Hours after the Trump administration demanded that the University of California pay a $1-billion fine to settle federal accusations of antisemitism in exchange for restoring frozen grant funding to UCLA, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the proposal “extortion” and said the state will go to court to protect the nation’s premier university system.
“We’ll sue,” Newsom said during a news conference with Texas legislators over California’s effort to counter a contentious Republican redistricting plan in that state.
President Trump is “trying to silence academic freedom” by “attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States of America,” Newsom said, adding that he would “stand tall and push back against that, and I believe every member of California Legislature feels the same way.”
The federal government on Friday said UC should pay the billion-dollar fine in installments and contribute $172 million to a fund for Jewish students and other individuals affected by alleged violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The statute covers illegal discrimination related to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, including Jewish and Israeli identity.
In addition, the Trump administration demanded sweeping campus changes encompassing protests, admissions, gender identity in sports and housing, the abolition of scholarships for racial or ethnic groups, and submission to an outside monitor over the agreement.
“He has threatened us through extortion with a billion-dollar fine, unless we do his bidding,” Newsom said.
“We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom on this extraordinary public institution. We are not like some of those other institutions,” he said.
The governor appeared to be referring to controversial and costly deals the Trump administration secured from Columbia and Brown universities over charges similar to those facing UCLA, deals Newsom criticized a day earlier in public remarks.
In a statement Friday, UC President James B. Milliken, who oversees the 10-campus system that includes UCLA, also seemed to rebuff the demand.
“As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians,” Milliken said. “Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the U.S. economy, and protect our national security.”
Milliken, who said UC was “reviewing” the terms, did not share details of the federal proposal, which sources said was first sent to media outlets before landing in UC inboxes Friday morning.
Four UC senior officials, speaking on background because they were not authorized to publicly comment on negotiations, confirmed the proposal’s details to The Times. A White House official who spoke on background also confirmed the financial figures.
A spokesperson for UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk referred The Times to Milliken’s statement. Federal negotiations are being handled on a UC-wide level.
UC is grappling with how to restore $584 million in frozen medical and science grant funds to UCLA. If the deal was accepted, it would be the largest settlement between a university and the Trump administration, far surpassing a $221-million agreement that Columbia University announced last month. Harvard is also reportedly considering a settlement involving a hefty fine.
“We would never agree to this,” said one of the UC officials who is involved in the deliberations with the Trump administration. “It is more money than was frozen at UCLA. So how does that make sense?”
But another senior UC official said the figure was understandable if it resolved all federal investigations across the system, even if UC may not ultimately agree to it. The federal proposal focuses on UCLA only, not all campuses.
Any payment would be a political liability for the university and state leaders in deep-blue California, where Trump’s policies are highly unpopular. A billion dollars would be a financial burden for a university system that is already facing a hiring freeze, budget squeezes, deferred state funding and scattered layoffs.
UC and individual campuses are under multiple federal investigations into alleged use of race in admissions, employment discrimination against Jews, civil rights complaints from Jewish students and improper reporting of foreign donations.
UCLA has faced the most charges from the government of any UC or public university, many of them tied to a 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment.
The encampment, which unsuccessfully demanded the university divest from weapons companies tied to Israel’s war in Gaza, was targeted in a violent overnight attack last spring and was later the subject of federal lawsuit by pro-Israel Jewish students. The students, along with a professor, accused UCLA of enabling antisemitism by not shutting down the encampment, which plaintiffs said blocked pro-Israel Jews from campus pathways. UCLA settled the suit for $6.45 million, including more than $2 million in donations to Jewish nonprofits.
The Trump administration’s Friday offer follows a similar playbook to agreements it reached with Columbia and Brown universities to restore federal funding and resolve allegations of civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students.
Trump wants to remake universities, which he has called “Marxist” hotbeds of liberalism and anti-Israel sentiment. During his second term, federal agencies have suspended or canceled billions in federal medical and science grants related to gender, LGBTQ+ issues or in response to campuses it accuses of being antisemitic. The White House has also attacked campus diversity programs and admissions practices as being illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.
University leaders have challenged the notion that cutting medical research helps protect Jewish people. “This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk, the UCLA chancellor, said in a campus letter this week.
At UCLA, Trump’s demands include an end to scholarships that focus on race or ethnicity, the sharing of admissions data with the government and changes to campus protest rules. The Trump administration is also proposing that UCLA Health and the medical school cease gender-affirming care for transgender people.
UC has already overhauled practices in some areas called for by the Trump administration — including a ban on protest encampments and the abolition of diversity statements in hiring.
The Trump administration is also saying it wants an outside monitor to oversee the agreement.
The proposal came one day after Newsom said UC should not bend “on their knees” to Trump. Newsom, a Democrat, has fashioned himself as a national anti-Trump figure and is considering a presidential run in 2028.
The university system, run by Milliken — who assumed his role only last week — and the Board of Regents, is independent under the state Constitution. But the governor can exercise political sway over the regents, whose members he appoints. Newsom also holds an ex-officio seat on the board.
“It’s about so much more than the temperament of an aggrieved individual who happens to currently be president of the United States,” Newsom said Thursday.
Kaleem reported from Los Angeles and Wilner from Washington. Times staff Writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento and Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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