The Genius of Trump’s Attacks on the Ivies

As President Trump intensifies pressure on universities over civil rights violations, some are resisting the administration’s demands and preparing for lengthy legal battles. Others, however, are changing course voluntarily.

Fear may be a factor—but fear is also what drove many institutions to adopt DEI policies in the first place. Now, as Solveig Lucia Gold observes, Trump is giving college presidents the cover they need to return to sanity and enact changes they’ve long desired but felt too intimidated to pursue.

Read her take here.

New Jersey is one of just two states holding statewide elections this year—and it’s likely to preview the coming national fight between progressive and moderate Democrats.

“What makes the Democratic primary in New Jersey so intriguing is the absence of a clear early leader,” writes Steven Malanga. “Polling shows that any of three or four candidates, representing different Democratic factions, could capture the nomination.”

Read his look at some of the candidates here.

As he eyes a 2028 presidential run, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker finds himself caught in a progressive trap. His 2025 budget marks a retreat from some left-wing priorities, driven by soaring costs—most notably, the decision to stop funding free health care for undocumented immigrants aged 42 to 64. But you wouldn’t know it from his rhetoric. Pritzker continues to embrace provocative political symbolism (recently comparing Trump and the MAGA movement to Nazi Germany), while sidestepping the difficult economic realities facing his state.

“He must satisfy constituencies demanding expansive programs, but Illinois lacks the fiscal resources to deliver,” explains John O. McGinnis. “Raising taxes, meantime, has proved politically infeasible. Even Democratic voters are skeptical of providing yet more resources to a government burdened by fiscal imprudence and union-driven debt.”

You can read McGinnis’s Spring issue piece here.

As University of Michigan president, Santa Ono abolished a sprawling DEI bureaucracy and suspended a student organization that had engaged in anti-Semitic intimidation.

His move to the University of Florida deserves attention, Jesse Arm argues, because of what it says about the shift taking place in higher education. “A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a University of Michigan president to view Florida as a step up,” he says. “Today, it makes perfect sense. The balance of moral and intellectual seriousness in American higher education is shifting southward.”

“This is one of the best call-outs I’ve read on the cowardice of career admin types. It’s good because it’s specific. These two men cannot dodge accountability for what they did not do – especially after claiming opposition to the practices they supported. This is ideological poison, and it’s like a seductive siren song to empathetic, quasi-educated Americans.”

Photo credits: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images