Michael Graetz has a new piece on the proposed IRS regulations, “A Presidential Assault on Pluralistic Democracy: The IRS’s Attack on Private Schools” (Tax Notes, Sept. 18, 2026). I believe the full text is not behind a paywall. Here’s how it starts:

On September 4 the IRS published proposed regulations (REG-119986-25) that, if finalized, would provide that any college, university, or other private school would no longer be an organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) if it “discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational, admissions, scholarship, athletic, or other policies.” The proposed regulations would deny exemption from income taxes for private schools, colleges, universities, and trade or professional schools, and would also deny charitable deductions for gifts or bequests to them. Any race-based action would be treated as discrimination, regardless of the school’s or its donor’s intent or any “remedial or diversity-related objectives.”

The proposed regulations reflect the Trump administration’s determination to enlist the IRS and the tax law in its widespread and ongoing ideological and partisan attacks on nonprofit organizations—especially, but not only, the nation’s most selective colleges and universities. This is hardly surprising, given the administration’s relentless attacks on numerous elite universities, notably its well-publicized battles with Harvard, including attempting to freeze more than $2 billion of grants for medical and other research, curtailing its ability to enroll international students, and contending that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits government funding of institutions that discriminate based on race, color, or national origin. On April 15, 2025, President Trump suggested Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status; a couple of weeks later, he announced that the administration would take away Harvard’s tax exemption. By May 2025, only four months after Trump’s inauguration, his administration had started at least eight ongoing investigations by at least six different departments, including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, and Veterans Affairs, and had canceled or stopped payments on federal grants to Harvard amounting to nearly $4 billion.

Of course, Harvard is not the only university to be subjected to funding freezes, grant terminations, claims of antisemitism and/or racial discrimination, and threats to revoke its tax exemption. Trump has signed numerous executive orders targeting colleges and universities, and JD Vance, his vice president, has called universities “the enemy.” Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Brown, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and the University of Virginia have all had funding frozen, ranging from $175 million to nearly $1 billion, and been subjected to federal investigations often based on antisemitism or diversity, equity, and inclusion allegations. Presidents of Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Virginia have resigned faced with these pressures, and at least a half dozen have entered into settlements with the government, beginning with the University of Pennsylvania, soon followed by Columbia, whose payment of $200 million and other agreements, including an independent overseer, seem the most onerous. The proposed discrimination regulation may well prompt more settlements.