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Linda McMahon blasts Harvard in scathing letter telling elite university it will no longer get federal grants

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Linda McMahon blasts Harvard in scathing letter telling elite university it will no longer get federal grants

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a scathing letter to Harvard University President Alan Garber on Monday, not only blasting the Massachusetts Ivy League school’s handling of antisemitism on campus but also advising school officials to refrain from applying for future federal grants because they will not “be provided.”

In her no-holds-barred letter, McMahon told Garber that the federal government has a “sacred responsibility” to be an important steward of American taxpayer funds, adding that the school has amassed a largely tax-free $53.2 billion endowment and receives billions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year.

“Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right,” she wrote. “Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these ‘students’ come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country – and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?”

She also said the university has “made a mockery” of the higher education system in the U.S., inviting foreign students to its campuses who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the U.S.

TRUMP SAYS HE’LL REVOKE HARVARD’S TAX-EXEMPT STATUS

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Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a scathing letter to Harvard University President Alan Garber advising him to not apply for federal grants because they will not be provided. (Getty Images)

McMahon slammed the school for adopting an “embarrassing” remedial math program for undergraduates, questioning why a school that’s so difficult to get admitted to has to teach low-level mathematics.

She called Harvard out for being embroiled in plagiarism scandals and lambasted the school for allowing Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review to engage in “ugly racism.”

McMahon blasted Harvard for hiring former Mayors Bill de Blasio of New York City and Lori Lightfoot of Chicago to teach “leadership” at its School of Public Health.

“This is like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation to future captains of the sea,” she said.

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“The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard’s consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided,” McMahon later wrote. “Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni.

“You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise,” she added.

In closing, McMahon reminded Garber that the Trump administration had been willing to maintain federal funding to Harvard as long as the school complied with federal law to protect and promote student welfare and stop racial preferencing.

HARVARD PRESIDENT APOLOGIZES FOR FAILURE TO ADDRESS ANTISEMITISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA AFTER NEW REPORTS RELEASED

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Harvard President Alan Garber (Screenshot/NBC)

“The proposed common-sense reforms – which the Administration remains committed to – include a return to merit-based admissions and hiring, an end to unlawful programs that promote crude identity stereotypes, disciplinary reform and consistent accountability, including for student groups, cooperation with Law Enforcement, and reporting compliance with the Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, and other Federal Agencies,” McMahon said. “The Administration’s priorities have not changed, and today’s letter marks the end of new grants for the university.”

Harvard confirmed to Fox News Digital that it received a letter from the administration on Monday.

“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,” a Harvard spokesperson said. “Today’s letter makes new threats to illegally withhold funding for lifesaving research and innovation in retaliation against Harvard for filing its lawsuit on April 21.

“Harvard will continue to comply with the law, promote and encourage respect for viewpoint diversity, and combat antisemitism in our community. Harvard will also continue to defend against illegal government overreach aimed at stifling research and innovation that make Americans safer and more secure,” the spokesperson continued.

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TRUMP BRANDS HARVARD ‘ANTISEMITIC’ AND A ‘THREAT TO DEMOCRACY’ DURING FUNDING BATTLE

President Donald Trump holds an executive order relating to education in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025. (AP NEWSROOM)

McMahon’s letter comes just days after President Donald Trump declared that his administration was going to be taking away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Trump made the announcement after Fox News reported that his administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. The Ivy League school’s failure to address antisemitism on campus is grounds for losing its 501(c)(3) status, sources said at the time.

Trump argued in mid-April that Harvard had “lost its way” and didn’t deserve federal funding.

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“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Look just to the recent past at their plagiarizing President, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States Congress.”

Harvard has become a target of Trump’s broader crackdown on universities, much of which is in response to last year’s anti-Israel unrest that erupted on campuses across the country.

On April 11, the Trump administration sent a letter to Garber and Harvard Corporation Lead Member Penny Pritzker outlining the institution’s failures and a list of demands from the White House. In the letter, the administration accused Harvard of failing to uphold civil rights laws and to foster an “environment that produces intellectual creativity.”

The Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding if Harvard did not reform governance and leadership as well as its hiring and admissions practices by August 2025. The letter emphasized the need for Harvard to change its international admissions process to avoid admitting students who are “hostile” to American values or support terrorism or antisemitism. 

 

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Harvard refused to comply with the demands, with Garber saying that “no government… should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The Trump administration then froze $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard and is reportedly looking to slash another billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The university later filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its “unlawful” freezing of funds.

Fox News’ Greg Norman, Andrea Margolis, Alexis McAdams and Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.

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Video: Kennedy Center Board Votes to Add Trump to Its Name

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Video: Kennedy Center Board Votes to Add Trump to Its Name

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Kennedy Center Board Votes to Add Trump to Its Name

President Trump’s handpicked board of trustees announced that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, a change that may need Congress’s approval.

Reporter: “She just posted on X, your press secretary, [Karoline Leavitt,] that the board members of the Kennedy Center voted unanimously to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center. What is your reaction to that?” “Well, I was honored by it. The board is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country, and I was surprised by it. I was honored by it.” “Thank you very much, everybody. And I’ll tell you what: the Trump-Kennedy Center, I mean —” [laughs] “Kennedy Center — I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” [cheers] “Wow, this is terribly embarrassing.” “They don’t have the power to do it. Only Congress can rename the Kennedy Center. How does that actually help the American people, who’ve already been convinced that Donald Trump is not focused on making their life better? The whole thing is extraordinary.”

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President Trump’s handpicked board of trustees announced that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, a change that may need Congress’s approval.

By Axel Boada

December 19, 2025

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Judge tosses Trump-linked lawsuit targeting Chief Justice Roberts, dealing setback to Trump allies

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Judge tosses Trump-linked lawsuit targeting Chief Justice Roberts, dealing setback to Trump allies

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a pro-Trump legal group seeking access to a trove of federal judiciary documents, including from a body overseen by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts – putting an end to a protracted legal fight brought by Trump allies seeking to access key judicial documents. 

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee assigned to the case earlier this year, dismissed the long-shot lawsuit brought by the America First Legal Foundation, the pro-Trump group founded by White House policy adviser Stephen Miller after Trump’s first term; Miller, now back in the White House, is no longer affiliated with AFL.

McFadden ultimately dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, saying Thursday that two groups responsible for certain regulatory and administrative functions for the federal judiciary are an extension of the judicial branch, and therefore protected by the same exemptions to federal laws granted to the judiciary.

“Nothing about either entity’s structure suggests the president must supervise their employees or otherwise keep them ‘accountable,’ as is the case for executive officers,” McFadden said.

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TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON VOTING BLOCKED BY FEDERAL JUDGES AMID FLURRY OF LEGAL SETBACKS

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are seen at the 60th inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Ricky Carioti /The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The lawsuit by AFL was first reported by Fox News Digital earlier this year. It named both Chief Justice Roberts in his capacity as the official head of the U.S. Judicial Conference, and Robert J. Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and sought access to a trove of judicial documents from both bodies under the Freedom of Information Act.

AFL accused both groups of performing regulatory actions that the lawsuit argued exceeded the scope of the “core functions” of the judiciary, and which it argued should subject the groups to the FOIA requests as a result.

AFL cited recent actions the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office had taken in 2023 to “accommodate” requests from Congress to investigate allegations of ethical improprieties by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and subsequently to create or adopt an “ethics code” for justices on the high court.

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“Under our constitutional tradition, accommodations with Congress are the province of the executive branch,” AFL argued.

“The Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office are therefore executive agencies,” and must therefore be overseen by the president, not the courts, they said.

GORSUCH, ROBERTS SIDE WITH LEFT-LEANING SUPREME COURT JUSTICES IN IMMIGRATION RULING

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

McFadden disagreed, rejecting the group’s argument that “courts” under FOIA refers only to judges. He concluded that both the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office are components of the judicial branch and therefore exempt from FOIA.

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“Indeed, if America First were right that only judges and ‘law clerks,’ who ‘directly report to the judge,’ count as part of ‘the courts,’ numerous questions arise, and senseless line drawing ensues,” he said in a memo opinion accompanying his order. “Rather, FOIA’s exclusion reflects that courts include a full range of ‘judicial adjuncts,’ from ‘clerks’ to ‘court reporters,’ who perform ‘tasks that are an integral part of the judicial process.’” 

Plaintiffs for AFL, led by attorney Will Scolinos, had argued in their lawsuit earlier this year that the Judicial Conference’s duties are “executive functions” and functions they allege must be supervised by executive officers “who are appointed and accountable to other executive officers.” 

Courts “definitively do not create agencies to exercise functions beyond resolving cases or controversies or administratively supporting those functions,” the group had argued.

The U.S. Judicial Conference is the national policymaking body for the courts. Overseen by the chief justice, it issues policy recommendations and reports to Congress as needed.

TRUMP IS THREATENING TO ‘FEDERALIZE’ DC WITH NATIONAL GUARD AND MORE. HERE’S HOW THAT COULD PLAY OUT 

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The U.S. Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, D.C. ((Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty))

The Administrative Office for the U.S. Courts, meanwhile, operates under the guidance and supervision of the Judicial Conference. Its role is to provide administrative support to the federal courts on certain administrative issues and for day-to-day logistics, including setting budgets and organizing data, among other things.

The news comes as President Donald Trump, in his first year back in the White House, has relied heavily on executive orders to advance his agenda — a strategy that has accelerated implementation of campaign promises but also prompted a surge of legal challenges.

 

Trump’s actions sparked hundreds of federal lawsuits this year alone, sending tensions skyrocketing between the executive branch and the courts, including federal judges who have blocked or paused some of Trump’s biggest priorities in his second term. 

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Contributor: Who can afford Trump’s economy? Americans are feeling Grinchy

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Contributor: Who can afford Trump’s economy? Americans are feeling Grinchy

The holidays have arrived once again. You know, that annual festival of goodwill, compulsory spending and the dawning realization that Santa and Satan are anagrams.

Even in the best of years, Americans stagger through this season feeling financially woozy. This year, however, the picture is bleaker. And a growing number of Americans are feeling Grinchy.

Unemployment is at a four-year high, with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, declaring, “The U.S. economy is in a hiring recession.” And a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds that 70% of Americans say “the cost of living in the area where they live is not very affordable or not affordable at all.”

Is help on the way? Not likely. Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, and — despite efforts to force a vote in the House — it’s highly likely that nothing will be done about this before the end of the year. This translates to ballooning health insurance bills for millions of Americans. I will be among those hit with a higher monthly premium, which gives me standing to complain.

President Trump, meanwhile, remains firmly committed to policies that will exacerbate the rising cost of getting by. Trump’s tariffs — unless blocked by the Supreme Court — will continue to raise prices. And when it comes to his immigration crackdown, Trump is apparently unmoved by the tiresome fact that when you “disappear” workers, prices tend to go up.

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Taken together, the Trump agenda amounts to an ambitious effort to raise the cost of living without the benefit of improved living standards. But if your money comes from crypto or Wall Street investments, you’re doing better than ever!

For the rest of us, the only good news is this: Unlike every other Trump scandal, most voters actually seem to care about what’s happening to their pocketbooks.

Politico recently found that erstwhile Trump voters backed Democrats in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia for the simple reason that things cost too much.

And Axios reports on a North Carolina focus group in which “11 of the 14 participants, all of whom backed Trump last November, said they now disapprove of his job performance. And 12 of the 14 say they’re more worried about the economy now than they were in January.”

Apparently, inflation is the ultimate reality check — which is horrible news for Republicans.

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Trump’s great talent has always been the audacity to employ a “fake it ‘till you make it” con act to project just enough certainty to persuade the rest of us.

His latest (attempted) Jedi mind trick involves claiming prices are “coming down tremendously,” which is not supported by data or the lived experience of anyone who shops.

He also says inflation is “essentially gone,” which is true only if you define “gone” as “slowed its increase.”

Trump may dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax” and a “con job,” but voters persist in believing the grocery scanner.

In response, Trump has taken to warning us that falling prices could cause “deflation,” which he now says is even worse than inflation. He’s not wrong about the economic theory, but it hardly seems worth worrying about given that prices are not falling.

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Apparently, economic subtlety is something you acquire only after winning the White House.

Naturally, Trump wants to blame Joe Biden, the guy who staggered out of office 11 months ago. And yes, pandemic disruptions and massive stimulus spending helped fuel inflation. But voters elected Trump to fix the problem, which he promised to do “on Day One.”

Lacking tangible results, Trump is reverting to what has always worked for him: the assumption that — if he confidently repeats it enough times — his version of reality will triumph over math.

The difficulty now is that positive thinking doesn’t swipe at the register.

You can lie about the size of your inauguration crowd — no normal person can measure it and nobody cares. But you cannot tell people standing in line at the grocery store that prices are falling when they are actively handing over more money.

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Pretending everything is fine goes over even worse when a billionaire president throws Gatsby-themed parties, renovates the Lincoln Bedroom and builds a huge new ballroom at the White House. The optics are horrible, and there’s no doubt they are helping fuel the political backlash.

But the main problem is the main problem.

At the end of the day, the one thing voters really care about is their pocketbooks. No amount of spin or “manifesting” an alternate reality will change that.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

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