{"id":219260,"date":"2025-10-12T13:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219260\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T13:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:43:12","slug":"republican-congressman-thomas-massie-praises-mit-for-rejecting-donald-trump-administrations-bribe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219260\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Congressman Thomas Massie Praises MIT for Rejecting Donald Trump Administration\u2019s \u2018Bribe\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A renegade member of Donald Trump\u2019s own party has blasted the president\u2019s attempts to pressure the nation\u2019s top universities into conforming to his MAGA agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surest way to screw up the world\u2019s best technical school is to let feds tell them how to run it,\u201d Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cCongrats 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Massie'sMassie has emerged as a rogue voice of GOP dissent under Trump 2.0. X\/Thomas Massie <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy signing the compact, universities receive a competitive advantage,\u201d a White House spokesperson told NBC News<\/a>. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rep.The Kentucky Congressman\u2019s boldest move has been joining with Democrat Ro Khanna in calling for greater transparency on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

MIT wasn\u2019t having it. \u201cIn our view, America\u2019s 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,\u201d school president Sally Kornbluth wrote in a Friday response to the DOE<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,\u201d she concluded. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s crimes. <\/p>\n

Those efforts, alongside his votes against Trump\u2019s spending proposals and criticism of the president\u2019s use of wartime powers without Congressional approval, have put him firmly in Trump\u2019s sights, with the MAGA leader calling him a \u201cgrandstander\u201d and \u201closer,\u201d and even threatening to back a primary challenge against him in the midterms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A renegade member of Donald Trump\u2019s own party has blasted the president\u2019s attempts to pressure the nation\u2019s top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1072,462,36688,3,25249,21,19,22,20,25,24,3123],"class_list":["post-219260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-maga","tag-massachusetts-institute-of-technology","tag-news","tag-republican-party","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}