In Trump’s letter requesting a $1.2 billion settlement to UCLA

At a rally planned today at UCLA, UCLA and the broader UCLA faculty associations are taking a victory lap and calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to join their fight against President Donald Trump’s demands for a $1.2 billion settlement with the storied state university.

The federal administration A 27-page settlement proposal was released Friday after the UCLA Faculty Association and the University of California Council of Faculty Associations sued the state university for disclosing the information under the California Public Records Act. The proposal outlines the administration’s vision for higher education that is free from efforts to promote diversity and transgender inclusion.

The university system argued that publicizing the proposal would cause it to “irreparable harm” during ongoing negotiations with the administration, but released the information after California the high court judge ordered itand the state Supreme Court denied his appeal.

UCLA is currently fighting administration attempts to force it to pay $1.2 billion after the U.S. Department of Justice in July accused the university of not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism during last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allegedly violating federal civil rights law. Newsom characterized the fine as “extortion,” and UC President James Milliken said the settlement payment would “completely devastated” the university system.

In issuing the requests, the Trump administration initially withheld more than $500 million in UCLA research grants. But its impact remains unclear now that a federal judge has ordered the administration to restore nearly all of those subsidies in August and September.

Some of the administration’s requirements require UCLA to:

• Hire a senior administrator to review UCLA’s policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and eliminate “identity-based preferences” in faculty hiring and grant programs.
• Prohibit the use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any reference to an applicant’s racial identity as a means of introducing or justifying discrimination” in the admissions process. (A 2023 US Supreme Court Decision already prohibits admissions based on race, although students are free to submit essays detailing how race has affected their lives.)
• Prohibit the UCLA School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals from performing gender confirmation surgery or hormone therapy on patients under the age of 18.
• Make a public statement that you will comply Trump’s executive order which recognizes male and female as the only two sexes.
• Ban transgender student athletes from participating in women’s sports.
• Create a process so that “foreign students who are likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or anti-Semitic disruption or harassment” are not admitted to UCLA. (This seems to contradict the letter’s purpose of protecting “UCLA faculty and students from retaliation for expressing minority opinions or engaging in free expression.”)
• Develop teaching materials to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”

Some of the administration’s demands are now UC policy, including the elimination of diversity claims in faculty hiring, which UC banned earlier this yearand ban on night demonstrations in university places.

• Anna Markowitzpresident of the UCLA Faculty Association: If UCLA complies with the demands, “not only will today’s students and workers be harmed by this egregious federal overreach — but generations of Californians.”

More than 600 Jewish UC students, faculty and alumni also publicly opposed the settlement in an open letter published in August.

As California faces a potentially tough budget year, labor and health groups are pushing for a 2026 ballot measure that would impose lump sum tax for California billionaireswrites Kristen Huang of CalMatters.

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and St. John’s Community Health in Los Angeles offers a 5% wealth tax to the roughly 200 billionaires who live in the state. Unlike an income tax on one’s earnings, a wealth tax — which Newsom has historically opposed — imposes a tax on a person’s net worth, including assets such as property value, pensions and owned artwork. Supporters say the tax would generate about $100 billion in revenue that would go into a special fund for health care and K-12 education costs.

But Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — a nonprofit that lobbies for lower taxes — said the proposal could set a troubling precedent if passed. Over time, the tax “could reach all the way to the middle class” by targeting capital wealth, Shelley said.

Read more here.

with early in-person voting is now underway in some counties, let’s dive into some election news:

• ICE at the polls?: The possibility of immigration officials showing up at the polls during California’s Nov. 4 special election is a growing concern among some state officials and voters. Without providing evidence, Newsom earlier this month said he expected ICE and Border Patrol agents at polling places as part of the Trump administration’s effort to suppress Democratic voters. In a September survey of registered voters by the Latino Community Foundation, 53 percent said they planned to vote in person, and two-thirds said they were at least somewhat worried that ICE or Border Patrol agents might show up at the polls. Read more by Maya C. Miller of CalMatters.

• Trump sends election observers to California: Prompted by a request from the California Republican Party, the US Department of Justice said it would deploy election observers to five California counties on Election Day to “ensure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law.” Both parties regularly deploy election observers, and Brian Watkins, a former senior adviser to the state GOP, said the request is “perfectly normal.” But some California Democrats criticized the request as arming the Justice Department. Read more from Maya.