IRS could take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status while DHS threatens to stop it enrolling foreign students – US politics live | US news

Joe Biden visited Harvard University on Wednesday during which he applauded its decision to defy demands from the Trump administration.

According to the Harvard Crimson, the former president attended a private seminar in which he said Harvard had “stepped up in a way no one else has”.

Asked if Harvard should pursue legal action, Biden said he believed it should “just do what it’s doing – lifting everybody up”.

Biden’s comments came after another former US president, Barack Obama, praised Harvard for having “set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom.”

President Donald Trump said Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s termination “cannot come fast enough”, while calling for the US central bank to cut interest rates.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump reiterated his stance on rate cuts, saying that Powell “should have lowered interest rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now.”

Conservationists on Wednesday sued the Trump administration over its attempts to boost the oil industry by rolling back green policies.

Filed by the environmental non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, the litigation focuses on Trump’s day-one “unleashing American energy” executive order. In an effort to boost already booming US energy production, the emergency declaration directed federal agencies to identify all policies and regulations that “unduly” burden fuel producers and create “action plans” to weaken or remove them.

The lawsuit seeks information about the development of these action plans from four federal agencies: the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

Since the executive order was passed, the administration has announced plans to eliminate scores of other green policies. Last week, for instance, it emerged that the EPA plans to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluting companies to collect and report their greenhouse gas emissions, ProPublica reported.

The IRS is considering revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, marking an escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure the university, according to the New York Times.

On Tuesday, president Trump called for Harvard to pay taxes, as part of an ongoing push for changes to its hiring, admissions and curriculum.

Sources said IRS officials told colleagues the Treasury Department requested the agency consider revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status on Wednesday.

Anna Betts

Donald Trump has declared that Harvard University should no longer receive federal funds, calling it a “joke” that “teaches hate and stupidity”, while his administration said the pre-eminent US university could lose its ability to enrol foreign students.

Harvard made headlines on Monday by becoming the first university to stand up against a series of onerous demands from the Trump administration, setting the stage for a showdown between the federal government and one of the US’s most prestigious institutions.

The Trump administration swiftly retaliated by announcing it would freeze more than $2bn in multiyear grants and contracts with the university. On Wednesday it was also reported by CNN that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was planning to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

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.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said late on Wednesday that Harvard would lose its ability to enrol foreign students if it did not meet demands the Trump administration demands to share information on some visa holders. The department’s secretary, Kristi Noem, also announced the termination of two DHS grants to Harvard totalling more than $2.7m.

Noem said she wrote a letter to the university demanding records on what she called the “illegal and violent activities” of Harvard’s foreign student visa holders by 30 April. “And if Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students,” she said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Harvard said it was aware of Noem’s letter and that the university stood by its statement earlier in the week to “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights”, while saying it would comply with the law.

President Donald Trump blasted Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Thursday for not lowering interest rates, calling him “always TOO LATE AND WRONG”.

“Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough,” Trump wrote on his TruthSocial platform. “Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now.”

The central bank’s chair warned on Wednesday that Trump’s sweeping tariffs on virtually every trade partner could put the Fed in the unenviable position of having to choose between tackling inflation and unemployment.

Trump’s stop-start tariff policy has unnerved investors and trading partners unsure about the long-term strategy, and what it might mean for international trade.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports thatTrump has repeatedly urged Powell to cut interest rates, but the US central bank has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, holding interest rates steady at 4.25% to 4.5% since the start of this year.

Jakub Krupa

And we have just heard from Moscow, with the Kremlin welcoming today’s meeting in Paris as a chance for Witkoff to update Europeans on his long conversation with Russian president Vladimir Putin last week.

“The United States is continuing to work in this direction with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians,” Peskov said.

“Unfortunately, from the Europeans we see a focus on continuing the war,” he said, as reported by Reuters.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio arrived in Paris on Thursday to meet French president Emmanuel Macron about crafting a Ukraine ceasefire, as Washington and Europe seek common ground on ending the fighting.

Top Ukrainian officials were also in the French capital to meet EU and US delegations, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said, without saying precisely who they were meeting, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The latest diplomatic initiative comes as Trump’s push for a ceasefire has yet to bear fruit despite his pledges to quickly end the war. ZelenskYy himself urged the Paris talks participants to lean on Russia to agree to a ceasefire.

“Russia uses every day and every night to kill. We must put pressure on the killers … to end this war and guarantee a lasting peace,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.

Rubio and Keith Kellogg, US president Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, arrived in Paris mid-morning, US envoy Steve Witkoff is also expected to join them.

President Donald Trump’s administration will ask a US federal appeals court on Thursday to pause a judge’s ruling lifting access restrictions the White House imposed on the Associated Press (AP) for referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage.

The Trump administration has argued that the lower-court ruling, which mandates AP journalists be granted access to press events in the White House, infringes on the president’s ability to decide whom to admit to sensitive spaces. The White House has asked to put the ruling on hold while it appeals.

The White House began limiting AP’s access to Trump in February after the news agency said it would continue using the name Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging Trump’s order to change the name of the body of water to the Gulf of America.

The case has become a flashpoint in Trump’s relationship with the news media as the White House moves to exert greater control over who gets to ask the Republican president questions and report on his statements in real time.

Lawyers for the AP accused the White House on Wednesday of defying the court order by continuing to exclude its journalists from some events and then limiting access by all news wires, including Reuters and Bloomberg, to Trump.

The White House has argued that the AP does not have a right to what the administration has called special access to the president.

The 8 April ruling from US district judge Trevor McFadden, appointed by Trump during his first term, temporarily ordered the administration to allow AP journalists to attend events open to similar types of news organizations in the Oval Office and on Air Force One, as well as in larger spaces in the White House while its lawsuit moves forward.

The AP sued three top Trump aides, alleging the restrictions were an attempt to coerce the news media into using the government’s preferred language and had hampered its ability to cover Trump.

McFadden found the measures retaliated against the AP over its coverage choices, likely violating free speech protections under the US constitution.

The three-judge panel to hear the White House’s request on Thursday afternoon includes two circuit judges Trump appointed during his first term, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, as well as judge Cornelia Pillard, nominated by Democratic president Barack Obama.

The AP alleged, and McFadden agreed, that the White House singled out the AP because it publishes an influential stylebook, which sets the language and grammar standards used by many US news organizations.

The AP says in its stylebook that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years and, as a global news agency, the AP will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.

A former Michigan public health official and Democratic candidate for governor entered the race for the state’s open US Senate seat on Thursday.

Abdul El-Sayed, 40, is the second Democrat to put his name in the running in what could be one of the most watched races in the 2026 midterm elections. He is also the second candidate this week to launch a campaign to replace Democratic senator Gary Peters, who is not seeking reelection.

“It’s way too hard to survive here in the richest, most powerful country in the world and it should not be this hard to get by,” he told the Associated Press (AP).

El-Sayed ran for governor in 2018 as a progressive Democrat and was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He came in second in the Democratic primary, losing to Gretchen Whitmer by more than 20 points and beating Shri Thanedar by more than 12 points. Whitmer went on to win the general election and is in the midst of a second term. She cannot run again because of term limits.

A resident of Ann Arbor, El-Sayed recently served as director of the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services in Wayne County, home to Detroit. Before that, he was the public health director of the city after it declared bankruptc y in 2013, reports the AP.

El-Sayed said he is inspired to run for Senate after the overhaul of the federal government brought on by president Donald Trump and Elon Musk, including changes and cuts made at the nation’s top health agencies. But he said Democrats must do more than just run on the opposite of Republican policies.

“You have to come with your own independent analysis of what you think the problem is and how you want to solve it, if you want to earn the trust of the public,” he said.

El-Sayed joins state senator Mallory McMorrow in the Democratic field of candidates looking to replace Peters. Others considering a run include Haley Stevens and Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel.

Former US Republican Mike Rogers launched his bid on Monday after losing a Senate race last year by 19,000 votes to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.

Chris Stein

Maryland’s Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen says the government of El Salvador has denied his request to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month.

Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday with the intention of meeting Ábrego García at the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where US authorities have said that the Maryland resident is being held along with others deported at Donald Trump’s orders.

The senator’s visit came days after Trump and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, refused to take steps to return Ábrego García to the United States, even though the US supreme court last week said the administration must “facilitate” his return.

At a press conference in El Salvador, Van Hollen said that he had met with the country’s vice-president, Félix Ulloa, who told him it would not be possible for him to speak with Ábrego García in person or on the phone.

“I asked the vice-president if I could meet with Mr Ábrego García. And he said, well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit Cecot,” Van Hollen said. “I said, I’m not interested at this moment in taking a tour of Cecot, I just want to meet with Mr Ábrego García. He said he was not able to make that happen.”

Van Hollen said he offered to come back next week to meet with Ábrego García, but Ulloa “said he couldn’t promise that either”. The vice-president also said he could not arrange for Ábrego García’s family to speak to him by phone. When the senator asked if he could do so, Ulloa told him that the US embassy must make that request, Van Hollen said.

“We have an unjust situation here. The Trump administration is lying about Ábrego García,” said Van Hollen, who said his constituent had been wrongly named as a member of the MS-13 criminal gang. The Trump administration has admitted that an “administrative error” led to the deportation of Ábrego García to his native country, despite an immigration judge granting him protected status in 2019.

California launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffs

Lauren Gambino

California is preparing to ask a court to block Donald Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” to the world’s fifth-largest economy.

The lawsuit, to be filed in federal court on Wednesday by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, is the most significant challenge yet to Trump’s flurry of on-again-off-again tariffs.

In the complaint, California officials argue that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs and that the president’s invocation of emergency powers to unilaterally escalate a global trade war, which has rattled stock markets and raised fears of recession, is unlawful.

“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said, formally unveiling the lawsuit during a press conference at an almond farm in the Central valley on Wednesday. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”

Invoking a statute known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), Trump has issued a series of declarations imposing, reversing, delaying, restarting and modifying tariffs on US trading partners.

The complaint argues that the law does not give the US president the authority to impose tariffs without the consent of Congress. It asks the court to declare Trump’s tariff orders “unlawful and void” and to order the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection to stop enforcing them.

“The president is yet again acting as if he’s above the law. He isn’t,” Bonta said at the press conference on Wednesday, noting that it was the state’s 14th lawsuit against the Trump administration in less than 14 weeks. “Bottom line: Trump doesn’t have the singular power to radically upend the country’s economic landscape. That’s not how our democracy works.”

Martin Pengelly

Pronouncing himself “disgusted” by Donald Trump’s favorable attitude to Russia and Vladimir Putin, the former UK defence minister Grant Shapps said the US president calling a Russian missile strike that killed dozens in Ukraine last weekend a “mistake” was an example of “weasel language we used to hear … from the IRA” terrorist group.

“All anybody needs Putin to do is get the hell out of a democratic neighboring country,” Shapps told the One Decision podcast, regarding attempts to end the war in Ukraine that has raged since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Shapps said:

And I just have to [put] this on record: it disgusts me, I feel disgusted [by] the idea that the leader of the free world cannot tell the difference between the dictator who locks up and murders his opponents and invades innocent democratic countries and the country itself that has been invaded.

This lack of moral clarity is completely demoralizing for the rest of the democratic world.

Shapps, 56, filled numerous roles in Conservative cabinets before becoming minister of defence in August 2023, becoming a key player in maintaining international support for Ukraine. He lost his seat in parliament last July, as Labour won power in a landslide. This month, Shapps was given a knighthood.

One Decision is a foreign policy focused podcast, with co-hosts including Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of the British MI6 intelligence service, and Leon Panetta, a former US defense secretary and CIA director.

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.”

Demonstrating the broadening resonance of the row, Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr spoke out in support of Harvard. Kerr, sporting a Harvard T-shirt, called the demands on the university the “dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” and cited his backing of “academic freedom”, reports AFP.

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.

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.