Harvard and NPR fight back against Trump
Sidebar
The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin and James Hohmann dive into the ways institutions are fighting back against President Trump – both culturally and legally – starting with Harvard University and NPR, which are both embroiled in lawsuits with the administration.
Plus, how are those two institutions bellweathers for the rest of America, from other universities to media outlets and free speech?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:08.6 | Make America great a game. How can you be against it? |
| 0:17.2 | President Trump prides himself on being a fighter, but what happens when institutions fight back? |
| 0:23.0 | This is Sidebar from The Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey, and I'm here today with Rhonda Colvin. Hi, Rhonda. |
| 0:27.8 | Hello. And James Homan. Hello, James. Hope you both had peaceful Memorial Day weekends. |
| 0:33.0 | On today's show, we'll talk about the schools, news outlets, and law firms fighting back against Trump from Harvard to NPR. |
| 0:41.4 | And just this morning, it's Tuesday morning, NPR filed a lawsuit against the Trump White House over executive orders barring the use of funds that Congress already allocated to NPR and PBS. |
| 0:52.6 | More on that in a moment. |
| 0:53.9 | But let's start with Harvard. |
| 0:55.9 | Now, Donald Trump knows this is an easy punching bag. It's like the most elite institution in America. |
| 1:01.4 | You think elite schools, you think Harvard. Let's talk about what happened. I want to go back to Thursday |
| 1:06.8 | because Harvarders now sued the Trump administration, but it all started with the decision that |
| 1:11.6 | the Department of Homeland Security made Thursday. What did DHS do, James? Essentially, they had |
| 1:17.8 | demanded that Harvard turnover all of this material, all the disciplinary records for all the |
| 1:23.9 | international students and a bunch of other stuff. Harvard said we've complied with this. |
| 1:29.9 | The Trump administration said not enough. And as a result, we're going to cut off all Harvard |
| 1:36.3 | international students. You are no longer eligible to be in the United States. Harvard can't |
| 1:40.7 | accept international students. Harvard can't host them. And the international students can't be in the United States if they're at Harvard. |
| 1:47.4 | And obviously that is a major, major step. |
| 1:50.3 | So Harvard immediately went to court and successfully quickly got a judge to say, no, we're going to hold off on this. |
| 1:57.2 | We'll have a hearing about it. |
| 1:59.2 | And so then the Trump administration fired back at that |
... |
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