President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration will revoke Harvard University‘s tax-exempt status, escalating his previous threats against the Ivy League school and potentially expanding an ongoing legal battle.
“It’s what they deserve!” Trump wrote in a terse Truth Social post announcing the decision.
The post is the latest escalation in Trump’s campaign against Harvard and other elite schools, based on claims that they have fostered antisemitism and other forms of discrimination on their campuses.
Trump has sought to extract concessions from the institutions by threatening to withhold federal research grants unless the schools make massive changes, many of which give the administration more oversight of its operations.
The State Department and immigration authorities have also targeted thousands of international students by revoking their visas and, in several high-profile cases, detaining individual students.
The Trump administration in mid-April said it would freeze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. The college filed a lawsuit soon after, calling the government’s flex of power “unprecedented and improper.”
Around the same time, Trump openly considered stripping Harvard of the tax-exempt status that the government grants to most public and private universities and colleges.
“Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” he wrote on Truth Social on April 15.
The Treasury Department has asked the Internal Revenue Service to consider revoking the school’s tax-exempt status, The New York Times reported last month.
Trump’s Homeland Security secretary also recently threatened to revoke Harvard’s ability to secure student visas for the international students enrolled there.
A spokesperson for Harvard responded Friday to Trump’s latest threat, saying, “there is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.”
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”
A group of Senate Democrats on Friday sent a letter to the acting chief of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, requesting an investigation into whether the White House has pressured the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status and whether the IRS has taken any action to examine Harvard’s tax designation.
“It is both illegal and unconstitutional for the IRS to take direction from the President to target schools, hospitals, churches, or any other tax-exempt entities as retribution for using their free speech rights,” wrote Sens. Chuck Schumer, N.Y., Ron Wyden, Ore., Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, both of Massachusetts.
“While auditing Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the President’s demands is clearly troubling, we are even more concerned about the implications for organizations that are too small to resist pressure from the White House or do not have the resources for legal action,” they wrote.
“Church groups, hospitals, health clinics, or food banks could be next.”
