civil right

President Trump declared Tuesday that federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., should seek the death penalty for murders committed in the capital, claiming without explanation that “we have no choice.”

“That’s a very strong preventative,” he said of his decision. “I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country, but we have it.”

Trump’s pronouncement is about much more than deterring killings, though. With speed and brazenness, Trump seems intent on creating a new, federal arrest and detention system outside of existing norms, aimed at everyday citizens and controlled by his whims. The death penalty is part of it, but stomping on civil rights is at the heart of it — ruthlessly exploiting anxiety about crime to aim repression at whatever displeases him, from immigration protesters to murderers.

This administration “is using the words of crime and criminals to get themselves a permission structure to erode civil rights and due processes across our criminal, legal and immigration systems in ways that I think should have everyone alarmed,” Rena Karefa-Johnson told me. She’s a former public defender who now works with Fwd.us, a bipartisan criminal justice advocacy group.

Authoritarians love the death penalty, and have long used it to repress not crime, but dissent. It is, after all, both the ultimate power and the ultimate fear, that the ruler of the state holds the lives of his people in his hands.

Though we are far from such atrocities, Spain’s purge of “communists” and other dissenters under Francisco Franco, Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers in the Philippines (though the death penalty remains illegal there) and the routine executions, even of journalists, under the repressive rulers in Saudi Arabia are chilling examples.

What each of those regimes shares in common with this moment in America is the rhetoric of making a better society — often by purging perceived threats to order — even if that requires force, or the loss of rights.

Suddenly, violent criminals become no different than petty criminals, and petty criminals become no different than immigrants or protesters. They are all a threat to a nostalgic lost glory of the homeland that must be restored at any cost, animals that only understand force.

“We have no choice.”

The result is that the people become, if not accustomed to masked agents and the military on our streets, too scared to protest it, fearful they will become the criminal target, the hunted animal.

Already, the National Guard in D.C. is carrying live weapons. With great respect to the women and men who serve in the Guard, and who no doubt individually serve with honor, they are not trained for domestic law enforcement. Forget the legalities, the Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act, which should prevent troops from policing American citizens, and does prevent them from making arrests.

Who do we want these soldiers to shoot? Who have they been told to shoot? A kid with a can of spray paint? A pickpocket? A drug dealer? A flag burner? A sandwich thrower?

We don’t even know what their orders are. What choices they will have to make.

But we do know that police do not walk around openly holding their guns, and certainly do not stroll with rifles. For civilian law enforcement, their guns are defensive weapons, and they are trained to use them as such.

Few walking by these troops, even the most law abiding, can fail to feel the power of those weapons at the ready. It is a visceral knowledge that to provoke them could mean death. That is a powerful form of repression, meant to stop dissent through fear of repercussion.

It is a power that Trump is building on multiple fronts. After declaring his “crime emergency” in D.C., Trump mandated a serious change in the mission of the National Guard.

President Trump with members of law enforcement and National Guard troops in Washington on Aug. 21, 2025.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

He ordered every state to train soldiers on “quelling civil disturbances,” and to have soldiers ready to rapidly mobilize in case of protests. That same executive order also creates a National Guard force ready to deploy nationwide at the president’s command — presumably taking away states’ rights to decide when to utilize their troops, as happened in California.

Trump has already announced his intention to send them to Chicago, called Baltimore a “hellhole” that also may be in need and falsely claimed that, “in California, you would’ve not had the Olympics had I not sent in the troops” because “there wouldn’t be anything left” without their intervention.

Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, told ABC that “the administration is trying to desensitize the American people to get used to American armed soldiers in combat vehicles patrolling the streets of America. “

Manner called the move “extremely disturbing.”

Add to that Trump’s desire to imprison opponents. In recent days, the FBI raided the home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton, a Republican who has criticized Trump, especially on his policy toward Ukraine. Then Trump attempted to fire Lisa D. Cook, a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve board, after accusing her of mortgage fraud in another apparent attempt to bend that independent agency to his will on the economy.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote on social media that progressive billionaire George Soros and his son Alex should be charged under federal racketeering laws for “their support of Violent Protests.”

“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to “BREATHE,” and be FREE,” Trump wrote. “Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our Country! That includes his Crazy, West Coast friends. Be careful, we’re watching you!”

Consider yourselves threatened, West Coast friends.

But of course, we are already living under that thunder. Dozens of average citizens are facing serious charges in places including Los Angeles for their participation in immigration protests.

Whether they are found guilty or not, their lives are upended by the anxiety and expense of facing such prosecutions. And thousands are being rounded up and deported, at times seemingly grabbed solely for the color of their skin, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguably the most Trump-loyal law enforcement agency, sees its budget balloon to $45 billion, enough to keep 100,000 people detained at a time.

Despite Trump’s maelstrom of dread-inducing moves, resistance is alive, well and far from futile.

A new Quinnipiac University national poll found that 56% of voters disapprove of the National Guard being deployed in D.C.

This week, the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. for a second time failed to convince a grand jury to indict a man who threw a submarine sandwich at federal officers — proof that average citizens not only are sane, but willing to stand up for what is right.

That comes after a grand jury three times rejected the same kind of charge against a woman who was arrested after being shoved against a wall by an immigration agent.

Californians will decide this in November whether to redraw their electoral maps to put more Democrats in Congress. Latino leaders in Chicago are protesting possible troops there. People are refusing to allow fear to define their actions.

Turns out, we do have a choice.

WASHINGTON — As Gov. Gavin Newsom and the University of California consider whether to sue the Trump administration to restore more than half a billion dollars in federal grants to ULCA, the White House on Tuesday had a terse response.

“Bring it on, Gavin,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about Newsom’s opposition to a Trump plan demanding more than $1 billion and sweeping campus changes at UCLA to resolve federal antisemitism findings against the university.

“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,” Leavitt said.

The statement was the first public comment from the White House about the high-stakes conflict between the nation’s premier public university system and the Trump administration, which has accused UCLA of violating the civil rights of Jewish students, illegally considering race in admissions and treating transgender people in sports, healthcare and campus life in ways that the government claims hinder women’s rights.

Leavitt spoke after a question from The Times about how Trump would response Newsom’s comments late last week that the settlement offer for UCLA was “extortion” and “ransom.”

“We’ll sue,” Newsom said Friday.

Responding to Leavitt’s comments, a Newsom spokesperson pointed The Times to a meme posted on X after the press conference.

“Glorious leader is entitled to all treasures of the realm, especially from universities,” said the post from Newsom’s press office account. The graphic features an image of what appears to a be a North Korean news anchor with a North Korea flag in the background.

In an earlier joint statement with California legislative leaders, Newsom said that the action against UCLA “isn’t about protecting Jewish students — it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president. Trump has weaponized the Department of Justice to punish California, crush free thinking, and kneecap the greatest public university system in the world.”

No lawsuit has been filed and the UC board of regents, who held an emergency meeting Monday afternoon over the grant cuts, has not announced how it will proceed aside from calling Trump’s current terms “unacceptable.”

Newsom sits as a voting member on the 24-person board, has appointed several of its members and can wield influence on the body, although the final decision on a lawsuit or settlement rests with the regents. Newsom did not attend Monday’s meeting.

In a statement after the meeting, a UC spokesperson said the $1 billion price tag would be “devastating.”

“UC’s leadership spent recent days evaluating the demand, updating the UC community, and engaging with stakeholders,” said Meredith Turner, UC senior vice president of external relations. “Our focus remains on protecting students’ access to a UC education and promoting the academic freedom, excellence, and innovation that have always been at the heart of UC’s work.”

Hundreds of grants — from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy — are on hold at UCLA. The money funds research into cancer, math, brain science and other areas, and helps pay for graduate student stipends and tuition as well as lab upkeep. If the freezes stay for the long-term, administrators are considering layoffs and other budget reductions.

Citing the reasons for the freezes, a July 30 NSF leter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk alleged UCLA “engages in racism, in the form of illegal affirmative action, UCLA fails to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias; UCLA discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.”

Frenk, in a campuswide message the next day, disputed the funding halt.

“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” he wrote.

University of California leaders face a difficult choice after the U.S. Department of Justice said this week that UCLA had violated the civil rights of Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests and federal agencies on Wednesday suspended more than $300 million in research grants to the school.

Do they agree to a costly settlement, potentially incurring the anger of taxpayers, politicians and campus communities in a deep-blue state that’s largely opposed to President Trump and his battle to remake higher education?

Or do they go to court, entering a protracted legal fight and possibly inviting further debilitating federal actions against the nation’s premier public university system, which has until now carefully avoided head-on conflicts with the White House?

Leaders of the University of California, including its systemwide president, James B. Milliken; UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk and UC’s 24-member Board of Regents — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is an ex-officio member — have just days to decide.

What led to the conflict

In findings issued Tuesday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, 2023. That’s when Hamas attacked Israel, which led to Israel’s war in Gaza and the pro-Palestinian student encampment on Royce Quad.

The Justice Department gave UC — which oversees federal legal matters for UCLA and nine other campuses — a week to respond to the allegations of antisemitism. It wrote that “unless there is reasonable certainty that we can reach an agreement” to “ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated and reasonable steps are taken to prevent its recurrence,” the department would sue by Sept. 2.

A day after the Justice Department disclosed its findings, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and other federal agencies said they were suspending hundreds of grants to UCLA researchers. A letter from the NSF cited the university’s alleged “discrimination” in admissions and failure to “promote a research environment free of antisemitism.” A Department of Energy letter cutting off grants on clean energy and nuclear power plants made similar accusations, adding that “UCLA discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.”

Initial data shared with The Times on Thursday night showed the cuts to be at least $200 million. On Friday, additional information shared by UC and federal officials pointed to the number being greater than $300 million — more than a quarter of UCLA’s $1.1 billion in annual federal funding and contracts. UCLA has not released a total number.

In a campuswide message Thursday, Frenk, the UCLA chancellor, called the government’s moves “deeply disappointing.”

“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk said.

In a statement to The Times Friday, an official from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, said it would “not fund institutions that promote antisemitism. We will use every tool we have to ensure institutions follow the law.”

An NSF spokesperson also confirmed the UCLA cuts, saying Friday that the university is no longer in “alignment with current NSF priorities.” A Department of Energy spokesperson also verified the cuts but did not elaborate outside of pointing to the department’s letter to UCLA.

What comes next

The Times spoke to more than a dozen current and former senior UC leaders in addition to higher education experts about the rapid deliberations taking place this week, which for the first time have drawn a major public university system into the orbit of a White House that has largely focused its ire on Ivy League schools.

Trump has accused universities of being too liberal, illegally recruiting for diversity in ways that hurt white and Asian American students and faculty, and being overly tolerant of pro-Palestinian students who he labels as antisemites aligned with Hamas.

Universities, including UCLA, have largely denied the accusations, although school officials have admitted that they under-delivered in responding to Jewish student concerns. In the last two years, encampments took over small portions of campuses, and, as a result, were blamed for denying campus access to pro-Israel Jews.

In a major payout announced Tuesday — before the Justice Department’s findings — UCLA said it would dole out $6.45 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by three Jewish students and a medical school professor who alleged the university violated their civil rights and enabled antisemitism during the pro-Palestinian encampment in 2024. About $2.3 million will be donated to eight groups that work with Jewish communities, including the Anti-Defamation League, Chabad and Hillel. Another $320,000 will be directed to a UCLA initiative to combat antisemitism, and the rest of the funds will go toward legal fees.

Through spokespersons, Frenk and Milliken declined interviews on what next steps UCLA might take. Friday was Milliken’s first day on the job after the long-planned departure of former UC President Michael V. Drake, who will return to teaching and research.

But in public remarks this week, Newsom said he was “reviewing” the Justice Department’s findings and that UC would be “responsive.”

The governor, who spoke during an event at the former McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento County on Thursday, said he had a meeting with Drake scheduled that day to discuss the Trump administration’s charges.

Newsom did not respond specifically to a question from The Times about whether UC would settle with Trump.

“We’re reviewing the details of the DOJ’s latest and then that deadline on Tuesday,” the governor said. “So we’ll be responsive.”

In a statement Friday, Newsom said, “Freezing critical research funding for UCLA — dollars that were going to study invasive diseases, cure cancer, and build new defense technologies — makes our country less safe. It is a cruel manipulation to use Jewish students’ real concerns about antisemitism on campus as an excuse to cut millions of dollars in grants that were being used to make all Americans safer and healthier.”

What insiders say

Senior UCLA and UC leaders, who spoke on background because they were not authorized to discuss legal decisions, said the university has been bracing for this moment for months. The university and individual campuses are under multiple federal investigations into alleged use of race in admissions, employment discrimination against Jews, and civil rights complaints from Jewish students. At the same time, leaders said, they were hoping the multimillion-dollar settlement with Jewish students would buy them time.

“It backfired,” said one senior administrator at UCLA, reflecting the sense of whiplash felt among many who were interviewed. “Within hours of announcing our settlement, the DOJ was on our back.”

Other senior UC officials said the system was considering suing Trump. It has already sued various federal agencies or filed briefs in support of lawsuits over widespread grant cuts affecting all major U.S. universities. UC itself, however, has not directly challenged the president’s platform of aggressively punishing elite schools for alleged discrimination.

It’s unclear if a suit or settlement could wipe out all remaining investigations.

Mark Yudof, a former UC president who led the system from 2008 to 2013, said he felt the Trump administration was targeting a public university as a way to “make a statement” about the president’s higher education aims going beyond Ivy League institutions.

“But this is not Columbia,” Yudof said, referring to the $221-million settlement the New York campus recently reached with the White House to resolve investigations over alleged antisemitism amid its response to pro-Palestinian protests.

On Wednesday, Brown University also came to a $50-million agreement with the White House. The Brown payment will go toward Rhode Island workforce development programs. Harvard is also negotiating a deal with the government over similar accusations regarding antisemitism.

“The University of California is much more complex,” said Yudof, who lives in Florida and also led the University of Texas and University of Minnesota. “For one, an issue that may affect UCLA is not going to affect UC Merced or UC Riverside. But do you come to an agreement on all campuses? If there is a settlement payment, does it affect all campuses, depending on the cost?”

George Blumenthal, a former chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, said he “just can’t see UC making the kind of deal that Columbia did or that Harvard contemplates. Committing public funds to Washington to the tune of tens or hundreds of million dollars strikes me as politically untenable in California.”

Pro-Palestinian UCLA groups said they don’t agree with the premise of negotiations. They point out that many protesters in last year’s encampment were Jewish and argue that the protest — the focus of federal complaints — was not antisemitic.

“We reject this cynical weaponization of antisemitism, and the misinformation campaign spinning calls for Palestinian freedom as antisemitic. We must name this for what it is: a thinly-veiled attempt to punish supporters of Palestinian freedom, and to advance the long-standing conservative goal of dismantling higher education,” said a statement from Graeme Blair, a UCLA associate professor of political science, on behalf of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

The bigger picture

Higher education experts say UC’s decision would set a national precedent. The university’s finances include more than $50 billion in operating revenues, $180 billion in investments — including endowment, retirement, and working capital portfolios — and smaller campus-level endowments. The funds support facilities across the state, including multiple academic health centers, investment properties and campuses, as well as tens of thousands of former employees enrolled in retirement plans.

Dozens of public campuses across the U.S. are under investigation or pressure from the White House to atone for alleged wrongdoing to Jewish students or to change admissions, scholarship programs and protest rules and more. But UC has long been a standard-bearer, including in academic and protest freedoms.

“If you are Trump, your target of Harvard or Brown is much easier — a snooty elite — than a public, even a UCLA or Berkeley,” said Rick Hess, an education expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Kenneth Marcus, who served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department during Trump’s first term, said there would be benefits for UCLA and the UC system to enter into a “systemwide agreement that would enable everybody to put this behind themselves.”

The Justice Department’s Tuesday letter said it was investigating all campuses but only issuing findings of violations so far at UCLA.

Marcus, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said a systemwide agreement would “provide the federal government with assurances that the regents are making changes across the board.”

Staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations on Thursday declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination policies, personal freedoms and Black economic advancement in response to President Trump’s upending of civil rights precedents and the federal agencies traditionally tasked with enforcing them.

The National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report accuses the federal government of being “increasingly determined to sacrifice its founding principles” and “threatening to impose a uniform education system and a homogenous workforce that sidelines anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow, exclusionary mold,” according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press.

“If left unchecked,” the authors write, “they risk reversing decades of progress that have made America more dynamic, competitive, and just.”

Report critiques racism entering ‘mainstream’ of American politics

The report, to be released Thursday at the group’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio, criticizes the administration for downsizing federal agencies and programs that enforce civil rights policies. The authors aimed to highlight what they saw as a multiyear, coordinated effort by conservative legal activists, lawmakers and media personalities to undermine civil rights policy and create a political landscape that would enable a hard-right agenda on a range of social and economic policy.

“It is not random. It is a well-funded, well-organized, well-orchestrated movement of many, many years,” said Marc Morial, president of the Urban League. “For a long time, people saw white supremacist politics and white nationalism as on the fringe of American politics. It has now become the mainstream of the American right, whose central foundation is within the Republican Party.”

The report directly critiques Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint for conservative governance coordinated by the Heritage Foundation think tank. Project 2025 advised approaches to federal worker layoffs, immigration enforcement and the congressional and legislative branches similar to the Trump administration’s current strategy.

The Urban League report condemns major corporations, universities and top law firms for reversing diversity, equity and inclusion policies. It also criticizes social media companies like Meta and X for purported “censorship” of Black activists and creatives and content moderation policies that allegedly enabled “extremists” to spread “radicalizing” views.

Debates over civil rights enter the center of the political fray

The Trump administration has said many policies implemented by both Democratic and Republican administrations are discriminatory and unconstitutional, arguing that acknowledgments of race and federal and corporate policies that seek to address disparities between different demographics are themselves discriminatory. Trump has signed executive orders banning “illegal discrimination” and promoting “merit based opportunity.”

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said civil rights groups that oppose the administration “aren’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the president is focused on uniting our country.”

The report, meanwhile, calls for the creation of a “new resistance” to counter the administration’s agenda. Morial urged other organizations to rally to that cause.

The Urban League and other civil rights groups have repeatedly sued the Trump administration since January. Liberal legal groups and Democratic lawmakers similarly sued over parts of the administration’s agenda.

Veteran civil rights activists, Black civic leaders, former federal officials, Illinois Atty. Gen. Kwame Raoul and seven members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, contributed to the text.

Raoul said that civil rights allies have felt “on the defense” in recent years but that now “it’s time to act affirmatively.” For instance, if rollbacks of DEI policies result in discrimination against women or people of color, legal action could follow, he warned.

“It all depends on how they do it. We’re going to be watching,” he said. “And just because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in disparate impact anymore doesn’t mean the rest of the universe must believe that.”

The report criticizes the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the Education Department, and denounces changes to programs meant to support communities of color at the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, among others. The transformation of the Justice Department’s civil rights division was singled out as “an existential threat to civil rights enforcement.”

The Justice Department pointed to its published civil rights policy and a social media post from its civil rights arm that reads the division “has returned to enforcing the law as written: fairly, equally, and without political agenda.”

Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford, a contributor to the report, said Trump “betrayed the American people” in enacting plans he said were similar to Project 2025.

Lawmakers reflect on the long fight for civil rights

Another contributor, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said civil rights advocates and their Democratic allies must do more to communicate with and educate people.

“When you have an administration that’s willing to take civil rights gains and call it reverse racism, then there’s a lot of work to be done to unpack that for folks,” the New York Democrat said. “I think once people understand their connection to civil rights gains, then we will be in a position to build that momentum.”

The Urban League originally planned to focus its report on the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the law’s 60th anniversary but pivoted after Trump returned to office to focus on “unpacking the threats to our democracy” and steps civil rights advocates are taking to pull the country back from “the brink of a dangerous tilt towards authoritarianism.”

For many veteran civil rights activists, the administration’s changes are condemnable but not surprising. Some lawmakers see it as a duty to continue the long struggle for civil rights.

“I think it’s all part of the same struggle,” said Rep. Shomari Figures, an Alabama Democrat who contributed to the report and whose father was successfully brought a wrongful-death suit against a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. “At the end of the day, that struggle boils down to: Can I be treated like everybody else in this country?”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.