White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt challenged Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday to follow through on his threats to sue President Donald Trump’s administration.
Newsom accused the administration of “extortion” on Friday after the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) pay $1 billion to settle allegations of antisemitism on campus. At the briefing, Leavitt said that the administration is “well within its legal right” to propose this settlement.
“Bring it on, Gavin,” Leavitt said. “This administration is well within its legal right to do this and we want to ensure that our colleges and our universities are respecting the First Amendment rights and the religious liberties of students on their campuses and UCLA has failed to do that. And I have a whole list of examples that I will forward to Gavin Newsom’s press office if he hasn’t seen them himself.”
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The administration’s proposal calls for UCLA to pay $1 billion to the federal government and contribute $172 million to a claims fund that would compensate victims of civil rights violations. If UCLA agrees, the administration would restore $584 million in federal research funding.
UCLA was at the center of anti-Israel protests in 2023, where administrators allegedly failed to shut down a “Jew Exclusion Zone” that required students to publicly denounce Israel to access parts of campus. Some administrators were caught privately cheering the anti-Israel protesters on and hoped to reward them for their activism.
The university settled a $6.5 million discrimination lawsuit with students and a professor on July 29 over the “Jew Exclusion Zone.” As part of the settlement, UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to be split between the university’s fund for combating antisemitism as well as several Jewish organizations.
Newsom told reporters that UCLA would not bow to the administration’s demands.
“Donald Trump today is trying to silence academic freedom; he’s attacking one of the most important public institutions in the United States of America,” Newsom said, according to KQED. “He has threatened us through extortion with a billion-dollar fine unless we do his bidding. So as long as I am governor, I will stand tall and push back against that, and I believe every member of the California legislature feels the same way.”
University of California President James Milliken said on Friday that an $1 billion payment would “completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system” and “all Californians,” KQED reported.
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