Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

US university professors and teachers are suing Donald Trump’s administration over its efforts to overhaul governance at Columbia University with threats to withdraw federal funding from the Ivy League institution.

The American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers launched a lawsuit against officials and the departments of justice, education, health and human services, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the General Services Administration after $400mn in funding to Columbia was cut earlier this month.

The legal challenge follows Columbia’s decision last week to cede to many of the government’s demands to overhaul faculty governance and student discipline, which triggered protests and widespread concern over threats to academic freedom and freedom of speech across US educational institutions.

Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, said: “The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia are part of a clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education.”

The lawsuit alleges that without due process, “the Trump administration is coercing Columbia University to do its bidding and regulate speech and expression on campus by holding hostage billions of dollars in congressionally authorised federal funding — funding that is responsible for positioning the American university system as a global leader in scientific, medical and technological research and is crucial to ensuring it remains so”.

The litigation comes after other legal challenges in recent weeks to the administration’s cancellation of federal grants to universities linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and its slashing of the indirect costs funded by the NIH on medical research to 15 per cent, in a move that is estimated to reduce support by $4bn across the country.

The government accused Columbia earlier this month of failing to prevent antisemitism on campus and warned future federal funding would be jeopardised unless it quickly implemented rapid reforms.

Similar to other universities, faculty members have criticised Columbia’s leadership for refusing to speak out or criticise the administration’s actions, in what has been seen by some as a tactic to avoid further targeting. It also attempted to discourage the filing of the AAUP lawsuit.

However, Columbia’s concessions failed to get the government to reverse its $400mn cut.

In a letter on Monday, Josh Gruenbaum, a member of the administration’s newly appointed task force to combat antisemitism, said: “Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign, but they must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end antisemitism and protect all students and faculty on their campus.”

He also warned “other universities that are being investigated by the task force should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop antisemitic behaviour on campus”.

The Department of Justice is pursuing 10 universities for alleged failures to curb antisemitism on campuses, while 60 are being investigated by the Office for Civil Rights of the education department.

In a sign of potential further escalation, the University of Pennsylvania said it had been made aware of the administration’s efforts to withdraw $175mn of funding linked to failure to prevent transgender students’ participation in women’s sports, although it has yet to receive formal notification.

Columbia University declined to comment.

It’s no secret that Capitol Hill is often mired in partisan politics and infighting, but a new book highlights additional chaos that public doesn’t see. In Mad House, Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater — both veteran reporters for The New York Times — chronicle the 118th body of Congress, which was elected in 2022 and served from January 2023 until January 2025.

Karni and Broadwater describe the 118th House as the first MAGA-controlled Congress, one that fully adopted the extremism and stagecraft of Trumpism. During its two-year session, the House passed only 27 bills that became law — the lowest number since the Great Depression.

Mad House chronicles how Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected speaker of the House after 15 rounds of voting — only to be ousted 10 months later. It also revisits the infamous spat in which Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) traded personal barbs during at a House committee oversight meeting. That particular meeting was held in the evening, which, Karni says, can be a particularly fraught time for legislative events.

Karni and Broadwater write that Republicans had a very narrow majority in the 118th Congress — with a handful of party members who often refused to do what the leadership wanted.

“When you have a tiny majority, any member can throw themselves in the mix and make themselves the deciding vote,” Karni explains. “And in the last Congress, it gave this group of 20 … far-right members outsized power. … And that’s who really kind of decided how the House functioned last year — or, more likely, did not function.”

Broadwater says current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) owes his position to the endorsement President Trump. “And you’re seeing that play out right now with how the House has chosen not to assert itself as a co-equal branch of government to Donald Trump, not to conduct oversight of the administration, and to essentially make itself a subservient branch,” Broadwater adds.

Looking ahead, Broadwater predicts we’ll see more Congressional disfunction, rather than less — especially since “it seems that voters actually like the fisticuffs.”

“A successful way to win primaries on the Right is to be the loudest, the fighter, the most extreme,” Broadwater explains. “So what we’re seeing now in the Democratic party is I think there’s a desire among the populace for the Democrats to become more of the party of fighting and not the party that plays by Robert’s Rules and keeps things super professional.”

Karni agrees: “Looking back on it now, I feel like if you want to understand the moment we’re in, it’s really brought to you by these characters from the 118th Congress.”

Interview highlights

Mad House

Penguin Random House

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Penguin Random House

On members of Congress sometimes sleeping in their offices instead of renting an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Karni: A lot of people can’t have two residences, and the office sleeping is a long-time thing. It kind of got less popular during COVID and after the MeToo movement because it’s an awkward thing to be living in your office and having staffers walk in in the morning and you’re, like, brushing your teeth. But people still do it to save money.

Broadwater: It’s extremely expensive to live in DC, and then you have a family back home and probably a house or a mortgage or at least an apartment back home. And so you have two residences and it becomes kind of untenable for them to deal on one salary unless you’re independently wealthy, which a lot of the members of Congress and a lot of the senators are extremely wealthy. But if you’re somebody like AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or somebody else who comes from smaller means, it does become quite difficult.

On burnout among members of Congress

Karni: For these House members, it’s a slog. First of all, there’s the travel. I mean, you are back and forth every week. Like, if you live across the country, the jet lag and the travel is just crushing. Then there is not seeing your family. … That takes a toll. … The physical violence and the threats [have] become huge. I mean, these members are under constant threats of violence, and they don’t have protection. If they want protection, they have to pay for it themselves from their campaign. Not to mention, then, you’re doing all of this traveling and not having a regular family life and being threatened. And then you look at it and you’re like, “For what? When we’re here, the House floor is frozen. We’re not actually voting. … It took a week to elect a speaker. For what?” So a lot of people just made the calculation it’s just not worth it anymore.

On the Left criticizing Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his response to the current Trump administration

Karni: I think right now what’s happening is Chuck Schumer has become the boogeyman of the Democratic Party among rank-and-file House Democrats and among voters, for just emotion and frustration at just wanting to do more, wanting to fight back. And this is because last week he voted with Republicans to stave off a government shutdown. If Democrats had not joined Republicans in the Senate, we would be in a government shutdown right now. And Chuck Schumer has been defending this decision for the past week, saying that would have been much, much worse. Elon Musk and Donald Trump wanted a shutdown. It would have allowed them to decide which programs are essential and not essential, and therefore never bring them back. His example that he’s been talking a lot about is SNAP, food stamps. They could just say during a shutdown, “This is not essential.” And during a shutdown, there’s no court check. So that could just go away.

On the relationship between Republicans in the current Congress and Elon Musk’s DOGE task force

Broadwater: It looks to me like they are embracing Elon Musk and his mission very much so. Each chamber has set up its own DOGE caucus, and they are trying to implement his cuts into their various spending plans. When he comes to Capitol Hill, he gave out his private cell phone number to members. He has tried to court people individually. And he’s posing for pictures. But Elon Musk, his polling is much lower than Donald Trump’s. The public at large does not feel the same way they feel about Trump as they do with Elon Musk. And Democrats, I believe, are focusing in on him as perhaps their best target. He wasn’t elected. He’s extremely rich. They know that there’s a lot of populist anger against the wealthy. And so, if the richest man in the world, who has all these contracts with the federal government, is coming in slashing the jobs of regular workers — and there are federal workers not just in DC, but all over the country — you can see how that could be a potent political weapon for Democrats to wield.

Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.