The U.S. Justice Department has told Congress it will not defend a decades-old grant program reserved for colleges where at least a quarter of undergraduates are Hispanic, concluding the funding scheme violates the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantees. The program steers about $350 million a year to more than 500 Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Its fate is now before a federal court in Tennessee, where the state and Students for Fair Admissions contend the grants give schools an unlawful advantage based on race. In a July 25 letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Solicitor General D. John Sauer cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions and said the DOJ had ‘determined that the challenged provisions cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.’ The move departs from the department’s usual practice of defending Acts of Congress and signals a broader realignment of federal education funding under the Trump administration. Two days later, the Department of Health and Human Services moved in the same direction, abolishing the National Institutes of Health’s Minority Biomedical Research Support program. A notice filed in the Federal Register by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the 26-year initiative, which channels grants and mentorship to students from under-represented groups in the biomedical sciences, conflicts with the president’s executive orders eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion requirements across federal agencies. Higher-education groups warn that ending the HSI grants could erode support for institutions enrolling 67 % of Latino undergraduates, while researchers say terminating the NIH program will cut off career pipelines for early-stage scientists. The paired decisions underscore the administration’s accelerating effort to dismantle race-conscious programs throughout the federal government in the wake of recent Supreme Court rulings.