BY JOHN K. WILSON

At 4:07pm ET today, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order imposing “free inquiry” on college campuses. In reality, this hypocritical order by an open enemy of free expression is nothing but a political tool that Trump wants to use to silence his ideological opponents.

The Executive Order requires public colleges to follow the First Amendment, which they’re already obligated to do. But now this will follow the interpretation of Trump officials, not the courts, to dictate what the First Amendment means.

The Trump Administration needed to deal with the problem that the colleges with the worst speech codes are conservative religious colleges. The solution was to include a hypocritical rule in the Executive Order that says private colleges will be judged only by “compliance with stated institutional policies.” Since conservative colleges openly state that they suppress free speech, they will be immune from any action (not that any Trump official would ever dare to punish a conservative college).

By contrast, if a more liberal private college aspires to protect free speech, they can have their federal funds taken away based on a Republican bureaucrat’s regulatory interpretation of the campus’ values. This Executive Order will tend to reduce free speech at private colleges, because colleges will have an incentive to remove any promises to protect free speech in order to avoid being vulnerable to federal funding cutbacks. And if private colleges have policies that provide stronger protections for free speech than the First Amendment (as many do), they can lose federal funding even if they meet First Amendment standards.

Exactly who will decide when a college is violating the freedom of speech required by this Executive Order? Normally, one would expect the professional civil servants at the Department of Education to make this determination. But last year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos expressed opposition to using “government muscle” on campus free speech issues: “A solution won’t come from defunding an institution of learning.” That may explain why this Executive Order gives the Department of Education no power to evaluate colleges.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Cabinet agencies will be free to draw up their own guidelines that could outline what the administration considers noncompliance with the First Amendment, a senior administration official said.”

That’s terrible enough to imagine, a kind of free-for-all of political retaliation against colleges. But Trump’s Executive Order is actually worse: It says that a dozen different agencies will punish colleges “in coordination with” the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, a position that has nothing to do with campus free speech. So who is the Director of the OMB? It’s Mick Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s acting chief of staff and a man who takes orders directly from Trump. This will be a nightmare for colleges, to know that their research funding can be revoked at the whim of Trump’s right-hand man.

It’s also a direct attack on the academic freedom of faculty, who can have their research funding cut off and their research stopped because Trump thinks their college didn’t do enough to punish some left-wing protester even though that has nothing to do with the research.

So how will the Trump Administration define this new regulation for all colleges getting federal research funds to promote free speech?

If the signing event for the Executive Order is any indication, this Executive Order will used by Trump as a political tool to punish his opponents and support conservative voices only.

Noting that the federal government spends $35 billion annually on contracts with colleges, Trump announced: “All of that money is now at stake.” Trump promised his audience of conservative students, “If a college or university does not allow you to speak, we will not give them money.”

It’s clear that Trump is not really seeking to protect free speech, but to protect only conservative speech and actually suppress leftist speech whenever possible.

At the signing ceremony for the Executive Order (where apparently none of the many leftists silenced on college campuses were invited to attend), Trump asked three conservative students to come to the podium and speak. One of the three primary cases Trump used to illustrate what his Executive Order is meant to address was the example of Kaitlyn Mullen, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln student who Trump noted was “berated and cursed at” while tabling for Turning Point USA. Mullen declared, “no other student should have to go through what I went through on campus.” Trump’s hypocritical idea of “free speech” is to punish campuses if they allow conservatives to be “berated” by anyone.

Last year, the AAUP censured the administration of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln for its extreme action in arbitrarily firing the adjunct instructor who dared to criticize a conservative.

So what is Trump saying? If a conservative on campus is harshly criticized, and even if administrators violate campus policies and fire the leftist instructor, that will not be sufficient—you will still be used as an example of colleges that should be financially punished by Republican regulators. This is a shocking call by Trump to use federal funds to impose a regime of mass censorship against the left on campus.

The AAUP is asking for signatures in opposition to Trump’s Executive Order.

Trump’s Executive Order uses government funds as a tool to demand repression of the left on campus, and if Trump actually follows through with his promises, it could be the beginning of an ominous attack on campus free speech under the pretense of defending free speech.