War on Universities, Lawyers & Expertise

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4thgenheel said:
rules for thee, not for me.

modern conservatism in a nutshell.
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I'm struggling to think of a good reason why Universities, hospitals, and churches should all remain tax exempt. All of them are primarily in the business of making money. They should all be taxed.
 
EyeballKid said:
Not sure whether this is better served on this thread or in the daily current events thread—but apparently the Trump admin is backing off their demands from Harvard.

Claiming that the letter from last Friday laying out the administration’s demands was sent in error, without proper authorization.

It’s nice that Harvard has finally exposed this bullshit Trumpian posturing for what it is, but Columbia and other universities should’ve stood up to this over the last couple months.

Fucking Keystone Kops administration, I swear.

www.nytimes.com

Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard

An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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But are they restoring funding? Telling the IRS and Dept of Education to stand down? It sorta sounds like they want to restore the deal they had been negotiating and pretend they didn’t demand much more, but are not willing to restore funding or tell the IRS to cool it on pulling their tax exemption.

It seems like the Abrego Garcia case in a way — we fucked up but having done so we will fight to the death to continue the thing we did wrong in the first place.

From the NYT link:

“… After Harvard publicly repudiated the demands, the Trump administration raised the pressure, freezing billions in federal funding to the school and warning that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy.

A senior White House official said the administration stood by the letter, calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming Harvard for not continuing discussions.

“It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”

Still, Ms. Mailman said, there is a potential pathway to resume discussions if the university, among other measures, follows through on what Mr. Trump wants and apologizes to its students for fostering a campus where there was antisemitism.

… And despite claiming that the letter should not have been sent, the Trump administration did not withdraw it….”

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Unreal to admit your mistake and issue demands for reversing it — sort of. The Trump team is just frustrated they finally hit a wall on the easy victories over firms and universities too weak-kneed to oppose them (and convinced giving Trump vague and unenforceable promises I the oath of least resistance). Now they want a re-do to reset to where things stood before they got greedy so they can get a quick memorandum of understanding and declare victory.

It is a pretty good indication that they worry about anything derailing the perceived inevitability of their blitzkrieg on the educated class to preserve the efficacy of their bullying.
 
nycfan said:
Unreal to admit your mistake and issue demands for reversing it — sort of. The Trump team is just frustrated they finally hit a wall on the easy victories over firms and universities too weak-kneed to oppose them (and convinced giving Trump vague and unenforceable promises I the oath of least resistance). Now they want a re-do to reset to where things stood before they got greedy so they can get a quick memorandum of understanding and declare victory.

It is a pretty good indication that they worry about anything derailing the perceived inevitability of their blitzkrieg on the educated class to preserve the efficacy of their bullying.
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It's especially unreal given that Harvard will be filing suit. Nothing says arbitrary and capricious quite like, "it was a mistake but we're standing by it."
 
nycfan said:
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“The Trump administration has grown so furious with Harvard University after a week of escalating dispute between the two sides that it is planning to pull an additional $1 billion of the school’s funding for health research, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump administration officials, the people said, thought the long list of demands they sent Harvard last Friday was a confidential starting point for negotiations.

… The letters to Harvard and other schools are coming from a new Trump panel called the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

… People close to Harvard say the task force is now escalating the fight to protect its own reputation. The government’s demand letter to Harvard received blowback after the university released it, including from some on the right who publicly said it was overreach.

…
Trump administration officials now doubt Harvard ever meant to negotiate and suspect the school aimed to fight the entire time, people familiar with the matter said.

The government’s set of demands was mistakenly sent a day earlier than the task force intended, but its contents weren’t an error, people familiar with the task force said. The administration stands behind the letter with the demands, a White House spokesman said. The New York Times earlier reported that a government official said the letter was sent mistakenly. …”

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White House burning up the phone lines trying to convince people that even though they mistakenly (too early) sent an outrageous official letter of demands far beyond antisemitism concerns to Harvard, Harvard is the bad guy for accepting the letter, assuming it was serious, making it public and rejecting it.
 
Willy said:
I'm struggling to think of a good reason why Universities, hospitals, and churches should all remain tax exempt. All of them are primarily in the business of making money. They should all be taxed.
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Some truth to this
Obviously you can't pick and chose-not implying you disagree
 
altmin said:
yeah-about-trumps-war-on-harvard-v0-n0v0rcpw97ve1.webp
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I bet he's not receiving billions in federal funding.

There's also the 1st Amendment.

Nobody is saying Harvard can't allow pro-terrorist/anti-Semitic behavior on their campus. Trump is just saying you can't do that and get federal money. Is he allowed to revoke already approved money? Probably not.

There's also the fact that if the protests were anti-black, the University would be on it like a fat kid on cake because of the liberal heirarchy of victimhood.

Jews rank far too low on the victimhood list these days.
 
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ZenMode said:
I bet he's not receiving billions in federal funding.
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i bet he's not doing critical research and innovation that improves the lives of billions of people all over the planet.

again, totally laughable for this admin to pretend to be sOoOoOo anti-antisemitism when they quite literally court and embolden white antisemites at every possible opportunity. the anti palestinian genocide folks are just the wrong ethnicity.
 
ZenMode said:
I bet he's not receiving billions in federal funding.

There's also the 1st Amendment.

Nobody is saying Harvard can't allow pro-terrorist/anti-Semitic behavior on their campus. Trump is just saying you can't do that and get federal money. Is he allowed to revoke already approved money? Probably not.

There's also the fact that if the protests were anti-black, the University would be on it like a fat kid on cake because of the liberal heirarchy of victimhood.

Jews rank far too low on the victimhood list these days.
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:ROFLMAO:
 
Willy said:
I'm struggling to think of a good reason why Universities, hospitals, and churches should all remain tax exempt. All of them are primarily in the business of making money. They should all be taxed.
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That's a reasonable position, and one I sympathize with to some extent, but it will have some profound consequences that we would need to think carefully about. What is not reasonable is selectively wielding the threat of losing tax-exempt status against individual institutions in an attempt to coerce compliance.
 
ZenMode said:
I bet he's not receiving billions in federal funding.

There's also the 1st Amendment.

Nobody is saying Harvard can't allow pro-terrorist/anti-Semitic behavior on their campus. Trump is just saying you can't do that and get federal money. Is he allowed to revoke already approved money? Probably not.

There's also the fact that if the protests were anti-black, the University would be on it like a fat kid on cake because of the liberal heirarchy of victimhood.

Jews rank far too low on the victimhood list these days.
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Please, tell me more about all the horrible antisemitism Harvard has "allowed" on their campus. Let me guess: it's people saying things like "Free Palestine"? Writing editorials in the school paper critical of Israel? Or have they been throwing rotten vegetables at the Jewish students and I just didn't hear about it?

In any event, the First Amendment limits the extent to which speech (even antisemitic speech) can be expressly proscribed and forbidden. Is Harvard's choice that it has to violate people's First Amendment rights to receive federal funding?
 
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