Trump Threatens To Cut ‘All Federal Funding’ to Universities That Allow ‘Illegal Protests’
AP Photo/Ben Curtis.
President Donald Trump declared through Truth Social on Tuesday that funding for universities that allow “illegal protests” will be pulled under his administration.
In his Truth Social post, the president warned there should be “no masks” at university protests and that “agitators” will be “imprisoned” or deported to “the country from which they came.”
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he wrote.
Trump’s announcement followed his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Education (ED), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announcing a potential stop to $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia University and the federal government.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited the university’s alleged inability to stop antisemitic protests on campus as the reason for the announcement.
“In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence,” he said in a statement. Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.”
Trump did not specify in his Truth Social post what covers an “illegal protest” that would stop federal funding. He did sign an executive order when he first entered office calling for “all available and appropriate legal tools” to target perpetrators behind “unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” much of it stemming from protests centered on the Israel-Hamas war.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” the executive order stated.
