Mark Herz: This is GBH’s Morning Edition.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to take a look at the ways that moves made by the Trump Administration in Washington are intersecting with local politics and the lives of ordinary people right here in Massachusetts. And I’m joined once again by GBH’s acuminate political reporter Adam Riley to break it all down.

Adam Reilly: Acuminate, yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word.

Herz: Yeah, I’m kind of, you know, I am rooting around in there for them, man. I’ve got to. You know, you’re sharp, you’ve got to keep us both sharp.

Reilly: I’m going to look that one up afterwards.
 
Herz: Yeah, yeah. And anyway, good morning, Adam!

Reilly: Hey, Mark. How’s it going?

Herz: Good, good. So there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s start with perhaps the biggest story of the week, the ongoing standoff between Harvard University and the Trump Administration has now led to Harvard suing the administration and federal court. What’s this all about?

Reilly: Well, as you will remember, back in early April, the Trump Administration had threatened Harvard with the loss of nearly $9 billion in grant funding if the university didn’t basically cede control of its internal operations to the federal government. Harvard then made it clear that it wasn’t going to cooperate, and the feds started to make good on their threat, at least partially. They halted $2.2 billion in grant funding and indicated they were going to halt another billion dollars. They also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and to limit the university’s ability to admit international students. All this, of course, is based on the premise that Harvard is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by basically allowing anti-Semitism to run unchecked on campus. That’s the government’s claim. In its legal complaint, Harvard said the government actions clearly violate the First Amendment. Harvard also said that while the government is accusing it of violating Title VI -- and if that were actually going on, the government would have the ability to halt funding -- Harvard said the government hasn’t taken the steps it’s legally required to before taking that action under Title VI. And Harvard’s lawsuit says there’s no actual connection, no real link between the government’s allegations of anti-Semitism on the one hand, and the research that is being defunded on the other.

Herz: And this lawsuit, it’s moving forward at the same time that Harvard’s pushback seems to have galvanized other colleges and universities. We’ve been hearing about that the last couple of days.

Reilly: Yeah, I heard you talking about it when I was driving in today. Harvard announced that it was suing the feds on Monday of this week, April 21st, and it was the next day, April 22nd, that more than 200 college presidents and other officials released that open letter to the federal government in which they decried “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” A whole bunch of Massachusetts college presidents signed onto that letter. You noted the president of Mount Holyoke, also the presidents of Tufts, BU, MIT, Amherst, Suffolk University, Smith, Hampshire, and Harvard. Probably a reach to say the letter went out because of Harvard’s lawsuit -- the turnaround just would have been too tight. But Harvard has been making it clear for quite a while now that it’s not going to comply with the government’s demands. And I have to imagine that that provided at least a little bit of inspiration, and helped rally the college presidents and others who signed onto that document.

Herz: OK, on to another topic that you have dug into for us. Previously, Wednesday was supposed to be the day that the Wu Administration met representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice’s task force on anti-Semitism to discuss what the city is doing to address that issue in Boston. But the meeting ended up not happening. What happened here?

Reilly: Well, as you and I discussed a couple of weeks back, the city and DOJ have been engaged in this weird standoff in which the city was saying, ‘we’ll be happy to have a meeting with you. We’ll even sit down for an advanced meeting with you in preparation of a bigger meeting to come, but you’ve got to give us examples of these alleged anti-Semitic incidents in Boston that you want to talk to us about.’ The DOJ claimed they had examples, but they were declining to provide them, even when the city pressed for the examples. And the city’s position basically was, before we have a big sit down with the task force on anti-Semitism, we need to know what it is that you’re going to be putting us on the hot seat about. The city released correspondence between Boston and the DOJ this week. And based on that correspondence, it seems that this just petered out when the DOJ simply refused to say what specific examples it had in mind. Very odd.

Herz: Well odd, also maybe some really sharp gamesmanship going on here, would you say? I mean, does this count as a win for the Wu Administration?

Reilly: I think the phrase sharp gamesmanship is terrific. It makes me want to say who’s the acuminate one here.

Herz: Okay, okay, okay.

Reilly: Yeah, because I mean, what the administration has done here is they didn’t just say, ‘no, we’re not going to engage with the Trump administration.’ While they made it clear that they would engage with a Trump administration, respectfully on the Trump administrations own terms, they agreed with the core premise of the Trump administration that anti-Semitism is a real issue that deserves to be taken seriously. But as we’ve discussed, they said, ‘give us more info so that we can sit down and have a substantive conversation.’ The Trump administration now looks like the one that’s sort of backed down here for reasons that remain unclear. All that being said, I don’t know that this issue is done once and for all. I contacted the DOJ to see if they still want to have a bigger sit down with the city. They haven’t responded to me yet, but this could be just the latest twist in a story that’s going to keep on playing out for weeks, if not months. That’s my prediction.

Herz: Interesting. So finally, we’ve talked about the Trump administration clashing with Harvard and Boston City Hall. Now, as we’ve also been hearing this morning, President Trump, wants a group in Somerville, ActBlue, investigated. It’s a progressive fundraising platform. What is happening here exactly?

Reilly: If any of our listeners have given money to left-leaning candidates online, they have almost certainly given through ActBlue. The platform says that it’s raised $16 billion online since 2004, so a couple decades, but that’s still a whole lot of money. And basically, as some of our listeners will know, ActBlue is an online fundraising portal that’s designed to make giving money as seamless as possible, kind of to do what Amazon has done for online shopping for online political contributions. Republicans say that ActBlue doesn’t have enough safeguards to prevent inappropriate donations, like donations from foreign individuals, donations that are actually coming from one person but are broken down and given under the names of other people, thereby skirting fundraising limits. ActBlue has sort of acknowledged that it has issues on this front, but it said it’s taken steps to keep those things from happening. It is now saying that this is just a blatant effort to cut off a source of democratic strength. This is, as we often say in this space, a clash that I think is going to certainly prompt litigation and could find its way up to the Supreme Court. Because ActBlue, really, as you look at success Democrats have had in recent decades -- ActBlue has been a key driver when they’ve been able to win elections. So this is a big deal.

Herz: Okay, GBH political reporter Adam Reilly, thank you as always.

Reilly: Thank you, Mark. Good to talk to you.

Herz: This is GBH.

Every week, GBH News’ acuminate political reporter Adam Reilly runs down the big ways that the Trump administration and its decisions are intersecting with the politics and people of Massachusetts.

Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis on the latest developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: So there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s start with perhaps the biggest story of the week, the ongoing standoff between Harvard University and the Trump administration has now led to Harvard suing the administration in federal court. What’s this all about?

Adam Reilly: Well, as you will remember, back in early April, the Trump administration had threatened Harvard with the loss of nearly $9 billion in grant funding if the university didn’t basically cede control of its internal operations to the federal government. Harvard then made it clear that it wasn’t going to cooperate, and the feds started to make good on their threat, at least partially. They halted $2.2 billion in grant funding and indicated they were going to halt another billion dollars. They also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and to limit the university’s ability to admit international students.

All this, of course, is based on the premise that Harvard is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by basically allowing antisemitism to run unchecked on campus. That’s the government’s claim.

In its legal complaint, Harvard said the government’s actions clearly violate the First Amendment. Harvard also said that while the government is accusing it of violating Title VI — and if that were actually going on, the government would have the ability to halt funding — Harvard said the government hasn’t taken the steps it’s legally required to before taking that action under Title VI. And Harvard’s lawsuit says there’s no actual connection, no real link between the government’s allegations of antisemitism on the one hand, and the research that is being defunded on the other.

Herz: And this lawsuit, it’s moving forward at the same time that Harvard’s pushback seems to have galvanized other colleges and universities. We’ve been hearing about that the last couple of days.

Reilly: Yeah, I heard you talking about it when I was driving in today. Harvard announced that it was suing the feds on Monday of this week, April 21st, and it was the next day, April 22nd, that more than 200 college presidents and other officials released that open letter to the federal government in which they decried “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” A whole bunch of Massachusetts college presidents signed on to that letter. You noted the president of Mount Holyoke, also the presidents of Tufts, BU, MIT, Amherst, Suffolk University, Smith, Hampshire and Harvard.

It’s probably a reach to say the letter went out because of Harvard’s lawsuit — the turnaround just would have been too tight. But Harvard has been making it clear for quite a while now that it’s not going to comply with the government’s demands. And I have to imagine that that provided at least a little bit of inspiration, and helped rally the college presidents and others who signed onto that document.

Herz: OK, on to another topic that you have dug into for us. Previously, Wednesday was supposed to be the day that the Wu administration met representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice’s task force on antisemitism to discuss what the city is doing to address that issue in Boston. But the meeting ended up not happening. What happened here?

Reilly: Well, as you and I discussed a couple of weeks back, the city and DOJ have been engaged in this weird standoff in which the city was saying, “We’ll be happy to have a meeting with you. We’ll even sit down for an advanced meeting with you in preparation of a bigger meeting to come, but you’ve got to give us examples of these alleged antisemitic incidents in Boston that you want to talk to us about.” The DOJ claimed they had examples, but they were declining to provide them, even when the city pressed for the examples. And the city’s position basically was, “Before we have a big sit-down with the task force on antisemitism, we need to know what it is that you’re going to be putting us on the hot seat about.” The city released correspondence between Boston and the DOJ this week. And based on that correspondence, it seems that this just petered out when the DOJ simply refused to say what specific examples it had in mind. Very odd.

Herz: Well odd, also maybe some really sharp gamesmanship going on here, would you say? I mean, does this count as a win for the Wu administration?

Reilly: I think the phrase “sharp gamesmanship” is terrific. Because what the administration has done here is they didn’t just say, “No, we’re not going to engage with the Trump administration.” While they made it clear that they would engage with a Trump administration, respectfully on the Trump administration’s own terms, they agreed with the core premise of the Trump administration that antisemitism is a real issue that deserves to be taken seriously. But as we’ve discussed, they said, “Give us more info so that we can sit down and have a substantive conversation.” The Trump administration now looks like the one that’s sort of backed down here for reasons that remain unclear. All that being said, I don’t know that this issue is done once and for all. I contacted the DOJ to see if they still want to have a bigger sit-down with the city. They haven’t responded to me yet, but this could be just the latest twist in a story that’s going to keep on playing out for weeks, if not months. That’s my prediction.

Herz: Interesting. So finally, we’ve talked about the Trump administration clashing with Harvard and Boston City Hall. Now, as we’ve also been hearing this morning, President Trump wants a group in Somerville, ActBlue, investigated. It’s a progressive fundraising platform. What is happening here exactly?

Reilly: If any of our listeners have given money to left-leaning candidates online, they have almost certainly given through ActBlue. The platform says that it’s raised $16 billion online since 2004 — so a couple decades, but that’s still a whole lot of money. And basically, as some of our listeners will know, ActBlue is an online fundraising portal that’s designed to make giving money as seamless as possible, kind of to do what Amazon has done for online shopping for online political contributions.

Republicans say that ActBlue doesn’t have enough safeguards to prevent inappropriate donations, like donations from foreign individuals, donations that are actually coming from one person but are broken down and given under the names of other people, thereby skirting fundraising limits.

ActBlue has sort of acknowledged that it has issues on this front, but it said it’s taken steps to keep those things from happening. It is now saying that this is just a blatant effort to cut off a source of Democratic strength. This is, as we often say in this space, a clash that I think is going to certainly prompt litigation and could find its way up to the Supreme Court. Because ActBlue, really, as you look at success Democrats have had in recent decades, ActBlue has been a key driver when they’ve been able to win elections. So this is a big deal.