GATEWAY PUNDIT
Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan Blocks Trump Education Department From Naming Foreign Donors Who Dumped Billions Into Harvard, Columbia, and Other Elite Campuses
Jim Hoft
October 3, 2026
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from publicly releasing the names of foreign donors and contract counterparties tied to some of America’s most prominent universities. DC US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Obama appointee who presided over the federal election case against President Trump, issued a temporary restraining order barring the Department of Education from releasing a list of foreign donors…The Department of Education announced in February that universities disclosed more than $5.2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts during 2025 alone, involving more than 8,300 transactions. The agency said universities have reported a cumulative $67.6 billion in foreign funding since Section 117 was added to federal law in 1986. READ MORE
JEWISH INSIDER Department of Education accuses colleges and universities of hiding foreign funding ties The Department of Education accused U.S. colleges and universities of attempting to hide their foreign donors from public scrutiny, after the American Association of Universities sued to block the release of a report on foreign donors to U.S. institutions of higher education due out last week. The department had repeatedly delayed the release of such data under Sec. 117 of the Higher Education Act since this summer, but was poised to release it last Friday, until a federal district court issued a temporary restraining order following a lawsuit by the AAU…The federal government has previously released top-line data about the amount of foreign funding to U.S. colleges and universities but has not released the specific names of donor organizations, which advocates argue would provide critical transparency about potential malign foreign influence in the United States.