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What’s the newest? After canceling $400 million in federal grants for Columbia College final week, Trump officers sent a letter demanding the college make sweeping modifications to its insurance policies and governance or threat dropping the remainder of its federal cash.
What are the calls for? Broadly, to punish protesters of Israel’s battle in Gaza severely, with expulsions or years-long suspensions.
The letter, from Trump’s “Process Pressure to Fight Anti-Semitism,” additionally calls for Columbia put the faculty president’s workplace immediately accountable for self-discipline, make a plan to carry scholar teams “accountable,” write new guidelines to forestall “disruption” of campus life by protests, take the Center Jap Research division away from its present management, and fully overhaul its admissions course of.
Is that this authorized? No, in response to Cornell law professor Michael Dorf. The federal authorities can lower off funding to punish civil rights violations, however solely after a prolonged course of. To this point, although, Columbia hasn’t challenged this in courtroom, hoping as an alternative to hunt a compromise — and maybe fearing a lawsuit would set off even worse retribution.
Why is that this occurring? Secretary of Training Linda McMahon has claimed that, because the protests started, Jewish college students at Columbia “have confronted relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses” and that college officers’ purported inaction in defending them quantities to a violation of civil rights regulation. Critics argue, although, that it is a blatant effort to make use of federal energy to relax criticism of Israel.
That is additionally half of a bigger Trump administration technique of utilizing federal funds as leverage towards universities they view as incubators of “woke” progressivism. Again in 2021, Senate candidate JD Vance said it was time to “truthfully and aggressively assault the colleges on this nation.” Extra not too long ago, activist Christopher Rufo called for utilizing the cut-off of federal funds to place universities into “an existential terror” and higher “self-discipline” them.
And with that, it’s time to sign off…
Issues on Earth could also be messy, however have you ever seen the information that astronomers have discovered greater than 100 new moons round Saturn? Which means Saturn now has 274 moons, placing it effectively forward of Jupiter (95) in our photo voltaic system’s moon energy rating.
