I have mentioned before one of the most famous descriptions of Cincinnati, my hometown: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times.” It is apocryphal. But it nonetheless captures some of the small-c conservatism of the city. Now, a few weeks into the Trump administration, the effects of its early actions on the city are becoming clear. The results are instructive.

Following the anti-DEI executive order Donald Trump released shortly after taking office, the University of Cincinnati is abandoning its DEI policies. UC President Neville G. Pinto stated in a letter to the university community that, “given the extent to which our university, like most educational institutions, relies on federal funding,” it had no choice but to abide by the order. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that “UC leaders have begun meeting to discuss initial steps,” and are evaluating “existing DEI programming and initiatives.”

Meanwhile, virtue-signaling by the city government from a few years ago may end up costing it. In 2017, at the beginning of Trump’s first term, the city council passed a resolution declaring Cincinnati a “sanctuary city.” But now, since “the new emboldened second Trump administration has warned that sanctuary cities could face a number of penalties, including shutting off the spigot of federal money for transportation projects and policing,” city leaders are nervously eyeing the Trump administration for further guidance on immigration, the Enquirer reports. That guidance may force them to comply with Trump administration immigration enforcement actions, against the spirit of the 2017 resolution.

I have relied on the Enquirer‘s reporting for this dispatch. But the paper is itself a city institution as well. And in one respect, it is adhering to the city’s stubborn character. Some of the Trump administration’s most praiseworthy early actions include executive orders making recognition of two sexes government policy and keeping women’s sports for women. A recent Enquirer report on how trans-identifying youth in the area feel “exhausted” by these and other actions is consistent with the relentlessly progressive way the paper reported on the transgender policy agenda after the 2014 suicide of Joshua Alcorn, a distressed teenage male who believed he was female. The Enquirer even invokes the extortionist specter of trans suicide, a transgender activist canard destroyed at the Supreme Court late last year.

If Cincinnati has a reputation for being behind the times, it is now catching up. In the process, it may discover that timeless truths are a better guide than modish fads and fallacies.