Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York recommended that President Donald Trump take the fight to “woke” universities next since his first six months as president.
York appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday to offer commentary on Trump’s first six months in office. His administration has seen the passage of a mandatory spending and tax bill and a rescissions package. Host Hugh Hewitt asked York what the president should work toward next.
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“I do think if there’s some sort of legislative way to go after wokeness in academia, the way that he has been doing with various individual schools, I think that’s a real possibility,” York said.
York was referring to Harvard and Columbia University, which have lost grants for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Trump administration cited last spring’s protests that, per the administration’s determination, escalated to antisemitism.
Harvard had $3 billion in grants frozen or cancelled since Trump took office. The ivy league institution typically boasts as much as $9 billion in federal funding. Columbia lost $400 million in grants and laid off 180 staff as a result.
“Well, he’s working on the Department of Education, which he can’t do completely, but he can go a long way toward it,” York noted.
“He could also actually try to do it through Congress by moving some of the actual real functions of the Department of Education to other places because you don’t need an entire education department.”
While the department’s employees are laid off and the funds are transferred to states, the president made it clear that it will still handle “Pell Grants, Title I funding, [and] resources for children with disabilities and special needs.”