The Trump administration will direct U.S. federal agencies to review Harvard’s grants in order to end or redistribute funds, part of the White House’s ever-changing escalation with the oldest universities in the United States.

Senior White House officials said the Government Services Administration (GSA) plans to send a letter to the agency: "requesting them to determine any contract with Harvard University and whether it can be cancelled or redirected elsewhere."

The government estimates that about 30 contracts can be reviewed, worth $100 million (£74 million). It has frozen $2.2 billion in federal grants and revoked the ability of Harvard to enroll international students.

Harvard did not comment immediately.

The university said on its website that its "cutting-edge medical, scientific and technological research" has historically been supported by the federal government and other entities.

Touting the agency's research on cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and obesity, the university website warned: "Without federal funding, this work will stop midstream."

Instead of automatically revoking funds, the White House began to review the funds received by Harvard from the federal government to determine whether the funds were crucial in the eyes of the government.

The GSA will advise each agency to “each contract that determines failure to meet its standards for convenience” and consider redistribution of these funds to other entities.

The draft letter accused Harvard of discrimination and anti-Semitism as justification for the move.

A government official told the BBC that potential cuts would not affect Harvard-affiliated hospitals.

They say that if federal grants are considered critical to the function of a particular institution, the institution may provide funding for continued funding.

The White House and Harvard University are trapped in a political, legal and financial struggle — and their bets have escalated dramatically over the past two months.

This is not the first time the government has tried to stop Harvard's funding. In April, the White House frozen $2.2 billion in federal funds, prompting the university to file a lawsuit.

Last week, the Trump administration also revoked Harvard’s ability to recruit international students or host foreign researchers, causing massive chaos in thousands of affected students and another Harvard lawsuit.

"Why cut research funding? Of course, this hurts Harvard because research funding is not a gift," Harvard president Alan Garber told NPR Tuesday morning. ”

Mr. Garber continued: “Research funding is provided to universities and other research institutions for research work – a high priority work designated by the federal government.”

"What they want to do is work. They pay the price to do the job."

The Sinclair Lab at Harvard Medical School is a fund-cutting department that is studying aging and is trying to find interventions on Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, infertility, immune diseases, and more.

"Our goal is to understand and reverse the underlying mechanisms of aging to develop treatments for a variety of diseases and tissue injuries," Mr Sinclair told the BBC via email.

Under the Trump administration, the lab lost a NIH grant and researcher Kelly Rich lost a career grant to study age reversal to combat sports disease. The White House's move to revoke Harvard's ability to host international researchers affected six people - half of the lab staff.

"The loss of funds not only stops the ongoing experiments, which cannot simply be restarted, but also harms the contribution of international scholars who are indispensable to laboratory operations and American wealth," Sinclair said.

Adam Nguyen, a Harvard alumnus and founder of admissions consulting firm Ivy Link, said the brunt of the potential "huge negative" impact will fall among graduate and doctoral students. He noted that academics from the United States and abroad rely on external funding for research.

"If you have cuts, they're in office," said Mr Nguyen. "It's simple. There's no money to fund their research.