The Sunday Subject: March 9, 2025
Week seven: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is somehow a real thing that exists now
Convicted felon Donald Trump held a “cryptocurrency summit” at the White House on Friday, a day after signing an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The government already controls roughly $17B in bitcoin, mostly sized through federal asset forfeitures, although since the virtual current’s value is entirely speculative, the dollar value fluctuates wildly.
Trump, who is unconstitutally selling his own cryptocurrency out of the Oval Office, says he wants the US to be the “crypto capital of the world.” His administratino has dropped legal action against several crypto firms — due to its untraceable nature, crypto is heavily used in criminal enterprising ranging from scams to child trafficking, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a man who ran a fraudulent charity and a fraudulent univeristy and was longtime friends with Jeffrey Epstein would want to drop legal action against crypto firms.
Trump cancels $400M in funding to Columbia University
The Trump administration cancelled $400M to Columbia University, claiming the institution failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism during pro-Palestine protests last year. Columbia, which has the highest Jewish population of any Ivy League school, was criticized at the time for its brutal crackdown on protesters — many of whom were Jewish — including two separate raids by the NYPD, over 100 students arrested, and in-person classes replaced with hybrid learning to prevent students from exercising their rights to peaceably assembly.
The punitive measures towards Columbia are part of an broader series of attacks on education by the administration. Elon Musk’s unofficial government agency DOGE has already cut programs that collect data on schools, that determine how to most efficiently distribute money to schools, research projects on which educational strategies are most effective, organizations that help school districts learn from each others’ successes, and teacher-training programs. Trump has also promised to eliminate the federal Department of Education. Trump and Musk claim this is being done in the name of cost savings, but total education spending before their cuts accounted for 1.19% of the federal budget. Musk himself receives nearly half that amount in government contracts.
Senate blocks trans sports ban
A handful of Republican Senators crossed party lines Monday to join with Democrats, who voted down the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” intended to ban trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. Senator John Hickenlooper accused the bill’s author, Republican Tommy Tuberville, of, “trying to churn the social wars about something that really doesn’t exist,” while Pennsylvania John Fetterman said the athletes targeted by the bill were schoolchildren who “deserve an ally.”
The bill would have amended Title IX — the anti-discrimination law which led to an explosion of women’s high school and college sports since its passage in 1972 — to include outright discrimination. For context, the NCAA, which governs college athletics, set a policy in 2011 allowing trans athletes to compete both during and after transition. There was little to no outcry, and no negative incidents we could find. Trans athletes in sports only became a political issue after then-Fox News shouting head Tucker Carlson started loudly and publicy taking issue with trans athletes in 2018, and the Republican party has since latched onto the manufactured controvery as one of their signature — if not always successful — wedge issues.
Under pressure from those same Republicans, the NCAA changed their policy last month, allowing trans women to practice with their teams but not compete.