Last updated: July 16, 2026. This page supplements the First Amendment page.
| Date | Administration Action | Why does this violate the Constitution? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | Demanded that Columbia University, among other things, oust the head of an academic department and place the department under academic receivership for five years or else lose over $400 million in federal funding. | Academic freedom is an extension of the First Amendment; conditioning appropriated funds on government control of a private university’s academic decisions is unconstitutional coercion. | Columbia ultimately settled in July 2025: $200 million plus $21 million to the EEOC, and federal oversight of admissions, discipline, and academic programs, in exchange for restored funding. Brown ($50 million), Penn (policy concessions), and Cornell ($60 million) followed the template; the Knight First Amendment Institute said the deal “sets a precedent for the government to direct colleges and universities to comply with its political agenda.” |
| April 2025 | Sent a list of demands to Harvard University, including a federally-approved audit of student and faculty “viewpoints.” When Harvard refused, the administration froze over $2.2 billion in federal funding, threatened its tax-exempt status, and disqualified it from new research grants. | In September 2025, a federal judge ruled the funding freeze unconstitutional First Amendment retaliation — “much more about promoting a governmental orthodoxy in violation of the First Amendment than about anything else” — and vacated the freeze and grant disqualification. | The administration appealed, seeking reinstatement of the freeze; no settlement as of mid-2026. The administration also revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students and barred their entry by proclamation — both blocked by the courts. |
| April 2025 | Signed an executive order to suspend or terminate college accreditors that do not align with his political ideology. Accreditors are an important aspect of college oversight, impacting curriculum and standards required for a college to accept a student’s federal financial aid. | Legal analysts argue the order exceeds the administration’s authority under the Higher Education Act and uses accreditation as a lever for ideological control of curricula. | |
| June 2025 | Used civil-rights investigations as leverage against university leadership: UVA’s president resigned after the Justice Department conditioned settlement of a probe on his departure (he later called it a “hostage situation”); the Education Department demanded George Mason’s president post a public apology (refused as compelled speech); Duke faced a probe of its law journal while $108 million in health funding was frozen. | A federal judge later described this exact investigate-then-defund “playbook” as First Amendment coercion (see the UCLA entry below); demanding a public apology is compelled speech. | |
| August 2025 | Froze $584 million in UCLA research funding over a 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment, then demanded the University of California pay $1 billion plus a $172 million claims fund to restore it — the largest cash demand ever made of a public university. | In November 2025, a federal judge blocked the campaign: “Defendants have engaged in coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment,” describing “a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities… to change their ideological tune.” | The administration dropped its appeal in February 2026, leaving the injunction in force. |
| October 2025 | Offered nine universities preferential federal funding in exchange for a “Compact for Academic Excellence”: ten commitments including “viewpoint diversity” audits, government-set gender definitions, and international-enrollment caps. | The Knight First Amendment Institute’s legal analysis concluded the compact “blatantly violates the First Amendment” as an unconstitutional condition on funding. | All nine invited universities declined. |