1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

From utilizing tax data to trace immigrants without legal status to threatening Harvard University's tax exemption, President Trump has been trying to use the IRS for his own political purposes, in ways that may seem unprecedented. But they're not. Former President Richard Nixon laid the groundwork more than four decades ago, when he tried to use the tax collector to punish his enemies and assist his friends. "One of the things that Nixon did consider was threatening the tax-exemptions of universities," says Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts. "And that sounds very familiar if you're reading the paper these days." Nixon was angry at universities for not cracking down on Vietnam War protesters. Trump has similarly complained about Harvard and other Ivy League schools not doing more to silence protests against the war in Gaza, amid an administration crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses. "We are going to be taking away Harvard's Tax Exempt Status," Trump wrote in a social media post. "It's what they deserve!" Trump is drawing on Nixon's old playbook, despite laws put in place after Watergate to prevent that kind of meddling by the White House. Stand up for the rule of law.