President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to sever the link between academia and government by freezing billions of dollars in federal grants to top research institutions. This act may score political points among those accustomed to understanding academia as a left-leaning “ivory tower” insulated from ordinary Americans and private enterprise. But it reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of how the United States became militarily and commercially dominant in the first place. Research universities have long undergirded, in particular, the country’s national security through defense research, and they continue to train the pipeline of talent that powers both government and industry. Practically speaking, cutting their support does not represent a principled political stance—it is a friendly-fire assault on U.S. national security. ...

Universities, for their part, converted U.S. taxpayers’ dollars into innovations that made the country prosper. Nowhere was this more evident

A nationwide power outage hit Spain and Portugal on Monday, leaving millions without electricity. Reports indicate issues with the European electric grid.