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    Mamdani attends Israelis for Peace vigil after his 7 October statement draws ire from Israel

    The New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday evening attended a vigil in Manhattan convened by Israelis for Peace, an anti-occupation group of Israelis in New York who have rallied weekly since 2023 to call for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages.Sitting in Union Square alongside New York City comptroller Brad Lander, his one-time rival for the Democratic nomination who has been campaigning for him, Mamdani listened as speakers at the event – which marked the two-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel – called for an end to the killing and to Israel’s occupation, and for equal rights for Palestinians.Earlier in the day, Mamdani drew ire from Israel over his statement on the anniversary in which he commemorated both the Israeli victims from that day and Palestinian victims from Israel’s ensuing war on Gaza.“Two years ago today, Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more. I mourn these lives and pray for the safe return of every hostage still held and for every family whose lives were torn apart by these atrocities,” Mamdani said in the statement on Tuesday.He denounced Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his government for launching a “genocidal war” in Gaza as well. He also accused the US government of being “complicit”.“A death toll that now far exceeds 67,000; with the Israeli military bombing homes, hospitals, and schools into rubble,” Mamdani wrote. “Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief itself has run out of language. I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered.”He said the last two years had “demonstrated the very worst of humanity” and called for an end to Israeli “occupation and apartheid”.Mamdani’s statement prompted a sharp rebuke from the Israeli foreign ministry on X, accusing him of “acting as a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda” and “spreading Hamas’s fake genocide campaign”.“By repeating Hamas’s lies, he excuses terror and normalizes antisemitism. He stands with Jews only when they are dead. Shameful,” the post said.Israel stands widely accused of committing genocide in Gaza, where its ongoing military assault has killed tens of thousands of civilians, some 20,000 of them children, caused famine and mass starvation, and razed much of the Palestinian territory. Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.Mamdani is no stranger to criticism for his views on the Israeli government and its war in Gaza, and the issue has proved a major flashpoint in the mayoral race.He has won significant support from certain segments of the Jewish community particularly among younger and more progressive voters, and faces stronger opposition from more conservative groups. A recent Marist poll found 35% of Jewish voters supported Mamdani, as does the same proportion supporting Cuomo. (The poll was taken before Eric Adams dropped out of the race.)The democratic socialist has faced criticism over his past refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”, which some view as a call to violence. He has since said he would discourage use of the phrase. He also recently reiterated his intention to order the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu should he travel to New York.His October 7 statement on Tuesday attracted pushback from other pro-Israel voices. David Frum, a writer at the Atlantic and former speechwriter for George W Bush, wrote on X: “The chilly formulaic language about the 10/7 atrocity … the intense angry passion of the denunciation of Israel’s self-defense … together they arrestingly reveal what the author cares about and what/who he does not care about.”Fox News anchor David Asman called the statement “obscene”. He wrote on X: “The ‘very worst of mankind’ is what Mamdani supporters are on the streets today celebrating…‘honoring’ the beasts responsible for Oct 7. He supports a ‘global intifada,’ responsible for 9/11 and Oct 7. He should not be mayor of a city hit so hard by Jihadists.”Noa Yachot contributed reporting More

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    White House says furloughed federal workers not entitled to back pay amid shutdown

    The White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) is arguing that federal workers who are furloughed amid the ongoing government shutdown are not entitled to back pay.In a draft memo first obtained by Axios, OMB argued that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019 would not guarantee furloughed workers back pay and that said funds must be set aside by Congress.“The legislation that ends the current lapse in appropriations must include express language appropriating funds for back pay for furloughed employees, or such payments cannot be made,” said Mark Paoletta, OMB’s general counsel, in a draft addressed to White House budget director Russell Vought, the Washington Post reported.The OMB previously revised a shutdown guidance document on Friday to remove reference to the GEFTA Act, reported Government Executive, a media site reporting on the US executive branch.Donald Trump previously signed GEFTA into law after the 2019 government shutdown, which lasted for 35 days. While many understood the law to automatically guarantee pay for federal workers, the White House’s OMB is arguing against that interpretation, suggesting that the law only created the conditions for back pay.Trump and other Republicans have not confirmed if workers would be paid when the government reopens. When asked about the White House’s stance on back payment for federal workers, Trump said “it depends who we’re talking about” during comments in the Oval Office on TuesdayTrump also added that he planned to announce additional government programs that will be permanently eliminated as the shutdown continues as well as possible layoffs, CNN reported.House speaker Mike Johnson said that federal workers affected by the shutdown should receive back pay, but noted that “some legal analysts [are] saying that [back payments] may not be appropriate or necessary, in terms of the law requiring that back pay be provided,” the Hill reported.Several Republicans have said that questions on back pay should put pressure on congressional Democrats to support a continuing resolution to reopen the government.Meanwhile, Democrats have slammed the reinterpretation of GEFTA as unlawful. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, which is home to thousands of federal workers, said any suggestion of withheld back pay is “more fear mongering from a president who wants a blank check for lawlessness”.Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, called the latest reinterpretation “lawless”. “They’re plotting to try and rob furloughed federal workers of backpay at the end of this shutdown,” said Murray during Senate floor remarks. “This flies in the face of the plain text of the law, which could not be more clear.”An estimated 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed during the federal government shutdown, now in its seventh day, the Post reported citing congressional bookkeepers. More

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    Bondi spars over Epstein but stays silent on Comey: takeaways from a tense hearing

    In an often tense hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, stood accused by Democrats of weaponizing the US Department of Justice, “fundamentally transforming” the department, and leaving “an enormous stain on American history” that it will take “decades to recover [from]”.Bondi criticized Democratic lawmakers in personal terms as she faced questions over the department’s enforcement efforts in Democratic-led cities, her mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and inquiries into Donald Trump’s political adversaries. Here are the key takeaways from Bondi’s appearance.1. Democrats criticized Trump’s weaponization of the justice departmentBondi faced questions about her tenure at the department, as Democratic senators condemned the Trump administration for weaponizing the DoJ to investigate and prosecute Trump’s political enemies.“Our nation’s top law-enforcement agency has become a shield for the president and his political allies when they engage in misconduct,” Dick Durbin said. Durbin called Lindsey Halligan, the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, part of a “network of unqualified mega-loyalists masquerading as federal prosecutors”.“Attorney General Bondi: in eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the justice department and left an enormous stain on American history. It will take decades to recover,” Durbin said.When asked by Amy Klobuchar whether she saw the president’s post on Truth Social, urging her to prosecute his political adversaries such as James Comey and Letitia James, as a “directive”, Bondi evaded the question.“President Trump is the most transparent president in American history,” Bondi said.She refused to “discuss personnel issues”, when Klobuchar asked about Bondi’s reported pushback to the president’s pressure campaign to remove Erik Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor. Bondi also refused to discuss the case against Comey, after Siebert said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the former FBI director.Adam Schiff said that the department, under Bondi’s leadership, had become Trump’s “personal sword and shield to go after his ever growing list of political enemies and to protect himself, his allies and associates”.Schiff is a noted adversary of the president, and served on the House select committee that investigated the Capitol insurrection. Bondi snapped at him when she refused to answer questions about the allegations against Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, for allegedly accepting $50,000 in bribes before Trump took office: “Deputy attorney general [Todd] Blanche and [FBI] director [Kash] Patel said that there was no evidence that Tom Homan committed a crime, yet now you’re putting his picture up to slander him.“If you worked for me, you would have been fired,” Bondi continued. “Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?”2. Bondi refused to discuss the arrest of James ComeyIn a line of questioning by Richard Blumenthal, Bondi refused to discuss or disclose any conversations she may have had with the president in the lead-up to the indictment of Comey last month. Blumenthal said Bondi attended a dinner with Donald Trump, just days before the former FBI director was criminally charged.Bondi instead pushed back against the Democratic senator from Connecticut. “I find it so interesting that you didn’t bring any of this up during President Biden’s administration, when he was doing everything to protect Hunter Biden, his son,” she said.3. Bondi and Durbin sparred over EpsteinDurbin grilled Bondi as to why she made a public claim that the Epstein “client list” was “sitting” on her desk for review earlier this year, only to “produce already public information and no client list”.Bondi pushed back, saying she had “yet to review” the documents, and reaffirmed that there was no Epstein client list.Bondi sparred with Durbin, questioning why he “refused repeated Republican requests to release the Epstein flight logs in 2023 and 2024”. Durbin said Bondi’s claims were not accurate.“I did not refuse. One of the senators here wished to produce those logs, and I asked her to put it in writing, and she never did,” Durbin said, apparently referring to his Republican colleague Marsha Blackburn.4. Republicans focused on ‘Arctic Frost’ revelationsPam Bondi said that Operation Arctic Frost – an intelligence-gathering effort that led to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election – was “an unconstitutional, undemocratic abuse of power”.On Monday, several Republican lawmakers said the FBI gathered phone records from Republican senators. These records were obtained through a grand jury. Republicans have called this move part of the wider pattern of political weaponization of the previous administration.“This is the kind of conduct that shattered the American people’s faith in our government,” Bondi said at the hearing. “Our FBI is targeting violent criminals, child predators and other law breakers, not sitting senators who happen to be from the wrong political party.”Republican Josh Hawley also chimed in. “I’ve heard them say that Joe Biden never targeted his political enemies,” he said. “Huh? That’s interesting, because I could have sworn that yesterday we learned that the FBI tapped my phone.”5. Bondi said ‘national guard are on the way to Chicago’In a heated exchange with Durbin, Bondi refused to answer a question about whether she was consulted about Trump’s decision to send national guard troops to Illinois – the state that Durbin represents.“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you,” Bondi said, after declining to discuss internal conversations with the White House.“I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. Currently the national guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.” More

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    Six former US surgeons general warn RFK Jr is ‘endangering nation’s health’

    Six former US surgeons general – the top medical posting in Washington – warned in an opinion column published on Tuesday that policy changes enacted by the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, are “endangering the health of the nation”.The surgeons general – Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello and David Satcher – who served under both Republican and Democrat administrations, identified changes in vaccine policy, medical research funding, a shift in priorities from rationality to ideology, plunging morale, and changes to staffing as areas of concern.Referring to their oaths of office, both Hippocratic as physicians and as public servants, the former officials wrote in the Washington Post that they felt “compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation”.“Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored,” they said, adding that they could not ignore the “profound, immediate and unprecedented threat” of his policies.Under a “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) agenda, Kennedy has accelerated vaccine policy changes despite opposition from scientists, including narrowing eligibility for Covid-19 vaccine shots and dismissing members of a vaccine advisory panel.He has cut federal funding for mRNA vaccine research for respiratory illnesses and instituted a review of vaccine recommendations. Kennedy also sought the dismissal of Dr Susan Monarez, former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Monarez testified before Congress last month that her firing by Donald Trump came after refusing a request from Kennedy to dismiss CDC vaccine experts “without cause”.Kennedy said in June that waning public trust in US healthcare and conflicts of interest between the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry are behind a mission to put “the restoration of public trust above any pro- or anti-vaccine agenda”.“The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies. This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible,” he said.The surgeons general pushed back on that characterization in their letter, noting that they had uniformly “watched with increasing alarm as the foundations of our nation’s public health system have been undermined.“Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation. Morale has plummeted in our health agencies, and talent is fleeing at a time when we face rising threats – from resurgent infectious diseases to worsening chronic illnesses,” they said.They accused Kennedy of failing to ground public healthcare policy in science, pointing out that Kennedy “has spent decades advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines” and referred to the recent measles outbreak in parts of the US.“Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views,” the authors concluded. “But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans.”Last week, two psychiatric organizations – the Southern California Psychiatric Society and a grassroots startup, the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health – called for Kennedy’s removal as health secretary in a statement, arguing that the HHS had “been damaged in ways that directly endanger lives, degrade scientific integrity, and obstruct effective treatment for mental health and substance use disorders”.The groups pointed to Kennedy’s restructuring of the agency including changes to the substance abuse and mental health services administration (Samhsa), which the secretary plans to place under the control of a new entity, titled the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the federal health department, said in a statement to NPR that “Secretary Kennedy remains firmly committed to delivering on President Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again by dismantling the failed status quo, restoring public trust in health institutions, and ensuring the transparency, accountability, and decision-making power the American people voted for.” More

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    Virginia governor’s race shaken up by ‘violent’ texts sent by ally of Democratic candidate

    A series of “violent” texts sent by a Democrat seeking to become Virginia’s attorney general has shaken up the state’s governor’s race, with Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears seizing on the controversy to try to reverse her opponent’s double-digit polling lead.Earle-Sears has released new campaign advertisements condemning Democratic former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, her opponenent in the governor’s race, for continuing to support Jay Jones, whose private texts three years ago speculated about a senior state Republican getting “two bullets to the head” and “breeding little fascists”.Jones, a former state lawmaker, has apologized, and Spanberger distanced herself from his remarks, insisting in a statement: “I will always condemn violent language in our politics.”But Earle-Sears, who trailed her opponent by 12 points in a poll for November’s election taken before the texts emerged, said Spanberger and Jones both needed to drop out of their respective races, a view echoed by Donald Trump. The president called Spanberger “weak and ineffective” in a post to his Truth Social platform.“Spanberger’s continuing support for Jay Jones is disqualifying for higher office,” Earle-Sears said at a weekend press conference. “She and her party’s irresponsible behavior have brought us to this point.”The episode comes amid escalating political violence in the US, which in recent months has included the murders of Democratic Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk – as well as an arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro.Trump and his allies have attempted to portray the violence as the exclusive preserve of leftwing agitators, even though a study – removed by the justice department from its website in September – concluded that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.The texts by Jones – who served in the state house from 2018 to 2021 – were sent in August 2022 to a Republican female former colleague. The text referred to Republican Todd Gilbert, the then speaker of the chamber.According to National Review, which first reported the texts Friday, Jones was musing about Gilbert and other Republicans in the wake of the death of Democratic long-serving state politician Joe Johnson Jr, saying he would “piss on their graves” if they died before him.Then he speculated on what he would do if he faced Gilbert and two dictators. “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” he wrote. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”In a subsequent text, he said Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, were “evil” – and “breeding little fascists”.The recipient of the messages, Republican state house of delegates member Carrie Coyner, challenged Jones on their content, the National Review said.“What he said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office,” she told the outlet in a statement.Her statement also said: “It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.”Jones issued his own statement of apology, accepting “full responsibility for my actions” and stating he had apologized to Gilbert and his wife.“Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach,” he said. “I am embarrassed, ashamed and sorry. I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology.”The Republican attorney general running for re-election against Jones, Jason Miyares, criticized his opponent at a press conference on Saturday. “The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of Virginia,” Miyares said. “It must be done with character and integrity. Jay Jones has proven he is reckless, biased, and willing to trade away his integrity. This conduct is disqualifying.”The scandal has put Spanberger on the back foot in a race that she was comfortably winning.“This definitely qualifies as something that breaks through, and not many events do that any more,” Virginia-based Republican strategist Zack Roday said to NBC News. “This is all the campaign is going to be for the next 30 days.” More

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    Alligator Alcatraz snaps back to life after judges’ reprieve of Florida’s migrant jail

    For two weeks at the end of August. “Alligator Alcatraz”, the harsh immigration jail in the Florida Everglades notorious for allegations of inhumane treatment and due process violations, looked like it was done.A district court judge ruled that its hasty construction in the fragile wetlands breached federal environmental laws, and state officials appeared to be complying with her closure order by shipping out hundreds of detainees and winding down operations.To many observers, the existence of the bleak, remote tented camp looked to have been a dark but brief chapter in the ongoing cruelty of the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown that has broken apart families and imprisoned thousands with no criminal record or history.Then two Donald Trump-appointed appeals court judges, one whose husband has close ties to the Republican Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, stepped in. Not only did their pause on Miami judge Kathleen Williams’s order allow DeSantis to keep Alligator Alcatraz open, it seems to have supercharged activities at his flagship detention camp.View image in fullscreen“It’s roared back into action,” said Noelle Damico, the director of social justice at the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has helped organize vigils attended by hundreds of protesters at the jail every weekend since it opened in early July.Immigration activists who have maintained a near constant presence at the gates say they have witnessed countless buses coming and going as the 3,000-capacity camp rapidly fills up again; attorneys for some of the detainees say Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials are escalating efforts to block access to their clients.The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz captives, of the estimated 1,800 held there in July ahead of the legal maneuverings, had since “dropped off the grid”.It suggests the site has again become a key hub of a secretive Trump program exposed by a Guardian investigation last month that transfers detainees around the country to other Ice facilities in a kind of “lawless limbo”, or simply deports them without notification to attorneys or family members.“Now it’s back open, this mismanaged state-run facility is essentially operating like a US black site, people are being disappeared, and the cruelty and chaos is by design,” Damico said.“But there’s also a growing awareness that this is an absolute break with everything our nation stands for. Across the country people are saying this is wrong, and we will continue to be here as long as people are being detained at the facility in reprehensible conditions.”Numbers at her group’s Sunday vigils have swelled since the site’s resurgence, she said, and protests against Ice had taken place in other Florida cities, including outside DeSantis’s newly opened “deportation depot” jail in Baker county.The Everglades camp, which was built in eight days in June on a largely disused airstrip 40 miles west of Miami, is the subject of several lawsuits filed by groups seeking its closure. Williams issued her preliminary injunction, stayed by the 11th circuit court of appeal, in an action filed by the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians and an alliance of environmental groups.Williams agreed with their assertions that acres of newly paved roads, installation of hundreds of yards of chain-link fences, and night-time light pollution visible for miles was harmful to the ecologically sensitive land.The appeals court panel, however, found in a 2-1 ruling that because the state had initially used its own money (an estimated $450m) to build it, it could not be considered a US government project and therefore no environmental impact study was required.On Thursday, it was reported that Florida received a $608m reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Alligator Alcatraz and other Ice-related projects.“This seems to be the smoking gun proving that our lawsuit is entirely correct,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity.“This is a federal project built with federal funds that’s required by federal law to go through a complete environmental review. The Trump administration can’t keep lying through their teeth to the American public at the expense of Florida’s imperiled wildlife.“Our legal system can and should stop this incredibly harmful boondoggle.”Further insight into the resurrection of Alligator Alcatraz came last week in a separate lawsuit in Florida’s middle district, filed on behalf of detainees who say they are being denied meetings with their immigration attorneys in breach of their constitutional rights.Ice requires three business days’ notice to set up a face-to-face meeting, a condition “dramatically more restrictive than at other immigration facilities” the lawsuit states, adding that attorneys often show up to find their clients have been transferred elsewhere “immediately prior to the scheduled visits”.“Some detainees never have the chance to meet with their attorneys,” it said.In testimony sent to the Guardian, the daughter of one undocumented Alligator Alcatraz detainee, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, said she was allowed to speak to him only in short phone calls that were monitored.“They are being treated like the worst of the worst. They are treated like animals and have been put in cages like animals,” she said.“They are chained by their hands and their ankles, they shower every three days with reused clothing they all share, and I can’t even imagine the quality and quantity of the food they are given.“They can’t even tell what time of day it is. Actual criminals are receiving better treatment than the humans trapped in this place.”Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the homeland security department, denied any mistreatment of detainees in a statement that insisted all allegations to the contrary were “hoaxes”.“Alligator Alcatraz does meet federal detention standards,” she said.In additional comments last month following the Guardian’s findings of due process violations, previously unreported accounts of neglect and abuse, and documented health emergencies, McLaughlin said: “Any claim that there are inhumane conditions at Ice detention centers are false. Ice has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens.“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”Tessa Petit, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said the revival of Alligator Alcatraz followed a pattern.“We’ve seen it in the history of not only DeSantis, but also the Trump administration. They start something, they make mistakes, we win [in court], then they come back harder and stronger,” she said.“Now they are more emboldened and empowered to just do what they’re doing, because it feels like they have more of the federal government support. So there’s no more shame in doing the wrong thing, no more shame in disappearing people.“We’re seeing that they’re learning, and we’re seeing the same thing happening in Baker. Nobody can tell us how many people are in both detention facilities, the families are hearing from their family members only once they’ve been deported, and lawyers still don’t have access to their clients.”Petit added that the camp’s comeback had effectively chilled dissent.“People are more and more afraid to reveal what is going on, and those who are being detained are also afraid to speak up,” she said. “They’ve feared them into silence.” More

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    US universities must reject Trump’s ‘compact’. It is full of traps | Jan-Werner Müller

    Sticks are bad, but sometimes corruption through carrots is worse. The Trump administration – after having brutally cut federal funding earlier this year – is now trying to make nine universities an offer that they seemingly cannot refuse. In exchange for preferential treatment in funding and bonuses like “invitations to White House events” – apparently the same logic as a fancy credit card that promises you backstage access at concerts – the universities are expected to sign a “compact” with the government. All nine institutions must reject this proposal: it is a thinly veiled attack on academic freedom; it is a test case for whether Trumpists can get away with demanding loyalty oaths; it exceeds the president’s powers to begin with; and it is bound to achieve the opposite of its stated goal of “academic excellence in higher education” (as opposed to what kind of excellence in education, one is tempted to ask).Some features of the compact might look reasonable at first sight. No one is against addressing ever-rising tuition fees (never mind that the Republican party at the same time is capping federal loan programs and shoveling money to high-cost private lenders). And some might welcome the Stephen Miller-lite version of xenophobia: capping the number of foreign students at 15% and forcing foreigners to take American “civics” (it is unclear who would decide the content of lessons “about how great our country is”).But the document also functions as a kind of rap sheet for institutions portrayed as single-mindedly focused on discriminating against white males. Formulations such as “signatories shall adopt policies prohibiting incitement to violence” would make one believe that, as of now, universities encourage terrorist agitators to run rampant on campus; the demand to “transform or abolish institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas” suggests that, as of now, anyone saying the wrong thing about abortion is beaten up by progressive vigilantes (never mind the question what it means to treat an idea as such “violently”).It is no small irony that one of the strategists of the assault on higher education, May Mailman, charges universities with having committed to a “culture of victimhood” in an interview with the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat; obviously, it is the Trumpist grievance-industrial complex which mass-produces resentment among supposed “real Americans” held down by nefarious liberal elites. For all the talk of fostering open debate, the goal appears to be the creation of safe spaces for the fragile egos of Maga students suffering from universities’ supposed culture of “negativity”.The clearest attack on academic freedom consists in the demand to ensure “a broad spectrum of viewpoints … within every field, department, school, and teaching unit”. Faculty, students “and staff at all levels” will first have to be tested for ideology; once “empirical assessments” have been completed, the diversity of viewpoints judged appropriate will have to be engineered, presumably by a bureaucracy that can also guarantee consistent viewpoints over time (for what if our new conservative colleague starts to hold different views?). In theory, the result would not just be affirmative action for the right, but forcing the economics department to employ Marxists.To be sure, some Trumpists themselves insist that the government should not be in the business of micromanaging the distribution of political attitudes. But the rejection is not a principled one centered on a proper understanding of academic freedom. It is simply the fear of setting a precedent with what they openly call “policing” and one fine day having the Democrats flood universities with leftists.As with other aspects of Donald Trump’s emerging mafia state, there is no guarantee that those bending the knee will not be bullied again. The government can always come back to universities and accuse them of having violated the agreement (still too many courses in victimhood studies; still too much “violence” – as defined by bureaucrats – vis-a-vis someone’s cherished ideas). The government will also encourage donors to claim back their cash. Since the compact’s criteria are exceedingly vague, those who take the offer will probably overdo compliance.At the risk of sounding like one of those dreadful self-styled victims: universities are fragile institutions. Many American ones are excellent precisely because people trust each other and cooperate successfully without over-regulation (some Europeans can tell you what it means to be subject to constant assessments – and how a Soviet-style bureaucracy constantly distracts from research and teaching). Of course there is always plenty of academic infighting, but what the Trumpists are doing is consciously trying to create divisions by setting potential Trump administration collaborators against those determined to resist it. As has become apparent with other autocrats’ assaults on universities, even if institutions escape (sometimes literally, as they have to relocate to other countries) the worst, much damage has been done. This is why the nine universities should not only reject the compact, but also publicly explain what is wrong with it (otherwise they will be immediately charged with wanting to protect their tuition-racket, helping foreigners and “importing radicalism” to undermine American greatness).Precisely because they have been losing court cases over free speech and visas for foreign students, Trumpists now seek to entrap universities in a deal that effectively removes the protections of federal law and gives the administration arbitrary power over them. The carrots serve to lure institutions of higher learning into a dark alley where, rather than just waiting with a big stick, the government can put a gun to their heads at any time.

    Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More