California Governor Gavin Newsom is arraying his political agenda behind directly combatting President Donald Trump — and while it appears to many as preparation for a Newsom run at the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, the governor has been able to pursue a Trump v. Newsom battle without abandoning his day job — as Trump continues to level attacks on California.
In his role as Governor, Newsom has responded to multiple Trump administration actions aimed at the state, suing Trump over his sending California National Guard and military forces onto the streets of Los Angeles, Trump’s threats to withhold federal aid for California’s wildfire emergencies, and recently Trump’s adding UCLA — one of the crown jewels of California’s state-run higher education system — to his administration’s ever-expanding list of targeted American universities.
In the same way Trump targeted Harvard, Columbia and multiple other private schools — pulling federal grants and even threatening accreditation over charges of civil rights violations and alleged anti-Semitism — the President has now placed a major public school in his sights over similar allegations.
Having ended or suspended $500M in grants to the California system, Trump has now demanded a “$1 billion settlement offer” from UCLA, requiring payment, compliance and ongoing federal oversight on multiple issues.
Newsom’s response is to call Trump’s attempt “extortion” and to fight it, with his office writing: “Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ to kneecap America’s #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom.”
Governor Newsom calls Trump’s $1 billion UCLA settlement offer extortion and will not bow. pic.twitter.com/ikkIpW3as8
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 10, 2025
Trump’s accusations against the universities are varied, but most include as the main point the charge that universities failed to adequately protect Jewish students during the pro-Palestine protests that impacted college campuses nationwide before Trump’s second term.
This has nothing to do with antisemitism. This has to do with Trump wanting to hurt California and in particular Los Angeles, and also to destroy higher education. There is absolutely nothing in this fine that helps Jews on campus. https://t.co/mvBjfQ2QPA
— Laura Friedman (@LauraFriedmanCA) August 8, 2025
In the UCLA case, a key element in Trump’s public opinion arsenal is that in late July UCLA settled a suit tied directly to the protests. The university reached “a $6 million settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor,” as NPR reports, “whose lawsuit against the university argued it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus.”
While different from Trump’s charges of rampant university-wide anti-Semitism, the settlement is being seized upon by MAGA adherents on X who frame it as a virtual admission of more far-reaching problems.
[NOTE: The Trump administration announced in July that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division found UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”]
James Milliken, University of California president, said in a statement: “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources, and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”
Newsom was part of a group of California officials releasing a statement that read, in part: “Trump has weaponized the Department of Justice to punish California, crush free thinking, and kneecap the greatest public university system in the world,” calling the administration’s actions a “kind of disgusting political extortion.”