Trump threatens to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status

President Donald Trump shared Friday morning he planned to remove Harvard University’s tax-exempt status amid a weeks-long battle to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, commonly known as DEI. It’s what the school deserves, Trump wrote. The president signed an executive order to cut funding to universities that practiced DEI. Harvard resisted efforts to shut down its DEI programs. Last month, the Trump administration paused about $2.2 billion of the school’s federal funding after the school refused to comply with a list of demands to fight anti-Semitism on campus.

The university then sued the Trump administration, alleging that the order violated the university’s First Amendment rights. Trump’s Friday statement came days after the school appeared to soften its stance on DEI by renaming its DEI office to the office of Community and Campus Life.

How are people responding?

• The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE, insisted that the IRS can’t change the university’s tax status on Trump’s order. Weaponizing the tax code against political opponents is a dangerous precedent to set for future administrations, the group noted in a Friday statement. The nonprofit finished by calling on Trump to follow the law.

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also accused Trump of weaponizing the IRS and questioned who he would target next. Maybe he’ll revoke tax exemptions for hospitals and churches, or maybe he’ll remove tax credits for families and small businesses, she opined in a Friday post.

• Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., thanked Trump for, in her words, holding the university accountable. She made an apparent reference to reports of anti-Semitic incidents on campus and insisted that if a school won’t protect its students, it doesn't deserve a tax break.

• Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., described Trump’s plan as an illegal power grab of the country’s higher education system. America doesn’t have kings, and the president can’t silence opinions he doesn’t like, she wrote.

Dig deeper: Read Leo Briceno’s report for more background on the Harvard-Trump dispute.