Former Republican Senate staffer Amanda Carpenter on MSNBC on August 12, 2025

Amanda Carpenter — a political commentator and former staffer to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) — said Tuesday that the ongoing negotiations between Harvard University and President Donald Trump's administration "look like eye-wateringly profitable shakedowns from an authoritarian administration that will further fuel their operation."

Harvard and the Trump administration are presently engaged in discussions to reinstate the university’s federal funding. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the emerging terms stipulate that Harvard would allocate $500 million to educational and vocational initiatives. In exchange, the administration would restore federal funding and withdraw all pending investigations against the university.

During an appearance on MSNBC to discuss the reported deal, Carpenter said, "The fact that Harvard thinks they can negotiate the best deal for their institution is where we start to have these problems. Because if you think that the Trump administration is approaching these as deals, as if they're going to apply the rules fairly and treat their targets with respect and have some kind of even rule‑based law to this, they're mistaken."

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She continued: "And we know this is mistaken because look at what they did last week. They looked at what Harvard's doing. Harvard says, 'yes, we're willing to pay half $1 billion,' which is a tremendous amount of money. Axios has calculated that to date, since Donald Trump came into office for a second term, he secured more than $1.2 billion total in these kinds of extractions."

"So what did they do? The Trump administration went to UCLA and said, we want a billion, because this is how these kinds of attacks works. And I view these as a kind of ransomware attack," Carpenter added.

According to Carpenter, institutions like Harvard and UCLA can put an end to Trump's financial "shakedowns" by sticking to two rules: Don't agree to send any money to the administration, and actively communicate with each other to form a united "kill chain" to institutions under threat can unite as one.

"Do not pay. Because an attack on one institution is an attack on them all," she said.

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