Senate Appropriations committee members sparred on Thursday over the Trump administration’s sweeping moves to combat campus antisemitism, including withholding hundreds of millions of dollars from some elite institutions.

The debate was sparked by an amendment proposed by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) that would prevent the administration from spending any funding on the Office for Civil Rights until the Department of Education inspector general certifies that enforcement actions targeting colleges and universities are being carried out in accordance with law and regulation.

The amendment was voted down along party lines. It’s unclear at this point how much funding the bill — which has not yet been released in full — actually provides for the Office for Civil Rights. The Trump administration had requested substantial cuts to the office’s budget.

Murphy said that the actions taken by the Office for Civil Rights have been undertaken “without going through any of the prescribed processes that we have put in law and previous administrations have put in regulation,” to allow schools and the public to contest and litigate against the decisions before losing federal funding.

“I think the extraordinary ways this administration is ignoring the law or going around the law requires us to do due diligence in making sure that when we appropriate money it gets used for the proper purposes,” Murphy said.

He called the administration’s suspension of funding to Harvard University particularly egregious, specifically highlighting the administration’s demand for greater viewpoint diversity in Harvard’s faculty. 

Murphy argued — as he has previously — that there are no provisions in federal law that give the government any authority to condition funding on the “viewpoint diversity” of the faculty.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the ranking member of the subcommittee responsible for Department of Education funding, pushed back, describing the administration’s actions as necessary and proper to counter “rampant” antisemitism on campuses and address a lack of action by the prior administration.

“Some of those higher education institutions have come to the table with the administration and said, ‘Yes, we’re gonna make changes, and that’s because of the violations of the office of what is under the Office of Civil Rights Under Title VI,’” Capito said. “Your amendment would halt the work of the Office of Civil Rights.”

Capito warned that any pause in Office for Civil Rights activities would likely drag on significantly.

She compared the situation on college campuses to the Nazi regime in World War II.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is Jewish, condemned the administration’s actions.

“I utterly reject this administration’s cynical exploitation of this issue, which it uses as a fig leaf to take control of and impose its will on institutions of higher education and other critics,” Ossoff said.

During the committee meeting, Democrats emphasized that the Department of Education funding bill as a whole defied Trump’s wishes to defund and dismantle key parts of the department.