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Faculty members from US universities – including public ones which do not receive endowments – are banding together in attempts to resist the Donald Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedoms.

The resolution comes as a result of “recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies [which] pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech”.

Harvard University is very rich. On that, most people agree.

Whether it’s rich enough to get through the next four years unscathed is less certain.

On Monday, the Ivy League school’s leaders took the bold step of publicly rejecting a sprawling list of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration. Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, rebuked the government’s ultimatum, which directed the university to overhaul its admissions, hiring and teaching practices – or risk losing billions in federal funding.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote in a public statement. “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The consequences of Harvard’s defiance were swift.

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A federal judge declined Tuesday to hold the Trump administration in contempt for failing to return a Maryland father wrongly deported to El Salvador but admonished government attorneys for failing to provide evidence of what they were doing to bring him home.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland ordered the U.S. to show what steps it is taking to comply with a court ruling to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was expelled from the U.S. in March.

Xinis said Abrego Garcia's attorneys would be allowed to take the sworn testimony of government officials in the case and that the process could take two weeks.

"There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship and grandstanding," she said.

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The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.

The announcement comes after the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” said a member of a department taskforce on combating antisemitism in a statement.

The education department taskforce on combating antisemitism said in a statement it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

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The exemption of smartphones, laptops and other electronic products from import tariffs on China will be short-lived, top US officials have said, with Donald Trump warning that no one was “getting off the hook.”

“There was no Tariff ‘exception’, Trump said in a social media post on Sunday. “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”

In the post on his Truth Social platform, Trump promised to launch a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector and the “whole electronics supply chain”.

Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official who played a major role in dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has left the state department, a US official said on Sunday.

Donald Trump’s administration has moved to fire nearly all USAID staff, as billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” has slashed funding and dismissed contractors across the federal bureaucracy in what it calls an attack on wasteful spending.

“Pete was brought to state with a big mission – to conduct an exhaustive review of every dollar spent on foreign assistance. He conducted that historic task and exposed egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“We all expect big things are in store for Pete on his next mission,” the official added.

Sources told Reuters that Marocco, who was the director of foreign assistance at the state department, may have been pushed out but they declined to give further explanation.

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