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11:45 AM ET, April 17, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
CNN:
IRS making plans to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status  —  The Internal Revenue Service is making plans to rescind the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, according to two sources familiar with the matter, which would be an extraordinary step of retaliation as the Trump administration seeks …
RELATED:
CNN:
DHS threatens to revoke Harvard's eligibility to host international students unless it turns over disciplinary records  —  Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is threatening to strip Harvard University of its ability to enroll international students if it doesn't turn over records …
William Kristol / The Bulwark:
Harvard Is Fighting Back.  So Can We.  —  The Trump administration, it seems, isn't happy “just” to cut Harvard University off from federal grants for declining a functional federal takeover at the private institution.  Per CNN, they're preparing to try to revoke the university's tax-exempt status, too:
Ismail Shakil / Reuters:
US IRS planning to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status amid Trump feud, CNN reports
Discussion: The Gateway Pundit
Washington Post:
Trump administration asks IRS to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status
The Harvard Crimson:   Joe Biden Applauds Harvard's Resistance at Private Kennedy School Event
Courtenay Brown / Axios:
Trump says Powell's “termination can't come fast enough”  —  President Trump blasted Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Thursday with the strongest suggestion yet of intentions to try to fire the nation's most powerful economic policymaker.  —  Why it matters: Trump's attack comes …
RELATED:
Colby Smith / New York Times:
Trump Says Fed Chair Jerome Powell's ‘Termination Cannot Come Fast Enough’  —  The president said that Jerome Powell has been too hesitant to cut interest rates, and “he should certainly lower them now.”  —  President Trump lashed out at Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve …
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Markets will ‘crash’ if Trump can fire Fed's Powell, Elizabeth Warren warns
Discussion: Raw Story
Alan Feuer / New York Times:
Boasberg Finds Probable Cause to Hold Trump Officials in Contempt Over Deportation Flights  —  The move was a remarkable attempt by a jurist to hold the White House accountable for its apparent willingness to flout court orders.  —  A federal judge in Washington threatened on Wednesday …
RELATED:
Luc Cohen / Reuters:
Trump challenges judges' probes of compliance with deportation orders
Discussion: Baltimore Sun and Persuasion
Susan Page / USA Today:
Trump in trouble? Stagflation, judicial contempt, and sagging polls
Breanne Deppisch / Fox News:
Trump admin seeks emergency relief of Boasberg contempt threat
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Trump brushes aside courts' attempts to limit his power
Discussion: New York Times and CNN
Marisa Kabas / The Handbasket:
GOP photos at El Salvador prison evoke Abu Ghraib—and worse  —  Members of Congress visited CECOT for some torture tourism—and to prove loyalty to Trump. … A row of Latino men with shaved heads and stoic expressions wearing identical white boxer shorts stand behind thick metal bars.
CNN:
Trump's pick to be DC's top prosecutor failed to report nearly 200 appearances on far-right media outlets to Senate  —  Ed Martin, the Trump administration's nominee to serve as US attorney for Washington, DC, failed to report hundreds of media appearances he's made in the past few years …
RELATED:
Mark Joseph Stern / Slate:
The Most Damning Aspect of the Supreme Court's Latest Trump Dodge  —  The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the Maryland father wrongly deported to a Salvadoran prison—has captivated the nation and spurred Democratic lawmakers into action, with Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen flying to El Salvador on Wednesday to try to get him freed.
Discussion: NBC News
Zachariah Hughes / Anchorage Daily News:
‘We are all afraid’: Speaking to Alaska nonprofit leaders, Murkowski gets candid on upheaval in federal government  —  U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a room full of Alaska nonprofit leaders that the tumult of tariffs, executive orders, court battles, and cuts to federal services under …
Tom Pappert / Tennessee Star:
Biden's FBI Ordered TN Highway Patrol to Release ‘Maryland Man’ Recently Deported to El Salvador After He Was Detained in 2022 Traffic Stop on Suspicion of Human Trafficking  —  The Tennessee Star learned on Wednesday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of the Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha …
Carl Zimmer / New York Times:
Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet  —  Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.  —  The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries …
Andrew Solender / Axios:
Scoop: Democrats seek probe of DOGE's Social Security meddling  —  House Democrats are pressing the Social Security Administration's inspector general to open a probe into DOGE's tinkering with the agency, Axios has learned.  —  Why it matters: Social Security is an extremely sensitive issue …
RELATED:
Jennifer Rubin / The Contrarian:   Fiscal Disaster Awaits
USA Today:
Abrego Garcia updates: Defiant senator 'won't rest' until he brings deported man home  —  SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador − The Maryland senator who traveled here hoping to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker who was living in Maryland when he was wrongly deported a month ago …
RELATED:
The Harvard Crimson:
Can Harvard Use Its Endowment To Make Up For Federal Cuts?  It's Possible, but Not That Simple.  —  Harvard's endowment is not a $53.2 billion pile of cash.  But as the University sits on the precipice of historic financial losses, it has increasingly faced calls to draw from endowment funds to make up the difference.
Discussion: KRDO and CNN
Hana Kiros / The Atlantic:
‘In Three Months, Half of Them Will Be Dead’  —  Elon Musk promised to preserve lifesaving aid to foreign children.  Then the Trump administration quietly canceled it.  —  After Elon Musk made a public show of remedying an apparent error in DOGE's massive cuts to foreign aid …
Chris Cillizza / The Daily Beast:
What Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Planning?  —  You don't need a degree in math (or politics) to know what record-breaking fundraising, a national tour and positive polling add up to.  —  FOURTH TIME  —  Fred Piccolo, 47, briefly worked as the Florida governor's communications director.
Lisa Needham / Public Notice:
White guy DEI  —  Affirmative action, Trumper style. … 📚 🧑‍🏫 📚  —  Republicans have spent decades howling about how affirmative action led to unqualified minorities taking jobs away from well-qualified straight white men.
Hunter Walker / Talking Points Memo:
Trump Is Sending People To The Camps  —  This is your TPM evening briefing.  —  Extraordinary times call for extraordinary and strong language.  President Trump's plan to have migrants — and potentially U.S. citizens — rounded up, flown to El Salvador, and confined there in a maximum security facility …
Discussion: The Independent and New Republic
Bloomberg:
HUD Building Put Up for Sale as Trump Looks to Unload Properties  —  The Trump administration is offering the Washington, DC headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for sale as it seeks to reduce its real estate footprint for a shrinking federal workforce.
Matt Lavietes / NBC News:
American doctor receives email from immigration officials telling her to leave the country immediately  —  Dr. Lisa Anderson, 58, was born in Pennsylvania and is a U.S. citizen.  —  A doctor born in the United States says she received an email from federal immigration authorities demanding that she leave the country immediately.
Discussion: ABA Journal
New York Times:
Texas Is Poised to Create a $1 Billion Private School Voucher Program  —  The Texas House approved the plan, part of a push by President Trump's allies to offer up to $10,000 for private school, home-school or virtual learning.  —  The Texas House of Representatives voted early Thursday morning …
National Environmental Satellite …:
Notice of Changes  —  Estuarine Bathymetry  —  Name of product or service:  —  Estuarine Bathymetry  —  Type of change:  —  Product will be decommissioned  —  Description of change:  —  Estuarine Bathymetry is being decommissioned and will no longer be available.
Don Moynihan / Can We Still Govern?:
The Death of Direct File  —  One of the most most tangible federal government innovations of recent years was Direct File, the long-sought effort to allow taxpayers a free and user-friendly means to report their taxes.  The fate of Direct File had hung in the balance, but AP reports that sometime …
Politico:
Top Pentagon official at center of Jackie Robinson controversy to resign  —  John Ullyot's departure comes during a week of upheaval at the Defense Department.  —  John Ullyot, the former top Pentagon spokesperson who found himself at the center of several controversies in the first months …
 
 
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 More Items: 
ProPublica:
Trump Team Eyes Politically Connected Startup to Overhaul $700 Billion Government Payments Program
Greg Sullivan / Bloomberg:
Russia Lifts Ban on Taliban Amid Deepening Ties With the Group
Discussion: Reuters and Al Jazeera
Erin Doherty / CNBC:
Trump's tariffs are ‘inviting corruption,’ Democrats tell Bessent, Lutnick
Jonathan Lambert / NPR:
Destroying endangered species' habitat wouldn't count as ‘harm’ under proposed Trump rule
Claire Heddles / NOTUS:
A Supreme Court Ruling on Labor Boards Could Let Trump Take Over the Federal Reserve
Discussion: CBS News
Bill Scher / Washington Monthly:
The Next Frontier of Plutocracy
Discussion: Blue Virginia
 Earlier Items: 
Bloomberg:
Tesla Slumps Below 50% Share of California's Electric Car Market
Joe Sommerlad / The Independent:
CDC autism report disputes RFK Jr's claims about why the condition is on the rise
NBC News:
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro says he hasn't heard from Trump since the arson attack
Carolyn Y. Johnson / Washington Post:
Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards