If they decide to settle, even if for a much smaller amount, its a big L for the UC system and the nation. The past Universities were much smaller, but the UC system is a beast. They must fight this or we are really going down the road of a politicized and neutered academia (like in Russia). This along with the recent Executive Order claiming to be able to require a political appointee to approve every research grant, we are going down the wrong road.
I am constantly thinking about this modern misunderstanding of what the framers of the Constitution meant by "Executive Power" is simple "to execute the law".
"Article II Vests Executive Power, Not the Royal Prerogative" [1][2] is critical and needs to be set front stage.
Yes. But there are systemic reasons that this has become the case.
1. For the house, since 1932 or so, the number of House Representatives has been fixed, meaning what used to be 30-50k citizens per representative, is quickly approaching 1M citizens:1 ratio. Instead of knocking on your neighbor's doors, you need to beg for money to run an expensive campaign.
2. Starting with Radio and TV and into hyperdrive with the internet, national political figures like the President can command a huge amount of political donations to be under their own control. That money can and is used to threaten House Representatives with getting primaried by the President, see 1. above.
3. As the law article I posted in the parent comment above thoroughly and convincingly investigated, the meaning of Executive Powers has changed from "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it" to I am a mini-king. Presidents have been able to push this growth as well, because see 2, then see 1.
Why would you suppose that a larger House would help keep the Executive in check? It seems more likely that the effect would be to dilute any individual House member's power and strengthen the party system.
> the meaning of Executive Powers has changed from "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it" to I am a mini-king.
I don't think John Adams, Lincoln, or FDR held anything close to the view that "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it."
The dynamics of a House whose member's districts are small enough (30,000) to not require a lot of money to run a campaign (just knock on doors and put up signs) compared to the current situation that makes them spend almost all their time begging for money and avoiding being the target of other people's money? That is fairly straightforward. They can buck the President and the Party, because they don't need their money for their constituents to know them.
>I don't think John Adams, Lincoln, or FDR held anything close to the view that "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it."
I provided a comprehensive and convincing document arguing that such an understanding did in fact exist in the late 1700's and the 1800's, specifically in terms of the meaning of "Executive Power" in Article II. My loose phrasing should not be where an argument should be hung.
Let me take a bit more time.
The 18th-century evidence reviewed in this law article pretty clearly shows that "executive power" just meant the power to execute laws. This didn't appear to be in contention; from radical Whigs to hardcore royalists agreed on this basic definition.
Some specific evidence: Blackstone's Commentaries, which Madison called "the book which is in every man's hand," flat-out defined executive power as "the right of enforcing the laws." That's it.
Blackstone carefully listed over thirty different royal prerogatives—war powers, foreign affairs, pardons, AND executive power. Just one item on that long list, not some umbrella term for everything.
Every single Founding-era dictionary backs this up. They all defined "executive" as having pwer to act or carry laws into execution. Not one included foreign affairs or war powers. When they specifically defined "executive power" as a legal term---it was always about implementing laws or putting plans into execution.
Even Ryalists e.g Robert Filmer agreed with this narrow definition, dismissed mere executive power as beneath a true monarch (!!) calling it just "a power of putting laws in execution by judging and punishing offenders."
The actual term for the Crown's broader powers was "the royal prerogative," not "executive power." Everyone understood that executive power was inherently subordinate to legislative power—it was an empty vessel that could only execute what the legislature authorized.
So the argument goes that the modern Vesting Clause Thesis basically makes a linguistic mistake. Sure, people called the king "the executive" because he had the executive power, but that doesn't mean all his other powers were therefore "executive."
> They can buck the President and the Party, because they don't need their money for their constituents to know them.
They can’t do anything at all without convincing hundreds or thousands of other Representatives to agree with them. Coalition building is the only way to exercise legislative power (which requires majorities) and increasing the number of Representatives obviously makes that much more difficult on an individual level and strengthens party institutions by, well, institutionalizing them, as personal relationships obviously become totally insufficient.
Constituent support is not the problem. There are lots of “problem” Congressmen several Presidents would have liked to get rid of, even in recent times. Unless your constituents really love the President more than they love you it has not often worked.
The rest of your post is worth addressing but really misunderstands the way men like Adam’s and even Washington actually exercised and practiced the office. I think you’re focused to much on the different in legal phraseology. If you really care I may have time to write something up tomorrow.
I view the practical difficulties of a large body making legislative progress as a different problem than getting representatives to be less vulnerable to outside influence from a need and fear of centralized sources of campaign money, which is the primary problem we now face. There is a clear line between politicians that have to be afraid of being primaries and the very few who do not, due to personalities or political skill. Those "problem" congressman are just nuisances because the larger body is under the thumb of the party's and president's money.
As for the second, I think it is rather clear from history of the early presidency that the Presidency was not trusted nor viewed as being equal to Congress in terms of power. Moreover, the argument is about the meaning the the vestment clause's use of phrase "the executive power" as interpreted by the founders. The law article presents a strong case IMO that the vestment clause was much more restrictive, less expensive than it is viewed in the modern era, and that is less generally recognized
I am actually really, really confused as to why you think that. That's not at all what the past several years have shown - we've seen over and again again individual Senators (who have more power, of course) and small blocks of Representatives hold things up over and over and over again. It's simply not practically possible to primary most Reps in their own districts because the primary problem isn't money, is that their constituents really do support them and not some nameless figure propped up by national campaign spending. For a party primary, the most important thing is far from getting some sort of national political support. That is not even remotely on the radar. It's garnering the support of the local party (people who actually live there and run the local outlet), local "elites" (politically involved business people, city and county pols, etc), and being someone known in your community - not through ads, but because you've lived there and done something. There are exceptions but this is definitely the rule.
Of course, it's also the case that people often overstate the influence of money in the first place. It's votes that decide the election, not dollars. You can't buy your way into electing somebody that nobody wants to vote for. You can only try to persuade them and encourage them.
> As for the second, I think it is rather clear from history of the early presidency that the Presidency was not trusted nor viewed as being equal to Congress in terms of power.
On the contrary, it is quite clear from the Constitutional Convention that one of their greatest fears was making the executive in any way dependent on the legislative, and the first several Presidents took a very expansive view of Presidential power - the accusation that Adams wanted to be a king was not just wild slander. Of course it is difficult to compare modern times with the past, to some degree - the reach of government in the 1900s increased by orders of magnitude, and the APA in 46 created a sort of shadow Constitution, so the field where people could even imagine the President ordering anything changed.
No, the blame for this lies squarely with the American people.
This is their circus and their mess.
Non-Americans don't care about the buck passing. At the end of the day this is all the responsibility of America as a whole and the people who live there.
Really outrageous extortion. UCLA and UC as a whole are running budget deficits and facing reduced state support (as well as the grant cancelations). There's simply no money for this and the white house knows it.
Beyond the headline - the context seems to be this:
> A draft of a proposed agreement sent to the school Friday and obtained by CNN requires UCLA to pay the federal government $1 billion over multiple installments, along with a $172 million claims fund for people impacted by violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
> The agreement the administration is proposing – which, if agreed to, would mark the biggest settlement it’s received from a higher education institution — requires a resolution monitor to oversee the school, as well as a new senior administrator who will be focused on compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
> The proposed agreement prohibits overnight demonstrations and calls on the school to revise its policies and procedures on protests. It also requires UCLA to discontinue race and ethnicity-based scholarships and provide the resolution monitor with admissions data.
> The proposal would ensure single-sex housing for women on campus and ensure athletic recognition for female athletes in women’s sports. The UCLA hospital and medical school will also be expected to stop providing gender-affirming care.
> In return, UCLA’s funding would be restored and the school would be eligible for future federal grants and contracts.
>The UCLA hospital and medical school will also be expected to stop providing gender-affirming care.
What does this have to do with anything that UCLA is accused of? This isn't about discrimination. This is about Trump forcing America's institutions to bend to his will. It's about power, and nothing else.
If you are criticizing Trump, did you have any credibility with that part of the public to begin with?
Not saying there aren't reasons to avoid name calling. But I feel like battle lines are fixed by now. I don't feel like "Good point" is a likely reaction to anything said by anyone.
When do we get to call Trump a dictator? When he ignores court rulings? When he floods the zone with illegal executive orders? Do we have to wait until he calls himself a Dictator and insists everyone else do the same?
I really wish some of the cowards braying about censorship on campus over the past decade would actually stand up against this… the entire right-wing media and legal apparatus (aside from FIRE maybe?) is just standing by or cheering this lawlessness and it’s infuriating.
I've never set foot in the USA, but from an outsider looking in, it seems like academic integrity was sidelined by ideology during that period. Once this has been normalised, it's not difficult for a competing ideology to move in. Seems like a real shame, but surely this didn't just happen overnight in 2024.
FIRE talks out of both sides of their mouth. Yes, they aren't absolute partisans and have been materially opposing part of Trump's fascist regime. But their media arm remains excessively focused on perceived excesses of the left and they've been unable to make a consistent full throated public denouncement of what is happening.
If they decide to settle, even if for a much smaller amount, its a big L for the UC system and the nation. The past Universities were much smaller, but the UC system is a beast. They must fight this or we are really going down the road of a politicized and neutered academia (like in Russia). This along with the recent Executive Order claiming to be able to require a political appointee to approve every research grant, we are going down the wrong road.
I am constantly thinking about this modern misunderstanding of what the framers of the Constitution meant by "Executive Power" is simple "to execute the law".
"Article II Vests Executive Power, Not the Royal Prerogative" [1][2] is critical and needs to be set front stage.
[1] https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2062/ [2]https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-meaning-of-article-...
Blame Congress. There are 3 branches of power meant to keep the others in check. That's not happened in...20, 30 years now?
Yes. But there are systemic reasons that this has become the case.
1. For the house, since 1932 or so, the number of House Representatives has been fixed, meaning what used to be 30-50k citizens per representative, is quickly approaching 1M citizens:1 ratio. Instead of knocking on your neighbor's doors, you need to beg for money to run an expensive campaign.
2. Starting with Radio and TV and into hyperdrive with the internet, national political figures like the President can command a huge amount of political donations to be under their own control. That money can and is used to threaten House Representatives with getting primaried by the President, see 1. above.
3. As the law article I posted in the parent comment above thoroughly and convincingly investigated, the meaning of Executive Powers has changed from "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it" to I am a mini-king. Presidents have been able to push this growth as well, because see 2, then see 1.
> meaning what used to be 30-50k citizens per representative, is quickly approaching 1M citizens:1 ratio.
This cannot possibly be true. The US population has increased from 125M in 1932 to 330M today. That's a 3x multiple, not 20x or 30x.
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that the 30-50k ratio was active in 1932. It was about 93,020 in 1853, 280,000 in 1932, 761,000 in 2023 [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...
Why would you suppose that a larger House would help keep the Executive in check? It seems more likely that the effect would be to dilute any individual House member's power and strengthen the party system.
> the meaning of Executive Powers has changed from "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it" to I am a mini-king.
I don't think John Adams, Lincoln, or FDR held anything close to the view that "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it."
The dynamics of a House whose member's districts are small enough (30,000) to not require a lot of money to run a campaign (just knock on doors and put up signs) compared to the current situation that makes them spend almost all their time begging for money and avoiding being the target of other people's money? That is fairly straightforward. They can buck the President and the Party, because they don't need their money for their constituents to know them.
>I don't think John Adams, Lincoln, or FDR held anything close to the view that "Congress tells me what to do, and I do it."
I provided a comprehensive and convincing document arguing that such an understanding did in fact exist in the late 1700's and the 1800's, specifically in terms of the meaning of "Executive Power" in Article II. My loose phrasing should not be where an argument should be hung.
Let me take a bit more time.
The 18th-century evidence reviewed in this law article pretty clearly shows that "executive power" just meant the power to execute laws. This didn't appear to be in contention; from radical Whigs to hardcore royalists agreed on this basic definition.
Some specific evidence: Blackstone's Commentaries, which Madison called "the book which is in every man's hand," flat-out defined executive power as "the right of enforcing the laws." That's it.
Blackstone carefully listed over thirty different royal prerogatives—war powers, foreign affairs, pardons, AND executive power. Just one item on that long list, not some umbrella term for everything.
Every single Founding-era dictionary backs this up. They all defined "executive" as having pwer to act or carry laws into execution. Not one included foreign affairs or war powers. When they specifically defined "executive power" as a legal term---it was always about implementing laws or putting plans into execution. Even Ryalists e.g Robert Filmer agreed with this narrow definition, dismissed mere executive power as beneath a true monarch (!!) calling it just "a power of putting laws in execution by judging and punishing offenders."
The actual term for the Crown's broader powers was "the royal prerogative," not "executive power." Everyone understood that executive power was inherently subordinate to legislative power—it was an empty vessel that could only execute what the legislature authorized.
So the argument goes that the modern Vesting Clause Thesis basically makes a linguistic mistake. Sure, people called the king "the executive" because he had the executive power, but that doesn't mean all his other powers were therefore "executive."
> They can buck the President and the Party, because they don't need their money for their constituents to know them.
They can’t do anything at all without convincing hundreds or thousands of other Representatives to agree with them. Coalition building is the only way to exercise legislative power (which requires majorities) and increasing the number of Representatives obviously makes that much more difficult on an individual level and strengthens party institutions by, well, institutionalizing them, as personal relationships obviously become totally insufficient.
Constituent support is not the problem. There are lots of “problem” Congressmen several Presidents would have liked to get rid of, even in recent times. Unless your constituents really love the President more than they love you it has not often worked.
The rest of your post is worth addressing but really misunderstands the way men like Adam’s and even Washington actually exercised and practiced the office. I think you’re focused to much on the different in legal phraseology. If you really care I may have time to write something up tomorrow.
I view the practical difficulties of a large body making legislative progress as a different problem than getting representatives to be less vulnerable to outside influence from a need and fear of centralized sources of campaign money, which is the primary problem we now face. There is a clear line between politicians that have to be afraid of being primaries and the very few who do not, due to personalities or political skill. Those "problem" congressman are just nuisances because the larger body is under the thumb of the party's and president's money.
As for the second, I think it is rather clear from history of the early presidency that the Presidency was not trusted nor viewed as being equal to Congress in terms of power. Moreover, the argument is about the meaning the the vestment clause's use of phrase "the executive power" as interpreted by the founders. The law article presents a strong case IMO that the vestment clause was much more restrictive, less expensive than it is viewed in the modern era, and that is less generally recognized
> which is the primary problem we now face
I am actually really, really confused as to why you think that. That's not at all what the past several years have shown - we've seen over and again again individual Senators (who have more power, of course) and small blocks of Representatives hold things up over and over and over again. It's simply not practically possible to primary most Reps in their own districts because the primary problem isn't money, is that their constituents really do support them and not some nameless figure propped up by national campaign spending. For a party primary, the most important thing is far from getting some sort of national political support. That is not even remotely on the radar. It's garnering the support of the local party (people who actually live there and run the local outlet), local "elites" (politically involved business people, city and county pols, etc), and being someone known in your community - not through ads, but because you've lived there and done something. There are exceptions but this is definitely the rule.
Of course, it's also the case that people often overstate the influence of money in the first place. It's votes that decide the election, not dollars. You can't buy your way into electing somebody that nobody wants to vote for. You can only try to persuade them and encourage them.
> As for the second, I think it is rather clear from history of the early presidency that the Presidency was not trusted nor viewed as being equal to Congress in terms of power.
On the contrary, it is quite clear from the Constitutional Convention that one of their greatest fears was making the executive in any way dependent on the legislative, and the first several Presidents took a very expansive view of Presidential power - the accusation that Adams wanted to be a king was not just wild slander. Of course it is difficult to compare modern times with the past, to some degree - the reach of government in the 1900s increased by orders of magnitude, and the APA in 46 created a sort of shadow Constitution, so the field where people could even imagine the President ordering anything changed.
Why not both?
No, the blame for this lies squarely with the American people.
This is their circus and their mess.
Non-Americans don't care about the buck passing. At the end of the day this is all the responsibility of America as a whole and the people who live there.
Really outrageous extortion. UCLA and UC as a whole are running budget deficits and facing reduced state support (as well as the grant cancelations). There's simply no money for this and the white house knows it.
> There's simply no money for this
Being broke has never been an excuse to not pay fines.
(I make no judgement on the actual claims, the courts exist for that)
There is no legal basis for the fine.
That is an entirely different argument, not the one I was responding to
When you are ignorant about the world, it becomes a very confusing place.
https://x.com/JohnDSailer/status/1907794415436873742?t=Zw9FF...
There are dozens of examples of UCLA violating federal civil rights laws. You just decided to pretend they don't exist.
Beyond the headline - the context seems to be this:
> A draft of a proposed agreement sent to the school Friday and obtained by CNN requires UCLA to pay the federal government $1 billion over multiple installments, along with a $172 million claims fund for people impacted by violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
> The agreement the administration is proposing – which, if agreed to, would mark the biggest settlement it’s received from a higher education institution — requires a resolution monitor to oversee the school, as well as a new senior administrator who will be focused on compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
> The proposed agreement prohibits overnight demonstrations and calls on the school to revise its policies and procedures on protests. It also requires UCLA to discontinue race and ethnicity-based scholarships and provide the resolution monitor with admissions data.
> The proposal would ensure single-sex housing for women on campus and ensure athletic recognition for female athletes in women’s sports. The UCLA hospital and medical school will also be expected to stop providing gender-affirming care.
> In return, UCLA’s funding would be restored and the school would be eligible for future federal grants and contracts.
And to stop providing gender affirming care.
Not to mention that the lawsuit in question has already been settled [1] https://jewishjournal.com/news/383073/settlement-reached-in-...
>The UCLA hospital and medical school will also be expected to stop providing gender-affirming care.
What does this have to do with anything that UCLA is accused of? This isn't about discrimination. This is about Trump forcing America's institutions to bend to his will. It's about power, and nothing else.
It's "discrimination" when it helps people the admin doesn't like, but it's mandatory to actually discriminate against people the admin doesn't like.
I wish people would stop using the term admin in relationship to Trump. This is the Trump Regime and we should all act accordingly.
the problem is is that doing so makes you automatically lose credibility with a large part of the public.
another problem is that Trump is not (yet) a dictator and we are (still, for now) a Constitutional democracy.
If you are criticizing Trump, did you have any credibility with that part of the public to begin with?
Not saying there aren't reasons to avoid name calling. But I feel like battle lines are fixed by now. I don't feel like "Good point" is a likely reaction to anything said by anyone.
if so, how is it that Trump's approval rating (and disapproval rating), has shifted by more than 10 points since he took office?
https://votehub.com/polls/?subject=trump&time_adjusted=true
When do we get to call Trump a dictator? When he ignores court rulings? When he floods the zone with illegal executive orders? Do we have to wait until he calls himself a Dictator and insists everyone else do the same?
I really wish some of the cowards braying about censorship on campus over the past decade would actually stand up against this… the entire right-wing media and legal apparatus (aside from FIRE maybe?) is just standing by or cheering this lawlessness and it’s infuriating.
I've never set foot in the USA, but from an outsider looking in, it seems like academic integrity was sidelined by ideology during that period. Once this has been normalised, it's not difficult for a competing ideology to move in. Seems like a real shame, but surely this didn't just happen overnight in 2024.
FIRE has been pretty clear... e.g.
https://www.thefire.org/news/inside-trump-administrations-ex...
FIRE talks out of both sides of their mouth. Yes, they aren't absolute partisans and have been materially opposing part of Trump's fascist regime. But their media arm remains excessively focused on perceived excesses of the left and they've been unable to make a consistent full throated public denouncement of what is happening.
Attempting to shame hypocrites is a pointless endeavor. They will only laugh at you while continuing to do what they do.
The only reasonable move is to interpret them as damage and route around them.
Any university that settles with that fascist are cowards at best, and committing bribery at worst