Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

Because the administration has chosen to include define a range of activity which is not obvious from other sources as incompatible with visa status, including membership in certain student organizations.

> Do they not have evidence of a crime?

"Crime" is not the issue, and, no, they don't, that's the problem -- they want information from Harvard with no basis other than the fact that students are on a visa, so that they can use it for fishing expeditions for excuses to deny visa status.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritag...

The US has benefitted enormously from being able to brain-drain other countries for their best and brightest. As a country, you are much better off offering the limited amount of spots in higher education to smart and driven students from abroad, than to average Americans.

> suppressors are likely to become legalized here in the coming months.

The fallout of reversing the brain-drain is going to take decades to have an impact, but you don't care, because you're getting your toy now now now.

* Trump does not care or maybe lacks the understanding of the concept of a network and influence with entities outside the U.s.

* Trump probably figures that he can use this as sort of leverage against negotiations with non-U.s. entities...but using a blunt instrument instead of nuance, or backchannels.

* Trump is foolishly following the guidelines from the architects of project 2025...whether those folks are educated enough to understand value of schools of higher educatioin, or worse, these architects fear having an educated population - regardless if that population are U.S. citizens or folks outside of U.S.

* Trump is behaving like a child having a tantrum, and is demolishing the "swamp" of current political arenas, and re-building it for himself/his party...and Harvard and other entities (that typically might be invited) are not invited in the upcoming new world order.

* Trump has little desire in any/all of this, and this is simply another stab at pushing the envelope of what the U.s. Executive branch can/can not do...much like a child who pushes boundaries to see how far they can get...and if no one pushes back/challenges (at least in meaningful ways), then they will keep pushing until greater power has been obtained.

...of course, it could be a combination of many of the above at the same time as well...and could be other stuff that i didn't note above too. In other words, welcome to the modern U.S. tyranny. ;-)

Look at the man-made objects around you. Every single one of them has been improved or made less expensive by research at institutes of higher education, including the device that you're using to read this comment, the electrical system used to power that device, the vehicles used to transport the people and goods to construct that electrical system...

Maybe, according to your values, higher education isn’t worth that - but to call it a grift is ridiculous.