The Brief

A federal judge in California today ordered the Trump administration to restore 500 National Institutes of Health grants that it suspended at UCLA in July over accusations the campus tolerates antisemitism.

Judge Rita Lin’s decision provides researchers at the university a major respite as UCLA and University of California leaders contend with Trump’s demands for a $1.2 billion settlement over a litany of accusations, including that the campus permits antisemitism. It’s a claim that more than 600 Jewish members of the University of California community in a public letter say is “misguided and punitive.” Meanwhile, UCLA’s leadership highlighted its efforts to combat antisemitism days before Trump’s settlement demands.

“Cutting off hundreds of millions of research funds will do nothing to make UCLA safer for Jews nor diminish antisemitism in the world,” the public letter signed by UC Jewish professors, students, staff and alumni says.

Last week several UC faculty groups and unions sued to halt the administration from pursuing its settlement demands, describing them as an “unlawful threat of federal funding cuts” to “illegally coerce the UC into suppressing free speech and academic freedom rights.”

Lin’s decision follows her string of orders since June that have restored hundreds of other UC research grants from multiple agencies. Her injunction is preliminary; the trial is ongoing.

Today’s action restores virtually all of the 800 UCLA science grants the government froze in July — a value of more than $500 million. Lin’s order today of restoring 500 National Institutes of Health grants follows her decision last month that 300 National Science Foundation grants suspended in July be restored. The federal government complied with her August order by reversing the freezes.

The science grants pay for research into life-saving drugs, dementia, heart disease in rural areas, robotics education and a whole gamut of science inquiries across the country. They help fuel the country’s research enterprise and are the top source of federal research grants at the UC. The UC system has battled the Trump administration over various efforts to slash its funding since President Donald Trump’s second term began. The science funding is also a key source of income and training for graduate students, who are the next generation of publicly funded academics.

Lin’s latest order also restores three Department of Transportation grants and an unknown number of Department of Defense grants that the Trump administration terminated this year.

Lin gave lawyers for the Trump administration until Sept. 29 to submit a report confirming that they complied with her orders to restore the grants.

How we got here

In June, Lin issued a preliminary injunction, later upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that ordered the Trump administration to restore 114 National Science Foundation grants and several dozen other grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Endowment for the Humanities at all UC campuses.

Then in August, Lin sided with the lawyers for the researchers in undoing the funding freezes for the 300 National Science Foundation grants. The lawyers argued that the Trump administration’s surprising decision in late July to suspend those grants violated Lin’s June injunction.

Lin’s latest order similarly says that the federal government violated her June preliminary injunction when it suspended the 500 National Institutes of Health grants at UCLA, also in late July. Core to her rationale is that the science agencies terminated UC grants en masse, in violation of a law, the Administrative Procedure Act, that requires federal agencies to explain in individual detail why the grants were terminated. Her rationale echoes other federal district court rulings about grant terminations.

How this relates to recent Supreme Court decision

Lin’s decision also creates a potential opening for other researchers seeking to challenge their grant terminations after an August U.S. Supreme Court decision seemingly made that process harder.

In that decision, the high court said the right venue to sue to get a defunded grant restored is the little-known Court of Federal Claims, not a traditional district court. A slim majority of justices said that plaintiffs need to argue in the Court of Federal Claims to get their money back while they argue in a traditional district court to challenge the policy that led to the grant’s termination in the first place.

But Lin concluded that that Supreme Court decision can’t apply to the UC researchers because of a quirk in who can file suit in the Court of Federal Claims. Because research grants are contracts between a university and the federal government, only universities have “standing” to bring a suit to the Court of Federal Claims. The Supreme Court decision didn’t take on the issue of individuals, Lin wrote, but the high court justices still believed plaintiffs should have some way to argue that their funding should be restored.

Here’s how Lin’s order creates an opening: Lawyers for the federal government argued to Lin that because the plaintiffs are individual UC researchers and not the UC campuses themselves, they can’t sue at all to restore their grant funding. But Lin balked at that rationale at the Thursday hearing and in her written order Monday.

“The district courts are the only forum where the UC researchers could defend their constitutional and statutory rights, and the Ninth Circuit has already determined that they may bring their claims here. This Court will not shut its doors to them,” Lin wrote.

She added in her written order that the lawyers for the federal government presented an “extreme” view that the researchers couldn’t sue anywhere, even in the hypothetical scenario in which the federal government terminated “the federal funding of all Black researchers, or every researcher with an Asian last name — and the researchers would have nowhere to sue to undo those wrongs, unless their universities decided to sue in the Court of Federal Claims.”

What the Trump administration has argued

In justifying the grant suspensions in July, the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health each sent UCLA letters accusing the university of using race-based admissions, allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports and not doing enough to address antisemitism on its campus.

But California barred public campuses from admitting students based on race in 1996 when voters through a ballot measure ended the practice. Representatives from the two science agencies wrote in July that though UCLA maintains it doesn’t use affirmative action, its “holistic review” admissions process is de-facto race-based admissions.

The letter from the National Science Foundation said the agency believes that “UCLA’s ‘holistic review’ admissions process, which considers factors such as an applicant’s neighborhood/zip code, family income, and school profile — and invites the disclosure of an applicant’s race via personal statements — is a transparent attempt to engage in race-based admissions in all but name.” The letter from the National Institutes of Health was virtually identical.

While the Supreme Court in 2023 overturned the use of race in college admissions in a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that students are free to discuss their identities and how they overcame hardships in admissions essays.

“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts wrote.

All three criticisms in the agencies’ July letters match the policies Trump is pursuing through executive actions to reshape higher education and the federal government. They also mirror the policy playbook fleshed out in Project 2025, a conservative publication that has shaped Trump’s current term in office.

UCLA addresses antisemitism

The UCLA grant suspensions followed a federal Department of Justice report in July that accused the campus of not doing enough to address antisemitism, particularly related to events during last year’s pro-Palestine protests and encampment. The report came months after UCLA commissioned a task force to investigate antisemitism on campus and come up with recommendations that UCLA leaders said they’d implement.

Students and faculty protesting Israel’s war in Gaza have themselves accused UCLA of bias against them, including Arab, Muslim and Jewish UCLA community members.

Trump’s settlement demand “does not make Jewish students safer,” the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California said in a statement last month. The advocacy group is composed of 39 organizations that offer family services, political advocacy, immigration legal aid and other services.

The Jewish public affairs committee acknowledged several strides UC and UCLA made to curtail antisemitism and promote safer campuses. “Meaningful progress is already underway in California,” the group wrote.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board will vote Tuesday on a plan to eliminate jobs as the district contends with several years of spending more money than it brings in.

The reduction in force (RIF) vote is the first step in a monthslong process that could result in layoffs at the district’s central office and schools.

In meeting materials posted late Friday night, the district proposed issuing notices to thousands of employees and closing hundreds of additional positions at the central office.

The move would save approximately $250 million, part of an overall $1.4 billion “fiscal stabilization plan.”

“Even with approval,” the plan states, “with available reserves already being fully utilized, further reductions will be necessary based on the multi-year projections.”

Why is the board voting on potential job cuts?

For the last two years, the district has relied on reserves to backfill a multi-billion-dollar deficit. That deficit comes as enrollment has declined steeply but expenses have not.

There are more than 40% fewer students compared to the early 2000s. At the same time, as costs have increased, the district has not closed schools or significantly reduced staff. LAUSD hired more staff to support students during the pandemic, and now the federal relief dollars that initially funded those positions are gone.

What’s in the plan?

Reductions in force are proposed for several categories including “un-funded” positions, central office staff, and at schools that support higher needs students.

The RIF proposal would:

• Authorize notices to about 2,600 certificated and classified contract management employees and certificated administrators. (e.g. teachers, counselors, etc.)
• Close 657 central office and centrally funded classified positions. More than a third of these are IT technicians, by far the largest group.
• Reduce hours for 52 positions.
• Reduce pay for 22 positions.

“In total this represents less than 1% of the total Los Angeles Unified workforce,” the materials note.

It is unclear how many positions included in the proposed reduction in force will ultimately result in people being laid off. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a previous board meeting that a RIF did not guarantee layoffs, as staff could be reassigned to other positions or given the opportunity to transfer schools.

The district's budget outlook could also change as employees retire or move to jobs elsewhere, etc.

What happens now? 

LAUSD must vote on the reduction in force before March 15, the deadline for California school districts to notify staff they may be laid off. Decisions have to be finalized by the end of June.

In a letter sent earlier this month, the unions representing LAUSD teachers, support staff and principals asked the board to delay the RIF vote until there is more information available about state funding and the public has more time to understand the proposed cuts.

United Teachers Los Angeles members recently gave their leadership the power to call a strike if the union can’t reach a contract deal with the district.

How can I weigh in?

The board meets Tuesday at 10 a.m. Registration for public comment opens Monday at 9 a.m.( 24 hours before the meeting). Speakers can comment by phone or in person and are generally limited to two minutes.

You can also email all board members here or find your individual representative below or leave a voicemail message at (213) 443-4472, by 5 p.m. the day before the meeting .

In case you haven’t heard, a 3-year-old, female gray wolf was found last week near Lancaster.

Experts say it's the first time we’ve seen one of these carnivores in L.A. County in a century.

The young gray wolf is officially tagged as BEY03F. But Paula Ficara, executive director of the Apex Protection Project, has a better name.

“Everyone has decided to call her bae, which is really cute because that’s her number: B-E-Y. So for Valentines she can be your Bae: B-A-E,” Ficara said with a chuckle.

Ficara’s nonprofit has the mission of protecting captive-born wolves and wolf dogs, as well as wolves in the wild. They have a sanctuary in Acton, where 23 wolves live.

She said people have had a lot of questions about BEY: Is she sick? Is she a lone wolf?

“The truth is that ... the wolves are coming down. They’re migrating naturally back to their original habitat. ... She’s a young adult and she’s decided to go off in the hopes of starting her own family,” Ficara said.

It’s not impossible but unlikely that she’ll find a mate this far south. Ficara said she’s likely to go back home to Northern California if she can’t spot a partner within a couple weeks or so.

Steve Wastell, Ficara’s husband of 30 years and director of operations at Apex, explained their biggest concern while the wolf is in L.A. County.

“The last wolf that came down, almost this far, on his way back up, ended up being hit by a car. So that’s one of the biggest things that could happen to her,” Wastell said.

A male gray wolf, OR93, traveled as far down as Ventura County in 2021. But sadly, the wolf was hit by a vehicle and killed along Interstate 5 in Kern County.

It's part of the reason why Ficara and Wastell started the "Wolf Crossing" campaign. They’re encouraging people to post homemade wolf crossing signs at wildlife corridors, trailheads and other places where roads meet wild.

“Obviously, not everyone is going to slow down on the highway. But just to bring a little more awareness that there may be a wolf crossing,” Wastell said.

One of their first wolf crossing participants? A group of school-age kids who stopped by the sanctuary recently to learn about wolves and make a sign of their own to post in their area.

“They had just met most of our wolves here, face to face. And they were super excited about protecting and super excited about this wolf being down here. So they were like, 'Yeah, let's do it!'” Wastell said.

Wastell and Ficara are encouraging everyone to make a sign and post to social media in the hopes it will make L.A. a little more hospitable for our visitor from the north.

The Olympic medal is one of the most coveted awards that an athlete can receive. But at this year's Winter Games in Milan, medalists are celebrating cautiously.

"I was jumping in excitement and it broke," American skier Breezy Johnson said after earning her gold medal on Sunday. She warned other medalists "Don't jump in them."

Johnson is one of several athletes who reported their medals detaching from their ribbon and in one case, breaking in half.

American skier Breezy Johnson holds up her gold medal on the podium of the women's downhill event during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Feb. 8.

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Stefano Rellandini

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AFP via Getty Images

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At a press briefing on Tuesday, Olympic organizing committee spokesperson Luca Casassa said he was aware that there were issues with some medals. He added that a solution has been identified and encouraged athletes with faulty medals to return them for repair.

"As a precaution, we are re-checking all the medals to make sure that the athletes' joy can be really 360 degrees when they conquer something which is so precious and so important," Casassa said in Italian.

He didn't specify what the issue or the fix was.

This isn't the first time that Olympic medals needed to be replaced. After the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, athletes raised concerns that their awards, which famously included pieces of the Eiffel Tower, were tarnishing and corroding after the games.

Athletes report faulty medals, but continue to celebrate their achievements

The exact moment when German biathlete Justus Strelow's medal came loose was caught on camera. In a video that has since gone viral, Strelow's teammates are seen clapping when a clang can be heard. The camera pans to Strelow, who picks up his medal and tries to re-attach it to his ribbon — leading to an awkward halt in celebrations.

In a video posted on Instagram, Alysa Liu, a figure skater with Team USA, showed off her ribbon-less medal, alongside the words, "My medal don't need the ribbon."

While most of the medal snafus were limited to strap issues, Swedish cross-country skier Ebba Andersson told Swedish broadcaster SVT that her silver broke in two when it fell in the snow.

Johnson, the American skier, said a small rectangular piece — that was supposed to hold the medal and ribbon together — came apart, making her medal unwearable.

"I'm sure somebody will fix it. It's not crazy broken but a little broken," she said on Sunday.

A few days later, Johnson told Reuters that she received a replacement medal, but she would prefer to have her original back, noting that her new medal was not yet engraved.

"They couldn't fix it so they gave me a new one," she said. "Although I'm actually curious, because then I think some of the later ones they were able to fix. So now I'm kind of wondering if maybe I can get the old one back fixed."

Design flaw or manufacturing glitch?

This year's medals resemble two halves coming together. In a video, Raffaella Paniè, who serves as the Brand, Identity and Look Director at this year's Winter Games, said it was meant to symbolize how each victory is the result of the athlete, as well as their team of family, coaches and trainers.

Reuters reported that the medals featured a safety clip, intended to snap off when pulled forcefully to prevent the ribbon from strangling. The Milano-Cortina press team did not respond to an email request for comment about the medals' clip function.

"It sounds like it's not all of the metals, it's just some of them, which leads me to believe that — just speculating — there's some sort of manufacturing glitch," said Doug McIndoe, editor of The MCA Advisory, a magazine from the Medal Collectors of America.

According to McIndoe, when cast metals are poured into mold and harden, it can cause the metal to shrink.

"It's possible that the opening where that clip goes in is maybe slightly too big, just a few millimeters or less than that, and it's just not securing that clip in properly," he said.

He added that it's an age-old question of how to make medals wearable, explaining that drilling a hole or incorporating one into the design of a mold to thread a ribbon through were historically unpopular methods. It wasn't until the 1960s that Olympic medals began to be worn around athletes' necks.

"Back from Roman times, they were, they were just something you hold in your hands and enjoy and a lot of them were issued in boxes," McIndoe added.

Even with the design hiccups, this year's gold and silver medals are worth the most they've been in a century. That's because the price of these precious metals have soared over the past year. Several factors are contributing to record prices, but a main driver is President Trump's tariffs, which is causing economic uncertainty in markets around the world, according to precious metals expert Peter Krauth.

Although each gold medal contains only about six grams of actual gold (the rest is made of silver) Krauth estimates that their current worth stands at around $2,300 — twice their value during the Summer Olympics in July 2024. A silver medal is currently worth around $1,400 — nearly three times its value two years ago, he said.

Krauth believes the price of gold and silver will continue to remain high for years to come, even up to the 2028 Summer Olympics. But he noted that the real worth of Olympic medals comes from the athletic achievement behind it.

"The sentimental value of a medal is worth way more than the metal in the medal," he said.
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Two federal immigration agents involved in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis last month appear to have lied about the details of the incident, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

The agents have been placed on administrative leave after "a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements," the spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

The rare acknowledgment of potential missteps by ICE agents comes after the agency's acting director, Todd Lyons, told Congress on Thursday that ICE has conducted 37 investigations into officers' use of force over the past year. He didn't say whether anyone has been fired.

McLaughlin said the agency is investigating the Jan. 14 shooting of the Venezuelan immigrant, and the officers involved could be fired or criminally prosecuted for any violations.

"The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct," McLaughlin said in Friday's statement. "Violations of this sacred sworn oath will not be tolerated."

DHS initially said the officer fired a shot to "save his life" after being "ambushed and attacked" by three immigrants with a snow shovel and a broom handle during a "targeted traffic stop."

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, the subject of the traffic stop, was injured after getting shot in the leg. Another Venezuelan man, Alfredo Aljorna, was also accused of attacking the officers.

However, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen on Thursday dropped the charges against them.

McLaughlin did not respond to questions about whether the agency stands by its initial statement describing the agent's behavior during the incident as self-defense.

Since the beginning, eyewitness accounts contradicted the statements made by DHS related to the shooting of Sosa-Celis.

His partner, Indriany Mendoza Camacho, told Minnesota Public Radio last week she was present the night of the shooting, and that Sosa-Celis was trying to separate the agent and the other Venezuelan man so both the immigrants could get into a house.

"I'm a witness, I saw everything, and my partner never grabbed anything to hit him or anything like that," she said.

The shooting happened during Operation Metro Surge, an aggressive immigration crackdown that brought about 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota starting in December.

The Trump administration Thursday announced it was ending Operation Metro Surge. The operation led to more than 4,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants, according to White House border czar Tom Homan, and the killing of two U.S. citizens, Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti.

Those shootings are also being investigated by federal authorities.

An internal preliminary review conducted by Customs and Border Protection into Pretti's death also contradicted the Trump administration's initial narrative about his shooting.

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