2 big reasons to care about the Harvard-Trump battle royale| Bay State Briefing

Good Monday morning, all.

With the ongoing slugfest between Harvard University and President Donald Trump's White House in the hands of a judge, now seemed like a pretty good time to zoom out, take stock, and ask one big question:

Why does a clash over a truly incomprehensible amount of money, pitting a wildly exclusive and fabulously wealthy university against the most powerful man in the world, matter to us mere mortals?

( In case you missed it:Here's a handy summary of what's happened so far and where we are now )

Because, if you're thinking, " Well, this is like a fight between Superman and Lex Luthor. Sure, there's some property damage. But they're just gonna be back to bashing each others' heads in tomorrow, " you're not half wrong (And we'll leave it to readers to decide whom to cast where).

But ... here's the thing.

There are some pretty grave legal and public health questions at stake — not to mention ground-level pocketbook issues for the Greater Boston economy that could ripple through the rest of the commonwealth if Harvard loses out on billions of dollars in federal funding.

To get some clarity, we turned, as is often the case, to Jeremy R. Paul, a constitutional law expert at Northeastern University Law School. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and content.

Q: First up, please explain the constitutional argument that Harvard is making and why it matters.

Paul:"Well, the starting point would be that the administration is conditioning receipt of federal funds, which is a public benefit, on Harvard giving up their free speech rights to decide how they conduct their classrooms, their hiring, [and] their student admissions. And this is a very strong claim Harvard is making. Because it is not permissible for the government at any level, from president on down, to condition your participation in a legitimate public program on your sacrificing your personal rights."

Q: But doesn't my bank do that when I take out a loan? They set the terms, the interest rate and the repayment schedule.

A:"Okay, so the first and easiest answer is that your bank is not bound by the Constitution, because your bank is a private actor. So, private actors are not subject to constitutional limits. If you ... have to sign a pledge of XYZ for you to get a loan. They might violate some [provision of the] Fair Credit Reporting Act. But they could not possibly violate the Constitution. So that's the easiest answer to that problem."

Q: Fair enough. But no money is ever free. What are reasonable expectations? What limits can the government legitimately set when it awards public money?

A:"They can do a lot of things. So, for example, if they're giving you a scientific research grant, they might ask you to make sure that none of the people working on the money that's coming from the grant are also engaged in research on some unrelated topic. So they want to be 100% of the time, or usually not 100% but usually some percent."

"They could ask researchers to comply with conflict-of-interest rules. But I don't know if you read that letter that the Trump administration sent to Harvard, which they later claimed was sent in error . But they did send it."

"And what it called for was, effectively, you know, a federal takeover of a private university. They wanted to control their admissions policies, their hiring policies, their curriculum policies, their student discipline policies, and none of those things should be connected to whether they receive federal funds for these grants or not."

Q: This will be duked out, obviously, in federal court. And there's a reasonable expectation that this matter will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Based on what we know, any inklings on how the high court might rule?

A:"I don't think this will get all the way to the Supreme Court, because I think the Trump administration will back down. But if it does get all the way to the Supreme Court, I think Harvard will win."

Q: Away from the constitutional questions, what's really at stake here? What door does this open?

A:"The danger of what the administration is trying to do is multiple, right? So the one that lawyers and people who care about the rule of law would focus on would be [is] that the whole spirit of private universities and free inquiry, everything that makes our country a great country, is deeply threatened. That's what a lawyer would say."

"But from the point of view of the overall future of the country, in addition to that, another danger is that right now, the United States of America attracts the best scholars, the best researchers from all over the world, to come study at our world-class universities."

"But if our universities begin to be perceived in other countries as creatures of government, rather than the best researchers and scholars, [they] will choose to study in other countries. And we will lose the long-standing economic advantages that we have had."

"And this is, this is like pointing a dagger at the heart of one of our strongest areas of competitive advantage. So it's really bad from a legal point of view and a point of view of demography, and it's also really bad for the country's economy."

Q: So, to really bottom line it, if grandma has some horrible disease and Harvard is researching that horrible disease, then they might not find that cure? Or the scientists who could come up with that cure go somewhere else?

A:"Exactly."

Mr. FitzGerald's vision

Members of Boston's Vietnamese community gathered over the weekend (and into this week) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and the resulting diaspora that brought thousands to the city's Dorchester neighborhood.

Boston City Councilor John FitzGerald, who represents Dorchester and a swath of the South End at City Hall, is an unabashed cheerleader for Dorchester's Little Saigon.

And he said he'd like to see it get as much love as Little Italy in the North End or Chinatown in downtown Boston.

"I have something I'd like to put forth: Traveling the world in District 3," he said, referring to his council district.

"You can go to Ireland in Adams Village. You can go down to Little Saigon and you can go to Polish Triangle," he told MassLive in a recent interview. "You can go to Poland, Vietnam and Ireland without leaving Dorchester. That's pretty cool."

"When you walk down Hanover Street, you know you're in Little Italy," he continued. "I would like to have that feeling around District 3, because it's the most diverse district in the city."

Mass. puts the brakes on electric truck mandate

To the joy of industry advocates and the chagrin of environmentalists, state officials have put off the enforcement of a rule that would have required truck manufacturers to increase the number of electric vehicles they sell within two years.

The news, first reported by Commonwealth Beacon , comes amid what state officials have described as "significant uncertainty" from Washington over electric vehicle mandates.

Kevin Weeks, the executive director of the Trucking Association of Massachusetts, told Commonwealth Beacon the industry welcomed the decision.

"Even if the manufacturers could provide the trucks, nobody would buy the trucks because you can't charge the trucks," Weeks told Commonwealth Beacon. "[They have] range issues, battery issues, cost issues, and on and on. It's just not feasible for people to purchase medium- and heavy-duty trucks that are electric at this point."

"We're very disappointed to see the state of Massachusetts, which is really considered a leader on climate, kowtowing to truck manufacturers in this instance," Emily Green, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, told the online news outlet.

If the rules had gone into effect, the state would have required that 7% of the trucks and tractor-trailers in the state to be electric vehicles, Commonwealth Beacon reported.

That percentage had to increase annually until more than half the trucks in the state are electric vehicles, according to Commonwealth Beacon.

Monday Numbers

If you needed another reminder that progressives who make up the core part of the Democratic base are dissatisfied with the way party bosses are resisting Trump 2.0, then a new poll pretty well seals it.

The poll of 4,100 politically active progressives and Democratic-leaning voters reveals a "deep crisis of confidence," according to Our Revolution , the advocacy group that commissioned the canvass.

Here are some top-line numbers from the poll, which was conducted between April 18 and April 20.

• 92%:The number of respondents who said they supported primary challenges for Democratic incumbents "who lack grassroots energy or urgency."

• 87%:The number of respondents who said the Democratic Party had "lost its way." That's up from the 76% who said the same thing two months ago. 

• 88%:The number of respondents who said the Democratic Party's U.S. House and Senate reelection operations should "stop automatically protecting incumbents."

• 82%:The percentage of respondents who said they wanted the Democratic Party to stop taking money from billionaires and big corporations.

• 70%:The percentage of respondents who said they weren't confident that party leaders would "do what's necessary to stop [President Donald] Trump."

• 72%:The percentage of respondents who said they supported "abandoning a cautious, centrist approach in confronting Trump and the far right."

"The voters we organize with are sounding the alarm: they want fighters, not placeholders," Joseph Geevarghese, the group's executive director, said in a statement. "If the party establishment continues to sleepwalk through this crisis, they'll be replaced by a new generation of leaders who aren't afraid to take on the fight of our lives."

Read More MassLive politics coverage

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'Black April' to triumph: Boston's Vietnamese community to celebrate its history | John L. Micek

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Trump is threatening to block international students from Harvard. Is that legal?

Advocates push for 'full conversation' on life without parole sentences

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They said it

"She brought joy to every conversation, love to everyone she knew, and was truly angelic in her goodness. Molly was close to every member of our family and spoiled us with her affection and her generosity of spirit. We're devastated by her loss."

— Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issues a heartfelt statement on the death of Molly McGovern, the daughter of U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-2nd District.

On your calendars

On Tuesday, Boston's Vietnamese community will gather for separate flag-raising ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

The 11:30 a.m. flag-raising at City Hall Plaza and a following event at the Dorchester Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Morrissey Boulevard at 1:30 p.m., cap four days' worth of events marking the somber anniversary and the journey of Boston's Vietnamese diaspora.

• Read More: 'Black April' to triumph: Boston's Vietnamese community to celebrate its history | John L. Micek

"These observances pay tribute to the lives lost and the enduring strength of Vietnamese refugees who rebuilt new lives in Boston and beyond," organizers, who include veterans, survivors, and descendants, said in a statement.

Attendees are "invited to participate and reflect together," they said.

Turned up to 11

Say what you want about Aussie hard rock legends AC/DC. They know the assignment, and they've been putting in the mileage since 1973. Older, wiser, and admittedly more depleted, they bring their very particular brand of rock and roll to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on May 4(Tickets and more info here).

I've always had a soft spot for these guys. There's just something about that formula of guitar riff intro/drum drop-in/and bass full arrangement, followed by Brian Johnson's strained vocalizing that just gets me every time.

From 1990, here's the guitar riff that's powered roughly a million baseball walk-ups: It's " Thunderstuck ."

Your Monday long read

It's nearly May, and we're already well into spring, so if you aren't already taking advantage of the great outdoors, now is the perfect time to start.

With that in mind, from Huckberry's Journal , here's a look at the 50 best trails in the nation. Naturally, several of them are in the northeast and New England.

They include:

• Davis Path, White Mountain National Forest , New Hampshire

• Mount Mansfield Loop Trail, Underhill State Park , Vermont

• Mt. Katahdin via Cathedral & the Knife Edge — Baxter State Park , Maine

• Northern Forest Canoe Trail , New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine

• Precipice Trail — Acadia National Park, Maine

"More than surfaces of packed earth, machine-milled gravel, dynamite-blasted rock, or simple planks through the woods, trails transport us — out of civilization's imposed organization and into the complexity of the natural world," Huckberry's Tanner Bowden wrote.

"Trails might convey us along ways long-traveled by Indigenous peoples or freshly graded by local orgs to a clear objective, like a lookout or waterfall, but a truly great trail offers a destination in every step. The best trails in America acquaint us with this land's boundless natural wonders but also with the spirit of the place itself," Bowden observed.

That's it for today. As always, tips, comments and questions can be sent to jmicek@masslive.com. Have a good week, friends.

Read more analysis from John L. Micek

• Mass. gave the U.S. its Constitution. Why it matters more than ever| Bay State Briefing

• US-Canada relations tested as border library faces new restrictions | John L. Micek

• 3 UMass poll numbers that could worry Republicans. And 1 for Democrats | John L. Micek

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