Trump embraces call to seize university endowments in new campaign video
Jeremiah Poff
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Former President Donald Trump said he would push to seize the endowments of universities that practice affirmative action in a new campaign video that outlined his policy goals for higher education, should he return to the White House.
In the video, Trump blasted the “exploding” cost of higher education and vowed to adopt an aggressive policy agenda aimed at thwarting the “indoctrination” of students.
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“The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left, and we will do that,” Trump said, indicating that he would use the college accreditation system to “impose real standards on colleges.
“The accreditors are supposed to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers, but they have failed totally,” he said. “When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.”
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1653491448535306245?s=20
The former president also embraced a call from the more populist elements of the conservative movement to tax the endowments of major universities. Trump said that he would pursue a 100% tax on endowments for schools that “persist in explicit, unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity” through the budget reconciliation process in the Senate, which allows legislation to bypass the filibuster, which requires 60 votes.
“A portion of the seized funds will then be used as restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies, policies that hurt our country so badly,” Trump said. “Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hard-working taxpayers, and now we are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”
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The push to tax university endowments at a higher rate has been taken up by some populist conservatives, but the idea has yet to receive a warm reception from mainstay Republicans who generally balk at tax increases.
The “seize the endowment” wing argue that the institutions are hostile to conservative values and have helped saddle a generation of students with billions of dollars of debt. By taxing university endowments, they say, a conservative government would be able to address some of the societal effects of sky-high debt among college graduates.