Trump re-ups his threat to strip Harvard University's tax-exempt status

WASHINGTON — 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.

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.