(The Center Square)– Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake wants to look into federal funding at elite universities if she is elected to the United States Senate come November 2024.
Lake sat down for a wide-ranging policy interview with The Center Square, where she was asked about issues ranging from education, tribal issues, and the economy.
“I think our universities need to concentrate on educating our young generation. Truly educating, not indoctrinating, not forcing CRT not forcing this DEI garbage,” Lake said.
Scrutiny on university presidents has intensified in the wake of a congressional hearing on antisemitism with Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth. Magill resigned and Gay is now facing calls to step down amid both her controversial remarks about antisemitism and a plagiarism scandal.
Despite being private universities, they still receive millions from the federal government. For example, Harvard University received $676 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2023, according to its financial overview.
“We need to look at the federal funding going into these almost indoctrination camps,” Lake added.
“It’s outrageous what they’re doing to our kids on these universities. That those presidents from these Ivy League schools could not stand up and speak out against a genocide is appalling. And we do need to look at how we’re spending federal money in these universities because they’re not churning out a quality education for our young people. Just the opposite,” she said.
Lake, who previously ran for governor in 2022, was also asked about her goals when it comes to Arizona’s tribal communities, which play an important role in the state’s governmental dynamic.
“When you really think about the 22 tribes, we are almost a melting pot because so many people actually move here from all over the country and really all over the world. People love Arizona. And so, I wanna have a great relationship with them.”
“A lot of people believe that if you’re not a Democrat, you can’t have a good relationship with the tribes. I disagree with that. The people who live on our various Indian tribes and reservations want to have security,” she said. “They want to make sure that the drugs aren’t taking the lives of their children. They want to have safe streets, and they want to have the issues that are plaguing them to be solved. So I think just like other Arizonans, we can solve problems with common sense, America First policies.”
However, one of the issues heavily impacting the tribes and Arizonans as a whole is water policy. As much of the issue ties into federal policy, senators often play a role in water issues, such as Colorado River usage. Lake said that she’s hoping other methods to increase water access for the state will be employed.
“We need to look at things like desalination. All of Israel’s water comes from desalination. We can do that here. But access to getting the water is critical and the infrastructure needs to be placed and funded to do that. So much of our federal funding though, there’s so much red tape that goes through it. And there’s also so much waste where we fund something and then we wonder, does the problem ever get solved?” the Republican said.
“And so we need to make sure there’s great oversight in that kind of funding, but every Arizonan, regardless of where they live, should have access to clean, fresh water,” she continued.
In regards to the economy, The Center Square asked how she would approach an economic downturn or national emergency, like another pandemic, that would prompt calls for another government stimulus. Many Republicans have credited recent high government spending bills to inflation.
“Usually when there’s a big catastrophic situation, a lot of bad decisions are made because we try to have the government come in and fix everything. So sometimes it almost takes a deep breath, slow down, maybe do something very small initially just to get people through, and then let’s reassess,” she said. “Because a lot of the things that happened during COVID, it was almost done in a panic. Now we look back at it and go, this was outrageous of the spending that was happening, and it’s gonna hurt our economy for decades to come.”
Lake is widely expected to win the Republican nomination for Senate, and she will likely face off against Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego. Incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who’s now an independent after leaving the Democratic Party last year, has not said yet whether or not she’ll seek re-election.
An extended video version of Lake’s interview with The Center Square will be released at a later date.
As James Brown used to say, it’s called “Paying the cost to be the boss”. Only in Democrat run American government do WE THE PEOPLE who pay the cost, never get to be the Boss, and get the kind of integrity education that leads to individual American SELF-Governing capability that alone produces workable, forms of Collective Self-Government. Unless that Harvard Presidential misfit, elevated solely on race and gender, like Biden was elevated on unachievable promises, both who have only promoted hatred of true American equality with their attempts at respective University and government forced equity, are removed form office post haste, WE THE PEOPLE should remove all federal funding from a Harvard University whose past student donations are more than enough to keep their tattered ideologically decayed educational doors open, and their treasonous ideologies alive to corrupt the fair minds of our American youth, where the teaching of qualities like “intuition” are left behind and only government paid tuition becomes primary.
If “The greatest task of American womanhood and Universities is to insure and protect the creation of quality American Human beings.”, then University Presidents, Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth are examples of pure failures, both as administrators and as women. No nourishing milk of human kindness here, just dried up ideological breast works in the defensive democrat party warfare that creates bastions of division and social confusion.
It ain’t (sorry, a Slo Joe/Joke moment) just a demoncrapic thing. The federal support for Harvard started in 1934. We’ve had many repo presidents and repo controlled congresses since then. And NOTHING has happened to end the federal support. Both parties are complicit and responsible.
WE SHOULDN’T jhave ever STARTED federally funding them, SINCE THEY ARE private institutions!
I agree with Lake. NO private university, business, company should get federal funding. Let the market (like we the people/customers) decide you survives and who doesn’t. That called the free market and capitalism.
Government fund schools because cost so high that tuition would be out of reach for most. Alternative would be only a few would have access to institutions of higher learning. Have to teach the real. We’d be really dishonest to teach a made-up false curriculum. No comment on the Native American situation. She sounds OK but we’ll see. Native Americans having rough time getting theirs. Like the Hollywood script in movie series “Hell on Wheels” ” Did you buy it? did you trade for it?, then how is it yours?” No comment on Native American issues.