The Trump administration told Harvard University on Thursday it no longer would be allowed to enroll international students, a significant escalation in President Trump’s war against the university.

Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ordered Harvard to be taken off the Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification.

Along with not allowing new foreign students, the DHS said the thousands of current foreign-born students at Harvard “must transfer or lose their legal status.”

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.

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A federal judge on Thursday temporarily reinstated hundreds of Education Department workers laid off by the Trump administration and blocked the president's executive order attempting to dismantle the decades-old agency.

District Court Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, said the White House's decision to fire more than 1,300 workers in March has prevented the federal government from effectively implementing legally required programs and services.

At the request of a coalition of states, he granted a preliminary injunction to rehire the staffers while a lawsuit plays out over whether the employees were illegally fired.

States and school districts are experiencing "delays and uncertainty in their receipt of federal educational funding, amounting in the millions, which jeopardize their missions of ensuring an educated citizenry and providing quality education," the judge wrote in the order. "Such delays and uncertainty raise immediate predicaments about whether there will be sufficient staff and student programming for the 2025-2026 school year and hinder long term planning."

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Just months after being freed through a pardon from President Trump, two men convicted of felonies for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol scored visits to the secure grounds of the White House.

During their visit, the men took turns posing for pictures and videos behind the lectern in the White House press briefing room.

"Thank you so much President Trump, if you're seeing this, we appreciate you setting us free," said Shane Jenkins, in a video he posted on social media.

Jenkins, who had a criminal record before Jan. 6, was sentenced to seven years in prison for assaulting police protecting the Capitol and using a metal tomahawk to try to smash a window. The day after the attack, Jenkins wrote in a text message, "I have murder in my heart and my head."

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