Trump seeks $1-billion fine against UCLA. Newsom says ‘we’ll sue,’ calling it extortion

A few hours after the Trump administration demanded that the University of California paid a million dollars to settle federal anti -Semitism accusations in exchange for restoring the funding for frozen grants to the UCLA, Governor Gavin Newsom called the “extortion” proposal and said that the state would go to court to protect the country’s leading university system.

“We will continue”, Newsom at a press conference with Texas legislators on California’s efforts to counter a controversial republican redistribution plan in this state.

President Trump “tries to silence academic freedom” by “attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States in America,” said Newsom, adding that he “would remain big and reject this, and I believe that each member of the California legislature feels the same”.

On Friday, the federal government said that UC should pay the fine of $ 1 billion in payments and contribute $ 172 million to a fund for Jewish students and other people affected by alleged violations of title VII of the civil rights law. The status covers illegal discrimination linked to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, including Jewish and Israeli identity.

In addition, the Trump administration required radical campuse changes encompassing protests, admissions, gender identity in sports and housing, abolition of scholarships for racial or ethnic groups and submission to an external instructor on the agreement.

“He threatened us with extortion with a fine of a billion dollars, unless we make his auctions,” said Newsom.

“We will not be accomplices of this type of attack on academic freedom against this extraordinary public institution. We are not like some of these other institutions,” he said.

The governor seemed to refer to controversial and expensive agreements that the Trump administration obtained from the universities of Columbia and Brown concerning accusations similar to those confronted with the UCLA, Newsom offers have criticized public remarks a day earlier.

Friday, in a press release, the president of the UC James B. Milliken, who oversees the 10 campus system which includes the UCLA, also seemed to postpone demand.

“As a public university, we are the guardians of taxpayers and a payment of this scale would completely devastate the largest public university system in our country, as well as to harm our students and all Californians,” said Milliken. “The Americans of this great nation rely on the vital work of the UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, increase the American economy and protect our national security.”

Milliken, who declared that UC “examined” the conditions, did not share the details of the federal proposal, which, according to sources, had been sent for the first time to the media before landing in UC reception boxes on Friday morning.

Four senior UC officials, speaking of context because they were not allowed to comment on the negotiations publicly, confirmed the details of the proposal to the Times. An official of the White House who spoke in the background also confirmed the financial figures.

A spokesman for the Chancellor of the UCLA, Julio Frenk, referred the Times to the Milliken Declaration. Federal negotiations are managed at a level at the UC scale.

UC is struggling with the way of restoring $ 584 million in frozen medical and scientific subsidies in the UCLA. If the agreement was accepted, it would be the largest regulation between a university and the Trump administration, far exceeding an agreement of $ 221 million that Columbia University announced last month. Harvard will also envisage a regulation involving a heavy fine.

“We will never accept this,” said one of the UC officials who participates in the deliberations with the Trump administration. “It’s more money than that frozen at the UCLA. So how does it make sense? “

But another senior UC official said that the figure was understandable if he has resolved all federal surveys through the system, even if UC cannot be ultimately. The federal proposal focuses only on the UCLA, not all campuses.

All payment would be a political responsibility for the university and state leaders in deep California, where Trump policies are very unpopular. A billion dollars would constitute a financial burden for a university system that already faces a job freeze, budgetary pressures, deferred state funding and disgruntled layoffs.

The CU and individual campuses are under several federal surveys on the alleged use of the race in admissions, discrimination in terms of employment with regard to the Jews, the complaints of the civil rights of Jewish students and the inappropriate reports of foreign donations.

The UCLA has faced the greatest number of government accusations of any UC or public university, many of which were linked to a 2024 pro-Palestinian camp.

The camp, which unexpectedly demanded the deactivation of the University of arms companies related to the War of Israel in Gaza, was targeted in a violent night attack last spring and was then the subject of a federal trial by pro-Israeli Jewish students. The students, with a professor, accused the UCLA of having allowed anti-Semitism by not closing the camp, which, according to the complainants, blocked the pro-Israeli Jews of the Campus tracks. The UCLA has set the prosecution for $ 6.45 million, including more than $ 2 million in donations to Jewish non -profit organizations.

The Trump administration’s Friday’s offer follows a game book similar to the agreements he concluded with Columbia and Brown Universities to restore federal funding and resolve allegations of civil rights against Jewish and Israeli students.

Trump wants to redo universities, which he called “Marxist” homes of liberalism and anti-Israeli feeling. During his second term, federal agencies suspended or canceled billions of federal medical and scientific scholarships linked to gender problems, LGBTQ + or in response to the campuses he accuses of being anti -Semitic. The White House has also attacked the diversity programs of the campus and admission practices as being illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.

University leaders have challenged the idea that reducing medical research helps protect the Jewish people. “This large -scale sanction funding for vital research does nothing to deal with any alleged discrimination,” said Frenk, the Chancellor of the UCLA, in a letter from the campus this week.

At the UCLA, Trump’s requests include the end of the scholarships which focus on the race or ethnicity, the sharing of admission data with the government and changes in the campus protest rules. The Trump administration also proposes that the UCLA Health and the Faculty of Medicine will cease the care of the sexes for transgender people.

UC has already revised practices in certain areas requested by the Trump administration – including the ban on protest camps and the abolition of declarations of diversity in hiring.

The Trump administration also says that it wants an outdoor instructor to oversee the agreement.

The proposal one day came after Newsom said UC should not look “on his knees” to Trump. Newsom, a democrat, trained as an anti-top figure and envisaged a presidential race in 2028.

The university system, managed by Milliken – which only assumed its role last week – and the Board of Regents, is independent under the Constitution of the State. But the governor can exert a political influence on the regents, whose members he appoints. Newsom also has an ex-officio SEAT on the board of directors.

“It is much more the temperament of a injured person who is currently president of the United States,” said Newsom on Thursday.

Kaleem reported Los Angeles and Wilner from Washington. The staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento and Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.