President Donald Trump recently froze more than $2 billion in federal funds earmarked for Harvard University for contracts and grants, but that may have only been an opening salvo in what could become a protracted legal battle.

Trump suggested in a Wednesday interview that billions more in federal funding for Harvard could soon be cut off or redirected to other recipients deemed more worthy of taxpayer support, Breitbart reported.

It seems likely that the president's remarks will be featured in an ongoing lawsuit filed by the university against the administration to unfreeze the federal funding it relies upon for research studies and other programs.

All federal funding for Harvard "may very well stop"

On Wednesday, President Trump participated in a town hall-style event with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo and guest co-hosts Bill O'Reilly and Stephen A. Smith, during which he was asked about the Harvard University funding freeze and revealed that the cuts could be made permanent or even expanded.

"Harvard gets four or five billion dollars a year from the United States government in the form of grants, and they have $53 billion," Trump said of the school and its endowment. "And yet they don’t treat the people right."

"They take foreign students, nobody knows where they come from. And they viciously hate our country," he continued. "And I’m saying if we’re going to give grant money, we want people in that school that are going to love our country, not people that are going to hate our country. They run a bad operation up there, and we have to get to the bottom of it."

"On top of that, they said they want to teach their students remedial mathematics. That’s basic math, two and two is four," Trump said of the elite university. "And you say, well, Harvard’s supposed to be so great, why do people have to have remedial, that’s basic, very simple mathematics? So, we’re looking into Harvard."

"But we give them billions of dollars a year, and that may very well stop," he added. "And that’s up to the president, it’s up to our government. We don’t have to grant their money. We can grant that money to people that really need it, and frankly, people that you’d rather have me give the money to, Stephen."

Trump admin freezes funds for Harvard

The Associated Press reported on April 15 that the Trump administration had frozen more than $2.2 billion in grant funding and more than $60 million in contracts with Harvard University after that school responded defiantly to a list of administration demands for reform.

Chief among those demands was that Harvard do more to effectively combat and limit antisemitism and anti-Israel activism on campus, which has created an unsafe environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students who've been threatened and attacked.

The administration also urged the school to end its obsession with "diversity, equity, and inclusion," or DEI policies, and focus more on merit for admissions and hiring, as well as to make alterations to its governance and leadership, among other things.

It was made clear at that time that upwards of $9 billion in total federal funding for Harvard was at risk if the university continued to refuse to acquiesce to the administration's insistence that the school abide by certain federal laws and policies.

Lawsuit filed over frozen funding

Harvard has remained defiant, however, and filed a lawsuit that seeks to unfreeze the federal funds amid accusations that the Trump administration violated federal laws and the university's constitutional rights in how the funding was cut off, according to CNN.

That legal fight could drag on for months or even years, and given the threat that the funding freeze could be expanded to include all taxpayer dollars earmarked for Harvard, it may even spin off additional lawsuits or end up at the Supreme Court eventually.