By John L. Micek
masslive.com
(TNS)
President Donald Trump made nationwide headlines on Friday when he vowed to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, further escalating tensions between the elite university and the Republican White House.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump declared in a post to his Truth Social site.
But Trump’s typically brazen tactics could end coming back to haunt him, legal experts told NBC News.
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Because while it’s true that the Internal Revenue Service has the power to carry out Trump’s promise, that post could throw a wrench in the works.
“There’s a way they could do this,” Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Chicago Law School, told NBC News. But Lakier added, “it can’t be at the behest of President Trump.”
Lakier, who told NBC News that Trump’s post was “dumb” and “not helpful,” pointed to a law that bars the president and other government officials from directing the IRS to investigate taxpayers as a major obstacle.
Edward McCaffery, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, agreed, telling NBC News that “it does not help that the president is politicizing this.”
“It raises the question that he’s directing this,” which suggests the move is “about retribution” and “vengeance” instead of public policy. And that’s something Harvard could use in its defense in court, he told the network.
Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a Washington, D.C., attorney who specializes in nonprofit organizations, said the IRS would face an “uphill climb” if it decided to move ahead against Harvard. And that fight could potentially take years, the network reported.
On Friday, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both Massachusetts Democrats, joined by some of their Senate colleagues, called on a government watchdog to investigate whether Trump’s call for action against Harvard had crossed legal lines.
The lawmakers said they’re looking for “an investigation into potential criminal activity related to this decision and into whether or not the Trump administration is using the [ Internal Revenue Service] to take other politically motivated actions.”
A spokesperson for Harvard said the school would fight any action to change its tax-exempt status.
The U.S. government has “long exempted universities from taxes in order to support their educational mission,” the spokesperson told NBC News, adding that revoking its status “would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.”
“The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America,” the spokesperson said.
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©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit masslive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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