Trump’s Unhinged Eruption at Harvard Actually Reveals a MAGA Weakness

Harvard University has declared that enough is enough, and it’s now openly refusing to buckle to Trump’s command for subservience on multiple fronts. In response, Trump erupted on Truth Social like a petty tin-pot dictator, raging that Harvard should lose its tax exempt status and worse. His eruption also included freezing $2 billion in funds to the university. We think this reveals a hidden weakness: Trump and MAGA know that if institutions don’t capitulate to them and band together to overcome their collective action problem, the Trump-MAGA assault could very well falter. If there’s some way out of our disastrous mess, it partly involves major institutions doing exactly this in a concerted, sustained way. We talked to Jonathan Friedman, the managing director of the free expression program at PEN America, about the real nature of Harvard’s pushback, the prospects for more institutions following suit, and the potential for a real united front of resistance to disarm MAGA. Listen to this episode here.