Grants update: We live in a world with many knives.

New grants listings and some thoughts on the other looming threat to programs.

Stuff you should know about grants this week, in brief.

This week’s listings

• Funding total is a bit funky. If you count everything here, including the workforce-adjacent money, it’s $2 billion, but there are concerning signs for a few of these grants I talk about below. Department of Defense money also makes its debut in the listings this week.

• Most Danger Ratings are the same. Department of Justice remains the only agency I know that told applicants to not even bother. If you’ve heard something similar for a workforce program, email me at nick@jobsthat.work or Signal me at Nickbeadle.06.

• State grants coming soon. I’m still building out the right approach and infrastructure for reviewing, verifying, and presenting these dollars.

• No Department of Education grants, for now. I don’t feel comfortable saying that anything out for competition will be awarded.

• Closing today. Kessler Foundation’s Signature Employment Grants, aimed at improving workforce participation for people with disabilities in the states where their participation is lowest. More details below.

Situational awareness

• The Department of Education announced the termination of more than $1 billion in awards. The money was for things the Administration calls “divisive teacher training” and “additional woke spending.” Ed’s press office told Inside Higher Ed that no additional information was “cleared for release” on the latter, strangely vague announcement.

• At this time of this writing, DOGE is not… loud at the Department of Labor. I suspect there will be some rough news soon, to go with some of my former DOL colleagues posting notes about probationary staff layoffs. One reason you’re getting this newsletter a little later than intended is my gut feeling that some hard news could come soon, especially on the staffing front. Today is the end of a pay period. Stay tuned.

• Something concerning happened with $1.35 billion of Biden disaster resilience and workforce funds. The competitions are still open, but the grants.gov listings no longer has the actual funding opportunity documents for FEMA’s major Hazard Mitigation Assistance programs. I haven’t seen any indication that you can’t apply anymore, so I’m maintaining the listings for both, for now. I recommend holding on applying as much as you can, although these processes are layered.

• Something weird happened with $450 million of Biden workforce funds. As I wrote last week, I’m also monitoring what’s happening with “workforce-adjacent” funds carrying out Biden-Harris priorities. For a Department of Transportation ports program, the Trump Administration posted a note saying a January removal of the funding notice was an accident and it would upload a rebooted Trump notice sometime in the near future. Per the grants.gov timestamp, the agency uploaded a replacement notice on Wednesday—and it’s the same equity-heavy Biden funding opportunity. Cool.

• They’re still posting new federal grants opportunities? And many for the types of things that DOGE has terminated, like cultural heritage and education. Take from that what you will.