Lia Thomas' Fmr Teammates Applaud Penn's $175M Funding Cut

Former University of Pennsylvania teammates of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas celebrated the Trump administration's decision to hack $175 million in federal funds from the Ivy League school for allowing such competitors to participate in women's sports.

The White House announced the move Wednesday, three years to the day since Thomas tied for fifth in the 200-meter freestyle event at the women's Division I NCAA Championships.

"We are so glad that Universities are beginning to see that there is a cost to openly harming female students on their campuses and we hope the pressure only increases. Penn and other universities within the NCAA, under NCAA policy and their own rogue leadership, have violated federal law and hurt women," former Thomas teammates Grace Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski, and Ellen Holmquist said in a joint statement released through the Independent Council for Women's Sports.

Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who tied Thomas on March 19, 2022, called the move "serendipitous."

"Three years ago to the day I raced and tied a man at the DI NCAA Championships in the 200 freestyle. Today, the Trump administration paused $175M in federal funding to University Pennsylvania for this reason. Serendipitous," Gaines wrote in a post to X.

Thomas also won the 500-meter freestyle final in record time to win the 2022 national championship in the women's event.

The funds cut were discretionary money from the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services. The university is "still at risk of losing all its federal funding" due to the Title IX investigation into Penn's allowing Thomas to compete on the women's team and use facilities for women athletes, the administration said Wednesday.

"Every woman on a college campus and under NCAA regulations should be assured of Title IX protections. Institutions that disregard the well-being of women have to understand they don't get to rewrite or ignore federal protections that women rely on," the trio's statement went on.

Trump on Feb. 5 signed the executive order "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports."