Sen. Bernie Sanders
The report, titled "Trump's War on Free Speech," documents what Sanders characterizes as an unprecedented federal assault on academic freedom, including nearly $3 billion in funding cuts to higher education institutions and the revocation of thousands of international student visas.
"The Trump administration is moving this country very aggressively into an authoritarian society," Sanders said. "Trump's attempts to control what colleges can say is a direct attack on the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution."
Among the court rulings cited in the report, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Maryland found that the Department of Education "initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished."
In California, a district court judge ruled that "the Administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge 'woke,' 'left,' and 'socialist' viewpoints from our country's leading universities."
The report found that the Trump administration distributed $2.76 billion less to higher education institutions in the first nine months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, despite unchanged congressional appropriations. The administration also froze billions in federal grants to prominent universities including Harvard ($2.2 billion), Columbia ($1.3 billion) and Brown ($510 million).
At least 50 university faculty and staff have resigned, been fired or left the United States since Trump's election, according to the report's analysis of public records. The State Department has revoked more than 6,000 international student visas, many for constitutionally protected speech related to protests against the war in Gaza.
The report also examines the administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," sent to 13 universities in October, which constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky called "extortion, plain and simple." The compact threatened to revoke federal funding from institutions that did not pledge to restrict faculty and student speech on political topics and limit international student enrollment.
All but two of the 13 institutions — the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University — publicly rejected the compact.
Sanders warned that the administration is preparing to weaponize the college accreditation process, which determines whether students can use federal financial aid at specific institutions. In a July 2023 campaign video, Trump called accreditation his "secret weapon" and vowed to "fire the radical Left accreditors" and replace them with new ones who would "impose real standards on colleges."
"Colleges and universities must not relinquish their constitutional rights to Trump's authoritarianism," Sanders said. "In America, the president should not get to decide what professors can teach, what research is conducted or who universities can enroll."
