'Off the rails': WSJ's conservative editors tear down Trump's 'biggest overreach'

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board went after President Donald Trump for what they framed as an unconstitutional attempt “to run Harvard” University after the Ivy League school rejected his demands for a MAGA-inspired policy overhaul.

Trump’s funding freeze of $2.2 billion in retaliation for the university’s snub drew the ire of the Journal’s board, which scorched the action in a Tuesday opinion piece that detailed the “good reasons to oppose this unprecedented attempt by government to micromanage a private university.”

While the editorial board noted that some of Trump’s demands fit the government’s civil rights purview and the MAGA leader's own ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, it found little else to support the presidential actions.

“The Administration runs off the legal rails by ordering Harvard to reduce ‘governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization.’ It also orders the school to review ‘all existing and prospective faculty . . . for plagiarism’ and ensure ‘viewpoint diversity’ in ‘each department, field, or teaching unit,’” according to the board.

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“These reforms may be worth pursuing, but the government has no business requiring them,” they told readers. The conservative editorial board grew particularly concerned about what they called Trump’s “biggest overreach” – which it slammed the administration for requiring "viewpoint diversity" – while failing to offer a definition.

“Does this mean the English department must hire more Republican faculty or Shakespeare scholars?” the Journal’s board of editors asked as it fired off a set of its own questions. “Must Harvard ask applicants if they support Mr. Trump and impose ideological quotas in hiring and admissions?"

The board concluded by telling readers that Congress can pass legislation if it wants to advance Trump’s reforms to higher education.

“But the Administration can’t unilaterally and retroactively attach strings to grants that are unrelated to their purpose,” the board wrote Tuesday. “President Trump has enough balls in the air without also trying to run Harvard.”