Well, Harvard University won a major legal victory today when a federal judge said the government had broken the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funding.

As William Brangham explains, it's one of the latest in a series of court rulings putting the breaks on some administration policies, which are likely headed to the Supreme Court.

That's right. Harvard's legal win today was a significant victory for the university,

which had sued the administration arguing that its canceling of research grants

trampled the school's due process and First Amendment rights.

Separately, a Fifth Circuit panel yesterday blocked the administration from

using an 18th century law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. And then last week,

another court ruled that the president overstepped his authority by issuing his sweeping

tariffs against other nations. So for some perspective on these legal developments,

we are joined again by Georgetown Law, Professor Steve Lattuck. Steve, thank you so much for being here.

Let's start with the Harvard case first. The administration had argued that Harvard wasn't doing

enough to stamp out anti-Semitism on campus. And so it blocked

all of these research grants, billions of dollars. Harvard sued and won. What did this judge rule that the

administration had done wrong? Yeah, I mean, so William, there are things there are two different

problems here. The first is that federal law provides a process for revoking those kinds of grants, for, you know, bringing claims of discrimination against universities like Harvard. They didn't follow it here. And second, there were the obvious First Amendment issues with going after a university based on what really looks

like for the most part, constitutionally protected speech. As you mentioned, I mean, it's just a

district court. It still has to go up to the federal appeals court in Boston and probably from

thence to the Supreme Court. But it's a big win for Harvard and another, as you say, a number of

recent losses for this administration.

Okay, separately, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which many people consider one of the most

conservative circuits in the country, said that the Trump's administration's use of this 18th century law known as the Alien Enemies Act

meant that the administration could not be deporting alleged gang members from Venezuela.

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