No. 83 of 108
September 4, 2025
Harvard wins a key victory, with the judge saying the remedy/punishment had no connection to the reason given (… withholding of hundreds of millions of grants). The Administration vows to appeal, and continues their push against Harvard and other universities. California wins a key victory, with the court saying the law cited did not fit the circumstances (…National Guard deployment without local request or consent). The Administration vows to appeal, and announces intent to deploy to Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans, as Washington, D.C. sues. The Appeals Court rules against the legal argument for unilateral authority to impose tariffs. The Administration vows to appeal and moves forward in implementing increases. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is in Congress today, in a super-heated hearing over the exercise of beliefs by his authority deemed counter to science, public health, and public policy established over many years. The Secretary pushes back and says a report will be issued shortly with definitive findings on the cause of autism, alarming autism activists.
All of this in the last 30 hours or so. We are in the whack-a-mole phase, in which both whackers and moles have mallets. The debates (also known as mallets) have been mostly about whether the law is being followed, who has authority, and whether positional authority overrides all laws. This inevitably centers fights around power – who has the power, and what is the power of the rule of law over the ruler’s power. This is the phase we are in. While this plays out, it is extraordinarily important to center our inquiries on outcomes. The whack-a-mole-a-whack is supercharged because it is about enabling, stopping, forcing, continuing very very different stories of the present and the future. As the fights continue, let us be clear-eyed and desirous of the world we want our descendants to thrive in.