WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is planning to halt more than half a billion dollars in contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, adding to a list of Ivy League colleges that have had their federal money threatened as a result of their responses to antisemitism, a White House official said.

Nearly $510 million in federal contracts and grants are on the line, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an email Thursday to campus leaders, Brown Provost Frank Doyle said the university was aware of “troubling rumors” about government action on its research money. “At this moment, we have no information to substantiate any of these rumors,” Doyle said.

It comes two days after President Donald Trump’s administration halted research grants at Princeton University. Dozens of universities are facing federal investigations into antisemitism following a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last year, but the administration has focused special attention on elite colleges.

Columbia University was the first one targeted, losing $400 million in federal money with threats to terminate more if it didn’t make the campus safer for Jewish students. The school agreed to several demands from the government last month, including an overhaul of student discipline rules and a review of the school’s Middle East studies department.

Trump’s administration has promised a more aggressive approach against campus antisemitism, accusing former President Joe Biden of letting schools off the hook. It has opened new investigations at colleges and detained and deported several foreign students with ties to pro-Palestinian protests.

___

AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed. Mumphrey reported from Phoenix.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WASHINGTON — Many colleges accused of tolerating antisemitism on their campuses have been settling with federal civil rights investigators in the weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who urged a tougher response to campus protests against the war in Gaza.

By settling with the Education Department, the schools close the cases against them as long as they meet the terms of the agreements, which mostly have required training, policy updates and reviews of past complaints.

But many colleges at the center of the highest-profile cases — including Columbia and Cornell — face investigations that remain unresolved and could run the risk of harsher penalties after Trump takes office. Trump has not said what he would like to see come of the investigations, but he has threatened to revoke federal money for schools that fall short of his demands.

“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said in a virtual address to Jewish donors in September. “No money will go to them if they don’t.”

Settlements with the Education Department’s civil rights branch have piled up in recent weeks with the University of Washington, the University of California, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers and the University of Cincinnati. Those follow other voluntary agreements signed by Brown and Temple universities, along with the University of Michigan.

The flurry of recent deals has drawn outrage from Republicans in Congress who say the Biden administration is letting colleges off the hook.

Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the settlements are “toothless” and fail to hold colleges accountable for permitting antisemitism. In a statement, he said the Trump administration should “examine these agreements and explore options to impose real consequences on schools.”

One of the committee’s priorities will be “calling out woke higher education institutions — especially those that allow antisemitism to run rampant,” Walberg said at a Wednesday meeting.

More than 100 U.S. colleges and school districts remain under investigation over alleged antisemitism or Islamophobia following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. That includes Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Princeton and other prestigious schools targeted by a Republican campaign against antisemitism.

The Department of Education investigations stem from complaints that schools violated Title VI, which bars discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color and national origin at colleges and universities that receive federal funding.

Several colleges facing investigations declined to comment on their status.

Presidents of several universities were called before Congress last year over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests, contributing to the resignations of Claudine Gay at Harvard, Liz Magill at Penn and Minouche Shafik at Columbia.

The vast majority of Education Department civil rights investigations end with voluntary deals negotiated with schools. If they can’t reach a settlement, the agency can refer the case to the Justice Department or move to cut off the school’s federal money — an extreme sanction that has almost never been used.

Whether Trump pushes the Education Department to use the so-called “nuclear option” is still in question. But without a deal before Jan. 20, colleges raise the risk that they could become test cases for Trump, who has been openly hostile to universities that he sees as hotbeds of liberalism.

Losing access to federal money is usually seen as a death sentence for colleges, though if there’s any exception it would be Harvard and its $53 billion endowment, the wealthiest college in the world. A total cutoff would also mean that students could not use federal financial aid at the university.

It couldn’t happen instantly, however. The Education Department can terminate federal money only if it fails to gain voluntary compliance from the school and only if it’s approved by an administrative law judge. There would have to be a hearing, and there would be opportunities for the school to appeal the decision.

As Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress, there’s also a renewed push for legislation on the subject. A December report coordinated by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., found that colleges across the U.S. failed to stop antisemitism amid last year’s demonstrations, highlighting cases at Harvard, Columbia and UCLA.

The report called for new legislation “to support students and ensure accountability,” and it endorsed legislation to cut off federal money at schools that support divestment from Israel. It called on the executive branch to “aggressively enforce” civil rights laws, saying universities that fail to curb antisemitism “are unfit stewards of taxpayer dollars should be treated accordingly.”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

BERWYN, Ill. — Far-right influencer Nick Fuentes is due in court later this month after a woman accused him of pepper-spraying her when she showed up at his suburban Chicago home following his “Your body, my choice” post on X.

According to court documents, the 57-year-old woman approached Fuentes’ home in Berwyn on Nov. 10, shortly after his address was leaked following his post, the Chicago Tribune reported. Berwyn is a Chicago suburb of about 54,000 people.

The woman told the newspaper in a Nov. 15 interview that her friends encouraged her to go to Fuentes’ home to see if rumors were true that he had been receiving prank deliveries after his post on X. She said she made a video of herself on the sidewalk in front of Fuentes’ home. Another woman pulled up in her car and told her to ring the doorbell.

She alleged that Fuentes opened the door before she could ring the bell, pepper-sprayed her, screamed an expletive and took her phone.

Fuentes, 26, faces a battery charge in connection with the incident, the newspaper reported. He is due to appear in court on Dec. 19. He has posted mugshots of himself on his X account along with “Free me (racial slur).”

He didn’t immediately respond to a message The Associated Press sent him Saturday through X. Attempts to reach his attorney, Eduardo Cervantes, were unsuccessful.

Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white supremacist, is part of an emboldened fringe of right-wing “manosphere” influencers who have seized on Republican Donald Trump’s presidential victory to amplify misogynistic derision and threats online.

Many of them have appropriated the “my body, my choice” abortion rights slogan, changing it to “your body, my choice.” The twist on the wording has been largely attributed to Fuentes’ Nov. 5 X post: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”