A renegade member of Donald Trump’s own party has blasted the president’s attempts to pressure the nation’s top universities into conforming to his MAGA agenda.
“The surest way to screw up the world’s best technical school is to let feds tell them how to run it,” Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X. “Congrats to my alma mater for turning down a bribe to let the executive branch dictate what happens on its campus. A lot of things are wrong in [the U.S.], but MIT is not one of them.”
His late-night post came after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday became the first university in the country to reject White House proposals tying federal funding to a set of demands from the MAGA administration.
Massie has emerged as a rogue voice of GOP dissent under Trump 2.0. X/Thomas Massie
The Department of Education sent a memo to nine top U.S. colleges earlier this month outlining a number of conditions those institutions would need to meet, such as limiting international student enrollment and barring transgender individuals from playing sports in a manner that aligns with their gender identity, in exchange for receiving priority federal funding.
“By signing the compact, universities receive a competitive advantage,” a White House spokesperson told NBC News. “The administration does not plan to limit federal funding solely to schools that sign the compact, but they would be given priority for grants when possible, as well as invitations for White House events and discussions with officials.”
The Kentucky Congressman’s boldest move has been joining with Democrat Ro Khanna in calling for greater transparency on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
MIT wasn’t having it. “In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences,” school president Sally Kornbluth wrote in a Friday response to the DOE.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” she concluded.
Representative Massie has increasingly emerged as a rare voice of dissent among Republican ranks under the second Trump administration. He has joined firebrand MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in a push to ensure greater transparency on the White House’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case.
Massie has co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Democratic counterpart Ro Khanna, demanding the Justice Department make public all unclassified records pertaining to Epstein’s crimes.
Those efforts, alongside his votes against Trump’s spending proposals and criticism of the president’s use of wartime powers without Congressional approval, have put him firmly in Trump’s sights, with the MAGA leader calling him a “grandstander” and “loser,” and even threatening to back a primary challenge against him in the midterms.