| So much happened under President Donald Trump’s administration this week, we broke our weekly roundup into two newsletters. Today, a look at what happened as the Trump administration attempts to exert more control over higher education and federal regulators, as well as a closer look at its legal battles in the first six months of the term. Columbia University agrees to pay the government hundreds of millions of dollars It was one of the first targets of the Trump administration’s attacks on institutions. And months later, Columbia University agreed to pay the government more than $200 million and be monitored for its diversity practices to unlock federal funding that Trump froze. The university, which was the site of outspoken pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year that made some Jewish students feel harassed, had already agreed to a multitude of demands, including the appointment of an official to review certain curriculum. But Trump’s war on universities is far from over. Harvard University was in court this week trying to get more than $2 billion in withheld research funding. The Education Department is investigating several universities for allegedly prioritizing scholarships for minorities and undocumented students.  |  | | | Trump’s focus on universities is a major area of concern for First Amendment advocates, who say it is part of his strong-arm tactics designed specifically to stamp out dissent. In Turkey, the nation’s strongman president has taken control of many universities as part of his crackdown on democracy. “What we’re witnessing here is the emergence of a new model for regulating universities by the government,” David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, told The Washington Post. “As the old schoolyard taunt goes, it’s a free country — and we’ve got to make sure it stays that way,” Will Creeley, the legal director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which supports First Amendment rights, told me in March as Trump’s focus on universities heated up. “That’s the struggle right now.” A brewing legal battle over Trump’s power to fire independent regulators Trump recently fired Democratic members of a government commission that ensures toys, baby gear and many other products are safe for consumers, and this week, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled he can continue to do so without Congress’s input. It means three of the five members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent commission set up by Congress, have lost their jobs for seemingly political reasons — despite laws protecting such firings. It’s part of a pattern of the Supreme Court giving deference to presidential power, even when lower courts rule against what Trump has done. As a result, he’s gained broad control over federal spending, firing federal workers and many of these commissions. This particular case seems to set up a bigger battle at the Supreme Court over whether independent commissions can continue to remain independent from the president, reports The Washington Post’s Ann E. Marimow and Justin Jouvenal. “We should all be worried, because this is an executive branch that frankly wants more power and that looks for these confrontations,” former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said in a Brennan Center for Justice briefing with reporters recently after the court allowed more federal worker firings. “It’s up to the courts to keep them in line.” Trump administration considers rolling back major climate protections Do greenhouse gases emissions hurt human health? That’s been the opinion of the federal government since 2009, but the Environmental Protection Agency is considering rolling that determination back, The Post’s Jake Spring reports this week. The Trump administration argues it will help business growth, but experts say it will also be much harder for the government to regulate emissions that are heating the planet and leading to rising sea levels and extreme weather. “They’re trying to completely defang the Clean Air Act by saying, ‘Well, this stuff’s just not dangerous,’” David Doniger, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, told Jake. “That claim is just mind-bogglingly contrary to the evidence.” This news comes the same week that the United Nations ruled that nations have a “duty” to limit greenhouse gas emissions and provide a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” under international law. Yet a major focus of this Trump administration has been trying to dismantle government actions to lower carbon emissions. The administration and Republicans in Congress rolled back incentives for everything from electric cars to energy-efficient appliances, ended monitoring of air quality at national parks and overturned rules limiting highly toxic air pollution and polluting tires. They’ve also gone after state efforts to fill the gap on climate laws. Jody Freeman, an energy lawyer in the Obama administration who founded Harvard’s environment and energy law program, said earlier this year that Trump is standing in the way of progress to avoid the worst ravages of climate change. “If we are not working in the direction of addressing it,” she said, “then we’re in trouble.” Questions of whether the Trump administration is complying with courts Trump or his appointees “have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling,” The Post Justin Jouvenal reports, “suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.” A lot of this is happening quietly, he reports. When a court blocks the Trump administration from an action, officials find a way to keep doing it, on everything from rulings about deporting migrants to blocking federal grants. As Justin writes: “Legal experts said the pattern of conduct is unprecedented for any presidential administration and threatens to undermine the judiciary’s role as a check on an executive branch asserting vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution.” | 
