July 28, 2025 • 36 mins
Immigration law expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight, discusses the Trump administration suing sanctuary cities and denying visas to the Venezuelan Little League team. Liam Knox, Bloomberg education reporter, discusses conservative Christopher Rufo and his quest to change higher education. June Grasso hosts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Trump administration has taken aggressive action against sanctuary cities
and states, filing lawsuits against Colorado and Denver, Illinois and Chicago,
Los Angeles, Rochester, New York for New Jersey cities, and
just last week New York City. The basic contention of
the lawsuits is that sanctuary cities and states interfere with
(00:32):
federal immigration enforcement. But on Friday, a federal judge dismissed
the administration's lawsuit against Illinois and Chicago. Joining me is
immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partnered Honda Knight. He was
the head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation during
the Obama administration. Leon, there's no official definition for sanctuary cities,
(00:56):
but can you describe what they are?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Two components of what people talk about when they mentioned
sanctuary city. So one is the issue of information sharing
with the federal government. So that is, if a specific
city or locality or county or state has information about
(01:21):
someone that's been arrested, the question is should they share
that information with immigration so that immigration knows that there's
now someone who's a document that that's been arrested that
they should try to pick up as part of an
initiative to pick up people with criminal violations. That's one,
and then the second is cooperation with administrative warrants or
(01:45):
what are called detainer requests, which is on the other end,
when I actually knows that somebody is in custody in
a city or county jail or a state facility, if
there's an ordinance that says, well, if ICE issues an
administrative warrant, which is a warrant that can be issued
(02:06):
just by an ICE agent, it doesn't have to go
to a court, does that compel in any way the city,
the county, or the state to actually comply with that warrant.
And so what the sanctuary provision say is no, you're
not compelled to do anything with that. If there's a
federal judicial warrant, fine, then turn the person over to
(02:28):
the ICE agent who's showing that federal criminal judicial warrant.
But otherwise just release them and don't do anything just
because ICE is commandeering you to perform work on its behalf.
And so those are the two things that are commonly
meant by sanctuary cities. It's not really that the city
(02:50):
itself is in any way sort of creating an amnesty
that legalizes undocumented people or anything like that within its borders.
What it's posentially saying is it's not going to do
anything affirmatively to help the federal government in its mission
of trying to deport people who are deportable from the
(03:11):
United States.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the Trump administration has been targeting sanctuary cities, which
are generally democratic cities. I mean, having a sanctuary city
does that really hold up their immigration efforts.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So we're not talking legally, we're just talking about as
a factual matter. Absolutely. ICE would prefer one million times
out of a million to be given a list every
day from states and cities and counties across the country.
Here is a list of people that we've arrested today.
Go look at all of these people in these lists
(03:48):
and try to figure out if any of them are undocumented.
And there are many cities in America, some in Florida,
I'm in Texas that do this. They provide us every
day with a list of people that have been arrested.
And then ICE goes and says, well, out of these
one hundred people on this list, we care about these fourteen,
(04:08):
detain them tell us when you're going to release them,
call us and we'll come pick them up. And because
that doesn't happen, then those let's say fourteen people out
of that list from one hundred, ICE has to go
find them. So it would be much easier for ICE
if they could just literally be handed that human being
(04:29):
and put them in an ICE detention vehicle and put
them in an ICE facility. But with you have a
law that does not permit that, then those people get
released and ICE has to catch them again, just like
if they had never had any information about them in
the first place. And so as a practical matter, I
don't think anybody would dispute that it practically makes the
(04:52):
job of deportation of people with criminal interactions. I can't
say criminals because some of these folks who get arrested
that are going to be acquitted. So that's one of
the other problems is if you say you're deporting a
criminal non citizen, the issue is, well, are they actually
criminals in the sense but they actually did something that
they got convicted for or are they just wrongfully arrested
(05:16):
of something? And then you know, there's the other argument
that people make about well, yeah, but they're here illegally,
so in and of itself, you can call that person
a criminal. But putting that argument to the side, which
is a semantic argument that people debate in the political realm,
the point being that that group, whether you care about
whether they were convicted or whether you just care that
(05:37):
they were arrested and people shouldn't be getting arrested anyway,
whatever you think about that group, it is immensely harder
to remove anyone in that group in any of the
iterations if the cities don't give that information and share
it affirmatively with ICE.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
The administration sued New York City Mayor Rick Adams and
other officials after the shooting of an off duty Customs
and Border Protection officer in a Manhattan park a little
over a week ago. They blamed New York sanctuary city
policies for the shooting. Here's Homeland Security Secretary Christy nom
(06:14):
two days after the shooting.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Make no mistake, this officer is in the hospital today
fighting for his life because of the policies of the
mayor of the city and the city council and the
people that were in charge of keeping the public safe.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Would the suspects have been in ice custody, if New
York wasn't a sanctuary.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
City, if according to the lawsuits, one of the two
people that had been arrested absolutely did interact with eyes
in the sense that I placed an immigration detainer on
one of the two people, both who committed the crime
of the attack on the CDP officer and for Washington Park.
(06:54):
Both were here illegally, and both were arrested and released
in New York. But I set actually placed what was
called an immigration detainer on one of the two individuals,
meaning they told a New York City jail, please hold
this person so we can go pick them up and
tell us when you're gonna release them, and that went unanswered.
(07:16):
It was like, you know, it's like sending a fax
into Mars. You know, if you send the facts to Mars,
nobody is there in Mars andswering that fact. It's the
same concept here, So that detainer is ignored, and then
this individual who gets arrested then walks out and they
commit this crime against the CBP officer for Washington. The
(07:39):
argument being if this had been a locality like some
of the ones in Florida or in Texas, for sure
that ice detainer would have been honored, meaning at least
one of the two individuals for sure would have been
arrested and detained and would never have been able to
commit this crime. But even the second one, who didn't
have an ICE detainer, had New y York had an
(08:00):
especially cooperative relationship with ICE, and it would have even
given this second person the moment they were arrested, affirmatively
the information to ICE and said, hey, please do us
a favor and pick up this person because we're really
trying to enforce the immigration law. And so depending on
(08:22):
the scenario, either one or both would have been apprehended
and would not have been free to commit that crime.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Are all the administration's lawsuits against sanctuary cities and states
basically making the same arguments based on the supremacy clause.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
They argue basically three different arguments. They say, Number one,
that there is preemption that the federal immigration law actually
requires in a sense information sharing between the federal government
and the state government in the same It's that part
(09:01):
of the Immigration Code says that states, cities, and counties
cannot pass any laws that prohibit the sharing of information.
And here's the key, It says regarding an individual's citizenship
and immigration status. And so the point is what does
that mean. Does that mean only that issue, meaning just
(09:25):
number one, are you a citizen? Are you here legally?
Or does it mean a bigger basket of information? Are
you detained? What time are you going to be released?
Where are you detained, what crime did you commit? Et cetera.
And so that say debate now, to be fair to
the states and the cities and the counties, this debate
has been had in the first Trump administration and now
(09:47):
in the second one, and so far the Supreme Court
hasn't weighed in, but every other court that has weighed
in has said that information is just the very narrow
is the person here legally or or not? And is
the person a citizen or not? But has nothing to
do with this broader basket of information that the federal
(10:07):
government seeks. But nevertheless, that's one argument. Number one, that
what the cities and the states and the counties are
doing is preempted because they have to provide this information.
And then number two, that it's preempted by the supremacy
clause because these laws discriminate against the federal government. They
give worse treatment to the federal government than they do
(10:28):
against others that might ask for this information. They're specifically
targeted towards not sharing information with the federal government. And finally,
they actually implicitly regulate the federal government. That's the final
argument that has made in these lawsuits, because if you're
telling the federal government here's how you have to operate
in a particular location. You have to do this, this,
(10:51):
and this. In order to get someone from county detention,
you have to get a federal warrant. You can't get
a civil warrant, etc. You can't ask for information. You
have to stand outside the dail and try to catch people,
or stand outside the courts and try to catch people.
Then you're regulating the federal government in a way that's
in permissible. So those are the arguments that the federal
(11:13):
government has made in these cases. But again, to be
fair to the states and the localities, they have not
been successful at any level district or appellate court so
far in winning any of these cases so far.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
this conversation with Leon Fresco. While Venezuela's Little League team
was denied visas to take part in the league's Senior
Baseball World Series in South Carolina. You're listening to Bloomberg.
The Trump administration has found a series of lawsuits targeting
(11:50):
state and city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement.
But last Friday, a judge in Illinois dismissed the administration
lawsuit against Chicago and Illinois. I've been talking to immigration
attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holnden Knight. Leon. The
judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the Trump administration didn't have
(12:12):
standing to bring the suit. Tell us about her ruling.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Very similar laws in Cook County in Chicago and Illinois
as the ones we were just talking about in New York.
And so the defendant Chicago, Illinois, Cook County file a
motion to dismiss, and they say, at the end of
the day, you can't sue us because you don't have standing,
because you're not affected by anything we're doing. If you
(12:39):
feel that you are affected by something we're doing, it's
because you're forcing us to do things. And you know
you can enforce all the immigration law you want in Chicago,
federal government. That's what the city and the county and
the state were saying. They're saying, you can enforce all
the immigration law you want. We don't have officers shooting
at you while you're trying to enforce immigration law, or
(13:01):
we don't have officers putting up barricades or hiding people
or anything else. The problem in these cases is you're
trying to make us do things that we don't want
to do, and so you don't have standing to make
us do things that we don't want to do, because
the Supreme Court has already held in the famous Prince case,
and that was a case where when the Brady Law
(13:24):
was passed that developed the national background check system. Until
that system was developed, they said for the states and
the localities they had to do the background checks. And
then the locality students said, you can't force us to
do background checks. We don't want to do that. You know,
there were some localities that didn't believe that constitutionally you
could have background checks on guns, and so the Supreme
(13:47):
Court agreed. They said the federal government cannot force states
and localities it's called anti commandeering into implementing federal regulatory programs.
And so that same theory that existed in the case
is being applied in these sanctuary city cases, but again
in this Chicago case, to say, if you actually are
(14:09):
saying you have standing because you're being hurt, you're only
being hurt because the cities aren't enforcing the law in
the way you want them to. And you can't do that.
You can't make a city or a county affirmatively do anything.
They can do what they want as long as they're
not interfering. And because there was no finding of interference,
(14:33):
then the idea was there's no standing because you can't
force them to cooperate. You can only force them to
not interfere.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
So can we conclude that the lawsuits against other sanctuary
cities and states will likely go a similar way?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, I mean, unless the Supreme Court wants to announce
a new doctrine and there is a final sort of
straw that the government is grasping at, which is to say,
in the end, we want to distinguish princes from these
sanctuary city cases to the extent that what we're seeking
is only information as opposed to the faith or the
(15:13):
cities doing anything. So, for instance, I don't think the
federal government will ever be successful in getting the Supreme
Court to say that a city or a county or
a state has to affirmatively detain somebody because that's an
affirmative action. That's similar to prince. But the question is
on information sharing. Is that going to be something that
(15:36):
is covered by prince or will they be able to
achieve an information sharing exception which allows the federal government
to force states and cities to share information that they
have with regard to foreign nationals, i e. Where are they,
where they detained, when are they going to be released?
(15:57):
And so that is I think the final threat question.
And I would say, given that the Supreme Court has
been pretty deferential recently toward Trump's efforts to deport people
and to enforce the immigration laws, I would say that
that one is not so crazy to think that the
Immigration Court might set out an exception for information sharing.
(16:20):
Wep the wave and see.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I want to turn to denaturalization, which has been in
the news a bit lately. Denaturalizing citizens used to be
reserved for extreme cases like war criminals or national security threats,
but last month the Department of Justice made it one
of five enforcement priorities for the agency's Civil Division. First
(16:46):
of all, who are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
We're talking about people who entered the United States did
everything the right way, got green cards, local permanent residents,
waited the statutory period past the English and Civics test,
and are now US. It is so they can vote,
they can serve on juries, they can apply for security clearances,
the whole thing. Yes, these are US citizens, just like
(17:08):
someone who was born here.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And how difficult is it for the government to denaturalize
a citizen.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
In federal court? Because when you do a denaturalization, and
this is where you know, you can issue all the
press releases you want, but in reality, when you do
a denaturalization, it is a very resource intensive action. You
actually have to get the Department of Justice and I
used to work together on filing an actual federal lawsuit
against the person, and there actually has to be the
(17:37):
equivalent of a trial, and you have to go in
and say that a material misrepresentation was made in either
the citizenship application or the green card application, such that
had that material misrepresentation been known at the time, there's
no way the person would have been approved in their application.
And so that's the standard, and it's a very high threshold.
(18:01):
There can't be something like oh, you didn't tell us
you were in the Elk Club and it turns out
you were in the Elk Club, or you didn't tell
us you were in the Five Sigma fraternity, and had
we known that, we would have approved you. No, no, no,
it has to be something serious, like cases where people
either didn't disclose criminal convictions or people didn't disclose certain
(18:25):
terrorists or national security issues. Then theoretically there is some argument.
Now the question is is this gonna be expanded out
to slightly more frivolous groups of people. We're gonna have
to wait and see. But I don't think at least
in the short term that's gonna happen, because the Department
(18:46):
of Justice at the moment is in a very big
crunt in terms of they've lost a lot of lawyers
from the department. These cases are very very resource intensive,
and so to devote lawyers to these cases when the
facts are not so compelling is not going to be
a productive use of their resources. But again, in scenarios
(19:09):
where a criminal conviction was not reported or with fake identities,
that kind of thing might actually be something where you'd
want to do this kind of denaturalization action.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So Trump has raised the prospect of stripping citizenship from
Elon Musk and New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zoren Mundami.
Could he do that?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So you have to go again to the theories of
these cases, which is that material misrepresentations were made on
either the green card or the citizenship cases. So on
the green card and citizenship cases, the ones that have
been made, I have no opinion, nor am I making
any allegations against anyone.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I want it against you.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
But allegations that have been made are that Elon must
reportedly engaged in unauthorized work while he was on a
student in the United States, which if he did, would
have been a violation of his student visa, which if
he did. When he was asked a question on his
Green card and his citizenship applications, have you ever violated
the terms of any visa you've held that he answered no,
(20:14):
that would have been a dishonest answer, and then thus
you can the naturalize them that would be his. The
Mamdani one would be even more complicated because his would
be based off of memberships in certain organizations that they
would claim, Hey, this guy was cohorting with terrorist type
people and he did disclose this in his application, and
(20:39):
so it's similar to the Moot Khalil type of situation.
And even though my Mood Khalils is easier because he's
just a Green card holder, but it's the same concept
at the end of the day, which is, did you
fail to disclose the kinds of affiliations that you had
with entities that had you disclosed them, we would never
(21:00):
have approved your Green card. And so I think that
one will be much more challenging because I don't know
if there are any such organizations. I'm not aware of any,
but who knows, you know. And then the final case
that's been brought up is Rosi o'donalds. She was born
in the United States, so for her they would actually
have to find that she committed one of the expropriating acts,
(21:22):
which there's only a few of them, which is that
you either go to a US embassy and say hey,
I don't want to be a citizen anymore, that's the
main one, or you take up arms against the US
and a war. But she hasn't done any of that,
so there is no provision in the law I'm aware
of where Rosie o'donald's citizenship could be taken away. From
(21:43):
that perspective, I think.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
She says, let's transition yet again, because there are so
many immigration topics in the news. Venezuela's Little League team
made it to the Senior Baseball World Series, which is
being held in South Carolina, as it always is, but
they can't make the competition because the US refused to
(22:05):
give them visas.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Every year there's a thing called the Little League World
Series and they put it on TV, and each year
there's more and more coverage. There used to be only coverage.
When I was a young kid, there was this coverage
of maybe like the final game or two. Now they
show the whole tournament, two, three, four weeks. I bet
there's even gambling on it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Now. No, there's gambling on everything.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
So probably yes, correct. And so the point is that
Venezuela qualified. One of the Little League teams from Venezuela
qualified to be in the Little League World Series. They
were the winner of their tournament. And because of the
travel band that was implemented several weeks ago that said
that Venezuelans who were trying to come on non immigrant visas,
(22:46):
meaning visas that were not visas for immigrating into the
United States like tourists visas which would be the visas
these kids would come in under. Can't comment United States
their band. Now that travel band did have a exception,
A literally had one for like the World Cup itself,
because I think they understand that. For instance, I think
(23:06):
I ran as qualified for the World Cup, and so
that one would be very tough if you don't let
them in for the World Cup. But secondly, you know,
for other things that are in the national interest. So
the Venezuelan kids applied for visa and they were denied,
and that was just it. They were not given a
chance to get one of these waivers. And so from
(23:26):
my perspective, I don't know if this perspective is shared
by others in the United States, But even when we
had the height of the Cold War with Russia, a
nuclear power who was intent on killing us and wiping
us off the face of the match, we still let
the balls showy ballet perform in New York and we
just ban them from the United States. And so somehow
(23:49):
we made it through the Cold War. I think we'd
be able to make it through whatever this period is
by letting some little kids play baseball. But call me crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So there are these exceptions, but do you think that
fewer people will come to the United States to attend
the events because of fears of the travel ban or
other restrictions.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Absolutely. I mean we already saw that with the Club
World Cup, where we had a number of stadiums that
were quite empty in cases where you would normally have
expected the stadiums to have many more people because people
would have been having summer travel to come visit their
teams from all over the world. And there was concern
(24:30):
that I heard, both specifically from actual human beings, but
also that were reported by news outlets. But you know,
I just corroborated with my individual clients who said, we're
not going to come in because we're afraid that something
will happen to us if we try to enter the
United States. I mean, it is a fear that is
not justified. Just to be clear, if one looks at
(24:52):
this from a statistical level and says, what is the
actual chance of something bad happening to me if I
come to visit some of these events. But nevertheless, because
of various media coverage and other things, that's happening, and
I think the administration needs to be doing more to
assuade these concerns. But because that's not happening, then you
(25:14):
have these situations where people aren't coming to attend these events.
And I don't know what effects it's going to have
on the World Cup next year. We're gonna have to
wait and see, but it would be a shame if
any of those stadiums were empty, because I think the
President himself wants to see a great World Cup. He's
very interested in the event. You know, he attends and
holds the trophy and everything, and so from that perspective,
(25:38):
I would hope that the administration would do what it
can to facilitate sports in the United States. And so
I'm hopeful that they will see the error here and
let the Venezuelan kids come in, because again, I just
don't see the security concern here of letting those kids
come in and play baseball for two weeks.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Thanks so much, Leon. That's Leon Fresco of Honda Knight.
Coming up next, the conservative activist who wants to widen
Trump's crusade against colleges. You're listening to Bloomberg. Columbia University
reached a landmark deal with the Trump administration to restore
(26:18):
federal funding for research the Ivy League school will pay
a two hundred million dollar penalty over three years, and
made other commitments intended to increase transparency and compliance with
federal civil rights laws. Christopher Rufo is a conservative activist
who's been influential in the White House's efforts to reshape
(26:39):
higher education, and he now wants to expand that campaign.
Joining me is Bloomberg education reporter Liam Knox, who has
written about Rufo. So Liam start by telling us a
little about Christopher Rufo.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Christopher Rufo is a fairly influential conservative activist policy designer.
He's been very influential than Trump administration's education agenda. He's
been an influential, in fact, in the conservative movement's intensified
focus on education and higher education in particular for the
(27:13):
past few years. He kind of rose to prominence in Florida.
A couple of years ago he helped design Governor Ronda Santis'
Don't Say Gay campaign. If you remember that was a
core architect of the anti Dei movement years ago. This
position of various conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute
where he still works, and Rond de Stantists actually appointed
(27:36):
him to the board of the new College, which was
a Florida institution where that was basically the proving ground
in Florida for a lot of what has now become
the Trump administration's nationwide campaign to reshape higher education and
reform higher education along their own minds.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
So will you explain is the effort to reform higher education?
Is it mainly an effort against DEI or an effort
against so called wokeness in higher education, or is it
about combating anti semitism on campuses.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
The answer is it's all of the above, and the
focus has shifted as the news cycles have shifted. Back
in February and March, when the negotiations the terms of
negotiation were being set with some of these universities, primarily
first and foremost Columbia University, the focus really was campus
anti semitism. Claims that these universities had fostered or enabled
kind of anti Semitic harassment on campus during the encampment
(28:35):
protest movements. But it's grown significantly since then. And you
see that actually even in the terms of the Columbia
settlement that came out last week, they included anti DEI measures,
you know, a commitment not to discriminate based on race
or sex in various programs, commitment to be transparent in
releasing data around race and merit and admissions. It included
(28:59):
a lot of stipulations around international student enrollment, which the
Trump Administration's agenda has sort of encompassed as well, and
Higher ed with their campaigns to provoke student fisas and
curtail international enrollment at American universities. So it's a wide
ranging campaign that the administration is waging in the higher sphere,
(29:23):
and you know that has kind of always been true.
But in terms of where they're headed next, I think
it's just, you know, one of the things that are
reporting on this story with RUFO and folks in the
Education Department whose ear he has show that it's only
set to expand even.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Wider, and expand even wider, meaning expand the number of
schools that they're going to target with the loss of
federal funding, or expand what they're asking from the schools.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
I think in the number of schools. The main finding
here is that, yes, the administration of the White House,
the Education Department, a number of other agencies helping human
services agencies that control federal funding for research, federal financial
aid funding, things like that. That is the main lever
kind of power that they've been using against civic institutions
(30:15):
that they're investigating or that they are bringing to the
negotiating table around federal funding freezes like Columbia, like Harvard.
But you know, those are just a handful of institutions
which serve a very comparatively small number of students across
the country. What Ruffo told us basically was that he'd
had some at least some level of interest from the
(30:35):
Education Department, from the White House in a broader plan
to not necessarily threaten every school with the loss of
federal funding, but to attach terms similar to those we
saw Columbia except last week into basically bake them into
federal contracts in research grants, you know, in kind of
Title Title six compliance that's basically civil rights low anti
(30:58):
discrimination law. That's another big level that they've been using,
and a slew of Department of Justice investigations around that lately.
Just today they launched another into Duke University. But you know,
basically right now, they've been doing this piecemeal, you know,
targeting you know, a few elite institutions here and there,
targeting a few dozen in some of these big batches
(31:19):
of civil rights investigations. The most wide ranging effects have
been felt in the elimination or the freezing of research funds,
because you know, those aren't always targeted at specific universities.
There's also been just kind of a lot of spending
cuts in that area. Rufo's plan would basically be a
blanket policy for federal funding for all universities, and there's
(31:42):
really very few universities that don't take federal funding in
some form or another, and so would have a near
universal impact on higher education.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
He's pushing this idea. Has the administration in any sense
been receptive.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
To this, it's my understanding that they have. I mean,
it's actually public that least the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon,
is supportive of it in spirit. She tweeted or posted
on x her support for Rufo's plan, calling it a
compelling road map basically to bring in this campaign wider
to other campuses across the country. And Rufo himself told
us that he had circulated the plan among political appointees
(32:19):
and senior officials in the White House at the Education Department,
that some of them had even helped him draft parts
of the plan of the strategy, and so it's certainly
not out of the questions to see this becoming policy soon.
When I spoke to the Education Department about it, they
basically said that there no implementation in the works, but
(32:39):
did not deny that it is a possibility in the future.
The one other piece that is not in the formal
plan that RUFO spoke with us about is kind of
bringing the accreditors into the next here. That's a strategy
using a college accreditation which are basically very influential but
largely at least until recently, lying under the radar. Organizations
(33:02):
that approve universities to receive federal financial aid, uphold standards
of educational quality, make sure that they're financially sound, these institutions,
make sure they're not breaking federal civil rights law. These
are organizations that just recently that you know, the Trump
administration is kind of bringing into its larger campaign against HIRET.
(33:22):
They used it against Columbia. There's a lot of talk
about what how that that's another lever another arrow in
the quiver of the administration in their bigger campaign here,
and that would be extremely universal and that you know,
that's something that the Education Department has that folks in
the Education Department have discussed and explored before. So you know,
(33:43):
I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility,
and it would be enormously impactful.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Rufo went to Georgetown and Harvard. Why did he develop
this antipathy? Especially, I guess to Harvard.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting. He didn't actually go
to Harvard University. He went to the Harvard Extension School,
as is not really a part of the university. They
offer university degrees, but they don't really reject anyone, but
basically you pay for a program. You know, a lot
of adults take this just because they're interested in auditing
classes at Harvard. So he doesn't actually have any really
(34:20):
direct ties to the university. But he does talk about
his experience as kind of being like a come to
light moment where he became disillusioned with the way that
faculty at elite universities teach, with the focus he believes
on overly liberal political influence. So I think, you know,
that's all part of his ideological journey. He didn't speak
(34:43):
that much about it in his interview with Bloomberg, but
you raise a good point It's not just Chris Ruffo
who attended elite institutions, it's most of the members of
the Trump administration who are making this policy.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Do they acknowledge that if the next president comes in
and it's a Democrat president too is so called woke
and is in favor of DEI, that these policies could
all be changed.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Right, They certainly could be. That's not really part of
the discussion. I mean, I think we're really still in
the honeymoon phase here. It's only been about six months
or so of the Trump administration. There's a lot more runway.
The folks at the Education Department at the White House,
who are responsible for education policy, have been very aggressive
in pursuing it thus far. I think they see quite
(35:28):
a lot more room to do that, and you know,
aren't really thinking about an endpoint here, you know. I
think that one of the things Rufo discussed was that
he feels that the Trump administration's agenda on high ED
has a popular mandate, an electoral mandate, that DEI is unpopular,
that other things that universities culture there you are unpopular,
and that reshaping it is something that has popular support.
(35:50):
You know. I guess we'll see if that continues to
be true, you know, but that's I think that's the
perspective from which these policy makers are approaching.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Talks are underway with Cornell, Northwestern and Brown to reinstate
previously frozen funds, so we'll see what happens there. Thanks
so much, Liam. That's Bloomberg Education reporter Liam Knox, and
that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show.
Remember you can always get the latest legal news on
our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
(36:24):
and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law,
and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every
weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso
and you're listening to Bloomberg
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Trump administration has taken aggressive action against sanctuary cities
and states, filing lawsuits against Colorado and Denver, Illinois and Chicago,
Los Angeles, Rochester, New York for New Jersey cities, and
just last week New York City. The basic contention of
the lawsuits is that sanctuary cities and states interfere with
(00:32):
federal immigration enforcement. But on Friday, a federal judge dismissed
the administration's lawsuit against Illinois and Chicago. Joining me is
immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partnered Honda Knight. He was
the head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation during
the Obama administration. Leon, there's no official definition for sanctuary cities,
(00:56):
but can you describe what they are?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Two components of what people talk about when they mentioned
sanctuary city. So one is the issue of information sharing
with the federal government. So that is, if a specific
city or locality or county or state has information about
(01:21):
someone that's been arrested, the question is should they share
that information with immigration so that immigration knows that there's
now someone who's a document that that's been arrested that
they should try to pick up as part of an
initiative to pick up people with criminal violations. That's one,
and then the second is cooperation with administrative warrants or
(01:45):
what are called detainer requests, which is on the other end,
when I actually knows that somebody is in custody in
a city or county jail or a state facility, if
there's an ordinance that says, well, if ICE issues an
administrative warrant, which is a warrant that can be issued
(02:06):
just by an ICE agent, it doesn't have to go
to a court, does that compel in any way the city,
the county, or the state to actually comply with that warrant.
And so what the sanctuary provision say is no, you're
not compelled to do anything with that. If there's a
federal judicial warrant, fine, then turn the person over to
(02:28):
the ICE agent who's showing that federal criminal judicial warrant.
But otherwise just release them and don't do anything just
because ICE is commandeering you to perform work on its behalf.
And so those are the two things that are commonly
meant by sanctuary cities. It's not really that the city
(02:50):
itself is in any way sort of creating an amnesty
that legalizes undocumented people or anything like that within its borders.
What it's posentially saying is it's not going to do
anything affirmatively to help the federal government in its mission
of trying to deport people who are deportable from the
(03:11):
United States.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the Trump administration has been targeting sanctuary cities, which
are generally democratic cities. I mean, having a sanctuary city
does that really hold up their immigration efforts.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So we're not talking legally, we're just talking about as
a factual matter. Absolutely. ICE would prefer one million times
out of a million to be given a list every
day from states and cities and counties across the country.
Here is a list of people that we've arrested today.
Go look at all of these people in these lists
(03:48):
and try to figure out if any of them are undocumented.
And there are many cities in America, some in Florida,
I'm in Texas that do this. They provide us every
day with a list of people that have been arrested.
And then ICE goes and says, well, out of these
one hundred people on this list, we care about these fourteen,
(04:08):
detain them tell us when you're going to release them,
call us and we'll come pick them up. And because
that doesn't happen, then those let's say fourteen people out
of that list from one hundred, ICE has to go
find them. So it would be much easier for ICE
if they could just literally be handed that human being
(04:29):
and put them in an ICE detention vehicle and put
them in an ICE facility. But with you have a
law that does not permit that, then those people get
released and ICE has to catch them again, just like
if they had never had any information about them in
the first place. And so as a practical matter, I
don't think anybody would dispute that it practically makes the
(04:52):
job of deportation of people with criminal interactions. I can't
say criminals because some of these folks who get arrested
that are going to be acquitted. So that's one of
the other problems is if you say you're deporting a
criminal non citizen, the issue is, well, are they actually
criminals in the sense but they actually did something that
they got convicted for or are they just wrongfully arrested
(05:16):
of something? And then you know, there's the other argument
that people make about well, yeah, but they're here illegally,
so in and of itself, you can call that person
a criminal. But putting that argument to the side, which
is a semantic argument that people debate in the political realm,
the point being that that group, whether you care about
whether they were convicted or whether you just care that
(05:37):
they were arrested and people shouldn't be getting arrested anyway,
whatever you think about that group, it is immensely harder
to remove anyone in that group in any of the
iterations if the cities don't give that information and share
it affirmatively with ICE.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
The administration sued New York City Mayor Rick Adams and
other officials after the shooting of an off duty Customs
and Border Protection officer in a Manhattan park a little
over a week ago. They blamed New York sanctuary city
policies for the shooting. Here's Homeland Security Secretary Christy nom
(06:14):
two days after the shooting.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Make no mistake, this officer is in the hospital today
fighting for his life because of the policies of the
mayor of the city and the city council and the
people that were in charge of keeping the public safe.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Would the suspects have been in ice custody, if New
York wasn't a sanctuary.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
City, if according to the lawsuits, one of the two
people that had been arrested absolutely did interact with eyes
in the sense that I placed an immigration detainer on
one of the two people, both who committed the crime
of the attack on the CDP officer and for Washington Park.
(06:54):
Both were here illegally, and both were arrested and released
in New York. But I set actually placed what was
called an immigration detainer on one of the two individuals,
meaning they told a New York City jail, please hold
this person so we can go pick them up and
tell us when you're gonna release them, and that went unanswered.
(07:16):
It was like, you know, it's like sending a fax
into Mars. You know, if you send the facts to Mars,
nobody is there in Mars andswering that fact. It's the
same concept here, So that detainer is ignored, and then
this individual who gets arrested then walks out and they
commit this crime against the CBP officer for Washington. The
(07:39):
argument being if this had been a locality like some
of the ones in Florida or in Texas, for sure
that ice detainer would have been honored, meaning at least
one of the two individuals for sure would have been
arrested and detained and would never have been able to
commit this crime. But even the second one, who didn't
have an ICE detainer, had New y York had an
(08:00):
especially cooperative relationship with ICE, and it would have even
given this second person the moment they were arrested, affirmatively
the information to ICE and said, hey, please do us
a favor and pick up this person because we're really
trying to enforce the immigration law. And so depending on
(08:22):
the scenario, either one or both would have been apprehended
and would not have been free to commit that crime.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Are all the administration's lawsuits against sanctuary cities and states
basically making the same arguments based on the supremacy clause.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
They argue basically three different arguments. They say, Number one,
that there is preemption that the federal immigration law actually
requires in a sense information sharing between the federal government
and the state government in the same It's that part
(09:01):
of the Immigration Code says that states, cities, and counties
cannot pass any laws that prohibit the sharing of information.
And here's the key, It says regarding an individual's citizenship
and immigration status. And so the point is what does
that mean. Does that mean only that issue, meaning just
(09:25):
number one, are you a citizen? Are you here legally?
Or does it mean a bigger basket of information? Are
you detained? What time are you going to be released?
Where are you detained, what crime did you commit? Et cetera.
And so that say debate now, to be fair to
the states and the cities and the counties, this debate
has been had in the first Trump administration and now
(09:47):
in the second one, and so far the Supreme Court
hasn't weighed in, but every other court that has weighed
in has said that information is just the very narrow
is the person here legally or or not? And is
the person a citizen or not? But has nothing to
do with this broader basket of information that the federal
(10:07):
government seeks. But nevertheless, that's one argument. Number one, that
what the cities and the states and the counties are
doing is preempted because they have to provide this information.
And then number two, that it's preempted by the supremacy
clause because these laws discriminate against the federal government. They
give worse treatment to the federal government than they do
(10:28):
against others that might ask for this information. They're specifically
targeted towards not sharing information with the federal government. And finally,
they actually implicitly regulate the federal government. That's the final
argument that has made in these lawsuits, because if you're
telling the federal government here's how you have to operate
in a particular location. You have to do this, this,
(10:51):
and this. In order to get someone from county detention,
you have to get a federal warrant. You can't get
a civil warrant, etc. You can't ask for information. You
have to stand outside the dail and try to catch people,
or stand outside the courts and try to catch people.
Then you're regulating the federal government in a way that's
in permissible. So those are the arguments that the federal
(11:13):
government has made in these cases. But again, to be
fair to the states and the localities, they have not
been successful at any level district or appellate court so
far in winning any of these cases so far.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
this conversation with Leon Fresco. While Venezuela's Little League team
was denied visas to take part in the league's Senior
Baseball World Series in South Carolina. You're listening to Bloomberg.
The Trump administration has found a series of lawsuits targeting
(11:50):
state and city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement.
But last Friday, a judge in Illinois dismissed the administration
lawsuit against Chicago and Illinois. I've been talking to immigration
attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holnden Knight. Leon. The
judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the Trump administration didn't have
(12:12):
standing to bring the suit. Tell us about her ruling.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Very similar laws in Cook County in Chicago and Illinois
as the ones we were just talking about in New York.
And so the defendant Chicago, Illinois, Cook County file a
motion to dismiss, and they say, at the end of
the day, you can't sue us because you don't have standing,
because you're not affected by anything we're doing. If you
(12:39):
feel that you are affected by something we're doing, it's
because you're forcing us to do things. And you know
you can enforce all the immigration law you want in Chicago,
federal government. That's what the city and the county and
the state were saying. They're saying, you can enforce all
the immigration law you want. We don't have officers shooting
at you while you're trying to enforce immigration law, or
(13:01):
we don't have officers putting up barricades or hiding people
or anything else. The problem in these cases is you're
trying to make us do things that we don't want
to do, and so you don't have standing to make
us do things that we don't want to do, because
the Supreme Court has already held in the famous Prince case,
and that was a case where when the Brady Law
(13:24):
was passed that developed the national background check system. Until
that system was developed, they said for the states and
the localities they had to do the background checks. And
then the locality students said, you can't force us to
do background checks. We don't want to do that. You know,
there were some localities that didn't believe that constitutionally you
could have background checks on guns, and so the Supreme
(13:47):
Court agreed. They said the federal government cannot force states
and localities it's called anti commandeering into implementing federal regulatory programs.
And so that same theory that existed in the case
is being applied in these sanctuary city cases, but again
in this Chicago case, to say, if you actually are
(14:09):
saying you have standing because you're being hurt, you're only
being hurt because the cities aren't enforcing the law in
the way you want them to. And you can't do that.
You can't make a city or a county affirmatively do anything.
They can do what they want as long as they're
not interfering. And because there was no finding of interference,
(14:33):
then the idea was there's no standing because you can't
force them to cooperate. You can only force them to
not interfere.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
So can we conclude that the lawsuits against other sanctuary
cities and states will likely go a similar way?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, I mean, unless the Supreme Court wants to announce
a new doctrine and there is a final sort of
straw that the government is grasping at, which is to say,
in the end, we want to distinguish princes from these
sanctuary city cases to the extent that what we're seeking
is only information as opposed to the faith or the
(15:13):
cities doing anything. So, for instance, I don't think the
federal government will ever be successful in getting the Supreme
Court to say that a city or a county or
a state has to affirmatively detain somebody because that's an
affirmative action. That's similar to prince. But the question is
on information sharing. Is that going to be something that
(15:36):
is covered by prince or will they be able to
achieve an information sharing exception which allows the federal government
to force states and cities to share information that they
have with regard to foreign nationals, i e. Where are they,
where they detained, when are they going to be released?
(15:57):
And so that is I think the final threat question.
And I would say, given that the Supreme Court has
been pretty deferential recently toward Trump's efforts to deport people
and to enforce the immigration laws, I would say that
that one is not so crazy to think that the
Immigration Court might set out an exception for information sharing.
(16:20):
Wep the wave and see.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I want to turn to denaturalization, which has been in
the news a bit lately. Denaturalizing citizens used to be
reserved for extreme cases like war criminals or national security threats,
but last month the Department of Justice made it one
of five enforcement priorities for the agency's Civil Division. First
(16:46):
of all, who are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
We're talking about people who entered the United States did
everything the right way, got green cards, local permanent residents,
waited the statutory period past the English and Civics test,
and are now US. It is so they can vote,
they can serve on juries, they can apply for security clearances,
the whole thing. Yes, these are US citizens, just like
(17:08):
someone who was born here.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And how difficult is it for the government to denaturalize
a citizen.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
In federal court? Because when you do a denaturalization, and
this is where you know, you can issue all the
press releases you want, but in reality, when you do
a denaturalization, it is a very resource intensive action. You
actually have to get the Department of Justice and I
used to work together on filing an actual federal lawsuit
against the person, and there actually has to be the
(17:37):
equivalent of a trial, and you have to go in
and say that a material misrepresentation was made in either
the citizenship application or the green card application, such that
had that material misrepresentation been known at the time, there's
no way the person would have been approved in their application.
And so that's the standard, and it's a very high threshold.
(18:01):
There can't be something like oh, you didn't tell us
you were in the Elk Club and it turns out
you were in the Elk Club, or you didn't tell
us you were in the Five Sigma fraternity, and had
we known that, we would have approved you. No, no, no,
it has to be something serious, like cases where people
either didn't disclose criminal convictions or people didn't disclose certain
(18:25):
terrorists or national security issues. Then theoretically there is some argument.
Now the question is is this gonna be expanded out
to slightly more frivolous groups of people. We're gonna have
to wait and see. But I don't think at least
in the short term that's gonna happen, because the Department
(18:46):
of Justice at the moment is in a very big
crunt in terms of they've lost a lot of lawyers
from the department. These cases are very very resource intensive,
and so to devote lawyers to these cases when the
facts are not so compelling is not going to be
a productive use of their resources. But again, in scenarios
(19:09):
where a criminal conviction was not reported or with fake identities,
that kind of thing might actually be something where you'd
want to do this kind of denaturalization action.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So Trump has raised the prospect of stripping citizenship from
Elon Musk and New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zoren Mundami.
Could he do that?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So you have to go again to the theories of
these cases, which is that material misrepresentations were made on
either the green card or the citizenship cases. So on
the green card and citizenship cases, the ones that have
been made, I have no opinion, nor am I making
any allegations against anyone.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I want it against you.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
But allegations that have been made are that Elon must
reportedly engaged in unauthorized work while he was on a
student in the United States, which if he did, would
have been a violation of his student visa, which if
he did. When he was asked a question on his
Green card and his citizenship applications, have you ever violated
the terms of any visa you've held that he answered no,
(20:14):
that would have been a dishonest answer, and then thus
you can the naturalize them that would be his. The
Mamdani one would be even more complicated because his would
be based off of memberships in certain organizations that they
would claim, Hey, this guy was cohorting with terrorist type
people and he did disclose this in his application, and
(20:39):
so it's similar to the Moot Khalil type of situation.
And even though my Mood Khalils is easier because he's
just a Green card holder, but it's the same concept
at the end of the day, which is, did you
fail to disclose the kinds of affiliations that you had
with entities that had you disclosed them, we would never
(21:00):
have approved your Green card. And so I think that
one will be much more challenging because I don't know
if there are any such organizations. I'm not aware of any,
but who knows, you know. And then the final case
that's been brought up is Rosi o'donalds. She was born
in the United States, so for her they would actually
have to find that she committed one of the expropriating acts,
(21:22):
which there's only a few of them, which is that
you either go to a US embassy and say hey,
I don't want to be a citizen anymore, that's the
main one, or you take up arms against the US
and a war. But she hasn't done any of that,
so there is no provision in the law I'm aware
of where Rosie o'donald's citizenship could be taken away. From
(21:43):
that perspective, I think.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
She says, let's transition yet again, because there are so
many immigration topics in the news. Venezuela's Little League team
made it to the Senior Baseball World Series, which is
being held in South Carolina, as it always is, but
they can't make the competition because the US refused to
(22:05):
give them visas.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Every year there's a thing called the Little League World
Series and they put it on TV, and each year
there's more and more coverage. There used to be only coverage.
When I was a young kid, there was this coverage
of maybe like the final game or two. Now they
show the whole tournament, two, three, four weeks. I bet
there's even gambling on it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Now. No, there's gambling on everything.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
So probably yes, correct. And so the point is that
Venezuela qualified. One of the Little League teams from Venezuela
qualified to be in the Little League World Series. They
were the winner of their tournament. And because of the
travel band that was implemented several weeks ago that said
that Venezuelans who were trying to come on non immigrant visas,
(22:46):
meaning visas that were not visas for immigrating into the
United States like tourists visas which would be the visas
these kids would come in under. Can't comment United States
their band. Now that travel band did have a exception,
A literally had one for like the World Cup itself,
because I think they understand that. For instance, I think
(23:06):
I ran as qualified for the World Cup, and so
that one would be very tough if you don't let
them in for the World Cup. But secondly, you know,
for other things that are in the national interest. So
the Venezuelan kids applied for visa and they were denied,
and that was just it. They were not given a
chance to get one of these waivers. And so from
(23:26):
my perspective, I don't know if this perspective is shared
by others in the United States, But even when we
had the height of the Cold War with Russia, a
nuclear power who was intent on killing us and wiping
us off the face of the match, we still let
the balls showy ballet perform in New York and we
just ban them from the United States. And so somehow
(23:49):
we made it through the Cold War. I think we'd
be able to make it through whatever this period is
by letting some little kids play baseball. But call me crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So there are these exceptions, but do you think that
fewer people will come to the United States to attend
the events because of fears of the travel ban or
other restrictions.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Absolutely. I mean we already saw that with the Club
World Cup, where we had a number of stadiums that
were quite empty in cases where you would normally have
expected the stadiums to have many more people because people
would have been having summer travel to come visit their
teams from all over the world. And there was concern
(24:30):
that I heard, both specifically from actual human beings, but
also that were reported by news outlets. But you know,
I just corroborated with my individual clients who said, we're
not going to come in because we're afraid that something
will happen to us if we try to enter the
United States. I mean, it is a fear that is
not justified. Just to be clear, if one looks at
(24:52):
this from a statistical level and says, what is the
actual chance of something bad happening to me if I
come to visit some of these events. But nevertheless, because
of various media coverage and other things, that's happening, and
I think the administration needs to be doing more to
assuade these concerns. But because that's not happening, then you
(25:14):
have these situations where people aren't coming to attend these events.
And I don't know what effects it's going to have
on the World Cup next year. We're gonna have to
wait and see, but it would be a shame if
any of those stadiums were empty, because I think the
President himself wants to see a great World Cup. He's
very interested in the event. You know, he attends and
holds the trophy and everything, and so from that perspective,
(25:38):
I would hope that the administration would do what it
can to facilitate sports in the United States. And so
I'm hopeful that they will see the error here and
let the Venezuelan kids come in, because again, I just
don't see the security concern here of letting those kids
come in and play baseball for two weeks.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Thanks so much, Leon. That's Leon Fresco of Honda Knight.
Coming up next, the conservative activist who wants to widen
Trump's crusade against colleges. You're listening to Bloomberg. Columbia University
reached a landmark deal with the Trump administration to restore
(26:18):
federal funding for research the Ivy League school will pay
a two hundred million dollar penalty over three years, and
made other commitments intended to increase transparency and compliance with
federal civil rights laws. Christopher Rufo is a conservative activist
who's been influential in the White House's efforts to reshape
(26:39):
higher education, and he now wants to expand that campaign.
Joining me is Bloomberg education reporter Liam Knox, who has
written about Rufo. So Liam start by telling us a
little about Christopher Rufo.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Christopher Rufo is a fairly influential conservative activist policy designer.
He's been very influential than Trump administration's education agenda. He's
been an influential, in fact, in the conservative movement's intensified
focus on education and higher education in particular for the
(27:13):
past few years. He kind of rose to prominence in Florida.
A couple of years ago he helped design Governor Ronda Santis'
Don't Say Gay campaign. If you remember that was a
core architect of the anti Dei movement years ago. This
position of various conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute
where he still works, and Rond de Stantists actually appointed
(27:36):
him to the board of the new College, which was
a Florida institution where that was basically the proving ground
in Florida for a lot of what has now become
the Trump administration's nationwide campaign to reshape higher education and
reform higher education along their own minds.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
So will you explain is the effort to reform higher education?
Is it mainly an effort against DEI or an effort
against so called wokeness in higher education, or is it
about combating anti semitism on campuses.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
The answer is it's all of the above, and the
focus has shifted as the news cycles have shifted. Back
in February and March, when the negotiations the terms of
negotiation were being set with some of these universities, primarily
first and foremost Columbia University, the focus really was campus
anti semitism. Claims that these universities had fostered or enabled
kind of anti Semitic harassment on campus during the encampment
(28:35):
protest movements. But it's grown significantly since then. And you
see that actually even in the terms of the Columbia
settlement that came out last week, they included anti DEI measures,
you know, a commitment not to discriminate based on race
or sex in various programs, commitment to be transparent in
releasing data around race and merit and admissions. It included
(28:59):
a lot of stipulations around international student enrollment, which the
Trump Administration's agenda has sort of encompassed as well, and
Higher ed with their campaigns to provoke student fisas and
curtail international enrollment at American universities. So it's a wide
ranging campaign that the administration is waging in the higher sphere,
(29:23):
and you know that has kind of always been true.
But in terms of where they're headed next, I think
it's just, you know, one of the things that are
reporting on this story with RUFO and folks in the
Education Department whose ear he has show that it's only
set to expand even.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Wider, and expand even wider, meaning expand the number of
schools that they're going to target with the loss of
federal funding, or expand what they're asking from the schools.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
I think in the number of schools. The main finding
here is that, yes, the administration of the White House,
the Education Department, a number of other agencies helping human
services agencies that control federal funding for research, federal financial
aid funding, things like that. That is the main lever
kind of power that they've been using against civic institutions
(30:15):
that they're investigating or that they are bringing to the
negotiating table around federal funding freezes like Columbia, like Harvard.
But you know, those are just a handful of institutions
which serve a very comparatively small number of students across
the country. What Ruffo told us basically was that he'd
had some at least some level of interest from the
(30:35):
Education Department, from the White House in a broader plan
to not necessarily threaten every school with the loss of
federal funding, but to attach terms similar to those we
saw Columbia except last week into basically bake them into
federal contracts in research grants, you know, in kind of
Title Title six compliance that's basically civil rights low anti
(30:58):
discrimination law. That's another big level that they've been using,
and a slew of Department of Justice investigations around that lately.
Just today they launched another into Duke University. But you know,
basically right now, they've been doing this piecemeal, you know,
targeting you know, a few elite institutions here and there,
targeting a few dozen in some of these big batches
(31:19):
of civil rights investigations. The most wide ranging effects have
been felt in the elimination or the freezing of research funds,
because you know, those aren't always targeted at specific universities.
There's also been just kind of a lot of spending
cuts in that area. Rufo's plan would basically be a
blanket policy for federal funding for all universities, and there's
(31:42):
really very few universities that don't take federal funding in
some form or another, and so would have a near
universal impact on higher education.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
He's pushing this idea. Has the administration in any sense
been receptive.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
To this, it's my understanding that they have. I mean,
it's actually public that least the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon,
is supportive of it in spirit. She tweeted or posted
on x her support for Rufo's plan, calling it a
compelling road map basically to bring in this campaign wider
to other campuses across the country. And Rufo himself told
us that he had circulated the plan among political appointees
(32:19):
and senior officials in the White House at the Education Department,
that some of them had even helped him draft parts
of the plan of the strategy, and so it's certainly
not out of the questions to see this becoming policy soon.
When I spoke to the Education Department about it, they
basically said that there no implementation in the works, but
(32:39):
did not deny that it is a possibility in the future.
The one other piece that is not in the formal
plan that RUFO spoke with us about is kind of
bringing the accreditors into the next here. That's a strategy
using a college accreditation which are basically very influential but
largely at least until recently, lying under the radar. Organizations
(33:02):
that approve universities to receive federal financial aid, uphold standards
of educational quality, make sure that they're financially sound, these institutions,
make sure they're not breaking federal civil rights law. These
are organizations that just recently that you know, the Trump
administration is kind of bringing into its larger campaign against HIRET.
(33:22):
They used it against Columbia. There's a lot of talk
about what how that that's another lever another arrow in
the quiver of the administration in their bigger campaign here,
and that would be extremely universal and that you know,
that's something that the Education Department has that folks in
the Education Department have discussed and explored before. So you know,
(33:43):
I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility,
and it would be enormously impactful.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Rufo went to Georgetown and Harvard. Why did he develop
this antipathy? Especially, I guess to Harvard.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting. He didn't actually go
to Harvard University. He went to the Harvard Extension School,
as is not really a part of the university. They
offer university degrees, but they don't really reject anyone, but
basically you pay for a program. You know, a lot
of adults take this just because they're interested in auditing
classes at Harvard. So he doesn't actually have any really
(34:20):
direct ties to the university. But he does talk about
his experience as kind of being like a come to
light moment where he became disillusioned with the way that
faculty at elite universities teach, with the focus he believes
on overly liberal political influence. So I think, you know,
that's all part of his ideological journey. He didn't speak
(34:43):
that much about it in his interview with Bloomberg, but
you raise a good point It's not just Chris Ruffo
who attended elite institutions, it's most of the members of
the Trump administration who are making this policy.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Do they acknowledge that if the next president comes in
and it's a Democrat president too is so called woke
and is in favor of DEI, that these policies could
all be changed.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Right, They certainly could be. That's not really part of
the discussion. I mean, I think we're really still in
the honeymoon phase here. It's only been about six months
or so of the Trump administration. There's a lot more runway.
The folks at the Education Department at the White House,
who are responsible for education policy, have been very aggressive
in pursuing it thus far. I think they see quite
(35:28):
a lot more room to do that, and you know,
aren't really thinking about an endpoint here, you know. I
think that one of the things Rufo discussed was that
he feels that the Trump administration's agenda on high ED
has a popular mandate, an electoral mandate, that DEI is unpopular,
that other things that universities culture there you are unpopular,
and that reshaping it is something that has popular support.
(35:50):
You know. I guess we'll see if that continues to
be true, you know, but that's I think that's the
perspective from which these policy makers are approaching.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Talks are underway with Cornell, Northwestern and Brown to reinstate
previously frozen funds, so we'll see what happens there. Thanks
so much, Liam. That's Bloomberg Education reporter Liam Knox, and
that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show.
Remember you can always get the latest legal news on
our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
(36:24):
and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law,
and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every
weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso
and you're listening to Bloomberg
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