Trump threatens Universities with Big Government funding cuts to solve imagined Free Speech attacks on Conservatives.

Wisconsin Republicans created and then inserted themselves into the imaginary issue of liberal intimidation on our University of Wisconsin campuses. While there are rules already on the books (a phrase right wingers use often) to deal with free speech on campus, Republicans like the power of "big government" to threaten and expel anyone exercising free speech rights they don't agree with.  

Trump is now using the most powerful office in the country, the presidency, to cut funding to universities on a national level, by taking one small incident and using that to severely harm any college targeted by the right wing. In other words, colleges will take the blame for an individual's actions on their campuses.

I'm going to let the words of one enlightened Republican, believe it or not, Sen. Lamar Alexander, to sum up what Democrats and others see as an obvious problem:

Trump's order, titled “Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities,” (is) aimed at “professors and power structures” who try to keep young Americans “from challenging rigid, far-left ideology.”  

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “I agree that colleges should punish hecklers who veto free speech, and stop coddling students to protect them from disagreeable points of view. But I don’t want to see Congress or the President or the department of anything creating speech codes to define what you can say on campus. The U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. Federal courts define and enforce it. The Department of Justice can weigh in. Conservatives don’t like it when judges try to write laws,* and conservatives should not like it when legislators and agencies try to rewrite the Constitution.”

*NOTE: Actually, conservatives do like it when judges write laws that side with them.