Tonight in Your Rights: Trump's 'tyranny' on education
Federal judges have taken swift action against Trump's radical anti-education agenda.
By showing you the bigger picture, we reveal how organized pushback gets results.
The day after Donald Trump tried to block Harvard from enrolling international students, the university’s former president Larry Summers called the move the “stuff of tyranny.”
Hours later, a federal judge halted that plan in just one of a series of orders against the Trump administration’s attacks on education.
In the span of two days, three federal judges have pushed back against the administration’s anti-education agenda, whether Trump’s target was Harvard University, medical research involving transgender people, or public schools generally.
An online petition in support of Harvard has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures by press time.
“The foundation for our democracy”
Trump’s Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, his former pro-wrestling colleague, received a judicial smackdown over her attempt to “effectively dismantle” the department that she leads.
In an 88-page ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun articulated the need to stop to that plan: “It is well established that an educated citizenry provides the foundation for our democracy.”
Judge Joun found that the Trump administration likely violated the separation of powers, acted outside the Constitution, and flouted the Administrative Procedures Act, in trying to use executive fiat to shut down an agency created by Congress.
She wrote:
“Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals (obtaining Congressional approval to shut down the Department) are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency). There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions. Not only is there no evidence that Defendants are pursuing a “legislative goal” or otherwise working with Congress to reach a resolution, but there is also no evidence that the [reduction in force] has actually made the Department more efficient. Rather, the record is replete with evidence of the opposite. Consolidated Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the Department will not be able to carry out its statutory functions—and in some cases, is already unable to do so—and Defendants have proffered no evidence to the contrary. Defendants fail to understand Plaintiffs’ claims which is evident by their attempt to frame this case as an unlawful terminations employment action.”
You can read the ruling in full here.
“A textbook example of viewpoint discrimination”
Today, two different federal judges blocked Trump’s attempts to meddle in the affairs of Harvard University.
One entered a temporary restraining order against Trump’s bid to block the university from enrolling international students.
Another stopped Trump’s attempt to censor peer-reviewed research involving the health of transgender and gender-nonconforming people from the federal government’s online patient-safety resource.
U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin ordered the government to restore the articles of Harvard Medical School physicians and scholars Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce to the Patient Safety Network, also known as PSNet.
Removing their works, the judge found, was a “textbook example of viewpoint discrimination.”
“This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” Judge Sorokin wrote in a 28-page order.
Mahmoud Khalil gets to hold his son
Yesterday, detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was finally able to hold his newborn son in an immigration detention center in Louisiana, over the government’s objections.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied Khalil’s request to attend his son’s birth on April 21.
A federal judge ordered Khalil to be allowed the visit with his wife, son and counsel before his immigration hearing in the Bayou State on Thursday.
His wife Noor Abdalla told The Associated Press that the government’s position was more than “heartless”: “It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse.”
The father-and-son meeting also serves as a poignant symbol of the Trump administration’s failed attempts to attack, degrade, and censor students and educational institutions — because it would not have occurred without Trump’s defeat in court.
I am just perplexed on why would this administration wants to destroy Harvard. Even if Harvard wins all their lawsuits- what foreign student would want to attend school here. What about all the alumni who proudly defend their alma mater? I keep thinking about Bill Ackman- does he want Harvard destroyed? I think it is hilarious that the Trump administration would take on a university that has one of the best law schools in the world. This administration pretends to fight antisemitism while they dine with white supremacists .
Oh my God, Adam. That creature is so grotesque. She looks a lot like Tammy Faye Baker