UPDATE (April 21, 2025, 6:15 p.m. ET): On Monday, Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, with the school’s president warning that “the consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting.”
It started with a weird letter. On April 11, Harvard University officials received a series of outlandish written demands from the Trump administration, including a “request” to install outside auditors who would monitor the school’s academic departments.
The university realized that failure to comply with the ridiculous demands would result in governmental punishment. But left with little choice, Harvard balked anyway.
The retaliation was swift: Immediately after Harvard said it would not comply with the apparent extortion attempt, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard. (There are federal requirements in place when imposing financial penalties like these, and the Republican White House appears to have ignored those requirements.) The Department of Homeland Security secretary also canceled nearly $3 million in agency grants to Harvard, and at Trump’s behest the IRS reportedly began scrutinizing the university’s tax-exempt status.
But what if the match that lit this fuse was dropped in error? The New York Times, citing multiple sources, reported that the original letter to Harvard “should not have been sent” and was “unauthorized.”
Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.
If the administration’s letter “should not have been sent,” was the White House prepared to retract it? Actually, no: Not only did a senior White House official tell the Times that the administration was standing by the letter, the same official went on the record to say it was “malpractice” for Harvard’s lawyers not to call administration officials about the contents of the ridiculous letter.
Or put another way, the White House effectively argued, “This mess is Harvard’s fault for not realizing that we shouldn’t have sent our absurd correspondence.”
Harvard representatives issued an official response of their own, noting that the original letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised.” The university added, “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”
What’s more, even if the April 11 letter was sent in error, that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from scrapping grants to Harvard — in legally dubious ways — amid reports that the White House might yet pull additional federal funds from the school.








