allocated for International and Foreign Language Education’s domestic programs—or all but 1 percent—will expire. However, key lawmakers have pledged to fight the rescission.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has tried to limit or repurpose IFLE funding. Throughout fiscal year 2025, colleges awaited funds that reportedly never came; instead, the money was reallocated to other grant programs, records from a higher ed legal group show.

For this year’s tranche of funds, Congress put more explicit stipulations on how the money should be spent. But if the Trump administration succeeds with its pocket rescission, that won’t matter.

“This is particularly troubling, because we saw Congress take the extra step—bipartisan language, bipartisan fashion, bipartisan process—and then the administration completely ignored that guardrail,” said Jared Bass, a former staffer on the House Appropriations Committee and now executive director of the Committee for Education Funding.

Sarah Beaton, a retired Department of Education staffer who oversaw most of the IFLE grants, expects that the cut will lead to more shuttered language programs. Some colleges have already closed language centers in the last year as the administration delayed or eliminated funding for them.

“The institutions that depend on these grants are not going to be able to keep the infrastructure needed at their schools to prepare globally competent students,” Beaton said. And once they are torn down, the programs teaching uncommon languages can’t just be rebuilt overnight. “It takes a sustained investment over decades to develop a robust pipeline of specialists capable of providing crucial international and language expertise.”

Beaton said during her tenure, the department supported over 220 less commonly taught languages throughout the United States.

“Some of these languages probably had two students in their class,” she added. “But if we didn’t give the institutions the money to support those two students, then those classes would have gone away. So in the future, if the government or private sector needs someone who could speak Uzbek or Zulu or any of these types of less commonly taught languages, they’re probably going to be nonexistent.”

For the specific higher ed programs, White House officials argued that the migrant student program “subsidizes aliens to come to the United States at the expense of American children and workers” and that the foreign language programs brings foreign students to the U.S. while “support[ing] woke and wasteful projects” like “doctoral dissertations on queer and trans community building in foreign countries.”

But international education advocates say these descriptions mischaracterize the grant programs.

“Undocumented students are not eligible for these programs,” said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “These program cuts are just another prong in a national campaign to limit access for immigrant students who are part of our communities.”

Aw from NAFSA described the White House’s justification as a “false narrative.”

“This is about foreign languages for domestic students. The majority of international students are at least bilingual or multilingual. They’re not the ones who are benefiting from these programs,” she said. “If you need foreign teachers for those languages, it’s because there’s not enough people in this country who are trained to teach those languages.”

Fueling More Uncertainty

Beyond the immediate concerns about maintaining a multilingual workforce, higher education experts say the pocket rescissions also raise concerns about whether colleges can continue to rely on the federal funding Congress appropriates.

Bass, from the Committee for Education Funding, stressed that the White House shouldn’t cut funding for any program as the administration is supposed to faithfully execute the law. But if the administration’s efforts go unchecked, he said, the theme will be uncertainty and “it’s going to be really hard to know what programs are going to be under attack.”

Some groups have already sued the department over concerns that funds would expire, and Bass worries that may become the norm.

“Now, you may have to sue the administration when you feel like you’re not getting your apportionment out the door, which is not how the appropriations process was designed,” he said. “But that’s the weight of this. Just because Congress appropriates it, you’re not guaranteed your funding. And that’s a really alarming message to send to the American public.”