By David Shepardson and Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools across the United States.
His comments, which were made on his social media platform Truth Social, come less than a week after his administration sought to block the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students.
Trump has frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, leading the university to sue to restore the funding.
Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research, however, which is not typically done at trade schools.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Monday. The White House did not immediately comment on what specific funds Trump wants to repurpose.
On Friday, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, a policy the Ivy League school said was part of Trump’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence”.
The order provides temporary relief to thousands of international students, who were faced with potentially having to transfer under a policy that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university called a “blatant violation” of the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws.
It said the move would have an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders.
Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, representing 27% of total enrollment.
The move was the latest escalation in a broader battle between Harvard and the White House, as Trump seeks to compel universities, law firms, news media, courts and other institutions to align with his agenda. Trump and fellow Republicans have long accused elite universities of left-wing bias.
In recent weeks, the administration has proposed ending Harvard’s tax-exempt status and hiking taxes on its endowment, and opened an investigation into whether it violated civil rights laws.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Jasper Ward; Editing by Toby Chopra and Joe Bavier)
