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

Leavitt says on Harvard:

A lot of Americans are wondering why their tax dollars are going to these universities when they’re not only indoctrinating our nation’s students but also allowing such egregious, illegal behavior to occur.

On Harvard, Leavitt claims that Harvard has allowed antisemitism on its campus, breaking federal law, and therefore should not get federal funding.

Last week the government’s antisemitism taskforce accused the university of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.

The Trump administration demanded that Harvard ban face masks and close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”. The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

When Harvard refused to comply with the list of demands, Trump cut $2.3bn in federal grants to the university.

Leavitt calls Kilmar Abrego Garcia (without evidence) “an “MS-13 gang member, Salvadorian, illegal alien criminal who was hiding in Maryland” and attacks the media coverage of the case “despicable” and “sensationalized”.

In fact, Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland legally and had a work permit. He was unlawfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March, despite a court order that he not be sent there. Last week the supreme court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” his release, but yesterday, the Trump administration misrepresented that decision, using tortured readings of the order to justify taking no actions to secure his release.

White House press briefing

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is due to begin speaking to reporters soon. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.

Lauren Gambino

Voters in Oakland will elect a new mayor today in a race that many residents view as a battle between a hometown hero and Big Tech money.

Barbara Lee, who represented Oakland in Congress for a quarter-century and is known internationally for her lonely stand against the use of military force in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, faces a strong challenge from former city councilman Loren Taylor.

While Lee has won the backing of local leaders – including nearly every member of the city council, former mayors of the city and labor unions, her opponent is drawing outside support from a coalition of independent groups backed by wealthy tech executives that have worked to elect more moderate Democrats in blue cities across the Bay Area. The effort has had success helping to elect tech-friendly mayors in San Francisco and San Jose and funding successful recall efforts against progressive leaders, including the former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao. Thao was recently indicted on federal bribery charges; she denies wrongdoing.

“The tech bros, the oligarchy, crypto bros, all of that stuff that we’re starting to see here – it came from San Francisco politics,” said Pamela Drake, a longtime activist and progressive political commentator who is supporting Lee.

Drake said she feared a “tech takeover” of the city’s politics. “That is what we see as a real threat,” she said, “that it is no longer going to be Oaklanders deciding what we want done.”

She pointed to a pro-Taylor committee that received tens of thousands of dollars from Max Hodak, who co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle large swaths of the federal workforce. Hodak split with Musk several years ago.

In an interview, Taylor, who narrowly lost the 2022 mayor’s race to Thao, called the claim that his campaign was driven by outside money “inaccurate” and emphasized his fundraising strength among grassroots Oakland-based donors.

‘Shock to the system’: farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs and cuts say they need another bailout

Nina Lakhani

Farmers across the US say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer-funded bail out to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.

Rural counties rallied behind Trump last year, averaging 78% support in farming-dependent counties, but anxiety is mounting among the agricultural base. The climate crisis-fueled extreme weather is compounded by the US president’s looming trade war and the administration targeting popular federal programs and staff, leaving farmers reeling and resigned to needing another bailout.

Travis Johnson, who lost more than 1,000 acres of cotton, sorghum and corn after a year’s rain fell within 48 hours in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in southern Texas last month, turning parched fields into lakes, said:

There’s a lot of uncertainty around and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried.

RGV farmers sell sorghum, wheat, corn and vegetables to Mexico among other crops, while buying fertilizer and equipment – and relying on Mexican farmhands for cheap labor. Johnson added:

We’ve already had two years of absolute disaster with falling prices and weather patterns … no farmer wants this but without a bailout this could be devastating and a lot more people could go under.

The Trump administration has issued widespread cuts to oversubscribed and chronically underfunded federal climate and conservation schemes designed to reduce costs and greenhouse gases, and improve yields and environmental health.

Trump is also shuttering local food programs which provide farmers with stable domestic markets like public school districts and food banks, helping make farms more resilient to global economic shocks. The USAID, which purchased about $2bn every year in agricultural products particularly wheat, sorghum and lentils for humanitarian aid programs, has been dismantled.

The loss in federal programs alone would have been tough to cope with, but then came the trade chaos. Trump’s tariff announcements began when most farmers already had spring crops in the ground – or at the very least had prepared the land and purchased inputs such as seeds and pesticides, making it impossible to switch to crops that could potentially find a market domestically.

Consensus is growing among experts that the turmoil represents an opportunity for rival agriculture economies – and disaster for US farmers. Ben Murray, senior researcher with the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said:

Without a bailout, we can only imagine how bad this will be for farmers and what an opportunity for Brazil – and this is all being done for a tax cut for the wealthy.

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

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.

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.

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Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to demands – US politics live | Trump administration

Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after university refuses to cave to administration’s demands

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