President Trump is capping off a week of attacks on American schools and universities.
On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided to block visas from international students whose schools taught exclusively online this fall, putting schools' funding and the students' futures in jeopardy. On Wednesday, Trump threatened to cut federal funding from schools if they don't reopen this fall. And on Friday, Trump topped it all off with another tweeted threat against colleges and school systems he perceives as "about radical left indoctrination, not education."
With his tweet, Trump channeled a common conservative argument that universities and colleges warp students into liberals — it's all a part of the "broader culture war conversation he's been stoking in recent days and weeks," The New York Times' Peter Baker explained. Matthew Gertz of the left-leaning news site Media Matters suggested Trump won't be able to actually rescind colleges' tax-exempt status "without a lot of trouble," but it could be a sign he'll deny them emergency funds they need to make it through the COVID-19 pandemic and restructure learning in the fall.
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