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      Caution and Courage on Campus Speech

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      More from our inbox:Fired in a Quake Zone Rachel Stern for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Universities Like the One I Run Aren’t Afraid to Let People Argue,” by Michael I. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 31):As the father of a high school senior currently deciding where to attend college, I agreed with much of what Dr. Kotlikoff had to say. But I was troubled by what he didn’t say. Right now, the greatest threat to academic freedom is the Trump administration.Foreign students are being detained and threatened with deportation for constitutionally protected speech. The independence of academic departments is being threatened by the White House. Universities are scrubbing their official documents of words the administration deems unacceptable. Defending free speech on campus while not calling this out by name can have only one explanation: fear.I sympathize. Putting your institution in this administration’s cross hairs risks devastating punishment. But when those who ought to be the greatest defenders of intellectual freedom stay silent or address such threats obliquely, we should all be scared.When I was a college student, I got to live out the idyllic fantasy that elite schools have marketed for generations: stimulating classes, extracurriculars and lazy afternoons in the quad. My daughter might have a very different experience. Her school might face devastating budget cuts for daring to defy the president. She’ll likely see research disrupted, graduate students’ and professors’ lives upended. She might witness international students being apprehended by masked law enforcement officers for speaking freely.I’m sorry she won’t get my carefree experience. But I hope the leadership of her school shows her something far more valuable: courage.Michael HandelmanBrooklynTo the Editor:Michael I. Kotlikoff’s essay rang true to me — not as theory, but as lived experience. I was a Cornell undergraduate when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. I sat in a class where a professor asked if any students were Republican. Nobody raised a hand.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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      Stock Ownership Is What Really Divides Americans

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      In a pamphlet published in 1711, Jonathan Swift lamented the “folly” of those who “mistake the echo of a London coffeehouse for the voice of the kingdom.” Those informal salons were, he wrote, frequented by people whose wealth depended on their shares in the Bank of England or the East India Company or “some other stock.” If the responses to the Trump administration’s tariff policies have shown us anything, it is that, like most of the ills against which Swift railed, this unfortunate tendency to conflate stockholders with the nation remains very much with us.The greatest division in American life is not between so-called red and blue states, or between urban and rural citizens, but instead between those who own stock and those who do not. For those who do, economic security can be measured in portfolio statements; the rest — roughly 40 percent of Americans — must make do with such antiquated metrics as the cost of housing or even the price of eggs.This division is not merely economic; it is also ideological. Though many Americans own at least some stock, 10 percent of Americans own 93 percent of it. Yet the elite stock-owning class has convinced itself that what is good for the S&P 500 is good for America. Worse, many Americans who own stock through retirement plans or pension plans have been convinced to believe this, too, even though their interests tend not to align neatly with those of multimillionaires.The result is a kind of ideological capture in which any policy that does not serve the immediate interests of shareholders is dismissed as reckless, radical or economically illiterate. The common good, insofar as it is considered at all, must first be translated into the language of market returns. Can anything be good if it does not make the line go up? The question (we are told) answers itself.Like awed visitors to the oracle at Delphi, we consult the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 with solemn credulity, and their half-random fluctuations are taken as portents of divine favor, or else as intimations of the coming wrath of heaven’s gracious ones. All presidents — including Donald Trump — genuflect before this altar, and most of us implicitly regard any policy that displeases the great god Wall Street as a kind of sacrilege. We treat the stock market as the final arbiter of our collective well-being.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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      The Digestible Politics of the Message Tee

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      Some elected officials and those in power are making use of a classic bit of fashion to deliver big ideas.With his approval rating dipping, New Yorkers seem to have lost trust in their mayor Eric Adams. But Mr. Adams is up front about where he’s putting his own trust right now: with God.On Tuesday, Mr. Adams, who announced that he would be running for re-election not as a Democrat but an independent, appeared at a press briefing wearing a T-shirt with the words “In God We Trust,” printed above an American flag.“This outfit is not campaigning, this outfit is my life,” Mr. Adams told reporters when asked about the white shirt, which looked to be about as premium as something purchased at a boardwalk souvenir stall.“I went through hell for 15 months and all I had was God,” said Mr. Adams, alluding to the federal corruption charges that were dropped against him this month.Mr. Adams is not the only political figure bringing the graphic T-shirt into formal political spaces.During President Trump’s prime-time address in early March a cluster of Democrats wore slogan T-shirts, providing a cotton-based clap-back to the president’s talking points. A few brandished the recognizable text: “Resist.” Florida representative Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z member of Congress wore a tee with the slogan “No Kings Live Here.”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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      A Lot About Trump Doesn’t Add Up

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      You have to give it to Donald Trump. The man is a marvel at multitasking.In one sensational swoop, President Trump was able to set the global economy reeling, shatter our alliances, shred our standing in the world, tank consumer confidence, scupper the Kennedy Center and tart up the Oval Office, turning it into Caesars Palace on the Potomac.And yet he still managed to find time to brag about winning his Jupiter golf club’s championship and sign an executive order relaxing restrictions on water pressure from shower heads — “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” the president cooed. He also ordered an investigation of an election security official he had fired four years ago for having the temerity to acknowledge that the 2020 election was not stolen.“We’re living in a bizarro world where heroes are being targeted and scoundrels are in a position to target them,” David Axelrod told me.Trump is also consumed with terms of surrender for top law firms and Ivy League universities in his quest to get even with those he feels went after him unfairly or embraced wokeness too avidly.My Netflix algorithm searches for “revenge,” “lives ruined” and “mayhem.” But I don’t want that in my government.Trump is engaging the full power of the presidency to settle scores. The White House was not meant for petty tyrants on revenge tours. In the biggest job in the world, Trump seems like a very small man.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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      Trump’s Tariff Pause Is Less Than Meets the Eye

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      Presidents who make big changes in government policy usually lay their plans with care. They game out what might happen next. They sweat the little things. Richard Nixon did not just decide one morning to fly to China. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were the better part of a decade in the making. The details of Barack Obama’s expansion of health insurance emerged from countless public debates.President Trump prefers to shoot before aiming. Declaring that he intends to reboot America’s relations with the rest of the world, he has imposed tariffs on imports with abandon, demonstrating a disregard for the details or the collateral damage. His careless conduct of the public’s business has roiled stock and bond markets, threatened to cause a recession and damaged America’s global standing. The president’s decision-making has been so erratic that at one point this week, the administration’s top trade official was interrupted in the middle of testimony before Congress because the president had just changed the policy the official was defending.The original version of Mr. Trump’s plan, which he paused on Wednesday, imposed tariffs on foreign nations at rates that bore no apparent connection to America’s national interests. The highest tariff rate, 50 percent, applied to Lesotho, a tiny and impoverished nation in southern Africa.The latest version isn’t much better. Mr. Trump is imposing a 10 percent tariff on imports from most nations, along with higher rates on imports from America’s three largest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China. The average tax on imports will rise to the highest level in more than a century, raising the prices on many consumer goods. The 145 percent maximum rate on Chinese imports is intended to isolate that nation economically, but the simultaneous tariffs on everyone else will undermine that goal. And while the stated purpose of all the tariffs is to expand American manufacturing, putting them in place immediately doesn’t give companies time to build factories. It will cause pain without any benefit.We want to emphasize that Mr. Trump has a point about the pain caused by free trade. The decades in which the United States threw open its doors to imports from other countries left many Americans without jobs and decimated the nation’s industrial heartland. Washington’s naïveté about China’s rise, accomplished partly through its own trade barriers and theft of intellectual property, is particularly regrettable.A revival of American manufacturing is a worthy goal. It would not heal past wounds, but it could provide a basis for future generations of Americans to build lives and to rebuild communities that are more prosperous and more secure.The price of cheap goods from ChinaDecrease in manufacturing employment caused by increased trade with China, 2000-19. More

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      Appeals Court Scales Back Freeze on Firing Consumer Bureau Employees

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      A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees.Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office director, was named the consumer bureau’s acting director in February and immediately began gutting the agency. He closed its headquarters and sought to terminate its lease, canceled contracts essential to the bureau’s operations, terminated hundreds of employees and sought to lay off nearly all of the rest.In a lawsuit brought by the bureau’s staff union and other parties, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington froze those actions last month with an injunction to stop what she described as the administration’s “hurried effort to dismantle and disable the agency entirely.” The Justice Department appealed her ruling.A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the government’s request to strike down Judge Jackson’s injunction, but it stayed parts of her ruling while the government’s appeal progresses. Specifically, the appeals court said the agency’s leaders can send a “reduction in force” notice — the process through which the government conducts layoffs — to employees they have determined are not necessary to carry out the agency’s “statutory duties.”When Congress created the consumer bureau in 2011, it assigned the watchdog agency dozens of tasks and ordered it to staff certain positions, including offices to aid student loan borrowers, military service members and older Americans. Those mandated obligations have been at the heart of the legal fight over the agency, because the bureau is required to fulfill those duties unless Congress acts.Mr. Vought’s team fired more than 200 probationary and fixed-term employees, only to reinstate most of them, with back pay, on Judge Jackson’s orders. The appeals court cleared the way for some to be fired again. Agency leaders may terminate employees after “an individualized assessment” of their necessity for carrying out the agency’s statutory tasks, the ruling said.But the court left much of Judge Jackson’s order intact, including her mandates that agency leaders shall not delete or destroy most of the bureau’s records and data, and that employees must be given access to either physical office space or the tools needed to work remotely. The consumer bureau’s Washington headquarters has remained shuttered and off limits to workers since Mr. Vought’s arrival.The appeals court expedited the government’s appeal and scheduled oral arguments for May 16. More

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      Trump Directive Calls to Turn Border Land Into ‘Military Installation’

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      President Trump announced a plan on Friday to turn a narrow strip along the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico into a military installation as part of his effort to curtail illegal crossings.The plan, set out in a White House memorandum, calls for transferring authority over the 60-foot-wide strip of federal border land known as the Roosevelt Reservation from other cabinet agencies to the Defense Department. Military forces patrolling that area could then temporarily detain migrants passing through for trespassing on a military reservation, said a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.The directive expands a military presence that has increased steadily along the southern border, even as crossings have already dropped precipitously during the Trump administration. The ordering of troops to the border has already put the military in politically charged territory, and, depending on the details of the effort, the plan could run afoul of laws that limit the use of regular federal troops for domestic law enforcement.The directive says that the border strip will become a “military installation under the jurisdiction of” the Pentagon. Military members would be able to stop anyone crossing into the “military installation” but would not have the power to make immigration arrests, according to the military official. Border Patrol agents could then be summoned to arrest the migrants.The memorandum formalizes a plan that the administration had been considering for weeks. The Washington Post had reported on the plan earlier.A White House spokesman did not respond to questions seeking clarity as to what U.S. forces operating in the strip of border land would be able to do. A Defense Department spokesman also did not respond to questions seeking clarity.Military officials are still working out how to execute the plan, including how long troops could detain migrants before turning them over to Border Patrol agents, and what type of “no trespassing” signs needed to be installed along the border, warning migrants they were about to enter a U.S. military reservation.Then there are other logistics that would have to be hammered out, such as the languages the signs are written in, and how far apart they are posted. There is also the question of where to position military patrols along hundreds of miles of rugged land along the border, and what additional training those troops might need.Adam Isacson, who focuses on border security and human rights at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the memorandum appeared to create a path for using quasi-military personnel to detain migrants.A section of the memorandum calls for the authorization of state National Guard members to work on the military-controlled strip. If those working at the installation hold migrants until Customs and Border Protection officials pick them up, their use “comes very close to military personnel detaining migrants,” Mr. Isacson said.Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

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      Pennsylvania Man Threatened to Kill Trump and Musk, U.S. Says

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      Shawn Monper, of Butler, Pa., also threatened immigration agents in comments on YouTube, federal prosecutors said.A Pennsylvania man was arrested this week after the authorities said he threatened to assassinate President Trump, Elon Musk and other government officials in comments that he posted on YouTube.Google, which owns YouTube, alerted the F.B.I. on Tuesday to the threatening comments, which were posted by someone using the username “Mr Satan,” whom the authorities later identified as Shawn Monper, of Butler, Pa., according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Monper, 32, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with four counts of influencing, impeding or retaliating against a federal official and a federal law enforcement officer.According to the court documents, Mr. Monper wrote, “im going to assassinate him myself” in the comments under a livestream of Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on March 4.In a comment on another YouTube video on Feb. 17, according to the complaint, Mr. Monper wrote, “Nah, we just need to start killing people, Trump, Elon, all the heads of agencies Trump appointed, and anyone who stands in the way.”On Feb. 26, according to the complaint, Mr. Monper wrote that he had “bought several guns” and had been stocking up on ammunition since Mr. Trump took office for a second time, promising “to do a mass shooting.”Butler, Pa., where Mr. Monper lives, was the site of a campaign rally where Mr. Trump was injured in an assassination attempt on July 13. The complaint did not mention that episode.Mr. Monper’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.In addition to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were also a target of Mr. Monper’s threats, federal prosecutors said.As the Trump administration has ramped up its deportation efforts, ICE and Department of Homeland Security agents have come under scrutiny for detaining students and legal immigrants.On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana found that the Trump administration could deport a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, Mahmoud Khalil, for his role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus last year.In a statement on Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi thanked the F.B.I. and the Butler Township police for their work on the investigation.“Rest assured that whenever and wherever threats of assassination or mass violence occur, this Department of Justice will find, arrest, and prosecute the suspect to the fullest extent of the law and seek the maximum appropriate punishment,” she said. More