Trump is taking on America’s institutions but resistance is building

Courts and universities try to preserve guardrails on presidential authority in the face of administration’s assertions of power.

The Trump administration has moved to freeze more than $US2.2 billion in grants and $US60 million in contracts to Harvard University, citing the university's refusal to comply with federal directives aimed at curbing campus activism. Illustration: Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/WSJ

In moving to accumulate unprecedented power, President Donald Trump has bulldozed his way through the traditional constraints of presidential authority with such force that institutions including universities, law firms and parts of Congress have been left reeling. This week, some started fighting back.

Harvard University refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands for changes to address alleged bias. Columbia University, facing criticism for acquiescing in negotiations over federal funding, took a tougher tone.

Federal courts raised the prospect of holding Trump officials in contempt. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has resisted calls to pre-emptively lower interest rates to cushion any economic fallout from Trump’s trade war. Former cybersecurity official Chris Krebs, targeted with a federal investigation for not going along with Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, quit his private-sector job so he could more freely battle the White House.

Voters are more loudly voicing opposition to some Trump policies, criticising Republican lawmakers during town-hall meetings.

“The embers are alive, and there are even some flames of resistance growing,” said Peter Wehner, a Trump critic who served in three earlier Republican administrations.

So far, the president and his top advisers are unbowed. They say the pushback presents an opportunity to paint Democrats, courts and universities as out of touch with voters who sent Trump to the White House a second time.

Students, faculty and other members of the Harvard University community rallying on Thursday. Picture: AP

A senior White House official said Trump’s team was eager for Democrats to stay focused on Trump’s deportation policies. The official said advisers to the president think fights with Harvard and the judiciary are similarly politically advantageous.

Trump has moved to strip power from opponents whom the White House sees as constraining his authority, presenting alternative viewpoints or deferring to liberal priorities. The president and his team have said some universities have privileged some viewpoints and racial groups over others or failed to rein in anti-Semitism. Trump has reached around $US1 billion ($1.57bn) in deals with law firms he views as hostile to his causes.

Trump barrelled through even more institutions this week. Where past administrations have tried to maintain the perception of independence in tax-law enforcement, Trump raised the prospect of revoking the tax-exempt status of Harvard and other universities. On Thursday, the president suggested other groups might not deserve tax-exempt status, singling out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog for government corruption.

It would take another power centre in Washington to limit the president’s authority – either the courts, which are flooded with cases challenging Trump’s actions, or Republican lawmakers. The party’s congressional wing has stood almost uniformly behind the president. But if GOP lawmakers sense that voters will punish them in next year’s midterm elections, they might present more resistance to his agenda in Congress, Washington veterans said.

Court rulings have been more stern as the administration inches closer to defiance of judicial orders. On Thursday, a federal appeals court reaffirmed that officials needed to do more to help free Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly sent by the US to a Salvadoran prison, one of the strongest rebukes of the administration’s actions.

This came after the Supreme Court ordered Trump officials to seek Abrego Garcia’s return, rebuffing the administration’s claims that it need do nothing to remedy its error. The lower court judge in the Abrego Garcia case vowed to check whether the government is abiding by her order.

Another judge said he had found probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for wilfully disregarding an order barring the removal of Venezuelan migrants from the country. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington told the government it needed to act quickly to avoid prosecution. The administration has appealed, and officials have signalled they would stand their ground.

Trump has moved to dismantle agencies conservatives have long criticised, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and Voice of America. The groups resisting now have independent resources. Harvard has a pool of deep-pocketed donors and an endowment of $53 billion to help withstand Trump’s $US2.2 billion funding freeze, though most of its endowment is restricted to specific uses.

Still, the president is fighting on favourable political terrain.

Senator Chris Van Hollen met Thursday with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. Picture: Press Office Senator Van Hollen/AP

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, left, embraces Patty Morin, mother of a murder victim, in the White House briefing room on Wednesday. Picture: Alex Brandon/AP

On Wednesday, the White House called reporters to a briefing featuring Patty Morin, the mother of a 37-year-old murder victim, drawing attention to a case in which a Salvadoran man illegally in the US was convicted. Administration officials said the event was meant to highlight the danger Trump says comes from undocumented immigrants and fortify the argument that Democrats – in pushing for due process rights for deportees – are defending alleged criminals.

Trump, in moving to pull funding from Ivy League universities and security clearances from law firms, is creating opponents who likely draw little public sympathy, said Scott Tranter, founder of political-data firm Decision Desk HQ.

As many GOP lawmakers staunchly support Trump, others are reluctant to cross him – and Democrats have no tools for controlling legislative action.

“We are all afraid,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) said on Monday. “Retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

But Republican lawmakers have experienced voter opposition to Trump. Some constituent meetings have grown so raucous that many GOP members in Congress have stopped holding them. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) contended with angry questions about Trump’s deportation policy at a town hall meeting this week.

In Westfield, Indiana, some people at a town-hall event hosted in March by Republican Victoria Spartz got angry. Picture: Chris Bergin/Reuters

Senator Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor for 25 hours and five minutes without rest to protest President Trump’s actions in his second term. Picture: Senate Television/AP

Democrats show signs of presenting a more forceful response to Trump, after they criticised each other earlier for appearing hapless. Democrats made no policy gains with a record-breaking 25-hour filibuster by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and a trip this week by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen to visit Abrego Garcia in Salvador. But they drew media attention and showed a willingness to challenge Trump.

Voters want to keep constitutional guardrails in place that constrain a president’s power, Wall Street Journal polling has shown. Some 58 per cent say Trump must comply with court rulings that limit his actions, even if he disagrees with those decisions, a Journal survey in late March and early April found, while 62 per cent say the president shouldn’t close federal agencies without congressional approval. Majorities also say they want the two parties and Trump to find common ground.

“It seems as if we are moving at a rapid speed toward a genuine constitutional crisis,” Wehner said, “a genuine separation-of-powers crisis and a genuine checks-and-balances crisis.”

Dow Jones Newswires