Schumer Reveals Grand Plan to Stop Trump from Pulling Harvard’s Funding: ‘We Sent Him a Very Strong Letter’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that Democrats are “fighting back” after President Donald Trump pulled federal funding from Harvard University.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Schumer told anchor Dana Bash that he and other Jewish senators sent a “very strong letter” to the White House demanding an explanation for the funding cut.

Trump ordered the Department of Education to revoke Harvard’s federal funding after the university said it would not comply with his demands to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The president also ordered the university to prohibit masks at campus protests that he said are anti-Semitic and to stop hiring teachers he categorized as activists.

Sunday, Bash said, “Trump, as you well know, says he’s cracking down on Harvard and other universities because of their response, or lack thereof, to those anti-Semitic incidents that you’re describing.”

She asked, “How do you think he’s doing with that?”

Schumer, who is Jewish, said he agreed Harvard had not done enough to curb campus anti-Semitism. But he also accused Trump of overreaching.

“What Trump is doing goes way beyond anti-Semitism,” the senator said. “He is going after these universities like he’s going after judges, like he is going to after law firms, like he going after the media.”

Schumer added:

Because he just doesn’t – he doesn’t believe in democracy. He thinks he’s king, as he said. And he did this at Harvard. So a bunch of us, Jewish senators, just sent a letter to the administration saying, detail the specific incidence of antisemitism and why cutting money off to cancer research or to Alzheimer’s research has anything to do with antisemitism.

The New York Democrat accused Trump of using incidents of antisemitism as “a pretext” to go after universities.

Schumer concluded, “So we sent him a very strong letter just the other day, asking eight very strong questions about why this isn’t just a pretext.”

Watch above via CNN.