The Brief

For months, the Trump administration has used civil rights investigations into universities as a means to freeze or cancel federal research funding, citing schools’ alleged failure to protect Jewish students from harassment.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Justice turned its attention to the University of California, a 10-campus system with nearly 300,000 students.

And, so far, much of that effort has focused on UCLA.

'One of the gravest threats' in UC history   

In late July, the DOJ declared that UCLA had violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the 1964 Civil Rights Act “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students ... from October 7, 2023, to the present.” In a press statement, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the department would “force UCLA to pay a heavy price.”

Soon after, the administration froze hundreds of science research grants at UCLA, including funding through the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

In a press statement, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk underscored that “federal research grants are not handouts.”

“Our researchers compete fiercely for these grants, proposing work that the government itself deems vital to the country’s health, safety and economic future,” he said.

Frenk also let on that the Trump administration’s actions didn’t come as a surprise: “For the past several months, our leadership team has been preparing for this situation and have developed comprehensive contingency plans,” he added. “With the support of the UC Board of Regents and the UC Office of the President, we are actively evaluating our best course of action.”

What followed was an offer from the federal government for UCLA to pay a $1 billion penalty and overhaul a broad range of campus policies and practices — in return, the government said it wouldn't sue the university.

As the L.A. Times first reported, the Trump administration’s settlement terms are far reaching, covering hiring, admissions, gender identity and protest rights. The government also wants to install an outside monitor to report on UCLA’s compliance, and there is no guarantee the Trump administration won’t launch future funding cuts or lawsuits.

Timeline of UCLA's response to federal actions

Here’s how school leaders and the university community have responded to the administration:

• Aug. 4: Attorneys on behalf of UC researchers submitted a court filing signaling that the NSF had defied a preliminary injunction and frozen hundreds of grants to UCLA. According to the filing, Frenk received “a long list of grants that were being indefinitely suspended.” The researchers themselves received “no explanation.”
  
• Aug. 12: A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore the suspended NSF grants.
  
• Sept. 10 and 11: UCLA hosted science fairs, inviting the public to learn about the research projects that remain frozen. The second day of the event was organized by UAW 4811, the union that represents student workers, postdocs and academic researchers across the UC system.
  
• Sept. 15: In a message to students, faculty, staff and alumni, UC President James B. Milliken called the Trump administration’s actions against UCLA “one of the gravest threats to the University of California in our 157-year history.” According to Milliken, the system receives more than $17 billion each year in federal support, including $9.9 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funding; $5.7 billion for research and program support; and $1.7 billion in student financial aid. “A substantial loss of this federal funding would be devastating for our mission and for the people who depend on us most,” he added. “It will mean fewer classes and student services, reduced access to healthcare, tens of thousands of lost jobs across the state and an exodus of world-class faculty and researchers to other states or countries.”
  
• Sept.16: A coalition of UC faculty, staff and unions filed their own lawsuit against the Trump administration. In it, the plaintiffs allege the grant cuts and settlement demands are unconstitutional. The administration's “economic coercion,” they add, is part of broader efforts to “exert ideological control over the nation’s core institutions.”
  
• Sept. 16 and 17: The UC Board of Regents, an independent body that oversees the system and plays a key role in federal negotiations, held its first public meetings since the research cuts. During public comment, Jason Rabinowitz, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 2010, one of the plaintiffs in the aforementioned lawsuit against the Trump administration, was the first to speak. “There should be no agreement to pay extortion money,” he told the regents. He also cautioned against the erosion of free speech. Ahead of the meetings, over 200 Jewish faculty members from campuses across the state signed a letter to the board: “Like Jewish people across the country and around the world, we hold various views about Israel and Palestine, U.S. policy in the Middle East and student activism on campus. But we are united in denouncing the federal government’s attempt to hobble the University of California — a bastion of free inquiry, social mobility and essential research — under the cynical and pretextual guise of ‘combating antisemitism.’”
  

Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.

Election Day is here, but now comes the waiting.

Do you have something to watch on Netflix? Maybe you've been meaning to pick up a hobby — how about crochet? Whatever you do, take a deep breath and keep busy because it could be days (or weeks) before we get some California election results.

The state is often knocked by the rest of the country as being "slow" to count votes. But here's the deal: that's a feature, not a bug, of the election system.

The backstory

Things take a while here largely because California works so hard to expand the ways people can vote. For example:

• Californians in recent years overwhelmingly vote by mail — nearly 90% of votes cast in the 2024 presidential election were mail-in ballots. In that same year's primary the percentage was just as high. Those ballots can be postmarked up to and including Election Day. They're counted as long as the ballot arrives within seven days (for the June primary, that's June 9).
• California offers same-day voter registration at any voting center. These new voters must cast a provisional ballot, which is counted once election officials confirm their eligibility (they are overwhelmingly accepted — for example, Los Angeles County reports that historically between 85% to 90% have been counted.
• Voters also have the right to cast provisional ballots if there's any problem on election day — like if poll workers aren't able to void an outstanding mail-in ballot, or if there’s any issue calling up voter information from e-pollbooks. Again (see above), provisionals take longer to process because eligibility has to be confirmed.
• Vote-by-mail ballots require signature matching. When the one received doesn't match the one on file, county registrars must contact that voter to let them know — and give them the chance to correct it.
• And, with more than 23 million registered voters, we're really, really big. In the 2024 general election more than 16 million Californians voted (down from nearly 18 million in the 2020 presidential election). Either way, that’s more people than the total populations of all but three other states.

Why things have sped up, some

But things have sped up considerably in the 30 counties that have adopted a 2016 law called the Voter's Choice Act, including L.A., Orange and Riverside counties. In recent elections, the changes associated with that law — like voters not being locked into a designated polling location — drastically cut down the number of provisional ballots cast, which helped move things along faster than they had before.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Courtesy California Voter Foundation

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Still, accuracy and a commitment to "expanding the franchise" — translation: allowing more people to vote — means the process is not designed to produce instantaneous results.

Why you should take a deep breath Election Night

You'll have to get that endorphin hit elsewhere on June 2.

A few things to keep in mind: You may recall that during the 2024 primary, it took about a week to call the results for L.A. City Council races in District 4, where incumbent Nithya Raman was fighting to avoid a runoff election, and District 14, where challenger Ysabel Jurado wound up overtaking incumbent Kevin de León by just a few hundred votes.

It took an even longer 15 days to call the results of Prop. 1, during which opponents conceded, walked back that concession, and conceded again when the measure won by a razor-thin 0.4% margin. And it took 23 days to call the second-place winner for Orange County's 45th congressional district — it ultimately went to Democrat Derek Tran who went on to beat Republican Michelle Steel in the general election. Tran is now up for reelection and rematch with Steel is considered likely in November.

Depending on how close some of these races end up being, we may face similar waits this election cycle.

TL;DR: Officially, county and state election officials have until July 10 to certify election results — including a mandatory audit that requires hand-counting all of the ballots at 1% of precincts. Nevertheless, you're going to see a lot of national media headlines about California's relative "slowness." Brush it off. We have sunshine, beaches, and a highly enfranchised population.

L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna confirmed Monday that ICE will play a role in World Cup security, but said he's been told federal agents won't conduct immigration enforcement.

He made the comments at a news conference on law enforcement's plans for the tournament, and said he'd been speaking directly with the head of Homeland Security in the Los Angeles area.

"There will be federal agents," Luna said. " Because it's gonna take all of us to make sure that all the venues, the scoped and unscoped events, are secure."

SoFi Stadium is set to host eight tournament matches, including the U.S. team opener against Paraguay on June 12. Los Angeles will also host a historic match three days later when Iran is set to take the field in Inglewood, making the U.S. the first host nation in World Cup history to be at war with a participating country.

Luna said the federal government had said that civil immigration enforcement would not occur at the tournament. But he made no guarantees.

" They told us that specifically would not be occurring at any of the games. Any of that's subject to change," he said. "But I have trust that they're giving me the appropriate information because if that starts occurring, we're gonna have a whole new host of problems."

In a statement to LAist, Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis wrote that Department of Homeland Security is working with federal, state, local and international partners.

“The safety and security of the American people and the millions of visitors attending these events remain our highest priority," Bis wrote in an email. "DHS will continue leveraging every available authority, technology, and partnership to protect the Homeland while ensuring the World Cup remains safe, secure, and successful for everyone involved.”

Luna is the latest official to confirm that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will play a role in the tournament. Kathryn Schloessman, who leads L.A.'s World Cup host committee, told reporters last month that ICE would be at the World Cup, and that its presence was typical at these types of major events.

ICE has two main branches: Enforcement and Removal Operations, which detains and deports people, and Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts international criminal investigations.

Todd Lyons, the former head of ICE, said at a congressional hearing earlier this year that it would be ICE’s investigatory branch, not its enforcement division, playing a key role in World Cup security.

Still, some in L.A. aren't satisfied. The World Cup is coming to Los Angeles at exactly the year mark since immigration agents ramped up arrests in the region. Masked agents in neighborhoods across the county sparked protests and widespread fear, and ICE arrests in the L.A. area last year tripled.

SoFi Stadium workers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have threatened to strike over ICE's role in the tournament. They'll vote on whether or not to authorize a strike later this week.