Trump’s Republican critics hit his flip-flop on weaponizing the IRS
The Trump Administration's pressure campaign against Harvard University and threats to go after the prestigious school's tax-exempt status go directly against the president's previous pledge to "never allow the IRS to be used as a political weapon," his critics say.
The administration froze $2.2 billion in funding for the university last week after school leaders refused a collection of government demands for top-to-bottom reforms.
Further escalating its attacks on Harvard, the administration also requested last week that a top official at the Internal Revenue Service rescind the university's tax exemption, according to CNN .
That move did not sit well with Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, critic of President Donald Trump and publisher of the Bulwark, a conservative news website.
Under former President Barack Obama, some Republicans believed the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Longwell said.
Because of that, there are scores of years-old videos of Republican officials "passionately arguing that the government targeting the tax-exempt status of groups because of their political beliefs is un-American and illegal," Longwell wrote on the social media platform X.
"I will never allow the IRS to be used as a political weapon‚" she quoted Trump saying in 2019 , accompanied by a video of the president's remark.
Republican Accountability, an anti-Trump conservative group, also posted a video compilation of leading national Republicans criticizing attempts to politicize the IRS.
"If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we'd no longer live in a free country," Vice President JD Vance said in one resurfaced clip.
"Were this a Republican president, a Republican attorney general and a Republican IRS that were targeting Democrats, I at least would speak out just as vigorously against it," Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in another clip, from a 2014 Senate hearing. "Because if we are going to respect the rule of law, the apparatus of the federal government cannot and should not be used as a partisan tool to bludgeon your enemies."
The video compilation showed similar clips of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, all Republicans.
The government has issued a variety of demands to Harvard purported to focus on fighting antisemitism at the school, and threatened up to $9 billion in federal grants to Harvard and its affiliates.
The demands include a push for Harvard to review its programs and departments for evidence of antisemitic harassment and adopt reforms to "improve viewpoint diversity and end ideological capture."
The administration also pushed Harvard to allow audits of staff and student viewpoints, change its disciplinary policies, and report information to the government on student discipline, admissions and foreign investments.
Harvard was the second university, after Columbia University in New York City, to receive a detailed list of demands from the Trump administration.
However, where Columbia initially accepted some of the government's orders, Harvard has resisted.
"The administration's prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government‚" Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a letter to the school community last week. "No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
"Tax-exempt status, I mean it's a privilege, and it's been abused by a lot more than Harvard," Trump said last week at the White House, when asked why it was acceptable for his administration to threaten Harvard's tax-exempt status after he criticized politicization of the IRS in the past.
