President Donald Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from the University of California at Berkeley after students protests forced the school to cancel an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos, Brietbart News senior editor and prominent figure within the white nationalist movement.
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Just hours after the campus erupted in protest Wednesday evening, the commander-in-chief wrote:
In a press statement, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) blasted Trump’s threat as an “abuse of power.”
“Berkeley has a proud history of dissent and students were fully within their rights to protest peacefully,” Lee wrote. Trump, she continued, “cannot bully our university into silence. Simply put, President Trump’s empty threat to cut funding from UC Berkeley is an abuse of power. As a senior member of the education funding subcommittee, I will continue to stand up to President Trump’s overreach and defend the rights of our students and faculty.”
As the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday, “It’s unclear whether Trump was actually threatening to cut funding or making some kind of rhetorical point. The larger UC system, for which Berkeley is the flagship campus, receives billions of dollars from the federal government to fund a variety of programs, notably research, student aide and health care programs.”
Roughly 1,500 people turned out to protest Yiannopoulos, who has gained notoriety for inflammatory writings and statements against women, Muslims, and LGBTQ people.
Chanting “No Milo, no Trump, no fascist USA,” the crowd formed outside the Martin Luther King, Jr. student union, where the talk was scheduled to be held, before the school announced its cancellation at roughly 6pm PST and evacuated Yiannopoulos from the premises.
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