Ruled illegal for revoking student visas over speech, admin moves to revoke schools' tax breaks too.

…(cont) So I flip forward — same notebook, I don't carry two — and five days later, the 3rd, there's a second line under it: "Administration moving to revoke tax-exempt status from schools it calls racially discriminatory." Same verb. I checked. Revoke. I circled it the second time, I don't know why I do that.

I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but it's the same word twice in five days in the same book, and I want to be sure I've got the dates right, because a man doesn't write a word down twice in a week for no reason and I haven't found the reason yet. The 29th, a judge revokes nothing — she stops one. The 3rd, the administration announces one on its own. No judge in that room at all, far as the notebook shows.

I go through the toll plaza most mornings, the one out past the dog track, and they've got the sign up — pay your bill or the transponder gets deactivated. Fair enough, that's how it's supposed to work. You get a notice. You get a hearing if you want to fight it. Somebody downtown signs off before the little box in your car goes dark. I asked the girl at the booth once what it takes to get one turned back on. Paperwork, she said. Weeks sometimes. I keep thinking about that box when I read these two entries side by side.

I'm sorry — I keep going back to this — but here's the part that won't let go of me. Ninety pages is heavy enough that somebody in that courthouse had to carry it down the hall in more than one trip, I'd guess, folders and all, just to get it filed. Students had to bring the case. A judge had to read the record and write the ninety pages and still call the taking-away illegal. To take away the tax exemption, near as I can find in front of me, it took a headline. I haven't located the ninety pages on this one yet. Maybe there's a ruling I haven't found. Which one of these two needed a courtroom, and which one needed a press release?

I'm sorry, last time on this one, I promise — but the dates won't leave me be. Friday the judge says the revoking they already did was against the law. The following week, same administration, announces a second one. Five days between the ruling and the release. I wrote that down too, in case I forgot it, because five days isn't long to decide there's a second thing that needs revoking.

Anyway. That's the notebook, that's everything I've got written down, and I was about to close it — excuse me, before you go, one more thing, since you're still standing there. The word in both entries, the one I keep circling in pencil because I don't own a pen that still works — is there a word for taking away something you already gave somebody? I've got it written right here. Both times. Same six letters. Revoke.