By Seung Min Kim, Associated Press
Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump reappeared his threat on Friday to strip Harvard University of his tax exemption status, degenerating a force test with the first major college which challenged administration to suppress the activism of the campus.
He underlines this promise even if the federal law prohibits the higher members of the executive power to request the internal income service to carry out or terminate an audit or an investigation. The White House said that all the actions of the IRS will be carried out independently of the president.
“We are going to remove the Harvard tax exemption status,” Trump wrote on his social media site on Friday morning from Palm Beach, Florida, where he spends the weekend. “This is what they deserve!”
The president called into question the fate of the Harvard tax exemption status – that the majority of American colleges and universities have – since the school refused to comply with the requests of the administration for the general changes of the government and leadership, revisions of its admission policy and audits of diversity of diversity on the campus. This prompted the administration to block more than $ 2 billion in federal subsidies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the institution.
Harvard pointed out on Friday that there is “no legal basis” to revoke its tax exemption status.
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the school said in a statement. “This would lead to a reduction in financial aid for students, the abandonment of critical medical research programs and the loss of innovation possibilities. The illegal use of this instrument would more broadly have the consequences for the future of higher education in America. ”
The Treasury Department ordered a senior civil servant of the Returned Department to start the Harvard tax exemption revocation process shortly after a publication on Trump’s social networks in mid-April by questioning it, although the White House suggested that the control of the Harvard tax agency begins before Trump’s public comments.
Democrats say that Trump’s actions against Harvard are purely political. The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, as well as the two Massachusetts Democratic Senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and the president of the Senate finance committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon, called for an investigator of the Inspector General on Trump’s attempts to strip Harvard of his tax exemption.
Trump’s decision “raises disturbing constitutional issues, especially if the president tries to cover Harvard’s rights of freedom of freedom and the revocation of his tax exemption status will deprive the University of his regular procedural rights,” the Senators wrote in a letter on Friday in Heather Hill, the inspector of the acting Treasury for the tax administration.
Mike Kaercher, deputy director of the Nyu’s Tax Law Center, said: “Congress bipartite majorities in the Congress have promulgated laws, making it a crime for the president and his staff to ask for an audit or an investigation into a particular taxpayer.”
An IRS representative did not respond to a request for associated comments.
Trump’s battle against Harvard is part of a wider campaign than cracker administration as an effort to eliminate anti -Semitism on university campuses. But the White House also sees a political advantage in the fight, leading it as a greater war against the elite institutions described by the faithful supporters of Trump.
The “next chapter in American history will not be written by the Harvard Crimson,” Trump told Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he delivered the start of the Alabama University on Thursday evening. “It will be written by you, the crimson tide.”
The Harvard Crimson is this student newspaper of the school. Crimson Tide refers to the Alabama school football program.
In addition to threatening Harvard tax exemption status and stopping federal subsidies, the Trump administration wishes to prevent Harvard from being able to register international students.
The writer Associated Press, Fatima Hussein, contributed to this report.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
