The Brief

California State University says it’s short $2.3 billion, a staggering budget gap that’s grown sharply since the system first revealed two years ago that it didn’t have the money to properly educate its students.

How the nation’s largest public four-year university system will generate that revenue is anyone’s guess, as annual tuition increases of 6% that kicked in last year and an influx of state taxpayer support have been insufficient to pay for Cal State’s growing labor, energy and education expenses.

The details of that cumulative gap were unveiled at the bimonthly Cal State Board of Trustees meeting this week.

More state support is increasingly unlikely, as California budget experts forecast multi-billion-dollar budget shortfalls worsened by severe federal cuts to major public safety-net programs, like Medicaid, and possible cuts to financial aid.

The funding shortfall, which doesn’t include billions of dollars in building maintenance backlogs, is a large portion of the system’s roughly $9 billion operating budget.

“This growing gap demonstrates why we need immediate action to achieve financial sustainability,” said Jeni Kitchell, an assistant vice chancellor for finance of Cal State. “We cannot sustain our current level of funding, especially while operating from a position of underfunding.”

The system fought off a $375 million proposed cut to its state allocation this year, instead receiving a $144 million cut — a 3% reduction in its state support. Lawmakers are offering Cal State a zero-interest loan to make up for that cut and promised to restore the money next year.

Already Cal State has cut more than 1,200 staff positions across the system in the past two years, reduced student support staff by 7% and terminated 1,400 courses during a period of ongoing budget deficits.

Without an infusion of cash, the system will have to shift money from some of its initiatives — including improving graduation rates — just to cover mandatory costs, such as health care, insurance, utilities, financial aid and agreed-upon union raises, Cal State leaders said. In such a scenario, system documents show, campuses may have to continue the cost-cutting they’ve implemented recently, which has included layoffs, reducing job categories, cutting courses and leaving job vacancies unfilled.

This year’s budget gap is $164 million.

State promises of more funding ‘violated’

Some Cal State trustees said they are frustrated that Gov. Gavin Newsom delayed his promises of five years of increasing state support, which was supposed to total more than $1 billion. Only three years of that compact have been funded to date; the fourth, which was supposed to kick in this year, will instead be spread out between 2026 and 2028, lawmakers and Newsom decided in the most recent state budget deal. Lawmakers didn’t signal a fifth year of compact funding, though they may in next year’s budget deal.

“We were promised a five-year compact,” said Jack McGrory, a Cal State trustee. He argued that Cal State trustees approved 10% or more in salary increases for workers the past two years based on those promises. “We did rely on the promise, and the promise was violated, and that's the story that we have to tell, and it's unfortunate, and it's going to put our relationships with the unions and our employees in a really bad situation,” McGrory added.

If the compact money or the $144 million state spending cut aren’t restored, Cal State won’t be able to grow student enrollment at a time when more high school graduates are completing the courses needed to be eligible for Cal State admissions. The system currently enrolls 460,000 students.

“How do we enroll more students if we do not have the resources to hire more faculty, to provide more staff support,” add mental health counselors and more free-food programs for Cal State’s largely low-income students, asked Patrick Lenz, the interim chief financial officer of Cal State.

Cal State has been trying to slow its spending. The chancellor’s office is cutting its budget by $18 million, or 8%, trustees learned at this week’s meeting. Several campuses in the Bay Area are consolidating their administrative offices to lower expenses. And last fall the system approved the merging of two campuses to avoid millions of dollars in new spending.

Unions say they’re owed raises

Meanwhile, thousands of employees are in a dispute with Cal State leadership over whether their union contracts guarantee them raises this year. The contracts say that if lawmakers fully fund the Cal State system, some of its workers get raises.

Cal State’s leadership says that because state lawmakers reduced the system’s funding by $144 million, they can’t give raises. Unions say because the state is allowing Cal State to borrow that money as a zero-interest loan, the system is fully funded. Cal State says borrowing money isn’t the same as being fully funded by the state. System leaders also lack confidence that the state will restore the $144 million cut next year. If the money doesn’t appear next year, Cal State would be stuck with a loan that adds to their budget crisis.

At least two state lawmakers are siding with unions. “Damn it, we are here to send a clear message. Do you hear us? Because guess what, if they don't get what they deserve, we're going to shut the s— down,” said Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Democrat from Gardena, at a press conference outside the system’s headquarters Tuesday morning. He was addressing Cal State’s chancellor and other leaders who were assembled yards away for their meeting.

“With everything going on with ICE, we don't need to add additional pressure on not only the students but the faculty here. They're already traumatized. Our state is already traumatized,” Gipson added.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, said he stands in “solidarity” with union workers to “to call on the chancellor and the trustees to keep your promise.”

The California State University Employees Union, with 35,000 clerical, custodial and student assistant members, says that the raises they think they’re owed are worth $30 million more than what Cal State plans to give them.

Erin Foote, a vice president for organizing for the union, said in an interview that Cal State leaders should partner with the union in pushing for legislation or a ballot measure to ensure Cal State and University of California have guaranteed funding. “It costs millions of dollars to run a revenue measure, and we would need the CSU to be our partner,” Foote said.

Cal State’s cash reserves are at $760 million — enough to operate the system for a month.

How Cal State’s budget shortfall grew

How did Cal State’s cumulative funding gap grow from $1.5 billion to $2.3 billion since 2023? Chancellor’s office staff point to these latest budget realities:

• $143.8 million: the amount of Cal State’s cut in state support this year
• $310.5 million: the growth in labor costs
• $322 million: the budget shortfalls at Cal State’s campuses the past three years

In that same time, Cal State’s revenue grew, but not by enough to cover the increase in costs. State funding that goes to the system’s operating budget — the corpus of money to pay for its education mission — grew from $4.5 billion to $4.87 billion last year. State support is Cal State’s largest source of funding for its operations. And the system’s tuition revenue jumped from $3.24 billion to $3.53 billion. Combined, those are increases of almost $700 million, according to the system’s financial transparency portal.

Next year is projected to be more of the same fiscal hurt.

Cal State budget officials say that the system will incur $365 million in new, mandatory costs in 2026-27, including $63 million in increased staff health care premiums and about $160 million in wage increases. That amount doesn’t include growing enrollment by the 3,500 students that the compact requires, which would cost $56 million.

For Cal State to afford the new, mandatory expenses, the state would need to return the 3% cut and a portion of the compact funding the system was supposed to get this year. None of that is a sure bet.

The funding they can rely on is new tuition revenue: students will be charged another 6% increase next fall.

Gov. Gavin Newsom took his spat with President Donald Trump to the world stage Thursday, when he criticized the administration and corporate leaders he accused of “selling out” to the White House at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Newsom traded broadsides with U.S. officials throughout his three-day swing through the global confab in the Swiss Alps.

For Newsom, who is widely expected to mount his own campaign for the presidency in 2028, the event provided a new audience for his signature brand of Trump-bashing.

“We’re deeply in their head,” Newsom told news site Semafor’s co-founder Ben Smith in an on-stage conversation Thursday. “I think the affordability agenda appears to be — I’m living rent-free in the Trump administration’s head.”

The Davos drama between the White House and governor’s office escalated Wednesday after Newsom accused the Trump administration of working to block a speaking engagement the governor had planned on the sidelines of the conference.

“They made sure it was canceled,” Newsom said. “And that’s what is happening in the United States of America — freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech — it’s America in reverse.”

The Trump administration did not respond directly to questions about Newsom’s claim and referred to the governor using a misspelling of his name frequently used by Trump.

“No one in Davos knows who third-rate governor Newscum is or why he is frolicking around Switzerland instead of fixing the many problems he created in California,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.

The governor was in the room with business titans and world leaders Wednesday when Trump delivered a speech in which he called Newsom “a good guy” and appeared to offer to send National Guard troops to fight crime in California.

As Trump took credit for declining crime and criticized cities with sanctuary immigration laws, cameras panned to Newsom, who laughed and shook his head.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded Wednesday, accusing Newsom of “hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless,” and deriding the governor as “too smug, too self-absorbed and too economically illiterate to know anything.”

Bessent spoke at USA House, a privately funded venue holding events with American officials and executives, which was scheduled to host a “fireside chat” later that day between Newsom and media outlet Fortune.

The governor’s office accused the Trump administration of pressuring the venue’s organizers to cancel the event.

“I was going to speak last night … a simple conversation, discussion after Trump’s speech,” Newsom said. “They made sure that I didn’t.”

In his conversation with Smith, Newsom discussed his transformation to becoming one of America’s leading Trump critics — a strategy of “fighting fire with fire” with memes and online jabbing that has won admiration from Democrats across the country.

Though Newsom has attended the World Economic Forum previously, he credited his pugilistic approach for capturing attention in a fractured media environment.

“I was doing my 10-point plans before, and I don’t think any of you would have been here this morning had I done that,” Newsom said.

Asked whether California — where a majority of residents still believe the state is heading in the wrong direction — can be held up as a model of effective governance, Newsom responded that he is “proud of my state.”

“We have more Fortune 500 companies than any state in America, more scientists, more engineers, more Nobel laureates in my state than any state in America,” he said.

While Newsom criticized the business executives he said have failed to stand up to Trump, he also continued his public campaign against a proposed tax on billionaires that could appear on California’s November ballot.

The proposal, a one-time 5% tax on assets excluding real estate, was proposed by a health care union to raise money for safety-net programs in the wake of federal cuts.

While proponents of the measure are still collecting signatures to place the idea on the ballot, Newsom said high-income earners are already leaving the state in response. And he argued that the initiative’s focus on health care programs would leave less money for California schools.

“It’s a badly drafted initiative … that literally takes teachers and takes our educational system out of any consideration of support,” Newsom said.

The Trump administration has abandoned the legal defense of its campaign to strip federal funding from schools and colleges that promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The administration formally dropped its appeal Wednesday in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, leaving in place an August ruling from U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland.

A coalition of groups, including the American Federation of Teachers, challenged a “Dear Colleague” letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education in February, which targeted practices the administration said “toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism.’”

Gallagher said the federal government ran afoul of procedural requirements and violated the First Amendment with its letter, online portal to report discrimination, and other federal guidance.

“The government did not merely remind educators that discrimination is illegal,” Gallagher wrote in her August order, “it initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished.”

The latest legal development is “a victory for California students and families,” said Christopher Nellum, executive director of EdTrust-West, a nonprofit advocacy group that aims to dismantle racial and economic barriers in California’s education systems.

“The evidence is clear: diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies expand access and help close opportunity gaps,” Nellum said in a statement to EdSource. “Federal funding threats aimed at dismantling these efforts undermine public education and harm the students who need support most.”

Educators and advocates said that over the last year, the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives had a major effect on the landscape of both TK-12 schools and higher education, even in California.

“The damage has already been done across the nation and even in California, where people think we’re impervious to the conservative backlash or right-wing movement,” said Royel Johnson, who leads the Race and Equity Center’s National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates at USC.

Back in February, Johnson and other advocates for DEI policies said the federal government’s guidance was not law and warned institutions from overreacting to the February 2025 “Dear Colleague” letter. Johnson has seen schools cut funding or staff to departments and programs focused on underserved groups. Some institutions have also scrubbed references to race, ethnicity, the LGBTQ community, diversity or equity in favor of something more general like community, Johnson noted, including his own employer, USC.

Some educational institutions in California made subtle changes over the last year. EdSource found that California State University institutions scrubbed some diversity buzzwords from their programs and websites. At Stanislaus State, for instance, “diversity” was dropped from events once called the Presidential Diversity Celebration Series. At CSU Monterey Bay, the Office of Inclusive Excellence became the Office of Community and Belonging.

Johnson says something is lost when schools drop “identity safety clues” from spaces and organizations that serve as a beacon to students who “have a tough time seeing themselves on campus.”

Some institutions were undeterred by federal and political pressure. Johnson points to Sacramento State as an institution that “doubled down” on its commitment to Black students and was among three colleges designated a California Black-Serving Institution. The Los Angeles Unified School District put more money into its Black Student Achievement Plan, despite being sued by a conservative group that called the program discriminatory.

The latest development is a legal victory that establishes support for the values of equity and inclusion, said John Rogers, a professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies. But he says the Trump administration’s tactics were successful in disrupting education over the last year.

“One of my concerns is that the strategy of the Trump administration is to disrupt and instigate a sense of conflict within local communities,” Rogers said.

He points to other actions taken by the Trump administration that have also been disruptive, such as canceling protections for schools against immigration enforcement or targeting policies that are aimed at supporting LGBTQ students, especially transgender students.

Johnson said that he hopes that schools and colleges can capitalize on this legal victory and stop self-censoring work under the banner of DEI that supports students and addresses the harms of the past. But he warns there will be more fights ahead.

“I hope folks can feel more emboldened today,” said Johnson. “It doesn’t mean more isn’t coming.”

Along busy streets in Long Beach’s Washington neighborhood, longtime resident Jesus Esparza says locals will consider just about anything to keep themselves safe from speeding drivers.

The latest idea: leaving reflective vests on the worst street corners so pedestrians can don them while crossing and leave them for the next passerby.

It’s a grassroots tactic that illustrates their frustration with Long Beach’s increasingly deadly streets. In 2025, the city recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions, a sharp increase from 2024 and the most in more than 10 years.

Long Beach has been striving for years to make its roads safer. In 2016, the City Council said it hoped to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2026. It was their version of a Vision Zero plan that many municipalities have adopted.

But in the ensuing decade, Esparza, who leads the local neighborhood association, says he’s seen little progress. He’s regularly passed along residents’ requests for traffic-calming measures — things like adding more lighting or delaying green lights so pedestrians get a head start in a crosswalk. But, he said, he’s yet to see any effective measures installed.

“We would always ask for speed bumps or speed tables,” Esparza said in Spanish, “but they don’t put them [on our streets.]”

Despite a rise in deadly crashes, a spokesperson for Long Beach’s Public Works Department, which manages streets, said the city is still confident in its strategy.

Its “core principles” include protecting pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists by slowing down drivers, Public Works spokesperson Jocelin Padilla wrote in an email. Those plans “remain unchanged.”

She said speeding is a primary factor in the city’s most serious crashes. Bad driver behavior, such as impairment and distraction, is also to blame.

Their greatest toll has been on people outside of cars. Last year, 32 people were killed while walking, biking or riding an e-scooter. That eclipses the number of people murdered here last year: 29.

Other residents have also pressed for faster action.

On another dangerous section of roadway along Orange Avenue, resident Kelsey Wise said she’s seen countless near misses. In response, she spent hours putting together a PowerPoint presentation to convince the city to install speed humps on Orange Avenue between Seventh Street and Hellman Avenue.

Wise estimated that roughly half of the drivers on her street travel above the posted 25 mph speed limit — a habit she finds increasingly troubling when teenagers from the nearby school zip through her neighborhood on electric scooters and e-bikes.

Last month, Wise presented the information to Councilmember Mary Zendejas’ office, who told her they would refer the presentation to Public Works. She’s yet to hear anything back.

“I think the system right now is designed to respond once something catastrophic happens, not when residents are signaling that something catastrophic is likely to happen,” Wise said.

Public Works told the Long Beach Post that seemingly simple fixes like the speed bumps Esparza and Wise asked for aren’t feasible. Its engineers prefer other “traffic calming treatments.” Speed humps slow down emergency response vehicles and the department has received “objections to noise” caused by drivers hitting them, Padilla wrote in an email.

Padilla said they instead favor “bulb outs” that extend curbs into the street at a crosswalk and “diverters” — islands that separate bicyclists from regular traffic and prevent cars from turning into neighborhoods or where it’s unsafe.

Over the past few years, the city has “made meaningful investments” to redesign major corridors with those principles in mind, Padilla wrote. Last May, Long Beach celebrated the completion of a $44.2 million project that installed protected bike lanes, new crosswalks and other traffic safety features on Artesia Boulevard.

On Tuesday, the City Council voted to approve reducing speed limits on dozens of streets.

Kurt Canfield, an organizer with local street safety group Car-Lite LB, said he was skeptical that speed limit reductions would slow down drivers unless it ramps up enforcement. Cops have been writing fewer speeding tickets since the pandemic.

The city has pivoted to relying on automated enforcement. Officials plan to install speed cameras at 18 locations throughout the city, but they’re not scheduled to be installed until the summer. They’ll then start issuing warnings to drivers until fines begin in the fall.

Canfield said he hopes last year’s high death toll will be an outlier.

“I think people are wanting to get back out and bike and walk, but as more people start doing that, now we have what essentially amounts to more targets to be victimized,” Canfield said.

The high death toll, he said, doesn’t mean the city’s approach is wrong, Canfield said.

“It just means that we need to try more, we need to continue building safer streets and changing behaviors because it does work,” he said.

It was short lived, but the wintry spell that graced Southern California is leaving the area. We're in for dry, sunnier weather this weekend and warmer weather early next week.

Today's highs will again be mostly in the mid-60s along the coast, topping out around 67 degrees in the valleys and Inland Empire.

Coachella Valley will see highs from 67 to 72 degrees. Meanwhile, in the Antelope Valley, cooler conditions will continue with highs from 54 to 64 degrees.

This weekend will be fairly windy across SoCal starting Saturday evening. The National Weather Service forecasts winds from 15 to 25 mph across L.A. County mountains and hills. Come Sunday, winds will be strongest in Inland Empire and inland Orange County, where gusts could range from 30 to 40 mph.