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    In Trump Attack on Harvard, Punishment Before Proof

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    The legal underpinnings of the administration’s broadsides against universities and schools stretch precedents and cut corners.In the White House’s campaign against Harvard University, the punishment came swiftly.The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in grants to the school, while seeking to exert unprecedented control over hiring, impose unspecified reforms to its medical and divinity schools, block certain foreign students from enrolling and, potentially, revoke its tax-exempt status.It is a broadside with little precedent. And, as with the White House’s other attacks on universities, colleges and even K-12 schools, the legal justifications have been muddled, stretched and, in some instances, impossible to determine.“It’s punishment before a trial, punishment before evidence, punishment before an actual accusation that could be responded to,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s third-ranking official during the Obama administration. “People talk about why higher ed hasn’t responded. Well, how can you fight a shadow in this way?​”The legality of each threat varies. In more typical times, some of the individual punishments might be validated by lengthy investigations in which a university would have a right to defend itself.But taken together, law professors and education experts said, the immediacy of the sanctions and threats conveyed an unmistakable hostility toward Harvard and other schools in the president’s sights. The broad vendetta, they said, could weaken the legal argument for each individual action.“You can’t make decisions — even if you have the power to do so — on the basis of animus,” said Brian Galle, a Georgetown University law professor who teaches about taxation policy and nonprofit organizations. “Those aren’t permissible reasons that the government can act. And so what’s interesting about the fact that it’s doing all of these things to Harvard at the same time, is that undermines the legitimacy of each of them individually.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harvard’s Decision to Resist Trump is ‘of Momentous Significance’

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      But a fight with the nation’s oldest, richest and most elite university is a battle that President Trump and his powerful aide, Stephen Miller, want to have.Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan University and a rare critic of the White House among university administrators, welcomed Harvard’s decision. “What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”Within hours of Harvard’s decision, federal officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to the university, along with a $60 million contract.That is a fraction of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Major Democratic Law Firm Ended Up Bowing to Trump

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      Paul Weiss was targeted by an executive order from President Trump. Its chairman, who had worked against Mr. Trump during his first term, then went to the Oval Office and cut a deal.Since President Trump’s first term, Brad S. Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, championed himself as a bulwark against what he saw as an unlawful and unpredictable presidency.Mr. Karp, who has a long history of fund-raising for Democrats, sought to unite major law firms in “a call to arms” to fight Mr. Trump in court on issues like his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. He publicly said lawyers were obligated to defend the rule of law.He hosted a “Lawyers for Biden” fund-raiser in 2023, and one of his top partners prepared Vice President Kamala Harris for her debates with Mr. Trump.So it was not surprising that Mr. Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order last week that created a potential existential threat for the firm, although the order was legally dubious and undercut fundamental principles of the justice system. In response, Mr. Karp began discussions with another big firm about presenting a unified and bipartisan front and challenging the order in court.But on Wednesday, Mr. Karp walked into the Oval Office around 8:30 a.m., leaving behind the adversarial approach.Now, he wanted to make a deal.A day later, Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Karp had agreed to pledge $40 million in pro bono legal services to issues the president has championed, including a task force being run by the Justice Department aimed at combating antisemitism “and other mutually agreed projects.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Justice Dept. Helped Sink Its Own Case Against Eric Adams

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      President Trump had just taken office when lawyers for Mayor Eric Adams of New York went to the White House with an extraordinary request: They formally asked in a letter that the new president pardon the mayor in a federal corruption case that had yet to go to trial.Just a week later, one of Mr. Trump’s top political appointees at the Justice Department called Mr. Adams’s lawyer, saying he wanted to talk about potentially dismissing the case.What followed was a rapid series of exchanges between the lawyers and Mr. Trump’s administration that exploded this week into a confrontation between top Justice Department officials in Washington and New York prosecutors.On Monday, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department sent a memo ordering prosecutors to dismiss the charges against the mayor. By Thursday, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned in protest over what she described as a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and the mayor of New York City. Five officials overseeing the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington stepped down soon after.The conflagration originated in the back-and-forth between Mr. Adams’s lawyers, Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, and the Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, exchanges which have not been previously reported.The series of events — in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client — represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More