Trump re-ups his threat to strip Harvard University's tax-exempt status
[May 03, 2025]
By SEUNG MIN KIM
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday re-upped his threat
to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, escalating a
showdown with the first major college that has defied the
administration's efforts to crack down on campus activism.
He's underscoring that pledge even as federal law prohibits senior
members of the executive branch from asking the Internal Revenue Service
to conduct or terminate an audit or an investigation. The White House
has said any IRS actions will be conducted independently of the
president.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump
wrote on his social media site Friday morning from Palm Beach, Florida,
where he is spending the weekend. “It’s what they deserve!”
The president has questioned the fate of Harvard's tax-exempt status —
which a majority of U.S. colleges and universities have — ever since the
school refused to comply with the administration's demands for broad
government and leadership changes, revisions to its admissions policy,
and audits of how diversity is viewed on the campus. That prompted the
administration to block more than $2 billion in federal grants to the
Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution.
Harvard stressed Friday that there is “no legal basis” to revoke its
tax-exempt status.
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out
our educational mission," the school said in a statement. "It would
result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical
medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation. The
unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave
consequences for the future of higher education in America.”
The Treasury Department directed a senior official at the Internal
Revenue Service to begin the process of revoking Harvard's tax-exempt
status shortly after a social media post from Trump in mid-April
questioning it, although the White House has suggested that the tax
agency's scrutiny of Harvard began before Trump's public comments
targeting the school.
Democrats say Trump's actions against Harvard are purely political. The
Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, along with Massachusetts' two
Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and the Senate
Finance Committee chairman, Ron Wyden of Oregon, called for an inspector
general investigation into Trump's attempts to strip Harvard of its
tax-exempt status.
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In this Sunday, March 13, 2016 photo, a relief sculpture rests on a
gate to the entrance of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP
Photo/Steven Senne, File)
Trump's move "raises troubling constitutional questions, including
whether the president is trying to squelch Harvard’s free speech
rights and whether the revocation of its tax-exempt status will
deprive the university of its due process rights,” the senators
wrote in a letter Friday to Heather Hill, the acting Treasury
inspector general for tax administration.
Mike Kaercher, deputy director of NYU’s Tax Law Center, said:
“Overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress have enacted laws
making it a crime for the President and his staff to request an
audit or investigation of a particular taxpayer."
An IRS representative did not respond to an Associated Press request
for comment.
Trump's battle against Harvard is part of a broader campaign the
administration is framing as an effort to root out antisemitism on
college campuses. But the White House also sees a political upside
in the fight, framing it as a bigger war against elite institutions
decried by Trump's loyal supporters.
The "next chapter of the American story will not be written by The
Harvard Crimson," Trump said Thursday night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama,
where he delivered the commencement address at the University of
Alabama. “It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide.”
The Harvard Crimson is that school's student newspaper. The Crimson
Tide refers to the Alabama school's football program.
In addition to threatening Harvard's tax-exempt status and halting
federal grants, the Trump administration wants to block Harvard from
being able to enroll international students.
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Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
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