I question whether Trump has the legitimate legal authority to decide the taxable status of specific institutions. If he wants to change the rules about what qualifies for tax-exempt status, that takes an act of Congress (which he can probably get, eventually).
What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status. The problems will be that, first, whatever the reason given will be, it will head for a court case, and second, it will be almost impossible to interpret the rules so that the new interpretation hits Harvard only (and not, say, the other Ivy League schools).
> What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status.
No. Even this is illegal. There's specific legislation about this, which explicitly covers the president. The president is not allowed to tell anybody at the IRS to investigate any individual person or organization.
I think actual firings, funding cuts, contract cuts, programs ending have already occurred regardless of how legal the acts that caused them to occur they are.
I think that assumes that there's some fair evaluating of tax status going on.
Harvard defied Trump and that's why they're making this push. I don't think any given argument to the feds will change that math.
If you work for the feds, I think you know that if you were to follow a process and find that Harvard should retain their tax exempt status then you won't have a job long.
It educated the elite that determinated economic policy consensus left and right overlapping , the elite deteriorated the industrial base and the middle class, thus a anti-elite was voted in to carry them out .
The scissor between productivity and wages created the force that cut the economic roots of the institution.
Wealth and class are different dimensions. Though correlated, especially in the USA which lacks a formal institutionalized gentry, just having a lot of money isn’t enough to be of the elite, high class.
What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status. The problems will be that, first, whatever the reason given will be, it will head for a court case, and second, it will be almost impossible to interpret the rules so that the new interpretation hits Harvard only (and not, say, the other Ivy League schools).