President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status after the elite US university refused to accept far-reaching policy changes ordered by the White House.

Trump had already moved to freeze $2.2 billion of federal funds on Monday in retaliation for the top university's defiance of the administration's push to bring campuses to heel.

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Trump said Harvard "should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity" if it does not submit to his demands for the college to change the way it runs itself, including selection of students and authority for professors. Tax-exempt status is "totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST," he added in the post on his Truth Social network.

In a letter to students and faculty, Harvard president Alan Garber had vowed to defy the government, insisting that the school would not "negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights."

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Trump's Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded Monday with a statement announcing the $2.2 billion hold in multi-year grants, plus a freeze on $60 million in government contracts.

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