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Harvard warned that the decision would lead to "diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation,"
By Rebecca Shabad

President Donald Trump said Friday that he will revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status, the latest move in the escalating clash between the administration and the Ivy League school.

"We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The president had previously suggested the university should lose its tax-exempt status. His latest statement came after Harvard sued the administration over its decision to freeze more than $2 billion in funding to the Ivy League school. The administration claimed the university was refusing to follow the administration's demands that it take actions aimed at ending antisemitism on campus.

"Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Trump threatened in a Truth Social post last month. He added, "Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!"

Responding to Trump's announcement Friday, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said the government has "long exempted universities from taxes in order to support their educational mission" and there was no legal basis to rescind its status.

"The tax exemption means that more of every dollar can go toward scholarships for students, lifesaving and life-enhancing medical research, and technological advancements that drive economic growth," he said.

Newton added that revoking the university's tax-exempt status "would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission."
Elon Musk gave it a shot in Washington. Now he’s aiming to be the de-facto mayor of a small Texas town.
By Will McCarthy

BOCA CHICA VILLAGE, Texas — Driving down a long empty stretch of Highway 4 in South Texas, there are few indications that this windswept corner of the nation, bound by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, is host to more than dense mesquite thickets and the ghosts of the Civil War. The land feels vast, unchanging and decidedly apolitical — bigger than people altogether.

That is, until a break in the brush reveals an enormous gold bust of Elon Musk, staring into the distance.

Then, signs of the political moment are everywhere. U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agents in bullet-proof jackets flag down passing cars at an inland border checkpoint.

A road leading off the highway reads “Mars-a-Lago.” A hundred yards away, bookending an old, black Studebaker parked for-sale in a dusty pullout, murals of Musk’s face and the DOGE Shiba Inu plaster two 30-foot concrete towers.

And finally, rising from the empty salt plains, in the shadow of a towering rocketship and suborbital launch vehicles, sit homes and hangars, office buildings and neighborhood streets. This is Starbase, the soon-to-be newest city in Texas, and Elon Musk’s first company town. The far-flung settlement, populated almost entirely by SpaceX employees and construction workers, is the site of SpaceX’s launchpad for their next-generation of Starship rockets, and home base for humanity’s future colonization of Mars.
By: Lynn Bonner

The state Board of Elections changed from a Democratic to a Republican majority on Thursday as state Auditor Dave Boliek exercised his new powers to appoint members to the five-member board.

The change to the board’s partisan makeup has implications for GOP Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s ongoing challenge to the results of the state Supreme Court race.

Griffin sued the elections board in his attempt to have votes thrown out as he seeks to unseat Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. With a Democratic majority, the board had resisted that effort and fought in court against tossing votes. That could now change.
By Devan Cole, Priscilla Alvarez and Katelyn Polantz, CNN

CNN  — A Donald Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas ruled that the president unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act and blocked the administration from quickly deporting some alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.

US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez of the Southern District of Texas said Trump had unlawfully invoked the sweeping 18th century wartime authority to speed up some deportations. His decision means Trump cannot rely on the law to detain or deport any alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua within his district.

The ruling is a significant blow to Trump’s decision in March to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, which has faced numerous legal challenges and has been halted by several courts. But Rodriguez’s ruling is the first to conclude that the president exceeded his authority by relying on a law that was intended to be used during times when the US is at war.
Rolling Stone reports that even members of the Trump administration are hoarding food, household supplies, and cash over fears about the impact of the president’s trade war. One Trump aide explained to Rolling Stone: “Because it would be stupid not to!”
Story by Khaleda Rahman

A Black boy who reported being called a racial slur on the playground was expelled from a Catholic school in Portland after his parents complained to the principal.

Mike Phillips and Karis Stoudamire-Phillips told The Oregonian that Tresa Rast, the principal of the Madeleine School, summoned police to the school's campus in late March after they demanded to know what actions the school would take after their son said he was called the N-word by another student.

Days later, the school expelled their fourth grader, saying the couple had violated the school's code of conduct for parents.

Rast has been placed on leave, the school told families on Wednesday.

Newsweek has contacted the school via email and Phillips and Stoudamire-Phillips, via an email to their attorney, for further comment.
Story by Justin Rohrlich

A Texas-based energy supplier says Tesla is “refusing to pay” over $2 million it owes for fuel deliveries to its Austin manufacturing plant – with some transactions dating to more than two years ago – and that the electric carmaker’s chaotic internal processes have only served to make matters even worse.

Sun Coast Resources, which is headquartered in Houston and operates in 49 U.S. states, accuses Tesla of having floated “a myriad of procedural reasons it has not paid,” according to a breach of contract lawsuit obtained by The Independent.

“Tesla's only reason for not paying Sun Coast is that Sun Coast has allegedly not complied with its requirements for invoice submittals,” the company’s complaint states. “To the contrary, Sun Coast has jumped through all of Tesla's proverbial hoops and provided all the documentation Tesla has requested, often multiple times, and Tesla continues to delay and make excuses as to why it has not paid for products that it knows it received.”

Adding to Sun Coast’s ongoing frustration, the complaint says Tesla “has had constant personnel turnover and passed Sun Coast off from person to person who only conjures up some new reason as to why Tesla has not paid.”
Story by Kyra Alessandrini

The Department of Justice has lifted a decades-old school desegregation order in Louisiana this week. It overturned the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools, which required them to integrate Black students. The agreement was put in place two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which put an official end to segregation laws.

Officials called the 1966 legal agreement a “historical wrong,” according to the Associated Press. It was lifted as part of the Trump administration’s focus on “getting America refocused on our bright future,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.

Why did the DOJ lift the school desegregation order?
Such agreements were put in place for schools that resisted integration in the 1960s. School districts were able to then prove that they had ended segregation in order to lift the decree.

In the case of the 1966 Plaquemines, the district in the Mississippi River Delta Basin in Louisiana was found to have integrated in 1975 but was put on watch by the court for another year. No changes had been made since.

“Given that this case has been stayed for a half-century with zero action by the court, the parties or any third-party, the parties are satisfied that the United States’ claims have been fully resolved,” the DOJ and the office of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.
US judge says clients may have ‘reservations’ about law firms that reached deals with the government
Kaye Wiggins in New York and Sujeet Indap in Claremont, California

US law firms were warned about the risks of striking deals with Donald Trump when a Washington DC judge permanently blocked the president’s executive order targeting Perkins Coie, saying it violated the US constitution.

“Some clients may harbour reservations about the implications of such deals for the vigorous and zealous representation to which they are entitled from ethically responsible counsel,” wrote Judge Beryl Howell on Friday night.

Howell declared Trump’s order against Perkins “null and void”.

The published terms of those deals “appear only to forestall, rather than eliminate, the threat of being targeted”, she added, as she cited other filings which said lawyers must be able to advance their clients’ interests without fear of reprisal from the government.

The president’s order, issued in March, suspended security clearance for Perkins Coie’s employees and forced a review of its government contracts. It cited the firm’s work for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

“From an esteemed judge, the signal sent to the law firm community is unmistakable,” said Ryan Goodman, professor at the NYU School of Law.
Story by Jessica Corbett, Common Dream

While Republicans on Capitol Hill—including the leaders of both chambers of Congress—have long argued for reducing the national debt, the GOP is now pushing a tax bill that would not only fund giveaways to the rich by gutting programs that serve the working class, but also add $3.8 trillion to the U.S. deficit.

The national debt is currently $36.2 trillion. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) on Tuesday released an analysis showing that the Republican bill would cost $3.8 trillion through 2034, or 1.1% of gross domestic product.

The JCT document notes that some estimates—such as the impact of modifications to de minimis entry privilege for commercial shipments and to Medicare, including limiting coverage—will be provided by the Congressional Budget Office.

The JCT's release coincides with a key meeting in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Politicodetailed:

The newly revised estimate released Tuesday afternoon is up slightly from the $3.7 trillion price tag budget forecasters had previously put on the plan, and it comes as the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee began formally debating the package. Additional changes are possible there, and also later, when Republicans are preparing to take the legislation to the House floor." [...]

Under the House GOP's budget, the size of their tax cuts is contingent on lawmakers simultaneously cutting spending, and Republicans are hoping to match $4 trillion in tax cuts with $1.5 trillion in spending reductions.

Ahead of the markup, Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), said in a statement that "this bill gives enormous additional tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations, spikes the deficit, and strips healthcare from millions of Americans."
Story by Sarah Fortinsky

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) sharply criticized President Trump on Thursday following reports that 17 family members of Sinaloa Cartel leaders were allowed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal with the Trump administration.

In floor remarks on Thursday, Schumer accused the president of being “soft on crime” and of “rolling out a welcome mat to El Chapo and his family and inviting them into our country.”

“If you’re related to El Chapo, Donald Trump says, ‘Come right in. Welcome to America.’ He’ll roll out the red carpet,” Schumer said on Thursday.
Story by Maryam Khanum

Social media users are mocking President Donald Trump for claiming that his proposed cuts to government funded food assistance programs would actually give Americans more access to food by helping decrease food prices nationwide.

Trump attended a meeting with House Republicans on Monday at Capitol Hill, after which he was asked about his plans for food assistance programs by reporters.

"You campaigned on lowering the price of groceries. How can you justify cutting food assistance?" one reporter asked Trump.

"The cut is going to give everybody much more food because prices are coming way down, groceries are down, eggs. You told me about eggs, you asked me a question about eggs in my first week," The President began. "I said 'I just got here, tell me about eggs.' Eggs now are way down, everybody's buying eggs. Groceries are down, energy is down, they're buying gasoline now for $1.99. If you look back, you'll see $3.50, $4."
Story by Steve Corbin

As of May 1 – 101 days into the Trump 2.0 administration – the highly credible Bloomberg News reported over 328 lawsuits have been filed against Mr. Trump's executive orders, proclamations, and policy decisions and Cabinet members' actions. On May 13, Fox News gave cameo details on 208 of the lawsuits; virtually all lawsuits are individually cited in a recent Litigation Tracker report, published by Just Security of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law.

The 47th president leads the pack with over 75 lawsuits filed against him, followed by at least 39 cases challenging unelected Elon Musk and his non-Congressional approved Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). More than 40 other lawsuits over funding cuts and agency firings also mention DOGE.

Just Security notes that 21 lawsuits have been filed against the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's Department of Justice and 12 lawsuits reveal Linda McMahon's Department of Education as the litigant. Legal challenges have been placed against each of the 21 Cabinet members' respective endeavors. This news, in and of itself, lays bare the fact that the majority of our 100 Senators failed to do their due diligence in approving Mr. Trump's nominees for Cabinet positions.

The volume of legal battles poses significant long-term risks to American democracy, let alone the cost to Americans like you and me who will have to pay attorney fees to defend Donald J. Trump, Cabinet members, and other officials' actions.
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