The U.S. Department of Justice has told Congress it will no longer defend a federal program that steers roughly $350 million a year to colleges whose undergraduate enrollment is at least 25 percent Hispanic, saying the grants violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment. In a 25 July letter released late last week, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the government agrees with a lawsuit filed by Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions that labels the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) program an unconstitutional form of racial preference. Created by Congress in 1998 and currently supporting more than 500 campuses, the HSI program offers competitive awards that can be used for purposes ranging from laboratory upgrades to faculty hiring. Justice Department support is normally presumed when an act of Congress is challenged, but the Trump administration’s reversal leaves the Education Department evaluating three HSI funding streams for possible shutdown and heightens uncertainty for institutions that collectively educate two-thirds of the nation’s Latino undergraduates. The department’s move follows the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 prohibition on race-conscious admissions and underscores the administration’s wider effort to dismantle programs it says confer benefits on the basis of race or ethnicity. That campaign scored an additional victory on 22 August when the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 order, allowed the National Institutes of Health to terminate $783 million in research grants the agency linked to diversity, equity and inclusion goals, overruling a lower-court injunction that had kept the money flowing. Hispanic-serving colleges and allied groups have signaled they will intervene directly to defend the HSI statute, calling the grants essential to closing persistent funding gaps. Unless another party can persuade the courts to keep the program alive, however, the Justice Department’s withdrawal and the high court’s latest order leave two of Washington’s largest race-based funding streams in jeopardy—and set the stage for fresh challenges to similar initiatives across the federal government.