Donald Trump takes away Harvard University’s tax status; cuts federal funding of left wing media
Donald Trump said he will strip prestigious Harvard University of its tax exempt status and signed an executive order to cut funding to ‘horrible and biased’ media.
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US President Trump said he is stripping Harvard University of its tax-exempt status.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a Truth Social post.
The move comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze US$2.2 billion in multiyear federal grants over the elite Ivy League school’s refusal to help stamp out alleged antisemitism and hate on campus.
At the time, Mr Trump had floated the possibility of targeting the prestigious Cambridge, Massachusetts, university’s tax-exempt status if it continued to push “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” on its students.
“Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” he said.
Tax-exempt status, which is decided by the Internal Revenue Service, enables universities to receive hefty financial gifts from the country’s richest donors who want to decrease their tax burdens.
President Trump also signed an executive order terminating federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
NPR and PBS, which have long been targeted for cuts by conservatives, both receive partial funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which the US president argued is unnecessary in the current media environment.
“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Mr Trump wrote in the order.
“The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage,” he added.
“The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”
Mr Trump had previously called for NPR and PBS to be defunded in a March Truth Social post.
“NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms … should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote on March 27.
In his late-night order, the president argued that “Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.”
“No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidise.”
A White House fact sheet on the order suggested that the left-leaning networks’ output acts as a “significant in-kind contributions to the Democrat party and its political cause,” therefore violating the CPB’s legal mandate to be “non-political [in] nature.”
According to the New York Post, Mr Trump also tasked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with determining whether PBS and NPR “are complying with the statutory mandate that ‘no person shall be subjected to discrimination in employment … on the grounds of race, colour, religion, national origin, or sex.’”
“In the event of a finding of noncompliance, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take appropriate corrective action,” the order read.
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TRUMP OFFERS BUDGET PREVIEW
President Trump unveiled his 2026 budget outline, proposing cuts totaling US$163 billion to education, foreign aid funding, energy and environmental protection — while boosting defense spending to over US$1 trillion.
The $163 billion cut in non-defense discretionary spending is 22.6 per cent below current levels, according to an outline of the budget released by the White House.
Meanwhile, the president proposed an increase of more than US$113 billion for the Pentagon from 2025 levels, bringing the total to $1.01 trillion. The administration is also calling for US$175 billion “to, at long last, finally secure our border.”
TRUMP TO AMPLIFY UNITED STATES’ ROLE IN WWII
US President Donald Trump said he will rename two US holidays to “Victory Day” in his latest attempt to alter the country’s nomenclature.
“I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Victory Day, observed by the European Union on May 8 and in former Soviet countries on May 9, marks the anniversary of the formal acceptance of Germany’s unconditional surrender by the Allied Forces at the end of World War II.
Though some in the United States mark the occasion, it is not a public holiday or celebrated as widely as in Europe.
“Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II,” Trump’s post said.
November 11 was originally named “Armistice Day” by former US president Woodrow Wilson to mark the anniversary of 1918 armistice ending the armed conflict in World War I.
It is now a public holiday celebrated in the United States as “Veterans Day” and meant to honour Americans who have served in the US armed forces.
“We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything — That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so!” Trump continued.
“We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”
No executive order or proclamation enumerating the holiday name changes has been formally issued yet by the White House.
Trump in his second term has repeatedly sought to rename parts of US public life, whether it be a national holiday — such as changing “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” back to “Columbus Day” — or a geographical feature, like renaming the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America.”
SECURITY ADVISER REPLACED AFTER GROUP CHAT SCANDAL
Donald Trump has confirmed that he is replacing his national security adviser Mike Waltz following a chat group leak, saying he planned to move him to the United Nations.
In the first major cabinet shake-up of Mr Trump’s new term, the president said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would now also serve as his “interim” national security adviser following Mr Waltz’s departure.
“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social, confirming earlier reports that Mr Waltz was being ousted.
“Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”
There was no immediate confirmation of US media reports that Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, would also leave the National Security Council.
US media had reported that Steve Witkoff, a real estate magnate whom Mr Trump has picked to lead US talks with both Russia and Iran, is in contention to replace Mr Waltz in the longer term.
Mr Waltz had been under pressure since the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Magazine revealed in March that Mr Waltz had mistakenly added him to a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about attacks on Houthi rebels.
Officials on the chat laid out the attack plan including the timings that US warplanes would take off to bomb targets in Yemen, with the first texts barely half an hour before they launched.
Despite intense media speculation that Mr Trump would fire Mr Waltz over the scandal, the president repeatedly offered his backing and the national security adviser appeared to have ridden out the storm.
In the end, however, the 51-year-old former congressman from Florida lasted just over 100 days of
Democrats will now turn up the heat on Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was the official who revealed the air strike details in advance, and who was also reported to have shared those details in a separate Signal group chat that included, among others, his spouse.
“Now do Hegseth,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted on X. Waltz’s new role will also require Senate confirmation, ensuring that Signalgate will stay in the headlines.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has also faced pressure over the scandal
TRUMP USE OF DEPORTATIONS LAW ‘UNLAWFUL’: JUDGE
A federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s use of an obscure wartime law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members was “unlawful.”
District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, blocked any deportations from his southern Texas district of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
Mr Trump invoked the little known Act, which was last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II, on March 15 and flew two plane loads of alleged TdA members to El Salvador’s notorious maximum security CECOT prison.
The Supreme Court and several district courts have temporarily halted removals under the AEA citing a lack of due process, but Rodriguez is the first federal judge to find that its use is unlawful.
“The president cannot summarily declare that a foreign nation or government has threatened or perpetrated an invasion or predatory incursion of the United States,” the judge said in his 36-page order.
“Allowing the president to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA, and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the executive branch’s authority under the AEA,” Rodriguez said.
“The president’s invocation of the AEA … exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” the judge said.
The administration does not have the lawful authority, under the AEA, “to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country,” he added.
MEXICO AGREES TO ‘IMPROVE’ TRADE RELATIONS
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that she had spoken with Donald Trump and agreed to work toward improving the trade balance between the two nations.
Ms Sheinbaum, whose country is considered one of the most vulnerable to Mr Trump’s trade war, described her conversation with him as “very positive.”
While President Trump left Mexico off the list of nations facing his steep “reciprocal tariffs,” its carmakers as well as steel and aluminium exporters still face duties.
Ms Sheinbaum says Mr Trump’s tariffs contravene a free-trade agreement between the two countries that also includes Canada.
Mexico replaced China in 2023 as the largest trading partner with the United States, which buys more than 80 per cent of its exports.
– with AFP news service
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Originally published as Donald Trump takes away Harvard University’s tax status; cuts federal funding of left wing media
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