UC Berkeley Under Lockdown, Protests Over Yiannopoulos Event, Trump Threatens Federal Funds Freeze.

Apparently his name is enough to enrage individuals so we will refrain from posting a picture of Milo Yiannopoulos. Tonight another university campus is in turmoil over the allowance of Milo to hold an event for followers of the polarizing Breitbart News editor.  "Yiannopoulos was making the last stop of a tour aimed at defying what he calls an epidemic of political correctness on college campuses."

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UC Berkely was put under lockdown after protestors approached and started breaking into the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building where Yiannopoulos was to speak. 

At about 6:20 p.m., UC campus police announced that the event had been canceled. Officers ordered the crowd to disperse, calling it an unlawful assembly.

After the smoke cleared, more people came out against the protests and the violence citing that free speech was not defended.  In this video from USA Today, we hear from several speaking against the violence.

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President Donald Trump’s threat early Thursday to pull federal funding from the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus over violent protests against a controversial speaker may sound serious, but it is essentially toothless, experts said.

Protests erupted on campus late Wednesday and the university canceled a scheduled speech by conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-proclaimed "troll" and editor for the conservative Breitbart News.

In response, Trump tweeted the statement below with a quick response from the California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a university regent.

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Whichever side you are on, it seems to be a mess. 

Can we say it is black and white and Free Speech was squelched?

Can we say a very unpopular speaker was shut down and should have never been allowed to speak? 

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Can we say Trump should have kept Attorney General Yates so he knows what is legal and what is not?

 

“There is currently no federal law that would allow the federal government to deny funding to an institution of higher education because they prohibited someone from speaking on campus,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the Washington, D.C-based American Council on Education (ACE), which represents college presidents.

 

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h/t:  sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com, USA Today

 

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