The Trump administration has issued a list of demands Harvard University must meet as a condition for receiving almost $9 billion in grants and contracts, federal money that is being threatened during an investigation into campus antisemitism.

In a letter to Harvard’s president on Thursday, three federal agencies outlined demands described as necessary for a “continued financial relationship” with the government. It’s similar to a demand letter that prompted changes at Columbia University under the threat of billions of dollars in cuts.

Some alumni and faculty members implored Harvard to push back, decrying the government intervention as an attack on academic freedom.

The government’s letter is a “dominance test,” not an effort to fight antisemitism, said Kirsten Weld, a Harvard history professor and president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

“If Harvard, the wealthiest university on the planet, accedes to these demands, the task force won’t go away — it will simply return with additional demands, just like a schoolyard bully,” Weld said in a statement. “Harvard must contest this patently unlawful attack in the courts.”

Harvard is the fifth Ivy League school targeted in a pressure campaign by the administration, which also has paused federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, and Princeton to force compliance.

Justices let Trump put grants on hold

The Supreme Court on Friday let the Trump administration temporarily suspend $65 million in teacher-training grants that the government contends would promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, an early victory for the administration in front of the justices.

The court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications.

The decision was 5-4, with five of the court’s conservatives — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — in the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent.

The order came in response to one of a series of emergency requests by the Trump administration asking the justices to intervene and overturn lower court rulings that have temporarily blocked parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

IRS planning to cut 25% of workforce

The IRS plans to cut as many as 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — as part of layoffs that began Friday, two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

The job cuts will begin with the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which would be reduced by 75% through layoffs, and its remaining workers would be absorbed into the agency’s Office of Chief Counsel, according to those two people as well as a third person familiar with the matter. Fewer than 200 people work in the Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, formerly known as the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the plans.

The Washington Post first reported on Friday’s layoffs at the IRS, which collects revenue and enforces tax laws.

Trump would open more forests to logging

President Donald Trump’s administration acted to roll back environmental protections around future logging projects on more than half of U.S. national forests under an emergency designation Friday that cites the dangers of wildfires.

Whether the move will boost production remains to be seen. Former President Joe Biden’s administration also sought to ramp up logging on public lands to combat fires that are worsening as the world gets hotter, yet U.S. Forest Service timber sales dipped under the Democrat’s tenure.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins did not mention climate change in Friday’s directive.

Lawmakers want to protect WTC program

Legislators on both sides of the aisle outraged over drastic cuts to the agency that oversees the World Trade Center Health Program have fired off a letter to President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. demanding the pivotal services be restored.

In their letter, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., and several other legislators voiced concerns about Kennedy’s plans to eliminate the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s entire staff “in the next few days.”

Trump and Kennedy announced Tuesday they planned to lay off two-thirds of NIOSH staffers. Kennedy also fired Dr. John Howard, the World Trade Center Health Program’s administrator. Around 873 other positions are to be culled, Kennedy said.

Unions sue over membership limits

A group of federal employee unions has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration’s efforts to strip union representation from about 1 million federal workers, arguing that President Donald Trump had exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the unions’ rights.

The complaint, filed late Thursday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., is the latest development in the unions’ escalating battle with the administration over its attempts to slash the federal workforce and roll back the protections afforded to the civil service employees. Unions representing government workers have repeatedly sued over the efforts to cut jobs and dismantle offices and agencies, winning at least temporary reprieves in some of those cases.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order designating employees of about two dozen agencies as central to “national security missions,” a move explicitly designed to exclude them from federal unions, which the administration said were “hostile” to his agenda.

Trump rejects coverage of obesity drugs

The Trump administration on Friday rejected a Biden administration plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs and expanded access for millions of people.

Under the law that established Medicare’s Part D drug benefits, the program was forbidden from paying for drugs for “weight loss.” But the Biden administration’s proposal last November had attempted to sidestep that ban by arguing that the drugs would be allowed to treat the disease of obesity and its related conditions.

Expanding coverage of the drugs would have cost the federal government billions of dollars. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the federal expense would amount to about $35 billion over 10 years.

The decision announced Friday was part of a larger regulation updating parts of Medicare’s Part D drug benefits and Medicare Advantage, the private insurance plans that about half of Medicare beneficiaries now use.

— From news services