Trump administration reportedly seeks fines from universities including Harvard
Good morning and welcome to the US politics blog.
We’re starting today with a new report from the Wall Street Journal saying that the Trump administration is seeking fines from other universities after Columbia agreed to pay more than $220m this week.
The White House aims to fine several universities it accuses of failing to stop antisemitism on campus, including from Harvard University, in exchange for access to federal funding, according to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting.
The Trump administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown – but Harvard is seen as a key target.
Stick with us today as we bring you all the latest lines from Washington and beyond.
Key events
Analysis: Trump cranks up distraction machine but focus refuses to budge from Epstein
David Smith
Donald Trump displayed the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Sitting in the Oval Office, he was asked by a reporter about the justice department’s hunt for evidence about the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “I don’t really follow that too much,” he said. “It’s sort of a witch-hunt.”
And then the pivot: “The witch-hunt you should be talking about is that they caught President Obama absolutely cold.” Trump was claiming a plot by Barack Obama to rig the 2016 election, accusing his predecessor of “treason”. For good measure he warned: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people.”
Why this and why now? It is not much of a mystery. Trump, who once claimed that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, has shot himself in the foot. His support base is in open revolt over his failure to release files relating to the convicted sex offender Epstein and a rumoured list of his elite clients.
The president’s solution is to reach for a very familiar playbook: distract, distract, distract.
It worked for him during his biggest crisis in the 2016 election campaign. On the same day that an Access Hollywood tape emerged in which Trump was recorded making lewd comments about women, his campaign seized on the WikiLeaks release of thousands of emails hacked from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Trump survived and went on to win the election.
Since then, whenever he lands in trouble, his fans have been eager to help him turn the page. But the Epstein saga cuts into Trump’s core political identity as the slayer of the deep state. He is once again throwing out numerous shiny objects but they are losing their shine.
Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, observes:
It is the distraction machine that has worked in the past breaking down – trying the old favourites and not getting much traction. What’s happened is like massive whiplash, which happens when you’re in some sort of moving vehicle and it’s going forward, often at a pretty high speed, and you suddenly crash into something and your neck jerks back often with very dire consequences.
Democratic lawmakers seek answers from homeland security head about masked Ice agents
José Olivares
Democratic members of Congress are pressing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reveal information about immigration officers’ practice of wearing masks and concealing their identities, according to a letter viewed by the Guardian.
The letter marks another step in pushes by US lawmakers to require immigration officials to identify themselves during arrest operations, especially when agents are masked, a practice that has sparked outrage among civil rights groups.
Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the powerful committee on oversight and government reform, along with representative Summer Lee, wrote to DHS secretary Kristi Noem pressing for “memoranda, directives, guidance, communications” regarding immigration officers’ use of masks and unmarked cars for immigration operations.
For every person within the United States, the Fourth Amendment guarantees protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment guarantees a right to due process under the law.
In direct violation of these principles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allowed its agents – primarily from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) – to conceal their identities and use unmarked vehicles while conducting immigration enforcement activities.
In recent months, as the Trump administration has escalated immigration enforcement operations, arrests, detention and deportations, the DHS and Ice have been relentlessly criticized for their agents’ use of masks and unmarked cars.
The two Democrats mention a number of examples, from the past few months under the Trump administration, in which immigration officials have hidden their identities while conducting immigration arrests and operations. They also mention a recent example, originally reported by the Intercept, in which two immigration judges in New York concealed the identities of government attorneys pushing to deport people.
This causes a dangerous erosion of public trust, due process, and transparency in law enforcement. These tactics contradict longstanding democratic principles such as the public’s right to accountability from those who enforce the law and pave the way for increased crime, making our communities less safe.
Fed says its ‘grateful’ for Trump’s encouragement to complete renovation
The Federal Reserve has said that it was “grateful” for Donald Trump’s encouragement to complete its renovation project and that it “looked forward” to seeing the project through to completion.
“We remain committed to continuing to be careful stewards of these resources as we see the project through to completion,” it said in a statement, a day after the president made a rare visit to the US central bank.
Trump tried and failed to ambush Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, during an on-camera exchange (clip below) over the cost of the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington yesterday.
Following his tour, Trump called the renovation “luxurious” but said he was not inclined to take the unprecedented step of firing Powell. “Because to do that is a big move and I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said. “And I believe that he’s going do the right thing. I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing.”
Alice Speri
Columbia University’s deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.
David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote.
“The means being used to push through these reforms are as unprincipled as they are unprecedented. Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself,” Pozen continued.
Not all Columbia affiliates were as critical. The Stand Columbia Society, a group of alumni, students and faculty that have for months championed some of the same reforms demanded by the Trump administration, welcomed the announcement.
“The Stand Columbia Society believes this agreement represents an excellent outcome that restores research funding, facilitates real structural reforms, and preserves core principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy,” they wrote. “We have been steadfast and consistent on what is the right thing to do, and today, both Columbia’s leaders and the federal government deserve credit for achieving this result.”
The Trump administration’s goal of fining other universities comes after a major deal was struck this week with Columbia University. The deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, is seen as a precedent for what the White House expects in future deals.
From our Wednesday night report:
Under the agreement, Columbia will pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government, the university said. It will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” the acting university president, Claire Shipman, said.
The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Gaza war that began in October 2023.
You can read the full report here:
Trump administration reportedly seeks fines from universities including Harvard
Good morning and welcome to the US politics blog.
We’re starting today with a new report from the Wall Street Journal saying that the Trump administration is seeking fines from other universities after Columbia agreed to pay more than $220m this week.
The White House aims to fine several universities it accuses of failing to stop antisemitism on campus, including from Harvard University, in exchange for access to federal funding, according to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting.
The Trump administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown – but Harvard is seen as a key target.
Stick with us today as we bring you all the latest lines from Washington and beyond.
