The Brief

California colleges and universities are still missing over $5 million worth of humanities grants, despite one federal district court order to return funds to University of California campuses. For at least 19 other campuses, the money remains out of reach as lawsuits continue to challenge the Trump administration's abrupt halt of promised funding in April, when the National Endowment for the Humanities canceled over $10.2 million to already-awarded projects in California.

Now campuses must scramble for limited, alternative funding if they want to keep their projects alive.

For students like Kathleen Boswell, a teaching credential student at Cal State San Bernardino, the loss affects their professional advancement. Boswell and fellow teaching credential students were ready to participate in the first cohort of the “Inland Empire Project,” originally to launch this fall. This project would have provided training and curriculum for current and prospective K-12 teachers to use local history to talk about national topics, such as world wars. Boswell especially looked forward to testing new approaches to connect students with American history.

“Kids get really excited when history is in their grasp,” she said. “If they can connect to local history, they can connect to the broader scope of history. It's a domino effect.”

Student Kathleen Boswell stands in front of the John M. Pfau Library at Cal State San Bernardino on Sept. 8, 2025.

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Elisa Ferrari

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CalMatters

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President Trump announced plans to gut the National Endowment for the Humanities in his most-recent budget, starting with cutting two-thirds of the agency’s staff. The agency is the largest public funder of the humanities nationwide, created alongside the National Endowment for the Arts after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act into law in 1965. The law asserts that the arts are vital to democracy. Ever since, NEH awards represent a coveted prize in the humanities field.

Earlier this year, the agency announced major ideological shifts for the types of projects it would support to comply with the president’s executive orders. Those orders aim to eliminate federal funding for programs that promote such ideals as diversity, gender equity, and environmental justice.

During the first three days of April, letters went out to most NEH grant recipients stating that their funding was terminated. A letter sent on April 2 to Cal State San Bernardino states that, “NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.” The termination was effective immediately.

CalMatters reached out to all 29 California campuses that had ongoing NEH-funded projects at that time, as listed on the federal grant tracker USA Spending. CalMatters found that every California campus but one had their funding cut by confirming with public information officers at each college and checking the American Historical Association’s database of terminated NEH grants.

The only campus spared, the California Institute of Technology, confirmed its funding for the Einstein Papers Project remained intact. The collection houses more than 90,000 of Albert Einstein’s written records.

Terminated projects covered a wide variety of topics, from digitizing the history of Catherine the Great at the University of Southern California to the creation of a minor in human rights and border studies at San Diego State University. Some colleges were in the midst of their project spending when they received the news, while others were slated to start in the upcoming months. Canceled grants ranged from about $23,000 to over $500,000. USC’s canceled projects totaled over $1.2 million.

UC researchers then sued federal agencies. In that case, Thakur v. Trump, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction in June ordering the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Endowment for the Humanities to reinstate grants to the UCs that were not given a grant-specific explanation as to why they were chosen for termination. That case is still ongoing.

Two other lawsuits over the grant cancellations have been filed by humanities groups on behalf of thousands of individual and institutional members. One lawsuit is led by The Author’s Guild and the other by the American Council of Learned Societies. Although the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York consolidated the two cases, the federal judge in both cases granted a preliminary injunction against the NEH in July only for The Author’s Guild case. However, the judge did not order the grants be returned, but instead be held until the case is tried.

As for the other lawsuit led by the American Council of Learned Societies, along with the American Historical Association and Modern Language Association of America, the same judge denied a preliminary injunction, stating they lack standing to sue the NEH for making such institutional cuts as firing employees and discontinuing programs. A hearing in the case is scheduled for today.

Over 40 universities and research institutions in California are members of the American Historical Association, including Cal State Bakersfield, which had to cancel its “California Dreamin’” project.

Jennifer Self, the university spokesperson, told CalMatters in an email that “at this point, the money is on pause and has not been reinstated and everyone is waiting for how this will play out.” Cal State Bakersfield had been awarded $183,000 for a partnership with Bakersfield College to bring high school teachers from around the country to visit historic sites and learn about the history of immigration and agriculture in the Central Valley. Teachers had already been sent their acceptance letters for the workshop when the funding was cut and the project had to be canceled.

Humanities projects take a huge hit

When Michelle Lorimer, the historian and professor at Cal State San Bernardino leading the Inland Empire Project, received the termination notice, she was devastated. For Lorimer, this award represented several months of research, gathering educators and establishing specific programming and curriculum goals. She says the experience has changed the way she looks at federally funded grants.

“I'm not going to apply for federal funding right now for the work that we're doing. That would be a waste of time,” Lorimer stated. “ It's really time-consuming writing these applications, so honestly it would need to be something that I'd feel confident that we'd have a shot at — not something I'm trying to pigeonhole our work into.”

The NEH initially approved the Inland Empire Project for nearly $150,000 to roll out over a period of three years. The project was to create a framework of teaching that uses local history as a method to demonstrate broader U.S. historical topics, such as segregation, redlining and environmental injustice. Teachers in local schools, as well as aspiring history teachers from Cal State San Bernardino, would have received this curriculum and tools to use in classrooms.

Lecturer Michelle Lorimer stands in front of the John M. Pfau Library at Cal State San Bernardino on Sept. 8, 2025.

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CalMatters

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Lorimer has looked for alternative funding, but grants of this size are rare and she anticipates that private grants will only get more competitive. Certain private grants are by invite only. Lorimer said that although her college is a member of the American Historical Association, she is not getting her hopes up that the funds might be returned.

Michael Kerp, an assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino, had planned to create curriculum about the Salton Sea, focusing on environmental and civil rights. He said that the cuts don’t just hurt the university, but the surrounding community.

“There are thousands of high school students who would have benefited from learning about their communities, understanding how to make change in their communities and working closely with their teachers and local leaders in the region,” Kerp said. “Underserved school districts had this opportunity, and now it's gone.”

Kerp plans on helping Lorimer downsize the project, and has been able to secure some smaller philanthropic funding through the university. He agrees that applying for future federal funding under the current administration is likely a waste of time.

Other projects halted include $171,000 for an institute at San Jose State open to K-12 teachers, librarians, and administrators highlighting the immigrant experience through history and literature. Another project was awarded to Saint Mary’s for over $50,000 for an architectural and engineering assessment of the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art building with the goal of someday making it the first carbon-neutral building on campus while preserving their collections. Cal State Dominguez Hills was to receive $141,000 to conduct an ethnographic study of Chat GPT’s influence in California and Hawaiian classrooms.

Three California private universities receive new NEH grants

Despite Trump's calls to dismantle the NEH, the organization announced on Sept. 15 it is awarding $10.4 million, the largest single grant it has ever awarded, to the New York-based Jewish organization Tikvah to “examine Jewish history, culture and identity in the broader context of Western history,” according to a NEH press release. In August, the NEH also announced that it merged seven grantmaking offices into four divisions and appointed new heads to those divisions.

Since May, the agency has also allocated over $44 million in grants to universities and organizations for research and preservation projects, including for an initiative called “A More Perfect Union,” which celebrates the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Three California private universities have received these new grants.

Two awards were given to the University of Southern California — $60,000 for the development of a book on the history of Jerusalem from 1099–1187 and over $249,000 to process and digitize historical archives relating to Southern California’s first African American Baptist church. The university had four NEH projects spanning over $1 million cut in the spring for programs including a history project that would have created an augmented reality of a long-lost Chinatown area of Los Angeles. Another project would have funded 18 academic conversations between humanities experts and the public regarding the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and reframing the conversation in a way that is inclusive of underrepresented groups like Native Americans.

A single award was given to National University, a private nonprofit university located in San Diego, in the amount of $100,000 for a project titled, “Legacies of War: Memorials and Memories of the American Civil War & the Vietnam War.” Pepperdine University, a private Christian university located in Malibu, also received $30,000 for a project focused on the role of Christianity and the bible in the “American founding.”

Given the new executive orders limiting the scope of what is now acceptable for a federally funded grant, the NEH website gives the following advice to prospective applicants: “We encourage you to read the relevant Executive Orders and consider whether your project’s topic — jointly with its goals, methodology, activities, and intended audience — seems allowable.”

Lylah Schmedel-Permanna is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.