Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is enforcing a sweeping overhaul of university research following Trump-era federal rollbacks. DeSantis’s accountability team is reviewing and terminating grant projects across the state to purge what he and President Trump call ideological bias in higher education.
Florida universities are being swept into an aggressive new regime of research oversight. More than 90 federal grants were terminated under Trump‑era guidelines targeting topics like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), climate, and misinformation.
Rather than resist, DeSantis has aligned with the federal push. His state’s government accountability “DOGE” team is auditing academic research projects and recommending cuts in line with the new Trump administration agenda.
“The Trump administration is working hard to get some of the rot out of higher education, the intellectual rot, the ideological rot,” DeSantis declared during a recent Jacksonville event.
This partnership signals a rare convergence between the White House and Florida’s governor, united in targeting perceived ideological excesses. As federal policy shifts, DeSantis has not just tolerated but embraced the change—actively scrubbing state academic funding in concert with the Trump administration. The move deeply restructures how higher education research operates in Florida, injecting political oversight into the academic funding process.
