The Brief

Since January, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions that touch virtually every aspect of higher education in Southern California, including campus protests and financial aid.

The changes could have huge consequences for students, educators and researchers.

For instance, allowing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access students’ personal data might discourage U.S. citizens in mixed-status families from applying for financial aid. The stripping of $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University for alleged acts of antisemitism could be a precursor to what's coming for Southern California campuses, several of which are under federal investigation.

This list doesn't cover every federal action on higher ed, but LAist tried to include the items that reverberate most clearly for the state and locally.

Federal staffing under Trump Administration

March 3: The Republican-led Senate voted to confirm Linda McMahon as the U.S. Department of Education’s new secretary. McMahon, a wrestling industry billionaire, has limited education experience. After her confirmation, she shared a speech titled “Our Department’s Final Mission,” echoing the president's goal of dismantling the agency. In her speech, McMahon pledged to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat” at the department. At the time, it was among the smallest federal agencies.

March 11: The U.S. Department of Education laid off nearly half of its workforce. The agency — which sends money to public K-12 schools, manages college financial aid for millions of borrowers, tracks student achievement, and enforces federal civil rights laws — started the year with 4,133 employees. Roughly 2,183 remain.

• The federal student aid office experienced the largest number of cuts, a move that could affect operations.
• The department also made particularly steep cuts to its civil rights office, which already faced a backlog of complaints. Seven of 12 regional Office for Civil Rights branches were shuttered, including one in San Francisco, which handled complaints filed in California. These cases involve families trying to get services for students with disabilities, allegations of bias related to race and religion, and sexual violence complaints.
  

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)

Feb. 14: The U.S. Department of Education directed colleges and universities to stop using race as a factor in student admissions or for any other consideration, including scholarships, housing and "all other aspects of student, academic and campus life." The department said it would enforce compliance at the end of February and punish institutions by withholding federal funding.

March 7: Trump signed an executive order to end public service loan forgiveness for people who work at places that “advance illegal immigration, terrorism, discrimination and violent protests.” Currently, borrowers are eligible for the program if they’re employed by a nonprofit engaged in: military service, public health, public education, public interest legal service, public service for individuals with disabilities and the elderly and other areas. This executive order has not gone into effect, because updating eligibility rules typically requires the Department of Education to undergo a lengthy federal rulemaking process.

March 14: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights said that 45 schools violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by partnering with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business. The program focuses on supporting Black, Latino and Native American students.

The department alleges that universities involved with the organization are engaging in "race-exclusionary practices.”

The schools under investigation include Cal Poly Humboldt, Cal State San Bernardino and UC Berkeley.

Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, told NPR the department is conflating efforts to provide an inclusive learning environment with violating civil rights obligations.

March 27, 2028: Amid pressure from the Trump administration, USC cut “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) from its list of stated values. In a message to students, faculty, staff and alumni, the university said it’s rebranding its DEI efforts as “Community,” in part because DEI “has evolved to encompass so many interpretations” and become “embroiled in broader cultural and political disagreements.” The university also said this decision was fueled by recent federal guidance.

Investigations related to campus protests

March 5: The U.S. Justice Department announced an investigation into University of California campuses to “assess whether UC has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination ... by allowing an antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses.” The next week, UCLA committed to carrying out the recommendations of a previously established Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. Those proposals include increased employee training and streamlining of the complaint process for antisemitic incidents.

March 7: The Justice, Health and Human Services, and Education departments, and the General Services Administration pulled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, saying the school failed to “fulfill their civil rights responsibilities to protect Jewish students from harassment.”

March 8: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident, at his university-owned apartment building. Khalil is a Palestinian refugee born in Syria who recently completed his studies at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He was also a lead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest last spring, when encampments protesting Israel's war in Gaza sprang up at campuses across the country — including at Cal State LA, UC Irvine, UCLA and USC.

The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting [antisemitism].” The administration’s specific charges against Khalil remain unclear. Students across the country, including at UCLA, have protested his arrest.

March 10: The U.S. Department of Education published a list of other higher education institutions that, like Columbia University, it says have fallen short in combating antisemitism, including several Southern California campuses that held protests related to Israel’s war effort in Gaza. The local colleges under investigation include:

• Chapman University
• Pomona College
• Santa Monica College
• UC Santa Barbara
• USC

March 13: The Trump administration issued a letter to Columbia University with a list of “precondition[s] for formal negotiations” to regain federal funding. These include:

• Expulsions and multiyear suspensions for students who participated in encampments or the occupation of a university building last spring.
• Moving all disciplinary processes under the university president’s office.
• Adopting a formal definition of antisemitism.
• Placing the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under an outside chair for at least five years.

The administration also demanded “document[ed] compliance” by March 20. Columbia has announced disciplinary actions against students who occupied the building last spring, including “multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions."

“Students who are Jewish need to be made to feel safe and secure on a campus — that's a given,” said William Tierney, professor emeritus and founding director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at USC. “That's true of any student on a campus, whether the student is Jewish, Palestinian, Muslim, transgender, gay, straight, whatever. You cannot learn if you don't feel safe and secure.”

Still, Tierney described the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia as “extremely troubling,” in part because it leaves no room for discussion.

In his view, the letter basically says: “The king has determined that you need to do these things immediately. And we don't really want a response. We want you to tell us that you have done those things, period. And if you don't, we will cripple the university.”

“And the exact same thing’s going to happen at UCLA, at Stanford, at [U]SC, at Berkeley — at any research university in California,” he said.

Data sharing

February and March: The Department of Government Efficiency gained access to student loan data — including Social Security numbers, income and migratory status. This heightened fears among U.S. citizens with undocumented parents or spouses, who worry this sensitive information could create a risk of deportation.

• In early February, the University of California’s undergraduate student association sued the U.S. Department of Education to halt DOGE’s access to student financial aid files. In response, the department said it would temporarily block Musk’s group from accessing those records.
• A federal judge in Maryland granted a temporary restraining order in response to a similar lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers, barring DOGE from accessing the information until March 10. The federation has filed for a preliminary injunction, and the government has opposed. A court is considering the case.

Other enforcement actions

March 28, 2025: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he’s signed more than 300 letters revoking the visas of students and other visitors. “Some are unrelated to any protests and are just having to do with potential criminal activity,” he said. When a reporter asked about the process of identifying people for removal, Rubio refused to provide details. “We’re not going to talk about the process by which we’re identifying [them], because obviously we’re looking for more people,” he said.

A large plume of white smoke billowed out of a cold storage facility on Friday afternoon, two days after the fire first ignited at the Boyle Heights warehouse.

"Due to an expected change in wind conditions, there was a flare-up inside the structure, which was anticipated by crews on scene," the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement. "More smoke is currently visible in the area of this incident; however, there is no additional hazard. Crews will continue to flow large amounts of water into the building for an extended period of time."

LAFD Chief Nick Ferrari later told reporters that the fire had burned through the roof, letting up gases and smoke. That cleared some of the interior of the building, allowing firefighters more visibility into conditions inside.

“This is going to be an extended event,” he said. “We have made great progress, just today alone.”

What residents are experiencing

Residents near the facility on South Los Palos Street reported a strong smell as they watched the smoke rise up, and vehicles driving in that direction turned around as it appeared that the fire flared up shortly before 5 p.m.

Gabriela Dueñas lives less than a mile from the warehouse and put on a mask while she sheltered indoors at her home.

“It smells horrible outside. More ashes are falling now. Seems like the fire is inside the structure now,” Dueñas said just before 5 p.m. on Friday.

Firefighters were at the scene dousing the building. The smoke shifted from black to white before turning black again within an hour. LAFD spokesperson Lyndsey Lantz said that the white smoke was a sign that firefighters were getting water on the flames, and brown smoke likely meant that materials were burning.

“We want to assure people that we expected that change due to the wind,” Lantz said. “Our crews were prepared for that.”

A thick cloud of smoke descends over a street near a cold storage warehouse after a reported flare-up.

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Dueñas said it was frustrating to learn that firefighters anticipated those changes, saying residents were not adequately informed ahead of time.

“Why isn’t LAFD using their social media platforms to provide updates to residents?” she asked. “Instead, we begin to panic when we see the sun covered with a black cloud of smoke.”

Will residents need to shelter in place?

LAFD does not expect a shelter-in-place will be put into effect, Lantz said.

A previous shelter-in-place order was triggered as fire reached an ammonia line. Since then, Ferrari said, the building operator was able to pull ammonia out of the facility’s tanks and transport the chemical off-site. The operator also filled a generator, allowing the building’s interior sprinkler system to keep running, he said.

Ferrari stressed the unusual nature of the fire, and the aggressive tactics that firefighters were using. Helicopter water drops — almost unheard of for a structure fire — continued on Friday. Firefighters were also able to retrieve a number of forklifts with lithium-ion batteries from inside the building, lessening the hazard that the batteries posed. Some remained inside, Ferrari added, but they were in a portion of the building uninvolved in the fire.

The fire broke out Wednesday, prompting an hours-long shelter-in-place order due to hazardous materials, including ammonia.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday extended a particle pollution advisory to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, and a smoke advisory remains in effect in a zone near the fire.

Early monitoring showed particles were generally present at background levels, AQMD said, but for several seconds at a time, they found increased levels of bromine and chlorine.

“Bromine and chlorine are typically found at trace levels during structural fires and the levels seen were below short-term health-based exposure thresholds,” AQMD said. “Concentrations below this level are not expected to cause adverse health effects. No significant levels of air toxic metals were seen.”

What the city's leaders say

Mayor Karen Bass spoke outside the building Friday evening, praising firefighters’ efforts. She added that people in the area could expect to continue to see smoke, and she urged people and their pets to stay inside as much as possible. She asked people to wear masks when they needed to go outside.

“We know that this is concerning. This is inconvenient, but we are doing everything we can to end this as soon as possible,” she said. “And we want everyone to be safe in the meantime.”

The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks opened the Pecan Recreation Center, 145 S. Pecan St., as a smoke relief center on Friday, and it will stay open overnight and as long as it is needed. Community groups, including Proyecto Pastoral, Running Mamis and Centro CSO, went door to door distributing masks, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said.

Jurado thanked the community for stepping up, allowing fire officials to focus their efforts on extinguishing the fire. She added the Eastside deserved great fire service just as much as Westside neighborhoods.

“This has been a resilient community that has faced history of environmental pollution, and with no recourse,” she said. “This city needed to show decisive action.”

SEATTLE — For days, questions about the health of star winger Christian Pulisic's left calf had loomed large over the U.S. men's national soccer team: After being kicked in the leg during last week's Paraguay game, would he be available in the pivotal second U.S. game of the FIFA World Cup?

In the end, it didn't matter.

The U.S. dominated Friday's match against Australia, winning 2-0 even as Pulisic, who was ultimately deemed unavailable before kickoff, watched his teammates from the sidelines.

The scoring started early when American striker Folarin Balogun streaked down the left side of the field and powered a pass into the penalty area, where Australian defender Cameron Burgess booted it into his net for an own goal in the 11th minute.

"I want to be dangerous. I want to create opportunities. And it might not always be myself that scores, but if I can force an error that gives us the lead, for me that's like a goal as well," Balogun said. "It was a special start to the game to give us the momentum, and then I think we carried it out."

The U.S. added a second goal when defender Alex Freeman knocked in a header just before halftime. The chippy match resulted in seven total yellow cards, three for the U.S. on defenders Antonee Robinson and Chris Richards and Balogun.

After the game, U.S. head coach Mauricio Pochettino praised his team and their approach. "We build the victory in our attitude," he said.

The win guarantees that the U.S. will advance to the knockout stage of the tournament, and it puts the Americans in the driver's seat to win Group D. That would set up the team for a more advantageous path through the knockout round, which begins Sunday, June 28.

Cristian Volpato #20 of Australia and Weston McKennie #8 of the United States battle for the ball during the team's World Cup Group D match on Friday in Seattle.

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About 90 minutes before kickoff, Pochettino told Fox that Pulisic would be unavailable due to the nagging left calf injury suffered last Friday. "It is hoped, as soon as possible, [that he] can be ready to be selected again to be part of the team," Pochettino said.

In his place, forward Ricardo Pepi made the start on the left side. For Freeman, his first career World Cup goal was the latest step in a remarkable trajectory for a 21-year-old player who made his first appearance for the U.S. national team just over a year ago. 

It was unclear whether Pulisic would be available for the third and final U.S. group stage game, a match against Turkey set for next Thursday.

Whether that game will matter depends on the outcome of Friday night's Turkey-Paraguay matchup; if Turkey draws or loses, the U.S. is guaranteed the top spot. If Turkey wins, that sets up next week's head-to-head game to determine the group winner.

Turkey, whose roster features stars like Arda Güler of Real Madrid and Kenan Yıldız of Juventus, had been considered by some analysts to be the strongest team in the group.

The U.S. victory over Australia was the second win in the group stage — the first time the American men have done that in a World Cup since 1930.
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Bernard Brown grew up going to parties all around Los Angeles. Maybe a little before he was supposed to.

“I won't say my age. I don't wanna get nobody in trouble,” he joked. “But I went to clubs like The Catch — The Catch One — and The Study on Hollywood and Western and places like that that are no longer with us.”

Brown went on to become a contemporary dancer and choreographer, and he remembers watching dancers at Black queer clubs, and the tenderness they had for each other. He told LAist that was exactly what informed his new art installation and dance performance, “Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves,” at the Pieter Performance Space this Juneteenth weekend.

“ I thought a lot about how intergenerational learning was starting to slip away, and what does it mean to learn how to be a Black queer person?” Brown said. “Where are those spaces, and how did I learn how to be this way? And so making this work has been about this labor, this love, this intergenerational learning, and also community.”

What to expect

“Sissies” has two components: an installation on view Friday through Sunday, and a dance performance featuring some of L.A.’s most prominent dancers and voguers this Saturday night at 8:30 p.m.

Rosalie Tucker, director of Pieter Performance Space, said this will look a little different from other dance performances you may have been to.

“The invitation to everyone who is a guest in the show, who has bought a ticket is: Let it go,” she said. “Let yourself be in the club. React. You don't have to be quiet. This isn't a silent setting. This is not a traditional theater setting, and that is intentional.”

That’ll culminate after the performance, when the audience will also be invited to join the dancefloor.

Though the installation is this weekend only, Brown told LAist that once it's over, he hopes to find a permanent home for the archives and exhibits he’s amassed.

The inspiration behind ‘Sissies’

Of course, archival research is a big part of the work. But for Brown, who was actually there at clubs watching vogue practitioners work the dancefloor, the research process looks a little different.

Brown, who teaches dance at UC San Diego, calls the work “autoethnographic” — that is, much of what you’ll see is based on his own experiences and observations over the decades.

“ We're talking about vogue, all of the elements: hand performance, floor performance, catwalk, duckwalk,” Brown said. “All of those things appear in the work, but it's based on the truth and the authenticity of our people.”

The themes in Brown’s work resonated with Tucker, especially in this political moment.

“What we're seeing is our histories being not just erased, but violently erased, excluded and lied about,” she said. “So we really have, I think, a responsibility to the future, to ourselves, to claim the truth of, 'This is what happened then, this is what's happening now.'”

Brown’s collaborators

Los Angeles has a long history of queer Black underground clubs and events, one that continues to this day in parties and warehouses.

“ Bernard has built this with the people who are the Black underground in Los Angeles as well, so it's not just like a theoretical thing,” Tucker said.

The score for the show is by DeFacto X, who co-founded Black Bass Collective, a staple of L.A.’s warehouse scene. Co-creator and visual director Malachi Middleton will also perform in the work. Some of Brown’s dancers have shared stages with people like Beyoncé, but he said they’re all also movers and shakers in their own right.

“They are creating their own work,” Brown said. “They are making spaces where people congregate, and they're doing the Lord's work in that regard, finding their way to the movement of our queer ancestors.”

Though Brown won’t be performing in the show, he said he gets emotional when he sees younger generations go through the same movements as the voguers and other dancers he saw in clubs decades ago.

“I am filled with joy — literal joy — and sometimes tears at how beautiful it is to see Black queer men being together intimately, folding into each other, their individual kikis and lala's that happen during performance, the authenticity of their visceral connection to each other,” he said.

LOS ANGELES — James Burrows, who helped create volumes of laughter as director of more than a thousand episodes of such classic television comedies as "Cheers," "Taxi," "Friends" and "Will and Grace," died Friday. He was 85.

His family confirmed his death in a statement to People, saying he "passed away peacefully today surrounded by his family." No location or cause of death was provided.

Burrows spent his career behind the camera specializing in situation comedies. Few viewers recognized him or knew his name, other than to see it flash quickly on the screen in the opening credits. But they knew his work.

Burrows got his start in television relatively late at age 35 in 1974, directing episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show," and "Laverne & Shirley."

He co-created "Cheers," directing 243 of the 273 episodes, as well as all 246 episodes of "Will and Grace."

He also helmed multiple episodes of such hits as "Frasier," "Friends" and "Mike & Molly," and the pilots of "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory."

"When I direct a television show, I try to reach that sweet spot where the best script meets the best performance and the best chemistry between performers," Burrows wrote in his 2022 memoir "Directed by James Burrows." "Hitting that exact moment, where these factors land in combination, results in the sweetest and most enduring laugh."

His family said, "Burrows understood that great comedy was never simply about laughter. It was about humanity, connection, and truth. That understanding became the foundation of a career that forever changed television.

"But beyond his remarkable achievements, Burrows will be remembered for something even greater: his kindness, generosity, and unwavering belief in the people around him. He possessed a rare ability to make everyone better and was known for remembering every person he met by name, making colleagues at every level feel seen, valued, and appreciated," the family statement said.

Born James Edward Burrows on Dec. 30, 1940, in Los Angeles, he moved to New York when he was 5 years old. He spent five years in the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus until his voice started to change. He attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art.

His father was writer, director and producer Abe Burrows, whose Broadway hits included "Guys and Dolls" and "Can-Can." The elder Burrows also mentored Larry Gelbart, future creator and producer of the TV show "M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H."

The younger Burrows spent hours of his youth in theaters and studios watching his father work, dining with him at such famed New York haunts as Sardi's and Gallagher's and meeting celebrities who attended his father's New Year's Eve parties.

After earning a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, Burrows attended the graduate program of the Yale School of Drama, where his classmates included actor-comedian Robert Klein, playwright John Guare and film director John Badham.

At Yale, he was required to take directing classes and he got hooked.

Burrows' first sitcom experience was as Burl Ives' dialogue coach on "O.K. Crackerby!" which was directed by his father and ran for one season on ABC in 1965.

From there, he was an assistant on "The Patty Duke Show." He moved back to New York and worked for Broadway producers Lee Guber, Frank Ford and Shelly Gross. He first met actor Moore while working on the Broadway production of "Holly Golightly," an adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that was directed by his father.

Burrows eventually worked as a stage manager for various road productions, where he met such actors as Hugh O'Brien, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Julie Harris.

By 1974, after working in dinner theater and summer stock, he turned on his television and saw Moore's eponymous TV show. He wrote her a letter asking if there was any opening "small or smaller" at her production company that he could fill, according to his memoir.

Moore's husband and business partner, Grant Tinker, invited Burrows to Los Angeles to direct an episode of the comedy. He apprenticed for MTM Enterprises, which had four sitcoms on the air at the same time.

Burrows cited his theater background for learning how to give actors direction and block out scenes. He's credited for being one of the first sitcom directors to increase the typical multi-camera television shoot from three to four cameras.

The common thread between Burrows' shows were the bonds between friends and unrelated families, whether it was the motley crew of regulars meeting at the bar in "Cheers" or the drivers working toward a better life in "Taxi" or the 20-somethings sharing the same apartment building in "Friends."

"The best sitcoms transcend the screen and reach out and grab the audience by the throat and by the heart," Burrows wrote in his memoir.

He relished discovering new acting talent while directing more than 75 pilots that were picked up as series.

"Having directed over a thousand shows means that almost any night you can turn on your television or go online and find a show that I directed. I'm very proud of that," he wrote in his memoir.

In 2019, Burrows was an executive producer on live productions of "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" with famous actors re-creating episodes of those 1970s comedies.

Burrows was married in 1997 to Debbie Easton, whom he met when she worked as a hairstylist on "Frasier." Daughters Kat Schatzow, Ellie Gluck and Maggie Burrows, who followed her father into directing, are from his first marriage to Linda Solomon, who died in 2004. His stepdaughter Paris is from his wife's previous marriage. He has a sister, Laurie Burrows Grad, and seven grandchildren.
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