This is clearly bothersome, and this administration bothers me at a deep level. One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale? Clearly it's to curtail the power of the executive, but I'm afraid that neither will resist the temptation to (over)correct or double down, respectively
The way to fix it is to change the constitution (for example [1], although bigger changes are probably needed, IMHO anyway, but this is a good start) but the constitution is so hard to change that this is not really feasible in the short to medium term. And making it easier to change the constitution is a catch-22.
And while the Democratic party is obviously tons better than the Republican party, that's only because the Republican party is so awful. The Dems seem to have only tepid interest to fix this at best.
It's not the democrats job to fix this. It's the voters job.
The voters decided to vote democrats out of office. They are the ones with the power here.
Democracy is about majority rule. Blaming the minority for not fixing the problem is to miss the whole point of voting.
The public decided that this guy, this party, should win the last election. The public will decide who wins the next one.
The really ugly truth is that a significant slice of the public think this is going well. Another significant slice thinks this is OK, let's do more of this. You might not like it. I might not like it. Welcome to the minority. (And Democracy does not treat minorities well.)
Big worry indeed. What puzzles me is that, for all the claims of the death of monoculture, how is it that politics has resisted these fragmentations? How has Trump managed to consolidate power so strongly within the power? I don't keep up with politics, but I suspect even those in the know have no clue either.
Thanks for this link. I wonder how the USA would have fared with that one change in the sentence.
Systems and laws only exist if people are willing to enforce them. If the majority of the population support someone disregarding it all, laws on paper are fairly worthless.
That means laws should be modified based on people’s will. For example, in United Kingdom of America, law can still punish murder as long as it’s not done by the king. It’s a different law than today’s , but still useful to quite some degree. Plus it may not be that different than today’s.
> One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale?
Well, it’s quite simple. If a Democratic president does happen to get elected again (hard to imagine happening in my lifetime), SCOTUS will clam up and reverse most of these little executive power loopholes. Recall how Biden didn’t have the authority to order the Department of Education to forgive student loans? But now Posse Comitatus is just, like, a suggestion.
Consider, when has a Democrat politician done this at any level or has talked about doing it? A democratic congress had gotten in Biden's way on really arcane technicalities.
Trump is more or less doing what he campaigned on and has a history of doing. At a minimum, don't vote for anyone involved worth supporting his admin. Don't vote for anyone with the same major donors (you can look up donors on open secrets), or the same project 2025/federalist background. Pay attention to your primary elections.
The simplest way to keep subsequent admins from doing this is to not vote R.
I would add that it's a false equivalence to take the behavior of one party, and then worry about the parties not behaving that way "but they might".
In other words the worth is not "what a future hypothetical democrat" might do, but rather what the "current republican is doing.
To answer your point though, the only real thing you can do is vote. That is your lever of power.
Make no mistake, Americans voted for this behavior. All of it was explicitly telegraphed in the campaign. He is doing exactly what people voted him to do.
Yes congress is weak. Yes the Supreme Court is bought and paid for. That doesn't help. But this isn't some accident. It was done openly, and voters rewarded it.
I get that lots of people didn't vote for him. But more people did. If you're not in love with the outcomes, make sure you turn out when the chance comes along. Encourage others to turn out. Because one side is not like the other, and making a choice matters.
And if you're in the "it doesn't matter who wins, they're all the same" camp, well, I'd respectfully suggest you're wrong. It does matter.
That's fine to say as a mantra but it wasn't working. It only stopped when Trump did something. Until liberals grapple with this unfortunate truth, there's going to be a large cohort of people who no longer view this as credibly in their interests, especially when it's their own dignity being threatened, and they're being lectured by people with no skin in the game and who turned a blind eye when it was happening.
What was the harassment? Because it often seems that when you dig into these accusations, they’re counting protesting against Israel or wearing a keffiyeh as acts of antisemitism.
During the Cold War the Russians were quite happy to fund protests everywhere especially on college campuses which are easy targets. But that was a super power influencing things.
This time around its this weird micro nation with 300K people that has got it into its head, it can exert global influence by throwing oil money around. But this is not the football world cup. Historically there are really no examples of such small countries exerting so much influence before it is all shut down by larger powers.
Expect ofcourse with the Vatican. But that is centralized religion with "citizenship" across borders. Qatar meanwhile barely has enough people to defend a town, and already experienced a backlash in 2017 with a blockade. This is the second round. Watch them retreat back to sports by the end of the decade.
Small countries and Geopolitical Power are not compatible.
You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. If you don’t mourn who the state deems you to mourn your suspicious and thousands of people will attempt to get you fired.
If you criticize the current government, you’re an agitator.
If you think something that is in opposition to the current administration, your a socialist commie
It is hard because they might be teaching global warming, or biology realities like intersex people exiting, or slavery was bad and it happened in the US, is seen as political by the some who are arguing to keep politics out of the classroom.
> 150 out of 45,000+ is just over 0.3%.... not a big number.
It's a big deal when it's targeted. It basically means that "you may be in the next 0.3%":
> One campus graduate student, who received the message and was provided anonymity due to fears of retaliation, claimed the release targeted Muslim and Arab individuals who had previously expressed support for Palestine.
That's what we hear. I wouldn't trust one side's story only:
> The student claimed they had been the subject of a false report of antisemitism to the campus Title IX and XI Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, or OPHD. They said other students who received the notification had OPHD cases that were determined to be unsubstantiated or stand open.
Also antisemitism is a red herring. It just fits today's narrative.
Do you believe it’s possible to oppose the human rights abuses committed by the state of Israel without being antisemitic? Do you think it’s ethical to conflate these two distinct activities?
Harvard and Columbia are both learning that giving in to the current administration's demands doesn't actually get them off your back, it actually emboldens them to demand even more.
I think, you mean Columbia and Brown. Harvard took the government to court won,though it will be appealled but they havent settled yet (that I know of.) I think the government is asking government 1 billion from UCLA .
This is clearly bothersome, and this administration bothers me at a deep level. One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale? Clearly it's to curtail the power of the executive, but I'm afraid that neither will resist the temptation to (over)correct or double down, respectively
You don't really. I think that's the big worry.
The way to fix it is to change the constitution (for example [1], although bigger changes are probably needed, IMHO anyway, but this is a good start) but the constitution is so hard to change that this is not really feasible in the short to medium term. And making it easier to change the constitution is a catch-22.
And while the Democratic party is obviously tons better than the Republican party, that's only because the Republican party is so awful. The Dems seem to have only tepid interest to fix this at best.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/opinion/trump-constitutio...
It's not the democrats job to fix this. It's the voters job.
The voters decided to vote democrats out of office. They are the ones with the power here.
Democracy is about majority rule. Blaming the minority for not fixing the problem is to miss the whole point of voting.
The public decided that this guy, this party, should win the last election. The public will decide who wins the next one.
The really ugly truth is that a significant slice of the public think this is going well. Another significant slice thinks this is OK, let's do more of this. You might not like it. I might not like it. Welcome to the minority. (And Democracy does not treat minorities well.)
Big worry indeed. What puzzles me is that, for all the claims of the death of monoculture, how is it that politics has resisted these fragmentations? How has Trump managed to consolidate power so strongly within the power? I don't keep up with politics, but I suspect even those in the know have no clue either.
Thanks for this link. I wonder how the USA would have fared with that one change in the sentence.
Systems and laws only exist if people are willing to enforce them. If the majority of the population support someone disregarding it all, laws on paper are fairly worthless.
That means laws should be modified based on people’s will. For example, in United Kingdom of America, law can still punish murder as long as it’s not done by the king. It’s a different law than today’s , but still useful to quite some degree. Plus it may not be that different than today’s.
> One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale?
Well, it’s quite simple. If a Democratic president does happen to get elected again (hard to imagine happening in my lifetime), SCOTUS will clam up and reverse most of these little executive power loopholes. Recall how Biden didn’t have the authority to order the Department of Education to forgive student loans? But now Posse Comitatus is just, like, a suggestion.
Consider, when has a Democrat politician done this at any level or has talked about doing it? A democratic congress had gotten in Biden's way on really arcane technicalities.
Trump is more or less doing what he campaigned on and has a history of doing. At a minimum, don't vote for anyone involved worth supporting his admin. Don't vote for anyone with the same major donors (you can look up donors on open secrets), or the same project 2025/federalist background. Pay attention to your primary elections.
The simplest way to keep subsequent admins from doing this is to not vote R.
I would add that it's a false equivalence to take the behavior of one party, and then worry about the parties not behaving that way "but they might".
In other words the worth is not "what a future hypothetical democrat" might do, but rather what the "current republican is doing.
To answer your point though, the only real thing you can do is vote. That is your lever of power.
Make no mistake, Americans voted for this behavior. All of it was explicitly telegraphed in the campaign. He is doing exactly what people voted him to do.
Yes congress is weak. Yes the Supreme Court is bought and paid for. That doesn't help. But this isn't some accident. It was done openly, and voters rewarded it.
I get that lots of people didn't vote for him. But more people did. If you're not in love with the outcomes, make sure you turn out when the chance comes along. Encourage others to turn out. Because one side is not like the other, and making a choice matters.
And if you're in the "it doesn't matter who wins, they're all the same" camp, well, I'd respectfully suggest you're wrong. It does matter.
Even more bothersome is being Jewish and having people like the named staff and students harassing you because they have a bone to pick with Israel.
I think it's possible to be bothered by your claim, the extermination of palestinians, and the consolidation of executive power.
Police can investigate. Judges can issue warrants. Trials can be held.
There are tools to deals with this sort of thing.
Separation of powers exists for a reason. It's basic civics that's being violated here. The details of the case are unimportant and a red herring.
That's fine to say as a mantra but it wasn't working. It only stopped when Trump did something. Until liberals grapple with this unfortunate truth, there's going to be a large cohort of people who no longer view this as credibly in their interests, especially when it's their own dignity being threatened, and they're being lectured by people with no skin in the game and who turned a blind eye when it was happening.
Good thing that's not happening, then.
It is well documented and established that this is exactly what's been happening.
What was the harassment? Because it often seems that when you dig into these accusations, they’re counting protesting against Israel or wearing a keffiyeh as acts of antisemitism.
> what was the harassment?
At least in New York, there was legitimate conflation between believing Israel has a right to exist and supporting a genocide.
If you're curious about the technicalities, it seems it's:
This (the power to audit): https://rpp.wtgrantfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09...
Plus this (the audit itself): https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of...
This seems to grant institutions permission to share PII for purpose of an audit, not compel them to do so.
Why was this flagged? Political?
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45235003
I feel like I understand so much better what living through the cold war era must have been like, when "being a communist" was the excuse de jure.
During the Cold War the Russians were quite happy to fund protests everywhere especially on college campuses which are easy targets. But that was a super power influencing things.
This time around its this weird micro nation with 300K people that has got it into its head, it can exert global influence by throwing oil money around. But this is not the football world cup. Historically there are really no examples of such small countries exerting so much influence before it is all shut down by larger powers.
Expect ofcourse with the Vatican. But that is centralized religion with "citizenship" across borders. Qatar meanwhile barely has enough people to defend a town, and already experienced a backlash in 2017 with a blockade. This is the second round. Watch them retreat back to sports by the end of the decade.
Small countries and Geopolitical Power are not compatible.
> But that was a super power influencing things
Who said superpowers aren't influencing American discourse today - such as DRAGONBRIDGE [0][1][2] which has made Reddit borderline unusable.
[0] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/prc...
[1] - https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/pro-ccp-spamouf...
[2] - https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/google-disrupted-d...
It still is. The 'enemy' died, the (manufactured) fear didn't.
Seeing now multiple television personalities ran off air does give a certain "Hollywood Blacklist" vibe
You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. If you don’t mourn who the state deems you to mourn your suspicious and thousands of people will attempt to get you fired.
If you criticize the current government, you’re an agitator.
If you think something that is in opposition to the current administration, your a socialist commie
There is a clear distinction between (mourning/not mourning [passive]) and (making statements justifying/condoning/celebrating murder [active]).
Can you seriously not spot the difference? Or are you a bot?
What the hell are you on about mate
Very normal thing to happen… in Maoist China or Stalin’s Russia.
Or McCarthy's America.
And this time, we’re simply paranoid about ourselves
Both of those people engaged in summarily executing hundreds of thousands of people for their political views. We aren't there yet.
One way you avoid that is you start sounding the alarm bells early.
[flagged]
And also both of those people practiced ideologies associated with the left.
And yet every day the state of things marches that way which minimal opposition.
[dead]
[flagged]
[flagged]
It is hard because they might be teaching global warming, or biology realities like intersex people exiting, or slavery was bad and it happened in the US, is seen as political by the some who are arguing to keep politics out of the classroom.
. . . and other 'realities' like anti-semitism is absolutely fine with us.
What a weird "what about"ism.
[dead]
150 out of 45,000+ is just over 0.3%.... not a big number.
Wait till they find out Google will also happily hand over your information when the government or law enforcement demands it.
> 150 out of 45,000+ is just over 0.3%.... not a big number.
It's a big deal when it's targeted. It basically means that "you may be in the next 0.3%":
> One campus graduate student, who received the message and was provided anonymity due to fears of retaliation, claimed the release targeted Muslim and Arab individuals who had previously expressed support for Palestine.
It's targeted towards those who were expressing antisemitic abuse on campus.
Whatever your thoughts are on the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is unacceptable conduct.
That's what we hear. I wouldn't trust one side's story only:
> The student claimed they had been the subject of a false report of antisemitism to the campus Title IX and XI Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, or OPHD. They said other students who received the notification had OPHD cases that were determined to be unsubstantiated or stand open.
Also antisemitism is a red herring. It just fits today's narrative.
Do you believe it’s possible to oppose the human rights abuses committed by the state of Israel without being antisemitic? Do you think it’s ethical to conflate these two distinct activities?
Curious what antisemitic abuse Judith Butler was supposedly expressing.
In UC Berkeley’s defense, the alternative would be an immediate cut to all research funding and worse so this was the best they could do.
Harvard and Columbia are both learning that giving in to the current administration's demands doesn't actually get them off your back, it actually emboldens them to demand even more.
I think, you mean Columbia and Brown. Harvard took the government to court won,though it will be appealled but they havent settled yet (that I know of.) I think the government is asking government 1 billion from UCLA .
chat is giving info about your staff and students to an actively hostile government that doesn’t actually like you as an institution the best defense?