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Another day, another kabuki lawsuit in ashes. From The Guardian:

In a ruling on Thursday morning, U.S. district ‌judge Richard Stearns in ​Boston said the administration’s lawsuit—⁠filed in March—failed to plausibly ​show ​an ongoing ​violation ‌of ​federal ​civil rights law on Harvard’s campus. The administration’s complaint focused largely on a handful of incidents alleged ‌in March 2025, Stearns said, saying these were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ​ongoing civil rights violations by Harvard. Thursday’s ruling deals a blow to Donald Trump and his officials, and their ongoing push to force the elite university to bow to its will—not only on the response to antisemitism, but to a range of race-in-admissions, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and other issues.

As we know, the president has a craw the size of the Grand Canyon, and there are many failures and defeats stuck down there, still wriggling around and keeping him up nights. (In his case that’s something of a metaphor.) Harvard is a big one. When most of the other elite universities were whimpering and folding—hail, Columbia!—Harvard officials whipped out the university’s account books, studied them carefully, and showed the president what money power really was.

In a brief, but pointed, four-page ruling, Stearns said he was not “diminishing any concern arising” from campus events in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks. But he said that the DoJ’s complaint had misconstrued the remit of Title VI. In framing the 1964 legislation, the judge ruled, Congress intended not to penalize a “wayward funding recipient but instead to incentivize it to bring itself into compliance with Title VI”. It was in essence forward looking, rather than backward looking, while the examples of alleged discrimination that the Trump administration had provided in its complaint were almost entirely restricted to the 2023-24. The Trump administration’s later amended complaint was “devoid of any factual allegations” and evidence of noncompliance after it had put Harvard on notice under Title VI in June 2025. As a result, what the judge dismissively described as “the government’s fevered forewarning of potential havoc” failed to meet the purpose of the enforcement action.

The problem, of course, is that we’re all paying for these futile exercises of pique. Can we send him a bill when he’s finally out of office?