This past week, the Trump administration lowered the boom on universities and student protestors. To demonstrate its determination to stamp out campus protests, it canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University. This sent a message to every other institution that this administration is prepared to levy a heavy financial penalty on any college that allows campus protests to get out of control.

The Trump team has a list of other campuses that it’s watching, including Harvard University, George Washington 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.

The pretext for the crackdown is anti-Semitism, but most Jews don’t want to be the scapegoat for Trump’s marauding on academic freedom. Trump is not protecting them. He’s making them a target.

Cutting off federal funding would have a devastating financial impact on all these universities.

Next, the Trump administration directed ICE to arrest and detain Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University who had led student protests at the university last spring. First, they said they would revoke his student visa. When he said he had a green card, they threatened to cancel it. ICE took him to a prison in Louisiana, and the legal battle over his free speech rights goes on.

The ACLU is representing Khalil. It said in a statement:

Let’s be clear: The First Amendment does not allow the government to retaliate against anyone for their speech. The Trump administration can’t use ICE to punish speech the government doesn’t like, and we must all speak out loudly NOW: Tell ICE: Free Mahmoud Khalil.

We have a Constitutional amendment protecting free speech. That includes not only citizens but people with green cards.

Trump and his team are seizing as much power as they can to see what they can get away with. Can they punish, even destroy, universities with heavy fines? Can they deport anyone who is not a citizen? Can they deport citizens? The law and the Cinstitution do not deter Trump and his flunkies.

These actions may be a prelude to sending in troops to break up anti-Trump protests.

Trump has cowed the Republican Party. We can’t let him intimidate everyone else.