Democrats Decry Republicans’ Clumsy Attempt to Target Higher Education After Voting to Cut Financial Aid for Students

Washington, D.C. (June 4, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, led Subcommittee Democrats in pushing back against Republicans’ attempt to use ‘antitrust’ to target colleges and universities that Trump and Republicans dislike.

However, Republicans’ own expert witnesses admitted there was not evidence to support Republicans’ claims of price-fixing. Preston Cooper, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute stated in his prepared remarks, “My testimony does not take a position on whether Ivy League universities are coordinating their pricing decisions, or whether they are in violation of federal antitrust law.” Scott Martin, Partner at Hausfeld, noted that he was making “no prejudgment about any current conduct.” 

The hearing also included testimony from: Dr. Julie Margetta Morgan, President, The Century Foundation; and Alex Shieh, Undergraduate, Brown University.

Subcommittee Democrats explained that House Republicans are wielding fake antitrust theories as a pretext to target their political enemies, as part of a broader Republican attack on higher education and civil society.

• Ranking Member Raskin said: “Like everything else, antitrust in the hands of our [Republican] friends is just one more chance to attack America’s colleges and universities that refuse to surrender control to that luminary academic scholar Donald Trump, who wants the federal government to take over faculty hiring, student admissions and academic affairs at every university in America.”
   
• Subcommittee Ranking Member Nadler said: “While President Trump threatens individual schools with cuts for not adhering to his ideology, they are using the power and resources of this Committee to pursue yet another empty antitrust theory so that they can bully their political targets.”
   
• Rep. Hank Johnson said: “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican supporters in Congress are attacking our elite institutions of higher learning because these institutions and others produced the critical thinkers who stand opposed to the global trend towards authoritarianism and dictatorship which Donald Trump and MAGA represent. They say this hearing is about eight Ivy League institutions and the cost of higher education, but that is just a facade. This is really about Trump’s war on facts, debate, and truth.”
   
• Rep. Chuy García said: “This hearing highlights a real problem: the crisis of affordability in higher education. But instead of focusing on systemic issues and solutions, Republicans have chosen a narrow and misleading target, the Ivy League, which enrolls less than half of 1% of all undergraduate students. Rising costs are not unique to the Ivy League. Over the last two decades, tuition and fees at private and public universities have increased by over 100%. […]  It’s a problem that affects working families, regardless of which school students attend.”
   
• Ranking Member Raskin said: “So, the two expert witnesses here, Dr. Cooper and Mr. Martin, as I’m reading your testimony, are saying that they don’t have evidence of price fixing. […] This is much ado about nothing. This is an attempt to create a propaganda smokescreen to attack Ivy League schools, and your expert witnesses are saying that they don’t have evidence that there are antitrust violations going on.”

Subcommittee Democrats made clear that Republicans are doing nothing to address the college affordability crisis, and instead are advancing policies that hurt colleges, students, and families in need. 

• Rep. Becca Balint said: “My Republican colleagues are not here to seriously investigate the problem of college affordability. They are here to advance Donald Trump’s culture war against people and institutions that he doesn’t like and to go after anyone who remotely disagrees with him. […]  The reason I know this is because my Republican colleagues—every single one of them across the aisle here—voted to eliminate or reduce student aid, increase monthly student loan payments and drive students to take out predatory private loans. […] We have real work that we should be doing to support our students, but we are preoccupied with going after the President’s supposed political enemies. It’s a shame and it’s a disservice to our students across this country.”
   
• Subcommittee Ranking Member Nadler said: “Let’s be clear: the cost of tuition at many colleges and universities—not just Ivy League institutions—is too high and is unaffordable for too many families. But the same Republicans who today claim to be concerned about the ability of students and their families to afford college tuition proudly cast their vote two weeks ago for a budget reconciliation bill that would take direct aim at student loan programs and other vital student aid.”
   
• Rep. Lou Correa noted that when he went to school at Cal State Fullerton, his tuition cost was nothing thanks to Pell grants, which Republicans are cutting: “By the way, my tuition then was zero. Pell grant, Pell grant, paid for everything, and I skipped a few meals to make it happen. Here we are today, discussing Harvard, Brown—I have to go back and tell my constituents that the two to three hours spent here today is going to make a big difference in their life. I will tell you what they’re looking at: Pell grants, Pell grants, cutting of Pell grants, school loans. They want to know how they can also get the opportunity to go to college.”
   
• Democratic witness Dr. Morgan said: “The Republican budget is going to have drastic negative impacts on the cost of higher education for most students in this country […] It’s going to cut Pell grants for millions of students, making them foot the bill for more of college. It’s going to make student loans more expensive to repay on the back end. It caps the amount of federal student loans that people can take on, but not the amount of tuition, meaning that more people are going to have to take on private student loans to cover that gap.”
   
• Ranking Member Raskin asked Republican witness Mr. Shieh if he would “use your platform here today to oppose the major cuts in Pell grants, which have allowed an avenue for upward mobility and education for young people, that are built into the current tax bill?” Mr. Shieh refused to condemn the GOP’s cuts to students’ financial aid.
   
• Rep. García asked Dr. Morgan a series of yes-or-no questions on Trump’s assault on education: “Does gutting the Department of Education lower tuition costs?” Dr. Morgan replied, “It does not.” “Does cutting research funding for universities lower tuition costs?” Dr. Morgan replied, “It does not.” “Does cutting financial aid programs and student debt relief lower tuition costs?” Dr. Morgan replied, “It does not.” “Does suppressing free speech and enforcing a Trump-approved ideology lower tuition costs?” Dr. Morgan replied, “It does not.”