US judge blasts President for ‘ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities’
For Donald Trump, the courtroom losses are now stacking up. Day after day, his efforts to bend the country to his will are rejected by judges. And day after day, the White House proffers fresh grist for the Supreme Court’s mill, as the President seeks relief at the hands of the country’s ultimate judicial bench.
Harvard University is the latest dragon to have slowed, if not yet entirely slayed, the Trump administration’s march. A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the President to reverse immediately more than $2.2bn (£1.6bn) in research funding cuts, using uncompromising language to describe Trump’s scorched earth battle against the Ivy League institution.
Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the White House had engaged in illegal retaliation after Harvard rejected Trump’s demands to change its governing policies and force its faculty and administrative staff to be vetted for “woke” viewpoints. She also argued forcefully that Trump used pro-Palestinian protests on Harvard’s campus as a lever, illegally to try and control the university’s activities.
She assessed the government “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities”. She ruled that the funding cuts were “arbitrary and capricious”, and that Trump’s claim to be cracking down on campus antisemitism was deliberately designed to obscure an assault on the “defendants’ power and political views”.
The court loss came on the very same day that the White House lodged an appeal at the Supreme Court against another ruling: last week’s 7-4 judgment by a federal appeals court that Trump acted illegally in April when he unveiled his so-called “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs on trading partners worldwide, including the UK.
The judges upheld a lower court ruling that Trump had no justification for implementing his tariffs via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that he cited in order to sideline Congress. Rejecting the argument that a trading or national security “emergency” existed, the court argued that Trump flagrantly overstepped his authority. The setting of tariffs, it ruled, is a “core Congressional power”, although the judges left the tariffs in place until 14 October, affording the White House a chance to launch its appeal.
Trump is now warning that if the Supreme Court strikes the tariffs down, “it would be a total disaster for our country”. He called last week’s ruling “very shocking” and the work of a “liberal court”, adding that “…without the tariffs, this country is in serious, serious trouble”.
Certainly any loss at the Supreme Court would complicate Trump’s ability to deliver on the promises he has made to his “Make America Great Again” faithful. They have been told that eventually, tariff revenues will be so significant that he will scrap federal income tax, funding the government instead via a promised – but still non-existent – “External Revenue Service”. If the tariffs are struck down, that pledge would be upturned and instead his government would have to refund billions of duties already collected from US importers.
Also dogging Trump’s footsteps as autumn gets under way is his failure to deliver on his promised transparency over documents pertaining to disgraced and deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. Fox News and the other right-wing TV and streaming networks carried non-stop live coverage of Wednesday’s effort by Epstein survivors to force the full release of files that Trump pledged last year on the campaign trail.
Survivors took to the steps of the US Capitol to urge lawmakers to pass legislation requiring the files’ release. “We are not going away, we are not going to be quiet, and we are not going to give up,” said Annie Farmer, a victim who testified at jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial.
Prominent Republicans including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky are now are joining Democrats and demanding full transparency over the files.
Trump, at the White House, dismissed Wednesday’s event as a “Democrat hoax”, but he is now on notice that his numerous efforts to distract his followers’ attention away from the issue have entirely failed.
The White House may now be hoping that the pomp and circumstance of Trump’s state visit to the UK this month affords the President a fresh opportunity to change the subject, and persuade Americans that he’s on the right track. But much now hinges on two separate courts: the Supreme Court, where so many of his initiatives will now be adjudicated, and the court of public opinion, where currently he is losing substantial ground.
