Trump Extorts $50 Million From Brown University, Funnels Money to Workforce Programs He Previously Defunded

The Shakedown

In July, Brown University signed a settlement with three federal agencies — Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services — that restored the school's access to hundreds of millions in federal funding. The price tag: $50 million over 10 years, earmarked for local workforce development programs in Rhode Island.

Unlike settlements Columbia and Cornell signed with the White House, Brown's deal includes no direct payments to the federal government. Instead, the university will fund job training programs that the Trump administration itself tried to eliminate.

Brown declined to say whether the grants-in-lieu-of-fines structure came from the university or the administration. But the deal conveniently allows both parties to claim victory: Brown avoids admitting wrongdoing, and Trump gets to posture as a defender of blue-collar workers while offloading the cost of workforce programs onto a private institution.

"The agreement to provide $50 million in grants to workforce organizations aligns with Brown's service mission while also meeting a workforce goal for higher education institutions articulated by the federal government," said Brian Clark, Brown's vice president for communications, in a statement that carefully avoids acknowledging any fault.

The three federal agencies that signed the agreement did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Trump's Workforce Development Hypocrisy

President Trump has made attacking elite universities a centerpiece of his political brand, accusing Ivy League schools of ideological bias and indifference to labor market needs. He frequently contrasts expensive four-year degrees with "practical" job training, positioning himself as the champion of working Americans left behind by the higher education system.

But Trump's supposed commitment to workforce development is pure theater. His budget proposal for the current fiscal year called for cutting workforce programs by $1.6 billion. Congress rejected those cuts, but the administration went ahead and canceled millions in existing grants anyway — including $40 million from a Department of Justice program that helped launch the very prison preapprenticeship program now receiving Brown's money.

Building Futures, a Rhode Island nonprofit that runs construction training programs, was one of the first recipients of Brown's settlement funds. The organization received $1.5 million to continue its prison preapprenticeship program — a program that would have ended without Brown's intervention after Trump's DOJ pulled its federal funding.

"If Brown hadn't come forward with its offer, the preapprenticeship might have ended," said Andrew Cortes, Building Futures' president and CEO.

So Trump defunded a successful workforce program, then forced a university to pay for it, and now gets to take credit for supporting job training. It's a perfect encapsulation of this administration's approach to governance: create a crisis, extort someone else to fix it, then declare victory.

Who Actually Benefits

The first $3 million from Brown's settlement is split between Building Futures and the Community College of Rhode Island. Unlike future grants, which will be awarded competitively, only these two organizations were invited to submit proposals for the initial round.

Building Futures will use its share to continue prison preapprenticeships like the one Joe is enrolled in. Joe, a man in his 40s serving time for drug charges, spent years working construction jobs before his incarceration. When prison officials offered him a spot in the preapprenticeship program, he jumped at the chance to formalize his skills and prepare for a union apprenticeship after release.

"I always liked working with my hands," Joe said. "And she liked to help," referring to his youngest daughter, who used to assist him with home projects.

The program teaches construction fundamentals and the math skills needed for the trade — a challenge for Joe, who admits he's "doing things I haven't done in 30 years, like fractions." When he needs help, he calls one of his four teenage children for a refresher.

Building Futures will also use Brown's money to expand a "contractor incentive program" that subsidizes employers who hire new apprentices, and to help companies start apprenticeships in nontraditional fields like education and health care.

The Community College of Rhode Island will use its portion to expand programs for early childhood educators.

Both organizations have existing relationships with Brown. Building Futures secured a commitment from the university more than a decade ago that 15 percent of labor hours on Brown construction projects valued over $5 million would go to program graduates. CCRI has long worked with Brown on transfer pathways for local students.

"We really wanted to start with two proven providers," said Mary Jo Callan, Brown's vice president for community engagement.

The Bigger Picture

Providence, where Building Futures operates, has a poverty rate of 22 percent — double the national average. Cortes founded the organization nearly two decades ago to address both a shortage of skilled construction workers and high unemployment in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

The model works: train people for union apprenticeships, then secure commitments from major employers to hire them. It's exactly the kind of program that should receive robust federal support.

Instead, the Trump administration tried to zero out its funding, then forced a university to pay for it as part of a compliance settlement that Brown insists involved no finding of fault.

Trump's framing of higher education versus workforce development as an either-or proposition is a false choice designed to pit working-class voters against institutions they already distrust. But his actions reveal the truth: this administration has no interest in actually funding job training programs. It just wants to use them as props in a culture war against universities while slashing the federal investments that make those programs possible.

Joe and his fellow trainees at Building Futures are getting real skills that could lead to family-sustaining careers. That's worth celebrating. But they're only getting those opportunities because a university coughed up money to replace the federal funding Trump eliminated — and because the administration saw an opportunity to shake down an Ivy League school while pretending to care about the working class.