President Donald Trump’s assault on Harvard “is a wildly unhinged abuse of power in every way," according to The New Republic’s writer Greg Sargent.
Railing against the Trump administration's move to revoke Harvard’s ability to accept international students because of a lack of information about the students, Sargent wrote, “That demand was itself absurdly intrusive, and seemed designed not to be met, creating a pretext for Trump to broaden his attack.”
A federal judge later blocked Trump’s move. “At this point, there’s no need to pretend there’s a genuine public-interest rationale at work here,” Sargent said. “Everyone knows it’s all about getting universities to surrender to flatter Trump, or about executing a broader hostile MAGA takeover of liberal institutions.”
Sargent, who also is host of The Daily Blast podcast, added, “There’s something particularly ghoulish about Trump’s suggestion that his blockade on international students is about helping American kids who are unfairly displaced by them. That’s because the ‘big, beautiful bill’ that House Republicans passed last week, which Trump has urged Senate Republicans to adopt, could make attending college harder for countless such kids.”
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Referencing a piece in The New Republic by Monica Potts, Sargent claims the bill “Would make it harder for full-time students to qualify for Pell Grants, bump off large numbers of part-time students, and restrict access to the program and other financial assistance for higher education in numerous other ways.”
Trump’s administration is attempting to propel many people into trade schools; however, Sargent believes this is “laudable” because supporting trade schools has “been a mainstay of Democratic proposals—sometimes with GOP support—for years.”
Sargent believes this points to a “deeper scam.” He said, “We are often told Trump’s success is fueled by a backlash against the failures of meritocracy. Meritocratic elites, in this story, game our system to help their own, destroying broader bonds of social trust.”
He added, “Trump is the tribune of those who have been left behind by those self-dealing elites. This gives Trump’s attacks on elite institutions like Harvard enduring political appeal.”
