Department of Education tells Harvard no new research grants unless it complies with White House demands
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(WASHINGTON) — Escalating an ongoing clash between President Donald Trump’s administration and Harvard University, the Department of Education announced Harvard is ineligible for new research grants unless it agrees with compliance criteria.
“Harvard is not eligible for any new grants from the federal government until they demonstrate responsible management of the university,” a senior official from the Department of Education said on a call with reporters on Monday.
The pause extends to medical research funding, according to the senior official, but does not impact federal student aid.
The official said public confidence in the university is at an all-time low — and that Harvard has failed to combat antisemitism and discrimination on its campus.
It has also abandoned the rigor of academic excellence and has become a leftist institution with “zero viewpoint diversity,” according to the official, who said that only 3% of Harvard’s faculty identifies as conservative.
“Today, we received another letter from the administration doubling down on demands that would impose unprecedented and improper control over Harvard University and would have chilling implications for higher education,” Harvard said in a statement to ABC News.
The statement called the move retaliatory and implied that its efforts are illegal.
“Harvard will continue to comply with the law, promote and encourage respect for viewpoint diversity, and combat antisemitism in our community,” it said, adding that the school would “continue to defend against illegal government overreach.
The weeks-long feud between Trump and Harvard stems from several investigations by federal agencies, including the Department of Education and the Health and Human Services Department. They are probing into accusations ranging from failure to disclose foreign gifts to discrimination on the basis of race within the Harvard Law Review.
The administration launched a wide-reaching antisemitism task force review, which froze 2.2 billion dollars in funding for the institution last month.
But the university has refused to comply with demands, with Harvard President Alan Garber claiming that Trump has exceeded his executive authority.
“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,” Garber wrote in a statement to the Harvard community in April.
In order for Harvard to return to compliance under federal law, the university would have to come into agreement with the administration, according to the senior official.
There was no announcement about the university’s tax-exempt status, which Trump threatened to take away on May 2.
The president can’t unilaterally revoke a school’s tax-exempt status under federal law, but sources told ABC News that the Internal Revenue Service is considering revoking the school’s status.
A Harvard spokesperson told ABC News last week that there’s no “legal basis” to rescind the university’s tax-exempt status and that it would endanger the school’s ability to carry out its mission.
“The tax exemption means that more of every dollar can go toward scholarships for students, lifesaving and life-enhancing medical research, and technological advancements that drive economic growth,” the spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News.
The move would not only lead to “lost opportunities for innovation” for Harvard itself, the spokesperson said.
“The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America,” they explained.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Education Department did not announce an immediate pause on Harvard’s grant funding — that there is no freeze on any additional existing grants beyond the previously announced $2.2 billion.
(LOS ANGELES) — The legal battle over the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard in California continued in a federal appeals court on Tuesday.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals presided over a remote hearing regarding California’s challenge to President Donald Trump‘s federalization of the state’s National Guard troops amid protests over immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who had instituted a curfew within downtown LA amid the protests, announced Tuesday she was lifting the measure.
“The curfew, coupled with ongoing crime prevention efforts, have been largely successful in protecting stores, restaurants, businesses and residential communities from bad actors who do not care about the immigrant community,” Bass said in a statement. “I am lifting the curfew effective today, and as we continue quickly adapting to chaos coming from Washington, and I will be prepared to reissue a curfew if needed. My priority will continue to be ensuring safety, stability and support in the Downtown neighborhoods.”
The hourlong hearing took place before a three-judge appeals court panel — made up of two judges nominated by Trump and one nominated by former President Joe Biden.
Brett Shumate, representing the federal government, said the appeals court should grant the Trump administration’s request for a stay of a lower court’s order, which would have blocked would have blocked Trump’s deployment of the troops and returned control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who did not consent to the Guard’s activation.
Shumate said the “extraordinary” court order, which was put on hold by the appeals court, interferes with the president’s commander-in-chief powers and “upends the military chain of command.”
Shumate argued that Trump acted within his discretion in calling up the National Guard “based on his determination that the violent riots in Los Angeles constituted a rebellion against the authority of the United States and rendered him unable to execute federal laws.”
He continued, “Yet the district court improperly second-guessed the president’s judgment about the need to call up the guard in order to protect federal property and personnel from mob violence in Los Angeles.”
Shumate also argued that Trump has “unreviewable” powers as commander-in-chief to deploy troops as he sees fit for any reason.
Meanwhile, Samuel Harbourt — the attorney representing the state of California and Newsom — asked the appeals court to deny the federal government’s motion, calling the federalization of the National Guard an “unprecedented, unlawful executive action.”
“To be sure, Los Angeles has seen certain episodes of unrest and even violence in recent days, including violence directed at state and local law enforcement officials. The state has strongly condemned these acts, and it has responded forcefully to them,” he said, going on to argue that the federal government provided no evidence that they “even contemplated more modest measures to the extreme response of calling in the National Guard and militarizing the situation.”
Harbourt said diverting thousands of National Guardsmen for a deployment up to 60 days takes them away from “critical work” such as wildfire prevention and drug interdiction, defies state sovereignty and “would allow defendants to further escalate tensions” in Los Angeles.
The judges did not issue a ruling on Tuesday or give any indication on when they would decide, while acknowledging that there is another hearing set by the lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, on Friday.
To send thousands of National Guardsmen to Los Angeles, Trump invoked Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which allows a federal deployment in response to a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” In his order, Trump said the troops would protect federal property and federal personnel who are performing their functions.
Breyer, the lower court judge, had called Trump’s actions “illegal.”
“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not,” Breyer said in his June 12 order granting the temporary restraining order sought by Newsom. “His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
The order did not limit Trump’s use of the Marines, which had also been deployed to LA.
In a press conference after the district court’s order, Newsom said he was “gratified” by the ruling, saying he would return the National Guard “to what they were doing before Donald Trump commandeered them.”
In its appeal to the Ninth Circuit, administration lawyers called the district judge’s order “unprecedented” and an “extraordinary intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.”
Some 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines were ordered to the Los Angeles area following protests over immigration raids. California leaders claim Trump inflamed the protests by sending in the military when it was not necessary.
(WASHINGTON) — A police SWAT team bursts into a home with little warning, only to quickly realize that it’s the wrong address and the occupants inside are innocent victims of the officers’ mistake.
The scenario has played out in American communities for years — sometimes resulting from bad intelligence, others from inadvertent officer errors — often leaving property damaged and families traumatized.
Legal immunity for cops can mean little restitution.
A major case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday could clear a path for some victims of wrong-house raids to sue for damages under an exception to immunity under federal law.
“It’s just a simple matter of fairness,” said Patrick Jacomo, an attorney with Institute for Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group litigating the case.
The plaintiffs — Trina Martin, her teenage son Gabe, and ex-partner Toi Cliatt — have spent seven years seeking to sue the FBI for damages after agents mistakenly raided their Atlanta home in 2017.
“I thought someone was breaking in, and it was so chaotic that I thought they had a mission, and the mission was to kill us,” said Martin in an interview with ABC News Live.
Toi Cliatt, who scrambled out of bed at the sound of flash-bang grenades exploding in his living room, described seeking shelter in a closet before the agents detained him.
“They threw me down on the floor and they were interrogating me, and they were asking me questions. And I guess the answers that I was responding to them with didn’t add up,” Cliatt said. “And that’s when I realized that they were in the wrong place.”
“The lead officer came back and he gave us a business card and he apologized and then he left,” said Martin.
The couple said their home sustained $5,000 of damage from burned carpet, broken doors and fractured railings. The emotional trauma is harder to quantify. “It’s countless,” Cliatt said.
Martin’s 7-year-old son Gabe, who sought cover under his bed in terror during the incident, says the experience dramatically altered his life.
“I see the world differently now. I didn’t really have a childhood growing up because of that,” said Gabe, now 13. “So, it really kind of changed me as a person.”
The FBI denied the family’s claims for restitution. The Trump administration, which is defending the agency at the Supreme Court, argues sovereign immunity shields the government from damages claims.
“Cops are human and they make mistakes. And a lot of times the mistakes that are being made are because there’s not enough due diligence, there’s not enough research going into it,” said Anthony Riccio, former First Deputy Superintendent of Chicago Police Department. “The result of it can be devastating for the family impacted.”
Most law enforcement agencies don’t keep track of wrong house raids or publicly report data, legal experts say. Civil Rights advocates estimate hundreds of cases of wrong-house raids nationwide each year; most victims are not compensated for the physical or emotional harm that often results.
“We have a right to be safe in our homes, and when officers are acting bad — for lack of a better word — then individuals have the right to hold them accountable,” said Anjanette Young, a Chicago social worker whose apartment was mistakenly raided by police in 2019.
Young’s case has become one of the most high-profile examples of the problem. Body camera video from the incident captures the 49-year-old handcuffed naked and bewildered in her living room just after 7 p.m. on a Thursday evening.
“You got the wrong house. I live alone!” she is heard on tape pleading with the cops. “Tell me what’s going on!”
Young says it took officers 40 minutes to realize they had the wrong address. They left her without any remedy, she said.
“I’ve been diagnosed with major depression and PTSD, and as a clinician myself, I understand what that means,” she said. “Time does not cure it. It is something that you live with and you have to learn how to manage it.”
A 2023 review by Chicago’s inspector general found that officers had committed at least 21 wrong-house raids over a four-year period. Young sued the city of Chicago and received a nearly $3 million settlement in 2021, but other victims aren’t so lucky.
“The problem with the Anjanette Young case was the information given to the officers was fictitious. A paid informant provided fictitious information in order to get money from the police department,” said Riccio. “When the officers showed up to execute the warrant, they were in the house for seconds before they realized, this is bad information.”
The impacts can be severe.
An Austin, Texas, police SWAT team responding to a gunfight, blew up the front door of Glen and Mindy Shields’ home in 2023 causing thousands of dollars in property damage. The suspect lived across the street. The city denied any wrongdoing and — as is often the case — claimed immunity.
When cops showed up outside Amy Hadley’s home in South Bend, Indiana, in 2022, her teenage son emerged with his hands up as some officers began to openly question whether the suspect lived there. They raided the home anyway. Police later said they had indications the suspect had posted to Facebook from inside.
“Police not only have things like qualified immunity to protect them, but in a case where the police work for the federal government, they have entire doctrines that effectively act like federal immunity,” said Jaicomo.
Trina, Toi and Gabe now hope the Supreme Court will help them pierce that shield.
Congress carved out an exception for federal law enforcement immunity from civil liability suits in 1974 for victims of “assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, or abuse of process” by an officer.
The government denies the exception applies to the Martin case.
“What the Martins are looking for in this case is to be made whole for the mistake that was made by the FBI, but much more broadly than that is to ensure that they might be one of the last families that this happens to in America,” Jaicomo said.
The case comes as advocates for victims of police misconduct and mistakes say President Donald Trump is rolling back guardrails on law enforcement.
The Trump Justice Department has put a freeze on federal civil rights investigations into cops and vowed to reconsider consent decrees with police departments found to have engaged in a pattern of misconduct.
That includes agreements with the cities of Louisville and Minneapolis for police reforms agreed to after the 2020 police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in their respective cities.
“The Justice Department had in recent years been really taking a close look, at where things are going wrong, where you see a pattern of constitutional violations. And what the Trump Justice Department appears to be doing is backing away from that process,” said ACLU legal director Cecilia Wang.
Anjanette Young says communities don’t need to wait for the feds.
In Illinois, she’s lobbying state and local officials for strict new rules on search warrants to prevent cops from raiding the wrong house, including new steps to vet intelligence on a suspect’s location; requiring a 30 second wait after knocking before breaking down a door; and, mandatory use of tactics least intrusive to someone’s home and property.
“It’s not okay to harm people and then not fix the harm,” Young said.
Retired Chicago police officer Riccio agrees. “Whether that’s repairing the damage or providing them with some sort of compensation for what they’ve experienced, yeah, absolutely,” he said.
The Martins say that kind of restitution is the exception rather than the norm. Now, they hope the nation’s highest court will change that.
“For seven long years it felt like they were turning their backs on us,” Martin said. “I felt unheard, and it was easier to just give up, you know? And I didn’t want to give up.”
(NEW YORK) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is leading a U.S. delegation to Singapore this week to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security summit, another signal of the Trump administration’s intensified focus on the Indo-Pacific region.
The summit will convene more than 550 delegates from 40 nations, including military, intelligence, business and security leaders, from across the Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, a source familiar with plans told ABC News.
Gabbard will be joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the 22nd annual summit, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which runs from May 30 to June 2 in Singapore.
Gabbard is expected to “discuss major security challenges” with leaders, a source familiar with Gabbard’s plans told ABC News. This year’s U.S. delegation includes higher-level representation than in previous years, the source added.
The Shangri-La Dialogue is considered Asia’s top defense summit, comparable to the Raisina Dialogue and the Munich Security Conference, both of which Gabbard attended earlier this year.
This trip marks Gabbard’s second trip to Asia in recent weeks, seemingly reinforcing the Trump administration’s renewed focus on the region.
Shortly after her confirmation, Gabbard traveled to India and met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of President Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with Modi in February.
Her relationship with Modi spans more than a decade, dating back to 2013 when she became the first Hindu member of Congress. They met again during her 2014 visit to India at Modi’s invitation.
Earlier this year, Gabbard accepted an invitation from Modi to speak at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, a multilateral conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics, but, before returning to Washington, D.C., Gabbard made stops in Japan, Thailand and France. Her diplomatic tour began in Honolulu, Hawaii — her hometown — where she represented the state in Congress for eight years.
While in Hawaii, Gabbard met with intelligence community partners and visited United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) headquarters in Honolulu.
In Singapore this week, she will hold bilateral meetings with regional leaders to “explore opportunities to chart a path that advances mutual interests of security, peace, and prosperity in the region,” according to a source familiar with the agenda.
Long before taking the helm of the intelligence community, Gabbard was already on the ground in Southeast Asia and, in 2019 while she was running for president, she paused her campaign for two weeks to serve on active duty with the U.S. Army National Guard in Jakarta, Indonesia, becoming the first candidate in modern history to do so.
Now, as director of national intelligence, her return to the region marks a shift from military service to high-stakes diplomacy, an evolution that underscores not only her long-standing personal and strategic ties to the Indo-Pacific, but also hints the administration’s broader efforts to elevate U.S. engagement in the region.