IRS may revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The IRS may revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status, following Trump threats. Sen. Chris Van Hollen demanded Wednesday that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele release Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Paste BN Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé takes a look at the data on how investors are responding amid stock market worries. A judge blocks the Energy Department from slashing federal research funding. Paste BN National Correspondent Trevor Hughes discusses how budget cuts are creating restroom and visitor center closures at national parks.
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Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, April 17th, 2025. This is the Excerpt. Today the latest on a feud between the Trump administration and Harvard, plus what does the data tell us about how investors have acted amid recent market troubles, and how budget cuts are hitting national parks and their bathrooms ahead of summer travel.
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The IRS may revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status after the Ivy League school refused to meet President Donald Trump's wide-ranging demands for changes in its policies, according to reporting from CNN and the Washington Post. The Post reported that the Trump administration asked the IRS to revoke the university's tax-exempt status, and CNN reported that the agency is making plans to do so.
Trump and Harvard are battling over his allegations the university failed to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests last year. Along with criticisms from Trump over DEI, Republicans have for years been discussing whether to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard and other universities they deem woke for DEI policies, while permitting what they view as anti-Israel protests. The White House has already frozen more than two billion dollars in grants and $60 million in contracts awarded to Harvard after it rejected demands to implement a mask ban, make changes to programs and departments that the administration felt fuel anti-Semitic harassment and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In a statement to Paste BN, Harvard spokesman Jason Newton called the possible loss of tax exemption unprecedented, and said the university's current tax status allows it to provide more money for students, researchers and technological advancements.
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Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen demanded yesterday that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele open the doors of his country's notorious prison and free a Maryland father who was wrongly deported by the Trump administration.
Sen. Van Hollen:
Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence he's committed any crime, and they've not been provided any evidence from the United States that he's committed a crime?
Taylor Wilson:
The US Senator from Maryland who traveled to El Salvador to discuss Abrego Garcia's case with Salvadoran officials, described a union sheet metal worker and father as a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and charged with no crime. Bukele said during a visit to the White House on Monday that he would not release Abrego Garcia and called the suggestion preposterous. Abrego Garcia's family has sued the US government demanding his return, and the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to begin the process of bringing him back to the US.
The senator told journalists he had met with Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa, but conceded that he had made little progress in his efforts to bring Abrego Garcia home to Maryland. Ulloa told the senator he could not arrange access to visit Abrego Garcia in prison, nor could he set up a phone call with the prisoner. US officials contend Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, but have provided no evidence to the courts to support the allegation. Government attorneys acknowledged in court documents that he was deported by mistake, but say they have no authority to free him because he's imprisoned in a foreign country.
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As tariffs tanked the stock market in recent weeks, did investors panic and sell? I spoke with Paste BN personal finance reporter Daniel de Vise, for a look at the data and what experts are saying about how to approach this market. Daniel, hi. Yes, sir.
Daniel de Visé:
Hello, sir.
Taylor Wilson:
So what did the data really find about how investors acted or reacted in these turbulent markets over the past few weeks? Did people panic? I guess, Daniel, is the big question.
Daniel de Visé:
Vanguard used these early days of April as a sort of a lab setting to try to figure out what people actually did and what they found at Vanguard, which is of course a huge investment manager, is that only 8% of their investors at Vanguard executed trades on any of those turbulent days. This is between April third and ninth. Anybody listening to this will remember these days, the stock market was all over the place. Vanguard found that of the investors who did make trades, most people only made trades on one day, which suggests more deliberate behavior. And buyers of stocks outnumbered sellers by a ratio of nearly five to one. And what that means is investors were buying low basically. They weren't panic selling.
Taylor Wilson:
Daniel, you spoke with some experts who maybe could offer some guidance to follow in climates like these. What are some of the things you took away from them?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, the single biggest thing, and I read this and hear this over and over again, is don't try to time the market. Timing the market would mean you pull everything out when you think everything's going to fall and then you put your money back into the market when it hits bottom or when you think it has hit bottom. The problem with doing that is even experts can't really predict when things are going to start to fall, and it's also very hard to predict when they're going to rise again. You'll remember that on April nine when President Trump paused most of his tariffs, the market went nutso, huge gains, and this is after a whole bunch of huge losses. And so if you didn't have your money in the market on April nine, you missed out on a 9%, 8%, 10% gain in the stock markets. This is why it's difficult to gauge when exactly to time the market. It's very hard to do.
Taylor Wilson:
So fast-forward to this week, Daniel, I think we expect some further turbulence, maybe some rocky roads to come. How are the markets now shaking out this week and I guess what's the sense if there is any sense for the coming days?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, so there was a big swoon of course in early April. On April nine, the market went way up again. In the days since then it sort of dribbled back down. I'm talking to you as the markets are about to close, everything's down a couple of few percent on the day, which is another kind of grim day. And I think that reflects both the fact that we still have these huge tariffs going on with China, that's still happening. There are still tariffs on other countries, albeit small ones. There's a huge amount of uncertainty, and I think Jerome Powell, the Fed chief, just said that, "Wow, there's going to be some inflation, ladies and gentlemen." So buckle up guys. Buckle up.
Taylor Wilson:
This is another helpful piece from you, Daniel, especially in this climate. Daniel de Vise covers personal finance for Paste BN. Thanks, sir.
Daniel de Visé:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from bringing major cuts to federal research funding provided to universities by the Department of Energy. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an appointee of former president Barack Obama, said she would consider whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction during a hearing later this month. The energy department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They along with several other universities and academic trade associations had sued earlier in the week to block the administration from moving forward with a policy change meant to reduce government spending in support of indirect research costs, which are not attributed to specific projects.
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Amid budget cuts, national park restroom closures may frustrate visitors planning trips this spring or summer. I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent Trevor Hughes for more. Trevor, thanks for hopping on, sir.
Trevor Hughes:
Hey, good to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
See, now multiple national parks have closed their toilets and visitor centers. What are you hearing and are these issues a direct result, I guess, of Trump's cuts across the National Park Service?
Trevor Hughes:
What we've been seeing is sort of an inconsistency across the network of parks. America's national parks are considered the crown jewels of our country and people who are going to those parks. And it is the off season, so it's a little quieter now and things are still closed if there's a lot of snow. But what we're seeing in parks across the country is intermittent restroom closures. And park advocates and park experts are saying this is directly results of President Trump's decision to offer buyouts, fire people, lay people off, put a hiring freeze in place. It's really a situation caused by the Trump administration as it attempts to cut back on federal spending.
Taylor Wilson:
Some say the potential closures of these kinds of visitor centers or these types of amenities could reshape how people visit national parks. Trevor, can you talk through that a little bit and also I guess just this conflict between reduced staffing and visitor expectations, especially with the high season summer months right around the corner?
Trevor Hughes:
Well, national parks have a well-deserved reputation for, and I don't mean to be crude here, but they have really nice toilets. They meet standards that are different than the National Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management. And so the concern among some folks is that if the more remote toilets are closed and locked because it takes a lot more resources to manage them, then park visitors will be less likely to go deeper into the parks and they'll stay pretty close to the entrance areas. And maybe miss out on some of the most amazing parts of these national parks. I think that is sort of the challenge that's going on here, is people expect a certain experience when they go to our national parks and the president's changes have really reshaped that already.
Taylor Wilson:
In terms of Trump's, I guess, broader approach, Trevor, as it relates to national parks, he previously encouraged Congress to pass and then sign that Great American Outdoors Act during his first term that poured money into improvements in public lands. I guess I'm asking, do recent cuts show a different approach from Trump?
Trevor Hughes:
They do. Part of the challenge is that national parks have spent the last four or five years building really nice new restrooms in some cases. And park staff are sort of in this tough place of knowing that if they open the restroom and don't have the staff to manage it, it might get damaged. And so there's a question of whether they're going to open these newly built restrooms that President Trump's initiative helped pay for. We've heard this criticism about the president's approach a number of times now, which is this idea that we're cutting the federal budget willy-nilly. Not with a scalpel, not with any deliberation about what really matters, but sort of a very broad brush approach. And then had to roll that back either because of court decisions or because of public pressure. And so I think what we're seeing here is the president very quickly after announcing all these cuts to national parks, actually said that they would hire more seasonal workers than normal.
And I suspect that that was pushback from a lot of national park visitors. Again, millions and millions of Americans visit national parks every year and they have an expectation of what it's going to be like when they go there.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, great piece. Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thank you, Trevor.
Trevor Hughes:
You bet.
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Taylor Wilson:
Nuclear power is providing up to 20% of our energy needs and is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, but there's still a problem, what to do with all the waste. Currently, spent nuclear fuel is stored in pools then later underground but neither of those are long-term solutions.
Allison Macfarlane:
Maybe the last 100 years, maybe, maybe not. And if you don't have a more permanent solution to manage this material, it will get into the environment and affect humans.
Taylor Wilson:
Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, shares the reality of nuclear power and how expansion can be done safely. Here is her conversation with my colleague Dana Taylor today beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, right here on this feed.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, as always just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.