What’s inside Trump’s $1.2-billion settlement demand letter to UCLA? It’s finally public

At a planned rally today at UCLA, the faculty associations of UCLA and the wider University of California are taking a victory lap and urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to join their fight against President Donald Trump’s demands for a $1.2-billion settlement with the renowned public university.

The federal administration’s 27-page settlement proposal was made public Friday after the UCLA Faculty Association and the Council of University of California Faculty Associations sued the public university to disclose the information under the California Public Records Act. The proposal outlines the administration’s vision for higher education that is free from efforts to promote diversity and transgender inclusion.

The university system argued that making the proposal public would cause it “irreparable harm” during ongoing negotiations with the administration, but released the information after a California superior court judge ordered it to do so, and the state Supreme Court rejected its appeal.

UCLA is currently grappling with the administration’s bid to force it to pay $1.2 billion after the U.S. Department of Justice in July accused the university of not doing enough to combat antisemitism during last year’s pro-Palestine protests, and for allegedly violating federal civil rights law. Newsom has characterized the fine as “extortion,” and UC President James Milliken said that paying the settlement would “completely devastate” the university system.

In issuing the demands, the Trump administration initially withheld more than $500 million in research grants to UCLA. But its leverage remains unclear now after a federal judge ordered the administration to restore nearly all those grants in August and September.

Some of the administration’s demands requires UCLA to:

• Hire a senior administrator to review UCLA’s policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and eliminate “identity-based preferences” in faculty hiring and scholarship programs.
• Prohibit the use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination” in its admissions process. (A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling already prohibits race-based admissions, though students are free to submit essays that detail how race affected their lives.)
• Prohibit the UCLA School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals from performing gender affirming surgeries or hormone therapy for patients under 18.
• Issue a public statement saying that it will comply with Trump’s executive order that recognizes male and female as the only two sexes. 
• Ban female transgender student athletes from participating in women’s sports.
• Establish a process so that “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are not admitted to UCLA. (That seems to be at odds with the letter’s goal of protecting UCLA “faculty and students from retaliation for expressing minority opinions or engaging in free expression.”)
• Develop training materials to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”

Some of the administration’s demands are already UC policy, including the elimination of diversity statements in faculty hiring, which the UC banned earlier this year, and banning overnight demonstrations at university locations.

• Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Association: If UCLA goes through with the demands, “It is not just today’s students and workers who will be harmed by this gross federal overreach — but generations of Californians.” 

More than 600 UC Jewish students, faculty and alumni also publicly opposed the settlement in an open letter posted in August.

As California faces a potentially tough budget year, labor and health care groups are pushing for a 2026 ballot measure that would levy a one-time tax on California billionaires, writes CalMatters’ Kristen Hwang.

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and St. John’s Community Health in Los Angeles are proposing a 5% wealth tax on the roughly 200 billionaires who live in the state. Unlike an income tax on someone’s earnings, a wealth tax — which Newsom has historically opposed — levies a tax on a person’s net worth, including assets such property value, pensions and owned artwork. Proponents say the tax would generate about $100 billion in revenue, which would go into a special fund for health care and K-12 education spending.

But Susan Shelley, the vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — a nonprofit that lobbies for lower taxes — said the proposal could set a troubling precedent if passed. Over time, the tax “could come all the way down to the middle class” by going after home equity wealth, said Shelley.

Read more here.

With early in-person voting already underway in some counties, let’s dive into some election news:

• ICE at the polls?: The possibility that immigration enforcement agents would show up at polling places during California’s Nov. 4 special election is a growing concern among some state officials and voters. Without providing evidence, Newsom earlier this month said he expected ICE and Border Patrol agents at voting places as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress Democratic voters. In a September survey of registered Latino voters by the Latino Community Foundation, 53% said they planned to vote in person, and two-thirds said they were at least somewhat worried that ICE or Border Patrol agents could show up at polling places. Read more from CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller.

• Trump sends election monitors to CA: Prompted by a request from the California Republican Party, the U.S. Department of Justice said it will deploy election monitors to five California counties on Election Day to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.” Both parties regularly deploy poll watchers, and Bryan Watkins, a former senior adviser to the state GOP party argues the request is “entirely normal.” But some California Democrats criticized the request as a weaponization of the Justice Department. Read more from Maya.

In anticipation of restrictive federal immunization rules, California health officials in September issued their own vaccination guidelines. CalMatters’ Ana B. Ibarra and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on California’s recommendations for updated COVID-19 shots as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.