Effectively, thank god justice has prevailed, and President Donald Trump and his household won’t be pressured to pay the $500 million penalty within the New York state civil fraud case over their years-long behavior of offering inflated property valuations to banks and insurers. Positive, the New York state appellate court docket that threw out the penalty made positive to say that Trump and his corporations did certainly interact in fraud—however determined they don’t should pay, as a result of the penalty was an extreme tremendous that violated the Eighth Modification.
No, actually.
Trump is making the rounds and bragging about it, and why wouldn’t he? It’s fairly the reward to a president who’s mainly stripping the nation to the studs and promoting it off to crypto grifters to be advised that any effort to punish his conduct is just too a lot. However in accordance with the court docket majority, the president and his sons juicing their valuations to deceive banks into giving them extra money is “not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the State.”
There’s something so grim about seeing the court docket present Trump with the safety of the legislation whereas he’s busy dismantling democracy. The tender solicitude for the pocketbook of Donald Trump, who has added over $3 billion to his private fortune simply since taking workplace in January, is nauseating, significantly if you distinction it with how gleeful Trump has been about forcing “settlements” that require universities to present the administration thousands and thousands of {dollars} to entry federal cash they have been already entitled to.
So, whereas a tremendous of roughly one-sixth of the quantity Trump made up to now seven months is merciless and extreme, these extortions are, apparently, not.
Not extreme: $221 million from Columbia College
The Trump administration squeezed Columbia College, accusing it of permitting antisemitism, for months till it coughed up 9 figures in order that federal grants can be restored. There’s no actual justification for that determine—it’s simply the quantity the administration settled on as the quantity it could settle for with a purpose to restore funding. The Equal Employment Alternative Fee is busy bragging about how its $21 million portion of that’s “the largest EEOC employment discrimination resolution publicly announced in nearly 20 years; the agency’s largest ever for victims of antisemitism; the most significant religious discrimination EEOC settlement for workers of any faith; and is part of a historic multi-agency settlement achieved by the Trump Administration”
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Positive, we don’t know precisely what number of workers have been victims of antisemitic discrimination and positive, the administration is totally answerable for how that $21 million will get allotted to these workers, however let’s simply fake that it’s a completely actual quantity relatively than only a method to step on Columbia and “woke” greater training establishments.
Not extreme: Demanding $1 billion from UCLA
Yep, that’s the demand from the administration. The College of California-Los Angeles ought to give it $1 billion to get … $584 million in funding restored. With that menace hanging over its head, UCLA has totally paused school hiring for subsequent 12 months.
To be honest, it’s appropriate that this isn’t extreme—it’s extortion.
Not extreme: An ever-increasing quantity from Harvard College
The administration is livid that Harvard won’t bend. A part of how that the proposed “fine” Harvard is predicted to pay is meant to be punitive is that it’s a wholly arbitrary quantity that Trump retains juicing as a result of he’s mad. A latest New York Occasions report revealed that Trump desires Harvard to pay $500 million as a result of he desires it to be double what Columbia needed to pay.
That report additionally reveals simply how a lot Trump desires to punish Harvard for preventing again: “Every time they fight, they lose another $250 million. Harvard has to understand, the last thing I want to do is hurt them. They’re hurting themselves. They’re fighting.”
Yeah, this isn’t simply extreme. It’s abusive.
Not extreme: Taking Harvard’s mental property
Within the battle with the Ivy League faculty, the Trump administration has additionally threatened to remove patents Harvard holds that stem from federal grants. Below the Bayh-Dole Act, faculties can obtain patents for innovations stemming from federally funded analysis, however the authorities can step in and take possession of these patents if sure circumstances are violated.
In line with the administration, Harvard didn’t well timed disclose innovations, didn’t use sufficient U.S.-based manufacturing, and didn’t maximize public advantages. Did the administration element which patents, precisely, are at problem? Nope. As a substitute, Harvard is meant to inform the administration about all of its patents after which possibly, possibly the administration will inform them extra.
How would this assist handle the alleged raging antisemitism that plagues Harvard? It wouldn’t! What it could do is permit the administration to have one other level of leverage, one other method to wreak hurt in order that Harvard will surrender that very same half-billion-dollar quantity that was far, far too extreme for Trump to pay.
Not extreme: $50 million to settle … nothing?
The place Donald Trump thinks that Donald Trump would have been irrevocably harmed by coughing up a fraction of his wealth, Donald Trump additionally thinks that forcing Brown College to pay $50 million with a purpose to unlock thousands and thousands in grants the administration illegally withheld is simply dandy.
With Brown, the administration didn’t even hassle to give you a purpose that it was withholding $500 million in already-allocated grants and contracts, nor did it say that Brown violated any legislation. With out that funding, Brown needed to take out a $300 million mortgage in April and a $500 million mortgage in July. The administration knew full nicely that the lack of half a billion {dollars} in funding was catastrophic and used that to carry Brown to heel. Too unhealthy Brown didn’t have the New York state appellate court docket searching for it, like they seemed out for poor Donnie.
