I have a new article up at The UnPopulist, continuing my work for them on charting Donald Trump’s abuses of executive power.
This time, I focus on an effort to deprive universities of tax-exempt non-profit status on vague and arbitrary grounds.
Earlier this month, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a rule that would revoke tax-exempt status from private schools—everything from elementary schools to universities—that offer “targeted support to Black or other minority students.” This isn’t just a ban on explicit racial preferences or quotas. It’s a ban on any help offered specifically to minority students, down to minority student clubs and mentoring programs, which the administration apparently considers an offense against that most victimized minority in America: white men.
Aside from the nefarious goal of this rule change, we should be concerned about how the administration is using the IRS to impose it. The politicization of the IRS’s nonprofit rules has implications that go far beyond college admission policies. It is a way to gain direct presidential control over civil society.
A word on the substance of this particular policy. The Trump administration is trying to use the language of civil rights, talking about eliminating special favors, but doing so in a way that is actually designed to roll back the advances of the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow.
Let’s put it this way. I grew up still seeing ads for the United Negro College Fund, with its famous motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The fund aimed at providing scholarships for talented young black people who otherwise could not afford to go to college. Is this a special favor for black students? Yes, but one that was based on merit, recognizing the disadvantages they faced from poverty and from the lack of educational opportunities and helping them overcome that.
But under Trump’s rules, this would be targeted by the IRS as an illegitimate purpose. Follow the link about how the Trump administration pressured universities into disavowing a mentoring program for black Ph.D. students because this is “discriminatory.” Here’s what that looks like in practice:
MIT, like many of the schools cited in the investigation, had paid The PhD Project “a nominal fee” to participate in the group’s university fairs or conferences, allowing MIT to send representatives to answer questions about attending their school, spokesperson Kimberly Allen said.
MIT informed the government in April 2025 it had ended its participation in such conferences.
I don’t know about you, but telling MIT it can’t even engage in recruitment of black students doesn’t sound like anti-discrimination. It sounds like a return to discrimination. And that’s a lot clearer when you realize that this administration is chock full of explicit racists. (This is something I’ve covered in the past, but I’ve been storing away even more examples, which I’ll be sharing soon.)
But that’s not the focus of this article. I focus on the arbitrary way the Trump administration is reshaping its rules for tax-exempt nonprofits. While they’re imposing new restrictions on universities, they’re loosening restrictions on churches by allowing religious organizations—but not other tax-exempt nonprofits—to engage in political activity and endorse candidates. I sum up the administration’s policy this way: “Starve the universities, feed the churches. Exploit a politicized IRS to discourage activity you deem politically unwelcome in institutions you regard as hostile, while you open the floodgates of money and influence for institutions you regard as friendly.”
I point out how vague statutes and undefined powers in the law made this possible, but then I point to a more ominous factor.
Today’s authoritarian right has revived and adopted the ideas of the Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt. The central idea of Schmitt’s theory is that no legal doctrine can really be based on universal and neutral liberal principles. Instead, he insisted, the only basic distinction in politics is between friend and enemy. The fundamental political imperative is to reward one’s friends and punish one’s enemies.
Here we see that doctrine put into practice in the nitty-gritty of IRS tax rules.
And please do follow those links, especially Andy Craig’s article, which lists some of the contemporary American right-wing endorsements of Schmitt. It’s one of those things that sounds so cartoonishly evil you can’t believe it’s really happening—but then the vice-president name-drops a Nazi theorist.
But you don’t need a theorist to engage in the age-old political impulse to rig the system in favor of your gang, which is the rule of our politics right now, until we demand something better.
Interesting topic. I am surprised at the angle here taken by the writer that it is OK for groups that are federally funded to violate civil rights based on race.
First, from the link provided in the article: "The PhD Project is one of many nonprofits that helps underrepresented groups gain access to higher education."
A couple of points here: 1. Who and how is this Project deciding what individuals are underrepresented? If all people can't use their services based on an objective set of rules, why are we as a nation funding it.
2. In light of the SCOTUS decision involving U of MI and their discrimatory programs, shouldn't all NGO's receiving public money be following the law of the land? 3. Should we, as a society, allow our government to decide which NGO'S get funded, and for what purpose?
On the subjectnos the IRS being used as an instrument to enforce executive viewpoints, isn't that exactly what we let happen under the Obama administration? I recall the IRS being used against the Tea Party's in an effort to silence them.
In the IRS Tea Party situation, one political appointee resigned and the President said that he doesn't tolerate that type of targeting. And yet, as a society, we didn't demand any changes to monitor and make sure that behavior didn't happen again.
I would argue that we set the precident that it is OK to use the letter agencies to enforce political views. Of course, in this case, it is simply an agency enforcing the law of the land as decided by SCOTUS.
NOW I will let my MAGA side out. This is a typical hit piece by the author. He has done many which are only based on "orange man bad". I have written in the past about how many of the actions being taken by this administration have their roots in actions in the past. They are not unique to the current administration and thus are an accepted part of our society.
There are many changes that need to be made. Blaming the current administration because they choose to use those powers in their chosen way will get us nowhere.
If only the D.S.A., I mean D.N.C. had nominated the best man….or woman, for President of these still United States…and not Selina Meyer, I mean one Kamala Harris who fit the right, I mean leftists profile of race, gender and upper class luxury beliefs
The Village Idiwitt is still hoping and praying for a viral sensation Robert Tracinski making like Roger and Me, or even better, Da Ali G and mugging the Anti Truth Neo Nationalist Sociopath with a copy of his Dick Tator from Day One book until the Agent Orangeman Menace Trump Bible Salesman’s smug face turns death white, when Heat Miser in the flesh soul finally starts to but him…Oh well, at least I can still believe in hell for such monsters and mobsters that meet and plot in the back room of the Bada Bing, I mean Oval Office