President Trump said Tuesday he will seek to block federal funding to colleges and universities “that allow illegal protests” on their campuses.
In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump wrote, “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 on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Universities of Wisconsin receive federal funding primarily in the form of grants for specific research, Federal Pell Grants and scholarships. In 2022-2023 fiscal year UW-Madison reported 25% of its total revenue sources consist of federal government investments. Here at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, our campus received a five-year $1.5 million federal grant which fuels the McNair Scholars Program.
In the 2024 – 2025 Annual Budget, UWL reported $402,942 in federal reimbursements for costs that support grants and contracts but can’t be directly charged to a specific project called Federal Indirect Cost Reimbursements. That same year, UWL reported $49,237,914 in federal financial aid costs. This money is categorized as part of the “federal funding” allocated to higher education
College campuses have long served as places for protests, especially anti-war demonstrations. The First Amendment’s freedom of speech allows for protests to occur in certain public spaces and universities outline their policies. Read UWL’s policies here.
In his post, Trump did not specify any legal authority or federal statute that would permit him to take action against the protesters.
Trump’s social media post uses the term “illegal protests” and comes after a federal task force was charged to combat antisemitism on 10 college campuses across the country. The task force’s first priority is to “eradicate antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”
The 10 universities identified by the Task Force are: Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern California.
This task force came pursuant to an executive order issued Jan 25 by the president.
The president’s executive order, titled Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, is in response to the increase of anti-Semitic incidents that have been reported on college campuses since Oct. 7 2023, the beginning of Hamas attacks on Israel. A wave of college protests began following the attacks and continued against Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The White House said the Justice Department will take “immediate action” to prosecute antisemitic crimes like vandalism and intimidation as well as “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
The order suggests closer monitoring of noncitizen students and staff who may be involved in activities that could affect their visa and may be deemed relevant to grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)—a section of US immigration law that deals with security-related grounds for denying entry or deporting individuals.
In the order, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Homeland Security are instructed to help familiarize colleges and universities with immigration laws, “so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens,” the order states.
The White House is promising to deport and revoke the student visas of those deemed sympathetic to Hamas.
“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump said in the fact sheet.
