No university has agreed to his latest extortion plan.View this email in your browser [link removed]

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****OCTOBER 17, 2025****

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****Kuttner on TAP****

**Trump keeps overreaching: Will it backfire?**

**No university has agreed to his latest extortion plan. And his vindictive partisan shutdown of the NY-NJ Gateway tunnel project could be a life preserver for Democrat Mikie Sherrill in the close New Jersey governor’s race.**

Trump’s latest scheme to take universities into receivership, a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” has turned out to be a gift to dithering college presidents. Trump’s offer that they couldn’t refuse, **sent on October 1 to nine universities** [link removed] that were expected to be malleable, offered preferential access to federal funding in exchange for compliance with several demands. These included freezing tuition rates for five years, capping international student enrollment, adopting definitions of sex/gender aligned with biological sex, ending consideration of race or gender in admissions and hiring, as well as “institutional neutrality” on political and social issues.

But Trump’s scheme was so crass and half-baked that several college presidents politely told him to stuff it. So far, he has no takers. Universities that explicitly rejected the deal citing academic freedom include Brown, MIT, Penn, USC, and Dartmouth.

Until now, the effort to have college presidents act in concert against Trump has been like herding cats. But thanks to Trump, my sources say, presidents are at last talking to each other. Meanwhile, Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, who kept looking for ways to cut a deal but was saved from himself by Trump’s escalating demands, has said that the administration is complying with court orders **to restore billions of dollars to Harvard** [link removed] in withheld funding.

Trump may also have overreached in his **Wednesday White House comments to the press** [link removed], making even more explicit that his selective freezing of appropriated federal funds is intended as targeted partisan punishment. He singled out the $16 billion Gateway tunnel project, now a series of partly completed giant holes in the ground. These are the first new rail tunnels under the Hudson in more than a century, intended to clear several choke points in both commuter and long-distance rail. The 115-year-old tunnels were further damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

“[OMB Director] Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects,” Trump said. “It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. Tell him it’s terminated.”

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**A district court judge in Rhode Island has already enjoined** [link removed] Trump’s freeze on lawfully appropriated funds based on political conditions. In addition to giving courts even more basis for issuing injunctions against Trump’s punitive withholding of federal funds, this latest Trump tantrum is a pure gift for Mikie Sherrill, the lackluster centrist Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor. His withholding of tunnel funds puts Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli newly on the defensive, since Ciattarelli has insisted that as a Republican he can work with Trump. But that rings hollow in the face of Trump’s latest actions.

Somehow, it hasn’t quite occurred to Trump that the tunnels connect two states. Ending funding for the Gateway project doesn’t just punish New York, a blue state. It also punishes New Jersey, a purple one, many of whose commuters work for Trump’s chums on Wall Street. You can imagine Trump saying, as he did of his crony Javier Milei in Argentina, that the tunnel funding would depend on who wins the election. But that would only embarrass Ciattarelli further.

Sherrill, who has been struggling, turned in a better performance in the second candidates’ debate on October 8 than in the first one, and the fate of the Gateway project was central. **Based on post-debate polls** [link removed], the race has stabilized with Sherrill holding roughly a six-point lead, and Trump’s latest comments could widen that.

Once again, Trump’s ability to withhold funds from universities or from public works projects as a form of partisan punishment will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. The more reckless and explicitly illegal Trump’s actions are, the more he may give swing votes Roberts and Barrett second thoughts about empowering a full-on dictator. In the meantime, Trump is putting some spine in college presidents and centrist Democrats.

**– ROBERT KUTTNER**

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****On the

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Mad King Trump Seizes Your Money [link removed]

The president is doing almost exactly what Charles I did to touch off the English Civil War.

**BY RYAN COOPER, DAVID DAYEN** [link removed] [link removed]

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Mamdani Dogwalks Disgraced Ex-Governor Cuomo in First NYC Mayoral Debate [link removed]

The New York state assemblymember repeatedly returned to his platform of making the city affordable for working people, while Andrew Cuomo flailed around in pancake makeup.

**BY WHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH** [link removed] [link removed]

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Dollar Store Workers Fight to Improve Jobs, Even Without a Union [link removed]

With unionization dropping under Trump, experts say “premajority” campaigns can help workers score wins.

**BY JESSE LEWIS** [link removed] [link removed]

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