President Donald Trump threatened Harvard’s tax status Tuesday and stop-work orders began halting federally funded research, as the dispute between the country’s oldest and richest university and the administration continues to escalate.

Harvard announced Monday it would not comply with a list of demands from the federal government, leading the Trump administration to freeze $2.2 billion in grant funding to the university and $60 million in multi-year contract value. That pause began to hit labs across the campus Tuesday, reportedly halting professors’ work from ALS diagnosis to tuberculosis research.

On Tuesday, the president threatened to take the crackdown a step further.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?'” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST.”

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment as of Tuesday evening.

In the last week, federal officials sent the university a letter with the stated intent of combating antisemitism on the campus, demanding an end to DEI policies, full cooperation with DHS, “oversight and accountability for biased programs that fuel antisemitism,” and more. The letter threatened an end to the university’s “financial relationship with the United States government.”

In response, a lawyer for Harvard wrote to the Trump administration saying the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” Monday, making the university the first to refuse to comply with the Trump administration’s demands.

With the world’s largest academic endowment at over $53 billion, Harvard is uniquely positioned to take on the funding threat, but some research funded through federal grants was immediately hit Tuesday.

“Three people in my lab were working on this project aimed at diagnosing ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and predicting if drugs work to cure it,” said David Walt, researcher and professor with Harvard’s Wyss Institute, Medical School and more. “This stop work order will result in this project being stopped until I can find alternative funding.”

A stop-work letter to the lab ordered the researchers to “cease all work” and “not to issue further orders for materials or services” related to the federal contract.

“Similar work stoppages are being received by many researchers, which will significantly delay the introduction of treatments for many diseases and will have devastating consequences on innovation, education, and the economy for years to come,” Walt said.

Two lawyers representing Harvard in the fight relate back to several high-profile cases in recent years, the AP reported.

Attorney Robert Hur was a senior Justice Department official during Trump’s presidential first term and most known as the special counsel who investigated President Biden’s handling of classified information.

Hur released a damaging report months before Biden dropped his 2024 bid for reelection, writing the president would present to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The second lawyer, William Burck, is known for representing Trump associates during Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and defending New York Mayor Eric Adams in a now-dropped corruption case by the Justice Department.

Numerous Massachusetts officials came out defending Harvard’s stance Tuesday, including Gov. Maura Healey, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Rep. Seth Moulton, and more.

Healey on X called the Trump administration’s demands “dangerous” and congratulated the university on standing against a “brazen attempt to bully schools and weaponize the U.S. Department of Justice under the false pretext of civil rights.”

Warren said she “hopes more institutions step up to protect academic freedom.”

“President Trump’s threats against universities are lawless, and denying funding for the next medical breakthrough will make us all poorer and worse off,” Warren wrote. “Cutting research for cancer or heart disease does not help anyone. Harvard is right to reject the Trump administration’s demands.”

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican involved in the congressional probe into antisemitism at Harvard, criticized the university in a statement Tuesday. Stefanik characterized Harvard as the “epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education” and called the government to “totally cut off U.S. taxpayer funding to this institution.”

Following Harvard’s stance Monday, Columbia University’s president also adopted a harsher tone against the Trump administration’s pressures after initially complying with demands from the federal antisemitism task force.

Columbia President Claire Shipman said in a statement she stands behind the early compliance, but “overly prescriptive requests about our governance, how we conduct our presidential search process, and how specifically to address viewpoint diversity issues are not subject to negotiation.”

_____

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.