Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s civil-rights case against Harvard, the latest judicial rebuke of an administration accustomed to pushing legal boundaries. But what is remarkable here is not the pushback. It is that a Republican administration is pushing the boundaries of federal civil-rights enforcement at all.
The administration has mobilized agencies across the government, allowing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to assume a leading role in higher-education matters once left largely to the Department of Education. And it has pursued the ultimate civil-rights sanction — the complete withdrawal of federal funding in many cases — with a determination that Washington has not displayed in decades. In its whole-of-government coordination, and the sheer force of its remedies, the second Trump administration has distinguished itself from every previous Republican administration in our lifetime.
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