The Trump Administration has been trying to leverage federal grants in ways that force various people and organizations to give up their constitutional rights or submit to constraints that go beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government. A standard response to criticisms of such policies that people have no right to these grants in the first place. Receiving federal grants and other government benefits, it is said, is a "privilege, not a right." Thus, the federal government can impose whatever conditions it wants on recipients. In an excellent recent Washington Post article, University of Pennsylvania law Prof. Mitchell Berman has a great explanation of why such reasoning is badly wrong:
Universities refuse to fully dismantle their DEI programs? The Trump administration withdraws billions of dollars in federal funding, and cancels visas for their foreign students. Law firms won't donate their services to causes that President Donald Trump favors? Trump cancels their lawyers' security clearances and refuses to deal with their clients. Journalists still call the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of Mexico"? Trump pulls their credentials for press briefings. The state of Maine allows some transgender athletes to compete on some girls' and women's sports teams? Trump threatens to cut off federal funding for its public schools.
Different targets, but one common tool: leverage. Trump uses federal funds and other government benefits to pressure individuals and institutions into exercising their constitutional rights as he prefers. This is extortionate. And therefore unconstitutional….
If Trump can use threats over tariffs to pressure nations into opening their markets or strengthening their currencies or ordering more U.S. arms, why can't he do the same with American institutions?
