administration

May 18 (UPI) — The United States may impose regional tariffs rather than issue blanket ones as a deadline approaches for racing a global plan, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.

The Trump administration originally said it would impose 90 deals in 90 days, but has backed down recently, acknowledging the complexities of negotiating trade pacts with dozens of countries on a compressed timeline, despite stepped-up efforts, President Donald Trump said during his recent trip to the Middle East.

“But it’s not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us,” Trump explained.

Trump said while in the Middle East that he and Commerce Secretary Scott Lutnick would begin advising some countries on U.S. plans for tariffs in the next two to three weeks.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Bessent said the United States will focus on a short list of countries in its initial round of tariffs.

“My other sense is that we will do a lot of regional deals,” Bessent said. “This is the rate for Central America, this is the rate for this part of Africa, but what we are focused on right now is the 18 important trading relationships.”

Following a move by Moody’s Ratings last week to downgrade the United States’ credit rating, Bessent called the service a “lagging indicator” during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I think that’s what everyone thinks of credit agencies,” he said, and asserted that the credit downgrade was in response to Biden fiscal policies.

In response to concerns about tariff costs being passed on to consumers, Trump has said large merchants like WalMart, which imports a significant amount of its merchandise from China, should instead absorb the price increases.

Bessent said Sunday that WalMart CEO Doug McMillion told him that the retail giant would “eat some of the tariffs” as it had done in previous years.

Bessent did not offer a specific date for the tariff imposition.

WASHINGTON — A humanities federation and a state council have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to reverse local funding cuts made by Trump advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Oregon Council for the Humanities, names DOGE, its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, and the NEH among the defendants.

The plaintiffs ask the court to “stop this imminent threat to our nation’s historic and critical support of the humanities by restoring funding appropriated by Congress.” It notes the “disruption and attempted destruction, spearheaded by DOGE,” of a partnership between the state and the federal government to support the humanities.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, maintains that DOGE and the National Endowment for the Humanities exceeded their authority in terminating funding mandated by Congress.

DOGE shut down the funding and laid off more than 80% of the staff at the NEH in April as part of an executive order signed by President Trump.

The humanities is just one of many areas that have been affected as Trump’s Republican administration has targeted cultural establishments including the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment of the Arts. The moves are part of Trump’s goals to downsize the federal government and end initiatives seen as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, which he calls “discrimination.”

The humanities groups’ lawsuit said DOGE brought the core work of the humanities councils “to a screeching halt” this spring when it terminated its grant program.

The filing is the most recent lawsuit filed by humanities groups and historical, research and library associations to try to stop funding cuts and the dissolution of federal agencies and organizations.

The funding freeze for the humanities comes when state councils and libraries have been preparing programming for the summer and beginning preparations for celebrations meant to commemorate next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Requests for comment Friday from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the White House were not immediately returned.

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that federal law enforcement is investigating a social media post made by former FBI Director James Comey that she and other Republicans suggest is a call for violence against President Trump.

In an Instagram post, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk” under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for “86 47.”

Numerous Trump administration officials, including Noem, said Comey was advocating for the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” Noem wrote.

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

The post has since been deleted. Comey subsequently wrote, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

“It never occurred to me,” Comey added, “but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Comey’s original post sparked outrage among conservatives on social media, with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Comey of calling for his father’s killing.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel said he was aware of the post and was conferring with the Secret Service and its director.

James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, noted that the post came at a delicate time given that Trump is traveling in the Middle East.

“This is a Clarion Call from Jim Comey to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East,” Blair wrote on X.

Comey, who was FBI director from 2013-17, was fired by Trump during the president’s first term amid the bureau’s probe into allegations of ties between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Comey wrote about his career in the bestselling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.”

He is now a crime fiction writer and is promoting his latest book, “FDR Drive,” which is being released Tuesday.

Washington, DC – Justices at the US Supreme Court have questioned lawyers representing the administration of US President Donald Trump and those challenging his effort to end birthright citizenship in the country.

The hearing on Thursday represented the first time the top court in the United States has heard a case related to Trump’s January 20 order seeking to do away with the more-than-century-old policy, which grants citizenship to nearly all infants born on US soil, regardless of their parents’ legal status.

It was not immediately clear when the court would issue a ruling in the case, although an outcome could take weeks. It also remained unclear if the justices would address the underlying constitutionality of Trump’s order, or if they would only rule on the narrower question of whether lower federal court justices are empowered to block the implementation of the order nationwide.

Still, demonstrators and lawmakers who gathered outside of the Washington, DC courthouse said any ruling challenging birthright citizenship would corrode the national fabric of the US.

“We are here at the highest court in the land because a fundamental promise of America is under attack. And we are here to say not on our watch,” Ama Frimpong, the legal director of CASA, told those gathered in protest.

“All persons born in the US are citizens of the US,” Frimpong said.

Legal experts have also said a ruling limiting federal courts’ ability to order a “national” or “universal” injunction to block Trump’s executive actions would in and of itself be transformative.

“That question, in a normal sense, would already shake the legal foundation of the country: whether lower courts have the right to order nationwide injunctions,” said Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro from outside the courthouse.

“But it’s the second question that really people are focused on, and that is if Trump has the power to cancel birthright citizenship for the children born to undocumented immigrants and certain visa holders visiting the US,” she said.

“Now it is up to the justices whether they want to go in either of those directions.”

‘Catch me if you can kind of regime’

Over two hours of questioning, lawyers for the Trump administration, as well as those representing states and individuals who have challenged Trump’s order, addressed matters both of constitutional grandeur and legal minutia.

Solicitor General John Sauer began by laying out the Trump administration’s broad argument that the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, has been incorrectly interpreted since then. The amendment, Sauer argued, “guarantees citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors”.

Trump also reiterated that position in a Truth Social post ahead of the hearing, saying birthright citizenship makes the US a “STUPID Country” that incentivises people to visit to have children.

Sauer also took aim at the three federal judges who have ruled in favour of separate lawsuits challenging the law’s constitutionality. Plaintiffs in those cases include 22 state attorneys general, immigrant rights organisations, and individuals affected by the rule. Sauer argued that the judges’ decisions should only apply to the plaintiffs in the cases, and not the entire nation.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether the broader constitutional question could be unpicked from the narrower question of the judges’ reach, saying the president’s order violates “by my count, four established Supreme Court precedents”.

That included the 1898 Supreme Court case, United States v Wong Kim Ark, which first established that the 14th Amendment applies to immigrants, she said.

Other justices questioned the implications of a scenario where the court ruled that the judges could not issue “national injunctions” in the case, without answering the underlying constitutional question.

Legal scholars have noted that this could create a situation where Trump’s end to birthright citizenship would not apply to states and individuals who successfully challenged his order in court. That would mean birthright citizenship – at least temporarily – would end in 28 other states if they do not launch their own challenges.

“Does every single person that is affected by this EO [executive order] have to bring their own suit?” Justice Elena Kagan questioned.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the Trump administration’s argument turns the US justice system into a “catch me if you can kind of regime”.

Under that, “everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights”.

A Los Angeles construction worker from Vietnam was among 13 immigrants roused by guards in full combat gear around 2:30 a.m. one day last week in a Texas detention facility, shackled, forced onto a bus and told they would be deported to Libya, two of the detainees’ lawyers said.

“It was very aggressive. They weren’t allowed to do anything,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, an attorney for the Los Angeles man, whom he did not identify for fear of retaliation.

Libya, the politically unstable country in North Africa, is beset by “terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict,” according to the U.S. State Department. Human rights groups have documented inhumane conditions at detention facilities and migrant camps, including torture, forced labor and rape.

The construction worker, who has a criminal conviction on his record, had lived in the U.S. for decades and has a wife and teenage daughter. He was arrested after appearing at an annual immigration check-in at a Los Angeles office two months ago and then shuffled around to various detention facilities before arriving at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

In the early morning hours of May 7, he was placed on the bus from the detention facility south to what was likely Lackland Air Force Base. From there, he and the rest of the group sat for hours on the tarmac in front of a military plane in the predawn dark, unsure what was going to happen. The men hailed from Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mali, Burundi, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico and the Philippines, the attorneys said. None were from Libya.

“My client and the other men on the bus were silent,” Nguyen said in court files. “My client was extremely scared.”

The plane hatch was open. Military personnel bustled in and out, appearing to bring in supplies and fuel the plane. Photographers positioned themselves in front of the military aircraft.

“Suddenly the bus starts moving and heading back to the detention facility,” said Johnny Sinodis, an attorney for another detainee, a Filipino who grew up and went to college in the United States and also had a criminal conviction.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts had issued a warning to the administration to halt any immediate removal to Libya or any other third country, as it would violate a previous court order that officials must provide detainees with due process and notice in their own language. Lawyers had scrambled to get the order after media reports confirmed what their clients had told them: Removals to Libya appeared imminent.

Sinodis said his client and others were returned to the detention unit and placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours.

In his declaration, he said his client spoke to a Mexican and a Bolivian national who were in the group. Each had been told that their home countries would accept them, but the officials still said they were going to send them to Libya.

It’s been a week since the incident, and the lawyers said they are still fighting to stop their clients deportations to a third country.

The Trump administration deported hundreds of mostly Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador, invoking a wartime law to speedily remove accused gang members. Their deportation drew immediate challenges and became the most contentious piece of the immigration crackdown. Officials have also sent people to Panama who were not from that country.

This month, the foreign minister of Rwanda said in a televison interview it was in talks with U.S. officials to take in deported migrants.

It’s unclear how Libya came to be a possible destination for the immigrants. Two governments claim power in the nation. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity has denied any deal with the Trump administration. The Government of National Stability, based in Benghazi, also rejected reports that it would take deportees.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that it had information that at least 100 Venezuelans held in the Salvadoran megaprison weren’t told they were going to be deported to a third country, had no access to a lawyer and were unable to challenge the removal.

“This situation raises serious concerns regarding a wide array of rights that are fundamental to both U.S. and international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement. “The manner in which some of the individuals were detained and deported — including the use of shackles on them — as well as the demeaning rhetoric used against migrants, has also been profoundly disturbing.”

Sinodis said his client had already been in custody for months and been told that he would be deported to the Philippines in late April. But that month, he was transferred from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., to Texas. An officer in Tacoma told him the decision to move him there came from “headquarters,” according to court documents.

On May 5, he was scheduled to be interviewed by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Texas. He expected to learn of his deportation date. Instead, they handed him a one-page document that said he would be deported to Libya. He was shocked, Sinodis said.

The man asked the officers whether there was anything he or his attorney could do to avoid this. They said no.

Nguyen said his client, who doesn’t speak English fluently, had a similar experience on the same day. The officers handed him a document in English that they said would allow him to be free in Libya. He doesn’t even know where Libya is and refused to sign the document. The officers told him he would be deported no matter what he did.

The next day, Sinodis said, his client’s commissary and phone accounts were zeroed out.

Sinodis finally reached an officer at the detention center who told him, “That’s crazy,” when asked about Libya. His client must have misheard, he said. But his client, who grew up on the West Coast, speaks fluent English.

Then on May 7, as things unfolded, the attorney reached another officer at the facility, who said he had no information that the man was going to Libya, and referred him back to an officer in Tacoma. A supervisor downplayed the situation.

“I can assure you this is not an emergency because the emergency does not exist,” the supervisor told him, according to court documents.

Shortly after noon that day, a detention center officer who identified himself as Garza called and told him he was looking into it, but so far had “no explanation” for why his client was told this, but he also couldn’t guarantee it didn’t happen.

Less than an hour later, his client called to tell him that he had been taken to an air base. He said when he was pulled out of his cell in the early morning, he saw the same two officers that interviewed him and asked him to sign the removal papers.

“He asks the officers, ‘Are we still going to Libya?” Sinodis said. “They said yes.”

If you voted for Donald Trump last November because you believed he’d increase economic freedom, it’s safe to say you were fooled. Following a reckless tariff barrage, the White House and its allies are preparing a new wave of tax-code gimmickry that has more in common with progressive social engineering than pro-growth reform. And don’t forget a fiscal recklessness that mirrors the mistakes of the left.

Defend these policies if you like, but let’s be clear: The administration shows no coherent commitment to free-market principles and is in fact actively undermining them. Its approach is better described as central planning disguised as economic nationalism.

This week’s example is an executive-order attempt at prescription-drug price control, similar to Democrats’ past proposals. If implemented it would inevitably reduce pharmaceutical R&D and innovation.

Tariffs remain the administration’s most visible economic sin after Trump launched the most extreme escalation of protectionism since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. Unlike the 1930s, however, today’s economy is deeply integrated with global supply chains, making the damage extensive and far more immediate. Tariffs are only nominally imposed on imports. Ultimately, they’re taxes on American consumers, workers and businesses.

The president has made it clear that he’s fine with limiting consumer choice, blithely telling parents they might have to “settle” for two dolls instead of 30 for their children. Smug pronouncements about how much we should shop (not much) or which sectors we should work in (manufacturing) are economic authoritarianism.

They’re also indicative of a deeper government rot. Policymaking is now done by executive orders as comatose congressional Republicans, like some Biden-era Democrats, allow the president to rule as if he’s a monarch.

A full-throated, assertive Congress would remind any president that manufacturing jobs were mostly lost to technologies that also create jobs and opportunity in members’ districts. Prosperity increases only through innovation and competition and isn’t restored by dragging people backward into lower-productivity jobs.

Now, even Trump’s tax agenda — once considered a bright spot by many free-market advocates — is being corrupted. Instead of championing the broad-based, pro-growth reforms we’d hoped for, the administration is doubling down on gimmickry: exempting tips and overtime pay, expanding child tax credits and entertaining the idea of raising top marginal tax rates.

These moves might poll well, but they’re unprincipled and unproductive. They undermine the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which aimed (however imperfectly) to simplify the code and incentivize growth, and not to micromanage worker and household behavior through the Internal Revenue Service.

And then there are the administration’s misleading, populist talking points about raising taxes on the rich to reduce taxes on lower- and middle-income workers. The U.S. income-tax system is already one of the most progressive in the developed world. According to the latest IRS data, the top 1% of earners pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. These high earners provide 40% of federal income-tax revenue; the bottom half of earners make up only 3% of that revenue. Thankfully, the House of Representatives steered away from that mistake in its bill.

Meanwhile, some Republican legislators are pushing to extend the 2017 tax cuts without meaningful offsets, setting the stage for a debt-fueled disaster. As noted by Scott Hodge, formerly the longtime president of the Tax Foundation, the GOP’s proposed cuts could add more than $5.8 trillion to the debt over a decade. That’s nearly three times the cost of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which many Republicans rightly criticized for fueling inflation and fiscal instability.

To be clear: Pro-growth tax reform is essential. But not every tax cut is pro-growth, and no tax cut justifies further fiscal deterioration. Extending the 2017 cuts, which I generally support, shouldn’t be confused with true tax reform.

Some of the provisions being floated — expanded credits, exclusions for tips and overtime, rolling back the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — are not growth policies. They are wealth redistribution run through the tax code, indistinguishable in substance from the kind of demand-side, Keynesian stimulus Republicans once decried.

Hodge notes that these measures would do more to mimic the American Rescue Plan than to reverse its pricey mistakes. And with the Federal Reserve still fighting inflation, adding trillions in unfunded liabilities to the national ledger is profoundly irresponsible.

None of this should surprise anyone paying attention. This administration is packed with advisors and surrogates who glorify union power, rail against globalization and scoff at the very idea of limited government. Some sound more like Bernie Sanders than Milton Friedman. Whether it’s directing industrial policy or distorting the tax code to reward their favorite behaviors, they are hostile to the competition and liberty of the free market.

Sadly, that hostility has real consequences: higher prices, greater economic uncertainty, sluggish investment and fewer opportunities for middle- and lower-class families.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

May 14 (UPI) — For a third straight day, the United States on Wednesday issued sanctions targeting Iran as the Trump administration attempts to negotiate a new nuclear arms deal with the Middle Eastern country.

The punitive measures imposed by the Treasury Department are secondary sanctions, meaning those aimed and punishing third parties for dealing with previously designated entities, individuals and countries.

The sanctions target six individuals and 12 entities in China and Iran accused of aiding Tehran source the manufacturing of critical materials used in the Islamic state’s ballistic missile program, specifically carbon fiber materials used in the construction of intercontinental rockets.

The State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce explained in a statement that Iran is “heavily reliant on China to conduct its malign activities in the Middle East.”

The targets work with the U.S.-sanctioned elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“The United States cannot allow Iran to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“The Iranian regime’s relentless and irresponsible pursuit of advanced ballistic missile capabilities, including its efforts to indigenize its production capacity, represents an unacceptable threat to the United States and the stability of the region.”

The sanctions are the third batch of Iran-targeted punitive measures that the Trump administration has imposed this week as it engages in negotiations with Iran on a new agreement aimed at preventing Tehran from securing a nuclear weapon — a goal long held by President Donald Trump.

In 2018, during his first term in the White House, Trump slapped sanctions on Iran and unilaterally pulled the United States from a landmark Obama-era multinational accord, calling it “defective at its core.”

He pursued a so-called maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and other punitive measures, but failed to coerce Iran back to the negotiating table, and it instead advanced its nuclear weapons capability to the point the U.S. government estimated in 2022 that it would need just a week to produce enough weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

In February, Trump reinstated his maximum pressure policy, which includes the recent batches of further sanctions.

The United States and Iran have had four recent negotiations on a new deal, but there does not appear to be a fifth round scheduled yet.

Trump administration officials have said a deal would see Iran dismantle its three enrichment facilities, but Iranian officials have said it will not stop enriching uranium but would be open to restrictions.

Trump is in the Middle East this week for a four-day trip, and has repeatedly voiced optimism that a deal can be made.

“I have a feeling it’s going to work out. I think it’s going to work. It’s got to work out, one way or the other we know it’s going to work out,” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday in Doha, Qatar.

Later to reporters aboard Air Force One, he was more direct with his threats against Iran.

“One way or the other. It’s very simple. It’s going to happen one way or the other. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. So, we will either do it friendly, or we will do it very unfriendly, and that won’t be pleasant,” he said.

The Trump administration has said it has sanctioned more than 250 people, entities and vessels related to Iran and its proxies since February.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has slashed another $450m in grants from Harvard University, amid an ongoing feud over anti-Semitism, presidential control and the limits of academic freedom.

On Tuesday, a joint task force assembled under Trump accused Harvard, the country’s oldest university, of perpetrating a “long-standing policy and practice of discriminating on the basis of race”.

“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination. This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement,” the task force said in a statement.

“By prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support.”

The elimination of another $450m in grants came in addition to the more than $2.2bn in federal funds that were already suspended last week, the task force added.

The feud between the president and Harvard – a prestigious Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts – began in March, when Trump sought to impose new rules and regulations on top schools that had played host to pro-Palestinian protests over the last year.

Trump has called such protests “illegal” and accused participants of anti-Semitism. But student protest leaders have described their actions as a peaceful response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has elicited concerns about human rights abuses, including genocide.

Columbia University was initially a centrepiece of the Trump administration’s efforts. The New York City school had seen the first major Palestine solidarity encampment rise on its lawn, which served as a blueprint for similar protests around the world. It also saw a series of mass arrests in the aftermath.

In March, one of Columbia’s protest leaders, Mahmoud Khalil, was the first foreign student to be arrested and have his legal immigration status revoked under Trump’s campaign to punish demonstrators. And when Trump threatened to yank $400m in grants and research contracts, the school agreed to submit to a list of demands to restore the funding.

The demands included adopting a formal definition of anti-Semitism, beefing up campus security and putting one of its academic departments – focused on Middle East, African and South Asian studies – under the supervision of an outside authority.

Free speech advocates called Columbia’s concessions a capitulation to Trump, who they say has sought to erode academic freedom and silence viewpoints he disagrees with.

On April 11, his administration issued another list of demands for Harvard that went even further. Under its terms, Harvard would have had to revamp its disciplinary system, eliminate its diversity initiatives and agree to an external audit of programmes deemed anti-Semitic.

The demands also required Harvard to agree to “structural and personnel changes” that would foster “viewpoint diversity” – a term left ambiguous. But critics argued it was a means for Trump to impose his values and priorities on the school by shaping its hiring and admissions practices.

Harvard has been at the centre of controversies surrounding its admissions in the past. In 2023, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard’s consideration of race in student admissions – through a process called affirmative action – violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution.

Tuesday’s letter referenced that court decision in arguing that “Harvard University has repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus”.

A pair of reports in April, created by Harvard University’s own task forces, also found that there were cases of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish violence on campus in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza, a divisive issue in US politics.

Ultimately, on April 14, Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, rejected the Trump administration’s demands, arguing they were evidence of government overreach.

“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 his response.

But Trump has continued to pressure the campus, including by threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status. Democrats and other critics have warned that it would be illegal for the president to influence the decisions of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with regard to individual taxpayers, like the university.

Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has also threatened to bar foreign students from enrolling at the university if Harvard did not hand over documents pertaining to the pro-Palestine protests.

On Monday, Garber, Harvard’s president, wrote a response to Trump’s secretary of education, Linda McMahon, defending his campus’s commitment to free speech while also addressing the spectre of anti-Semitism.

“We share common ground on a number of critical issues, including the importance of ending antisemitism and other bigotry on campus. Like you, I believe that Harvard must foster an academic environment that encourages freedom of thought and expression, and that we should embrace a multiplicity of viewpoints,” his letter read.

But, he added, Harvard’s efforts to create a more equitable learning environment were “undermined and threatened” by the Trump administration’s “overreach”.

“Harvard will not surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government,” Garber said.

“I must refute your claim that Harvard is a partisan institution. It is neither Republican nor Democratic. It is not an arm of any other political party or movement. Nor will it ever be.”

President Trump has spent the first major overseas trip of his second administration — next stop Wednesday in Qatar — beating back allegations that he was personally profiting from foreign leaders by accepting a $400-million luxury airliner from the Gulf state’s royal family.

Trump has bristled at the notion that he should turn down such a gift, saying he would be “stupid” to do so and that Democrats were “World Class Losers” for suggesting it was not only wrong but also unconstitutional.

But Democrats were hardly alone in criticizing the arrangement as Trump prepared for broad trade discussions in Doha, the Qatari capital.

Several top Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns about the deal, including that the plane would be a security risk. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday said there were “lots of issues associated with that offer which I think need to be further talked about,” and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), another member of the Republican leadership team, said that Trump and the White House “need to look at the constitutionality” of the deal and that she would be “checking for bugs” on the plane, a clear reference to fears that Qatar may see the jetliner as an intelligence asset.

Criticism of the deal has even arisen among the deep-red MAGA ranks. In an online post echoed by other right-wing influencers in Trump’s orbit, loyalist Laura Loomer wrote that while she would “take a bullet for Trump,” the Qatar deal would be “a stain” on his administration.

The broad outrage in some ways reflected the stark optics of the deal, which would provide Trump with the superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet — known as the “palace in the sky” — for free, to be transferred to his personal presidential library upon his departure from office.

Accepting a lavish gift from the Persian Gulf nation makes even some stolid Trump allies queasy because of Qatar’s record of abuses against its Shiite Muslim minority and its funding of Hamas, the militant group whose attack on Israel touched off a prolonged war in the region.

Critics have called the deal an out-and-out bribe for future influence by the Qatari royal family, and one that would clearly come due at some point — raising serious questions around the U.S.’ ability to act with its own geopolitical interests in mind in the future, rather than Qatar’s.

Trump and Qatar have rejected that framing but have also deflected questions about what Qatar expects to receive in return for the jet.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in response to detailed questions from The Times, said in a statement that Trump “is compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

Leavitt has previously said it was “ridiculous” for the media to “suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” because he “left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service, not just once, but twice.”

Ali Al-Ansari, media attache at the Qatari Embassy in Washington, did not respond to a request for comment.

Beyond the specific concern about Qatar potentially holding influence over Trump, the jet deal also escalated deeper concerns among critics that Trump, his family and his administration are using their political influence to improperly enrich themselves more broadly — including through the creation of a $Trump cryptocurrency meme coin and a promised Washington dinner for its top investors.

Experts and other critics have for years accused Trump of violating constitutional constraints on the president and other federal officials accepting gifts, or “emoluments,” from foreign states without the express approval of Congress.

During Trump’s first term, allegations that he was flouting the law and using his office to enrich himself — including by maintaining an active stake in his golf courses and former Washington hotel while foreign dignitaries seeking to curry favor with him racked up massive bills there — went all the way to the Supreme Court before being dismissed as moot after he’d been voted out of office.

Since Trump’s return to office, however, concerns over his monetizing the nation’s highest office and the power and influence that come with it have exploded once more — and from disparate corners of the political landscape.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), left, speaks with Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight hearing on May 8, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

In a speech last month on the Senate floor, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) alleged dozens of examples of Trump and others in his family and administration misusing their positions for personal gain — what Murphy called “mind-blowing corruption” in Trump’s first 100 days.

Murphy mentioned, among other examples, the meme coin and dinner; corporations under federal investigation donating millions to Trump’s inaugural fund and those investigations being halted soon after he took office; reports that Trump has sold meetings with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for millions of dollars; and Donald Trump Jr.’s creation of a private Washington club with million-dollar dues and promises of interactions with administration officials.

Murphy also noted Trump’s orders to fire inspectors general and other watchdogs meant to keep an eye out for corruption and pay-to-play tactics in the federal government, and his scaling back of laws meant to discourage it, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Corporate Transparency Act.

“Donald Trump wants to numb this country into believing that this is just how government works. That he’s owed this. That every president is owed this. That government has always been corrupt, and he’s just doing it out in the open,” Murphy said. “But this is not how government works.”

When news of the Qatar jet deal broke, Murphy joined other Democratic colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a statement denouncing it.

“Any president who accepts this kind of gift, valued at $400 million, from a foreign government creates a clear conflict of interest, raises serious national security questions, invites foreign influence, and undermines public trust in our government,” the senators wrote. “No one — not even the president — is above the law.”

Other lawmakers — from both parties — have also weighed in.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) blasted Trump’s acceptance of the plane as his “lastest con” and a clear attempt by the Qatari government to “curry favor” with him.

“This is why the emoluments clause is in the Constitution to begin with. It was put in there for a reason,” Schiff said. “And the reason was that the founding fathers wanted to make sure that any action taken by the president of the United States, or frankly any other person holding federal public office, wasn’t going to be influenced by getting some big gift.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday that he did not think it was a “good idea” for Trump to accept the jet — which he said wouldn’t “pass the smell test” for many Americans.

Experts and those further out on the American political spectrum agreed.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert in constitutional law, said the gift of the jet, “if it is to Trump personally,” clearly violates a provision that precludes the president from receiving any benefit from a foreign country, which America’s founders barred because they were concerned about “foreign governments holding influence over the president.”

Richard Painter, the top White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said that Trump accepting the jet would be unconstitutional. And he scoffed at the ethics of doing business with a nation that has been criticized as having a bleak human rights record.

“After spending millions helping Hamas build tunnels and rockets, Qatar has enough to buy this emolumental gift for” Trump, Painter wrote on X. “But the Constitution says Congress must consent first.”

Painter criticized the White House justifying the deal by saying that Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi had “signed off” on it, given Bondi’s past work for the Qatari government, and said he knew of no precedent for a president receiving a lavish gift without the approval of Congress. He noted that Ambassador Benjamin Franklin received a diamond-encrusted snuff box from France’s King Louis XVI, but only with the OK from Congress.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, said that it was unclear whether Trump would heed the cautionary notes coming from within his own party, but that the Republican-controlled Congress should nonetheless vote on whether the jet was a proper gift for him to receive.

“If the members of Congress think this is fine, then they can say so,” Weissman said, “and the voters can hold them accountable.”

Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, a prominent backer of Trump, criticized the deal on his podcast Monday, saying that Trump supporters would “all be freaking out” if Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had accepted it.

“President Trump promised to drain the swamp,” Shapiro said. “This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.”