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.
I won’t pretend to know what might happen next in this multifaceted fiasco, but the apparent fact that the Trump administration accidentally sent its threatening demands to Harvard — a point the White House is not contesting — is emblematic of Team Trump’s broader incompetence crisis. Indeed, it’s hard to even know where to start compiling a list. The Signal chat scandal was obvious evidence of the administration’s incompetence, but so was Team Trump’s decision to fire important government employees it scrambled to try to rehire. Alas, we can keep going. When Donald Trump and his team disclosed Social Security numbers while releasing documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, it was a reminder that this White House has a competence problem. When the president and his team sent non-criminals to a prison in El Salvador while falsely claiming that they were gang members, it was a reminder that this White House has a competence problem. When Team Trump’s DOGE operation repeatedly stepped on its own tail, including an instance in which it confused $8 billion and $8 million, it was a reminder that this administration has a competence problem. When the White House royally screwed up its Office of Management and Budget spending “freeze” memo, it was a reminder that it has a competence problem. The common thread tying together too many of the developments surrounding Trump’s White House: These guys just don’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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