Trump's social media post targeting Harvard's tax-exempt status could create problems for the IRS

I'm commending, actually, the letter from the president of the university,

the Harvard professor added

I think Medicare and Medicaid are facing danger, regardless of what DOGE is doing,

Litvak explained

Obviously, I was really, really upset,

Litvak told Fox

Presuming the law is followed, that’s the only way for the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status,

Tenenbaum said

I think this could happen, in the sense that the IRS could initiate moves and actions to take away Harvard’s status.”

As for whether the IRS could strip Harvard of its long-held status, McCaffery said

Glib references and making it seem like the president is fighting with the board of trustees is not helpful,

McCaffery said

That’s meant for situations like this, where there are efforts at influence by the president,

Lakier said

This reasonably looks like a threat” and is “still unconstitutional,

Lakier said

Sonia Sotomayorjustice

Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

In a unanimous ruling in that case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote

There’s a way they could do this,

Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Chicago Law School, said of the IRS stripping Harvard of its existing tax status, but

Prohibition on executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations.”

The statute Lakier pointed to is titled

The First Amendment clearly prohibits government officials from threatening to suppress speech,

she said, a position the Supreme Court reiterated last year in a case involving a New York official’s attempt to pressure the National Rifle Association

It shall be unlawful for any applicable person”

The 1998 law says

They will have to convince the court that specifically what Harvard is doing is violating public policy” and “not political preference,

he said

Alan Garberpresident

The issue for me was not principally whether we had problems that we needed to address,

Dr. Garber said in a lengthy interview in Washington

I think Republicans should be quite cautious about using the I.R.S. against any particular sector or narrow group of organizations,

said Scott Hodge, the former president of the Tax Foundation, a think tank that favors lower taxes

It’s what they deserve.”

Mr. Trump added

Been there, done that,

said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education and an under secretary of education during the Obama administration

Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission. 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."

Newton added

Alan Garberpresident

Tax-exempt status is granted to educational institutions to enable them to successfully carry out their mission of education, and for research universities, of research,

Garber said