Trump repeats that the government will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status

President Donald Trump says Harvard University will be stripped of its tax-exempt status, redoubling an extraordinary threat amid a broader chess match over free speech, political ideology and federal funding at the Ivy League school and across American academia.

President Donald Trump says Harvard University will be stripped of its tax-exempt status, redoubling an extraordinary threat amid a broader chess match over free speech, political ideology and federal funding at the Ivy League school and across American academia. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social. Trump floated a trial balloon April 15 for the notion of removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the Internal Revenue Service had been making plans to carry out the idea. CNN reached out Friday to the IRS for comment. “There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a university spokesperson told CNN. “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.” Money for federal taxes would have to be taken away from other priorities and “would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation,” the spokesperson said Friday. Harvard’s president has said the school “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”