March 4, 2025 — Over the weekend, the Trump administration told the University of Maine that it is discontinuing a $4.5 million award to the Maine Sea Grant Program.
There are 33 other similar Sea Grant programs in coastal and Great Lakes states around the country. Yet only Maine appears to have had its funding revoked. And the announcement came one week after Gov. Janet Mills sparred publicly with President Donald Trump at the White House about his executive order on transgender athletes.
The four-year federal award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went into effect last February and would have awarded Maine Sea Grant roughly $4.5 million through January 2028, including about $1.5 million this year.
“It has been determined that the program activities proposed to be carried out in year 2 of the Maine Sea Grant Omnibus Award are no longer relevant to the focus of the administration’s priorities and program objectives,” NOAA wrote in a letter to the University of Maine.
The program now appears to be in jeopardy, though both the UMaine system and its partners were still determining the specific impacts on Monday.
Federal and matching funds support the salaries of 20 people at the university and around the state. A spokesperson said Monday that the University of Maine system is still assessing how the funding cuts will directly impact staff and research projects underway.