> University of California will now permanently end the use of SAT and ACT in undergraduate admissions. This is widely expected, probably correctly, to trigger a chain reaction, whereby one US university after the next will abandon standardized tests

You're really missing the point of this action. Since the College Admissions scandal, it has become clear that people with deep pockets can game the SATs and ACTs by paying people with inside knowledge. The UofC doesn't want to eliminate standardized testing, they declared they want a replacement. They are changing this because it is unfairly skewed toward people who can pay up.

Trump and the corruption and anticompetitiveness that he represents is a long line of Conservatism that up-ticked during Reagan's era. Yes, that is certainly a threat to America, and something to worry about.

Conservatives want it all, and they want it concentrated in the fewest hands possible. They are the scorpion on the back of the frog which is Capitalism. Capitalism is free-enterprise, the opportunity for people to create wealth by creating things that benefit society. Conservatives want to twist the rules, to cheat the system, so that you don't have the opportunity, so that the rules heavily favor the people who already have it. Why? Because Conservatives stand for no-change, keep the wealth in the hands of people who were born into it. And concentrate it into their hands even more.

Conservatism is the opposite of what created the USA and made it special, it is the opposite of what made the USA an economic powerhouse. Conservatism is the default that most countries are governed by, since the beginning of time, across all geographies. Conservatism is the reason why innovation and brilliant creativism is sidelined. Because incumbent power brokers don't need it, they don't need change, they don't need improvements. They just need all the gains to continue going to a very few, and all they need for that is the maintenance of exploitation. Occasionally throughout history Conservatism has been broken by special laws the created fairness. In Ancient Greece it was the Solonian Constitution. In Ancient Rome it was The Law Of Twelve Tables. In 1707 Britain it was Parliament which broke Royal Monopolies and led to the Industrial Revolution. At the founding of the USA it was the Constitution. In all these cases, these laws of fairness drove massive levels of economic growth, of creative destruction and innovation, that changed the world.

The Conservatives want to destroy that, because they want it all for themselves, no matter what the consequences. The Roman Emperors destroyed their equitable laws, and that lead to the decline of Rome. Now massive corporations, their heads, and their political stooges/lackeys want to destroy equitable economic laws, they want to destroy antitrust legislation that prevents them from controlling it all forever. The momentum that big companies are building to destroy competition and fairness in this country is an existential threat to what makes the USA special. Citizens United. Unfettered mergers and acquisitions. Widespread corporate surveillance using data snooping. All these are of great concern.