Donald Trump calls Harvard a ‘joke’ and says it should be stripped of funds – US politics live

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Trump calls Harvard a 'joke' and says it should be stripped of funds

US president Donald Trump called Harvard a “joke” on Wednesday and said it should lose its government research contracts after the prestigious university refused demands that it accept outside political supervision.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that Trump’s administration also threatened to ban Harvard from admitting foreign students unless it bows to the requirements, as US media reported that officials were considering revoking the university’s tax-exempt status.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform:

Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges.

Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.

Trump is furious at the storied institution for rejecting government supervision of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant and ordered the freezing of $2.2bn in federal funding to Harvard this week.

People walk on the Business School campus of Harvard university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also canceled $2.7m worth of research grants to Harvard on Wednesday and threatened the university’s ability to enrol international students unless it turns over records on visa-holders’ “illegal and violent activities”.

“If Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students,” a DHS statement said, with secretary Kristi Noem accusing the university of “bending the knee to antisemitism”.

Harvard has flatly rejected the pressure, with its president, Alan Garber, saying that the university refuses to “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights”.

More on this story in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:

Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador in an effort to get answers about the Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García. He said he hoped to meet Ábrego García in person and see his condition. He previously told the Guardian the case had tipped the US into a constitutional crisis. Hollen says he was told that the Trump administration was paying the Salvadorian government to hold Ábrego García, citing that as the reason he has not been released.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back during a White House press briefing, saying that Democrats refuse to “accept the will of the American people,” and repeating administration claims that García was a member of the MS-13 gang. “Nothing will change the fact that Ábrego García will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again,” she said.
Numerous Democratic politicians and top universities across the country have rallied in support of Harvard, but the Trump administration has doubled down, threatening to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status and insisting that the university apologize.
UK officials are tightening security when handling sensitive trade documents to prevent them from falling into US hands amid Trump’s tariff war, the Guardian can reveal. In an indication of the strains on the “special relationship”, British civil servants have changed document-handling guidance, adding higher classifications to some trade negotiation documents in order to better shield them from American eyes, sources said.
Donald Trump has proposed giving money to immigrants in the country illegally who choose to leave voluntarily, and that his “self-deportation program” would include the prospect of those who are “good” re-entering the country later legally.
The Department of Health and Human Services may be facing a severe $40bn budget cut – slashing roughly a third in discretionary spending according to an internal budget document.
Jerome Powell, the US Federal Reserve chair, warned that Trump’s tariffs were generating a “challenging scenario” for the central bank and were likely to worsen inflation. His comments on Wednesday came as US stock markets had already been rattled by a new trade restriction on the chip designer Nvidia.
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said in his first press conference that the significant and recent rise in autism diagnoses was evidence of an “epidemic” caused by an “environmental toxin”, which would be rooted out by September. However, autism advocates and health experts have repeatedly stated the rise in diagnoses is related to better recognition of the condition, changing diagnostic criteria and better access to screening.

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Higher education leaders worry the arrests and visa revocations could discourage students overseas from pursuing higher education in the United States.

The lack of clarity of what is leading to revocations can create a sense of fear among students, said Sarah Spreitzer, vice-president of government relations at the American Council on Education, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Spreitzer said:

The very public actions that are being taken by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security around some of these students, where they are removing these students from their homes or from their streets, that’s not usually done unless there is a security issue when a student visa is revoked.

The threat of this very quick removal is something that’s new.

Several international students who have had their visas revoked in recent weeks have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US.

The actions by the federal government to terminate students’ legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation. Their schools range from private universities like Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions like the University of Maryland and Ohio State University to some small liberal arts colleges.

At least 901 students at 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since mid-March, according to an Associated Press (AP) review of university statements and correspondence with school officials.

In lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security, students have argued the government lacked justification to cancel their visa or terminate their legal status, reports the AP.

The payments frozen to Harvard are for government contracts with its leading research programs, mostly in the medical fields where the school’s laboratories are critical in the development of new medicines and treatments, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled antisemitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at encouraging minorities.

The antisemitism allegations are based on controversy over protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses last year.

Columbia University in New York stood down last month and agreed to oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after being threatened with a loss of $400m in federal funds.

In the case of Harvard, the White House is seeking unprecedented levels of government control over the inner workings of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university – and one of the most respected educational and research institutions in the world.

AFP report that in a letter sent to Harvard, the administration’s demands included:

Ending admissions that take into account the student’s race or national origins.
Preventing admission of foreign students “hostile to the American values and institutions”.
Ending staff hiring based on race, religion, sex or national origin.
Reducing the power of students in campus governance.
Auditing students and staff for “viewpoint diversity”.
Reforming entire programs for “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias”
Cracking down on campus protests.

Donald Trump also said on Tuesday that Harvard “should lose its tax-exempt status” as a nonprofit educational institution if it does not back down.

CNN and the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was now making plans to do so after a request from Trump.

White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by email that “any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the president.”