The Brief

A scholarship for Black students at UC San Diego is now available to anyone, regardless of race, after students and a right-leaning nonprofit organization sued the university for discrimination this July.

The plaintiffs argued that the scholarship fund violated a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was put in place to protect Black Americans in the South.

One of the students, Kai Peters, said he was denied access to the scholarship because he isn’t Black. Peters sent a written statement to CalMatters through the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, the nonprofit plaintiff. He said his rejection is an example of “institutionalized racism” — a phrase that was created in part to characterize how government institutions discriminate against Black Americans.

“I don’t see the irony,” said Joshua Thompson, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the plaintiffs. “The idea is that we don’t want government actors out forcing their discrimination.”

The Black Alumni Scholarship Fund for UC San Diego students is now called the Goins Alumni Scholarship Fund, named after its founding donor Lennon Goins, according to a press release last week. Its website says each scholarship is worth $2,500 and that nearly 275 scholarships have been awarded since 2016.

The rebranded scholarship program is just one of numerous initiatives in California that have come under scrutiny in the last two years. Last summer, the Supreme Court overturned precedent that allowed private universities in the state to use affirmative action, and this year, the Trump Administration has ended numerous campus initiatives promoting diversity.

In March, the UC changed its hiring practices, banning its 10 campuses from requiring “diversity statements” as a condition for employment. Now those statements are voluntary.

Other changes are more subtle. In February, Bakersfield College described its “Chicano/Latino Pre-Commencement Event” as a means to “encourage Chicano/Latino students to participate in (graduation) celebrations.” But by the time graduation rolled around in May, the word “Chicano/Latino” had been removed from that sentence.

Website indicates change of focus

The press release about the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund didn’t address the reason for the change, and a spokesperson for the San Diego Foundation, Hiram Soto, declined to comment further.

But a CalMatters analysis of the fund’s website shows how the university changed course.

In September, the website said that the university scholarship fund was founded in 1983 by Goins to “expand educational opportunities for high achieving, civic-minded African American students,” focusing on admitted Black students with a record of “community service” and “resiliency to racial and other identity challenges.”

There was no mistake that this fund was by and for the Black community. “100% of BASF Scholars identify as Black/African American,” the website said, adding that the goal of the scholarship fund was to “increase Black graduation at UCSD from 2% to 5% of degrees awarded.”

Despite decades of scholarships, that goal remains unattained. In the 2023-24 school year, just under 3% of UC San Diego’s undergraduate degrees awarded went to students who identify as Black or African-American, according to the system’s data.

Racial discrimination is illegal in the U.S., but in California, the standard of what constitutes discrimination depends in part on whether an entity is public or private. While private entities, including nonprofits and foundations, have long offered scholarships and programs for certain racial or ethnic groups — arguing that spending money is a form of free speech — state agencies, including the UC campuses, are prohibited from any form of affirmative action after California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996.

To avoid legal scrutiny, UC San Diego moved the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund to the private San Diego Foundation in 1998, according to the September iteration of the fund’s website.

But in the lawsuit, Thompson and his legal team alleged that the university has remained involved in the scholarship’s operation. “Our allegations were that (UC San Diego officials) were conspiring with a private entity to get around (Prop.) 209 and the Equal Protection Clause.” Specifically, he said the university was giving the San Diego Foundation information about which students identified as Black on their college applications and that the leadership of the fund included some university officials.

The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 prohibits government agencies from using private entities to discriminate. Back then, government agencies and law enforcement, especially in the South, often used private groups — most famously, the Ku Klux Klan — to terrorize Black communities.

By working with the private foundation to support Black students, UC San Diego is guilty of the same kind of “nefarious behavior” as the government and law enforcement agencies of the Jim Crow South, Thompson said. “This is the full tradition of our civil rights laws,” he said, citing both the Ku Klux Klan Act and more recent laws, such as Prop. 209. “We don't want the government to discriminate against people on the basis of race.”

Soon after filing the lawsuit, Thompson said the scholarship fund reached out to his legal team and agreed to change its name and to open up applications to students who didn’t identify as Black.

He said other changes may be on the horizon. In February, the Pacific Legal Foundation sued UC San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital regarding another program aimed at minority high school students. Thompson said the San Francisco university system is now negotiating how to continue with that program too.

These negotiations happen informally, so there’s no written settlement agreement to show how universities are responding and what changes actually occur.

Today, the scholarship fund website says its applications are to open to UC San Diego students who are involved in community service and those with a demonstrated “ability to overcome major challenges,” as well as other race-neutral criteria.

The website includes no mention of Black students.

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

Michael Gates, a former deputy assistant attorney general, produced a letter Friday that he said confirmed he was not fired for cause, but rather resigned from the Civil Rights Division of the federal Department of Justice.

The Orange County Register last week reported that Gates had been fired for cause, citing an anonymous DOJ source who said Gates repeatedly referred to women colleagues by derogatory and demeaning names and had complained about the department employing a pregnant woman. The Register also published a government employment form, which was undated, that they said showed that Gates was fired for cause.

Gates told LAist the allegations were “100% fabrication.” Then on Friday, he shared a screenshot of a Nov. 21 letter from John Buchko, director of operational management at the DOJ, stating that the department “has accepted your voluntary resignation” and “will remove from your personnel record any previous reference to your termination.”

LAist reached out to Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson, to confirm the letter, sharing that screenshot. She responded by email: “No comment on personnel matters.”

Michael Gates provided this letter. A spokesperson for the department said they would not comment on personnel matters.

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Courtesy Michael Gates

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Back to Huntington Beach

Gates told LAist earlier this month that he was resigning from his job with the federal government because he missed Huntington Beach and his family. On Friday, the Huntington Beach City Council confirmed Gates has been hired back as chief assistant city attorney. He starts Monday.

Gates is both loved and loathed in politically contentious Huntington Beach. He has been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies and a continuous thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is one of the most prominent critics of the president.

Gates was first elected city attorney in 2014 and has won re-election twice since then, with wide margins. Huntington Beach is among a minority of cities in California that elects rather than appoints a city attorney.

Gates' track record

As city attorney, Gates sued the state over housing mandates and the right to implement voter ID. He also marshalled the city into the center of culture war battles. While he was city attorney, his office sued California over the state’s sanctuary law, as well as a law prohibiting schools from requiring teachers to inform parents of a child’s request to change pronouns or otherwise “out” them as LGBTQ.

Many Huntington Beach residents support his work. But Gates has also faced heavy criticism and legal penalties, for some of his actions. In 2021, the city paid out $2.5 million total in a settlement with one former and one current employee who alleged age discrimination while working at the city under Gates. The city did not concede to any wrongdoing under the settlement.

And last year, Gates helped broker a controversial settlement over the pandemic-era cancelation of the city’s annual airshow, which will cost Huntington Beach taxpayers millions over the coming years.

What’s next?

Gates told LAist he’s looking forward to, once again, heading up the city’s litigation, including a scheduled trial against an effort to force Huntington Beach to adopt by-district elections. He said he plans to run again for city attorney in next year’s election.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who rose to prominence as one of President Donald Trump's biggest defenders and recently became one of his biggest critics, is leaving Congress.

Greene's announcement late Friday that she would resign effective Jan. 5, 2026, is the latest escalation of months of clashes with the president over his second term agenda — including the release of the Epstein files.

"Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for," Greene wrote in a lengthy statement shared online.

The third-term Congresswoman also said it would not be fair to her northwest Georgia district, one of the most conservative in the country, to have them "endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for," while noting that "Republicans will likely lose the midterms."

Greene is one of a record 40 House members and 10 senators who have indicated they do not plan to return to their seats after the 2026 election, joining a number of lawmakers who are retiring or running for a different office.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman filed a motion Friday in Superior Court to dismiss manslaughter charges against two Torrance police officers who fatally shot a Black man in possession of an air rifle in 2018.

Hochman argued in court documents that prosecutors can’t meet the legal standard of proof needed for the officers to be convicted of a crime.

The court has not yet ruled on the matter.

The details

Officers Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez were indicted in 2023 in connection with the killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, 23, who was suspected of stealing a car.

As the officers approached the car, they saw what was later revealed to be an air rifle between Mitchell’s legs. When Mitchell appeared to reach for the rifle,the officers opened fire, according to police.

The backstory

Former District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges against the officers in 2019, saying they reasonably believed Mitchell had a gun. Her successor George Gascón, elected in 2020 on a platform of police accountability, assigned a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor sought the criminal indictment.

When Hochman took office in 2024, he appointed a new special prosecutor, who recommended the charges be dropped.

“We cannot move forward in good faith with prosecuting these two officers because we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence that the officers unreasonably believed they were in imminent danger when they saw what looked like a sawed-off shotgun or rifle between Mr. Mitchell’s legs and his hands moved toward the weapon just before the officers shot,” the statement read.

The courts

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta did not immediately make a ruling Friday on the motion to dismiss the charges, saying the state Supreme Court is also considering the case.

The state Supreme Court is considering an appeal filed by one of the officer’s attorneys after Ohta rejected an earlier motion to dismiss by the defense.

As the Palisades Fire was still burning in January, residents saw an eye-grabbing headline: the Santa Ynez reservoir, perched directly above the Palisades, was offline for repairs and empty.

The reservoir’s closure frustrated residents and spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a state investigation into whether the reservoir being full of water would have made a difference fighting the deadly fire.

After months of analysis, California agencies including the state’s EPA, Cal Fire and the Department of Water Resources issued a report confirming the explanations given by local officials and experts in the aftermath of the fire: the water supply was too slow, not too low — and even a functioning reservoir likely wouldn’t have done much in the face of an unprecedented natural disaster.

Why the hydrants stopped working

The report found that not even a full reservoir positioned uphill from the Palisades Fire could have maintained water pressure and stopped the devastation.

“The water system lost pressure, not due to a lack of water supply in the system, but because of an insufficient flow rate,” the report states.

A reservoir perched at a high elevation, such as the Santa Ynez, can serve an important role in maintaining water pressure for hydrants throughout the system. As water gets used downhill, water from the reservoir flows to towers that maintain water pressure. Because of gravity and physical limitations on flow rates, the pressure towers can't be refilled at the same pace as they are drained and eventually dry up.

In the case of the Palisades Fire, the report states, a full reservoir would have helped keep water pressure up for only a short time.

The report noted that some data points on the demand on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s system were missing.

However, investigators found that based on experiences with other fires, the high demand across the system meant it was “unlikely that [the reservoir] could have helped maintain pressure for very long.”

The system’s design

The report found that the closure of the Santa Ynez Reservoir was in line with the primary purpose of L.A.’s water infrastructure: maintaining a clean drinking water supply. The reservoir repairs were prompted by a damaged cover. The repairs, the report notes, were required by federal and state laws on drinking water safety.

More broadly, municipal water systems like L.A.’s weren’t built to fight wildfires, as LAist reported in January.

“This report confirms what we and others have been saying more broadly regarding water system expectations and capabilities, but does so completely independently and with new details specific to the L.A. fires,” Greg Pierce, the director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, said in an email to LAist.

What’s next

The report makes two major recommendations: continue to follow the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, and make sure firefighters in the state are positioned for year-round fires.

The state stopped short of recommending any changes to L.A.’s municipal infrastructure. Water experts like Pierce say massive amounts of water and a very expensive redesign of L.A.’s water system would be needed to keep fire hydrants working during large urban conflagrations.

For their part, researchers and others have been looking into other solutions, including putting more utility lines underground and redistributing water across the system.

The report about the reservoir comes on the heels of a separate report from the Fire Safety Research Institute about the timeline leading up to and during the January firestorm. That report, which was commissioned by the California governor's office, contains a detailed account of the Palisades and Eaton fires' progressions and emergency services' responses on Jan. 7 and 8.

As for the Santa Ynez Reservoir, the repairs to fix its broken cover and make it usable again are slated to begin in June and finish by May 2027.