Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to demands – US politics live
Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to administration’s demands
Donald Trump has said Harvard “should lose its tax exempt status” and be taxed as a political entity after the Ivy League school rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:
Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!
Most universities, including Harvard, are exempt from federal income taxes because they are classified as providing a public good.
The latest escalation comes after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of Harvard’s federal grants after the university refused to cave in to what the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the administration’s list of demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.
Former president Barack Obama praised Harvard for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices.
Key events
Judge drops case against man Pam Bondi called MS-13 leader and allows time to challenge deportation to El Salvador
A federal judge agreed on Tuesday to dismiss a gun charge against a man US attorney general Pam Bondi has called a leader of the MS-13 gang after prosecutors said the Trump administration wanted to deport rather than prosecute him, Reuters reports.
US magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick put the order on hold until Friday to allow the man, Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, 24, to pursue other legal channels to contest what his lawyer warned could be an imminent removal to an El Salvador prison.
Fitzpatrick said the criminal case was not the proper forum to decide issues related to his deportation and noted that he had limited authority to question the decision by prosecutors to drop the charge.
“I cannot and will not go in and second guess decisions that are uniquely prosecutorial in nature,” Fitzpatrick said during a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia.
Villatoro Santos, a Salvadoran man living illegally in Virginia, was charged last month with illegal possession of a firearm after an FBI SWAT team raided his home. During a news conference, Bondi called him one of the top three leaders of MS-13 in the US and touted his arrest as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrant gangs.
In a criminal complaint, an immigration agent said law enforcement “observed indicia of MS-13 association” and seized four guns and ammunition during a search of Villatoro Santos’ room, but made no reference to his alleged leadership in the gang. He was not charged with any gang-related activity.
Villatoro Santos’ case is one of several in which Trump administration officials have publicly labeled immigrant detainees gang leaders and terrorists without backing up those claims with evidence in court.
Less than two weeks after Villatoro Santos was arrested, prosecutors moved to drop the charge and Bondi said he would face removal proceedings. A federal prosecutor, John Blanchard, told the judge on Tuesday that he did not know what would happen to Villatoro Santos once the charge was dropped.
A lawyer for Villatoro Santos asked the judge to delay ruling on the motion, warning of a risk that Villatoro Santos would be sent to El Salvador without the ability to challenge his deportation. The Trump administration has sent hundreds of migrants it has alleged are members of MS-13 and other transnational gangs to a prison in El Salvador without a court process.
The lawyer, Muhammad Elsayed, said the Trump administration had made a “high-profile spectacle” of the case and sought assurances that Villatoro Santos would have an opportunity to defend himself in immigration court.
“This was clearly a political decision,” Elsayed said of the decision to drop the criminal case.
Donald Trump has described American farmers as being on the “frontline” in his escalating trade war with China while pledging to protect them.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, wrote:
Our farmers are GREAT, but because of their GREATNESS, they are always put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China, whenever there is a Trade negotiation or, in this case, a Trade War.
He accused China of being “brutal” to US farmers during his first term in office but that a “great trade deal was made”.
“The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!” he added.
Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said he has not yet heard back from the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, about his request to visit the country to meet with his constituent Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.
“If I don’t hear from him, and Abrego Garcia is not quickly returned, I do intend to go to El Salvador this week to show solidarity with his family,” Van Hollen told CNN.
I also hope to visit this notorious prison to see Abrego Garcia to let him know his family and friends are very worried about him, as am I.
At a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, Bukele said he would not order the return of Abrego Garcia, calling the question “preposterous”.
The Trump administration is looking at closing 30 embassies and consulates overseas as part of an overhaul of the US government’s diplomatic footprint, according to multiple reports.
A State Department document obtained by Punchbowl News and CNN outlines a plan to shutter 10 embassies and 17 consulates, including in Eritrea, Luxembourg, South Sudan and Malta, and folding them into embassies in nearby countries.
The proposed consulate closures include Edinburgh, five in France, two in Germany and Florence, Italy.
It comes as the Trump administration is reportedly pushing to cut the State Department’s budget by nearly half.
Sam Levine
A watchdog group on Monday sued the Trump administration over its decision to remove a public tracker of how the government spends funds appropriated by Congress.
The director of the office of management and budget (OMB), Russell Vought, has sought to justify taking down the tracker, telling Congress in March that the tool “requires the disclosure of sensitive, predecisional and deliberative information”. “Such disclosures have a chilling effect on the deliberations within the executive branch,” he added.
But the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the non-profit group Protect Democracy in US district court in Washington DC, says that federal law requires the OMB to publicly post apportionment documents.
The suit says:
Congress mandated prompt transparency for apportionments to prevent abuses of power and strengthen Congress’s and the public’s oversight of the spending process.
Absent this transparency, the president and OMB may abuse their authority over the apportionment of federal funds without public or congressional scrutiny or accountability.
The vast majority of US private and public universities and colleges are tax-exempt entities because of their educational purposes – purposes including teaching, research and public services, that the federal government has long recognized as fundamental to fostering the productive and civic capacities of citizens – and/or the fact that they are state governmental entities. In turn, state governments usually grant tax-exempt status to such organizations.
The federal tax code classifies tax-exempt colleges and universities and their foundations as public charities, which means they’re not subject to tax on investment income, payout requirements, or other rules that apply to private foundations.
Here are the requirements from the IRS:
To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.
Organizations described in section 501(c)(3) are commonly referred to as charitable organizations. Organizations described in section 501(c)(3), other than testing for public safety organizations, are eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions in accordance with Code section 170.
The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, and no part of a section 501(c)(3) organization’s net earnings may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any organization managers agreeing to the transaction.
Section 501(c)(3) organizations are restricted in how much political and legislative (lobbying) activities they may conduct.
Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to administration’s demands
Donald Trump has said Harvard “should lose its tax exempt status” and be taxed as a political entity after the Ivy League school rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:
Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!
Most universities, including Harvard, are exempt from federal income taxes because they are classified as providing a public good.
The latest escalation comes after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of Harvard’s federal grants after the university refused to cave in to what the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the administration’s list of demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.
Former president Barack Obama praised Harvard for setting an example for other higher education institutions to reject federal overreach into its governance practices.
As we said earlier, former president Joe Biden will address a conference in Chicago just before 5pm local time with a speech on focused on defending Social Security.
But, Politico reports, not all Democrats are too enthused by Biden’s return to the national stage. One former Biden donor and bundler said the speeches are “fine” because “that’s what you expect a former president to do, but I don’t anticipate crowds of Democrats wanting him as a focal point of the national conversation.”
And a person who worked closely with the Biden campaign has told the outlet:
It takes a special level of chutzpah as the man most responsible for reelecting Donald Trump to decide it’s your voice that is missing in this moment. The country would be better served if he rode off into the sunset.
RFK Jr urged to release nearly $400m allocated to help families combat heat
Nina Lakhani
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services, is facing new demands to release almost $400m allocated by Congress to help low-income US families keep the air conditioning on this summer.
The funds are under threat after the staff running a decades old program were fired – as part of the Trump administration’s so-called ‘efficiency’ drive.
States and tribal nations are still waiting for funding allocated by Congress for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) – a chronically underfunded bipartisan program that helped around 6 million households keep on top of energy bills last year.
The money is stuck in limbo after the Trump administration this month eliminated the division of energy assistance (DEA) – the office within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that oversees the four-decade old program – and fired the entire staff.
Pressure is now growing on Kennedy to reinstate the staff and guarantee that the energy aid be distributed to the states – in compliance with the administration’s constitutional obligation to abide with congressional appropriations.
An estimated one in six households are behind on their energy bills, according to NEADA, which means millions of families could be at risk of utilities shutting off power in what’s expected to be another record-breaking hot summer.
Amid a protracted cost of living crisis, one in four households were unable to keep up with energy bills last year, according to the Census Bureau.
In the northern cold states, LIHEAP helped keep the heat on for more than 43,000 households in Michigan and 26,000 Vermonters. But in the short-term it is mostly southern states where residents are most likely to suffer first, especially as deadly heat waves increase due to global heating.
In Arizona, just over 37,000 residents qualified for LIHEAP assistance last year. In Phoenix, the US’s hottest major city, residents endured a record 113 consecutive days at or over 100F. Even with LIHEAP, almost one in four heat deaths in Maricopa county, where Phoenix is located, happened indoors. A significant proportion did not have electricity and/or a functioning air conditioning unit.
Doge collecting federal data to remove undocumented migrants from housing and work – report
The Trump administration is using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce, the Washington Post (paywall) reports.
The Post reports that at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households (where some family members have legal status and others don’t) from public housing, according to multiple staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. Affiliates from the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) are also looking to kick out existing mixed-status households, vowing to ensure that undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public programs, even if they live with citizens or other eligible family members.
The push extends across agencies: Last week, the Social Security Administration moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country. Federal tax and immigration enforcement officials recently reached a deal to share confidential tax data for people suspected of being in the US illegally.
The result is an unprecedented effort to use government data to support the administration’s immigration policies. The Post notes that that includes information people have reported about themselves for years while paying taxes or applying for housing — believing that information would not be used against them for immigration purposes. Legal experts say the data sharing is a breach of privacy rules that help ensure trust in government programs and services.
Tanya Broder, senior counsel for health and economic justice policy at the left-leaning National Immigration Law Center, told the Post.
It’s not only about one subgroup of people, it’s really about all of us. Everyone cares about their privacy. Nobody wants their health-care information or tax information broadcast and used to go after us.
The White House did not reply to a request for comment. In response to questions, a DHS official said: “The government is finally doing what it should have all along: sharing information across the federal government to solve problems.”
“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs said.
Trump donors eye potential bonanza if US succeeds with Greenland land-grab
Tom Perkins
Some of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign donors and investors, who collectively have hundreds of millions of dollars in financial ties to the US president, are positioned to potentially profit from any American takeover of Greenland, raising even more ethical questions around Trump’s controversial pursuit of the Arctic territory.
The administration is in part aiming to secure rare minerals that are essential for the US tech industry and national security, and to potentially reopen oil and gas exploration: “This is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources,” Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, recently said.
A Guardian analysis of campaign finance records and corporate filings show US tech moguls who invested in mining companies operating in Greenland, fossil fuel executives and crypto tycoons with their own set of plans for the country collectively gave at least $243m to the president’s 2024 campaign.
Meanwhile institutional investors bankrolling Greenland mining interests also amassed $314m worth of shares in Trump Media, most just ahead of the election.
“There’s a closed loop among these investors, billionaires, Trump and the crypto projects,” said Emily DiVito, a senior adviser for economic policy with the Groundwork Collaborative economic thinktank. Greenland is an example of that in action, she added.
“These donations are investments, and they were made with particular outcomes in mind, and even if they weren’t stated at the time, the money changed hands,” DiVito said.
