university

Mention Aaron Donald and nearly everyone thinks Rams, the team he spent his entire 10-year NFL career with and led to a Super Bowl championship in 2022. Donald was a three-time NFL defensive player of the year, nine-time All-Pro and is regarded as one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time.

But before Los Angeles there was Pittsburgh, where Donald grew up and where he went to college. And it is the University of Pittsburgh where Donald became an unstoppable force from 2010 to 2013, setting an NCAA record with tackles for loss by an interior lineman before the Rams plucked him as their first-round draft pick.

So it is Pitt that will retire Donald’s No. 97 on Nov. 15 during a home game against Notre Dame, Panthers athletic director Allen Greene announced Monday. Donald also will be enshrined in the Pitt Hall of Fame this weekend, joining other iconic alumni names Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, Mike Ditka and Larry Fitzgerald.

“Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I’m grateful to the University of Pittsburgh for taking a chance on me when so many others wouldn’t,” Donald said in a statement. “I accomplished more in my career than I ever dreamed of, and for that I’m truly blessed.

“To soon see my number hanging alongside other Pitt greats is an honor beyond measure. I will always love this University. Hail to Pitt!”

Donald starred at Penn Hills High, east of Pittsburgh. As a Pitt senior in 2013, Donald led the nation with 28.5 tackles for loss and added 11 sacks and four forced fumbles. He was a unanimous first-team All-American and won every award that exists for a lineman: the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, Chuck Bednarik Award, Outland Trophy and Rotary Lombardi Award.

“Aaron Donald is a proud Pittsburgher who embodies the very best of what it means to be a Pitt Panther,” Greene said. “His humility, determination, and work ethic reflect the character of this community. Retiring his jersey honors not only an extraordinary athlete, but a leader whose relentless pursuit of excellence has defined his legacy.”

The first floor of Pitt’s Duratz Athletic Complex was renamed the Aaron Donald Football Performance Center in 2019, after Donald made a seven-figure gift to the program. He also set a high bar for workouts, as Rams teammate Jared Verse learned when he joined Donald for a punishing series of full-body circuit training in July — months after Donald retired.

“His wife came in laughing at me — I told her to call the police,” Verse joked, adding, “I tried to lie and say my mom was at my house and I had to go let her in. He told me to give my keys to his management or assistant and that they would go let my mom in. So I wasn’t leaving.

“Finished the workout. I’m dead tired, I’m exhausted. I had a plan to go jump in the sauna afterwards, didn’t happen. I had plans to watch film, didn’t happen. Went home and I didn’t work out for another day and a half because I couldn’t move my body.”

Donald also founded the AD99 Solutions Foundation, which provides Pittsburgh’s underprivileged youth access to education, nutrition and community involvement.

Accolades for his Rams career will be forthcoming. Donald will be eligible for the NFL Hall of Fame in 2029 and is considered a lock for first-ballot induction. The Rams have retired eight players’ jersey numbers and Donald’s No. 99 likely will be the ninth.

“I had the privilege — and sometimes the misfortune — of facing Aaron 14 times in his first seven years, and every snap was a reminder of his complete domination,” said Fitzgerald, an NFL Hall of Famer who spent 17 years with the Arizona Cardinals. “As a Pitt man, I was filled with pride watching him redefine what it meant to play defense, but as an [NFL] opponent, I knew he was carving his name into history at our expense.

“He wasn’t just disruptive. He was destructive, bending entire offenses to his will and still making plays no one else could make. Retiring his number is the perfect tribute because there will never be another Aaron Donald, and there will never again be another 97 at Pitt.”

Uniform numbers retired by the Rams

• #7: Bob Waterfield
• #28: Marshall Faulk
• #29: Eric Dickerson
• #74: Merlin Olsen
• #75: Deacon Jones
• #78: Jackie Slater
• #80: Isaac Bruce
• #85: Jack Youngblood

AMY HUNT is sprinting herself to the top of the athletics charts after putting on a scintillating display in Tokyo.

The Team GB star secured a silver medal in the Women’s 200m final at the 2025 World Athletics Championship.

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And it was a result that reduced Hunt to tears with her podium finish being so unexpected.

SunSport can bring fans up to speed on the British sprinter’s background.

Who is Amy Hunt?

Born on May 15, 2002, Amy Hunt is a British sprinting sensation who was raised in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Hunt rose to prominence when she set a new world record of 22.24 seconds in the Under-18 women’s 200m race in Mannheim, Berlin during the summer of 2019.

The talented Brit then went on to win gold medals in both the 200m and 4x100m at the European Under-20 Championships.

But then sadly, her transition into senior athletics was disrupted by COVID-19 before a serious leg injury in 2022 put her out of action for several months.

However, Hunt returned to the track late in 2022 and by 2024, the super sprinter found herself securing a bronze medal at the 2024 Diamond League in Stockholm.

She then went on to picking up her first title as part of GB women’s 4x100m team that took gold at the European Championships in Rome before finishing second in the 100m at the 2024 British Ahtletics Championships in Manchester.

All of the above helped Hunt deservedly earn a spot for Team GB at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games and her spectacular leg saw the Brits win a second medal in the 4x100m relay.

Now fast forward a year later, Hunt stunned the world by coming second in the 200m women’s final at the World Athletics Championships.

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What did Amy Hunt study at Cambridge University?

In 2020, Hunt started an undergraduate degree at Cambridge University.

She went on to graduate with a degree in English in 2023, where she was a Corpus Christi Alumna.

This delayed Hunt’s sprinting training as it only allowed her to start practicing in early June 2023.

However, she came fifth 5th in the 100m final at the British Championships and was part of the winning U23 British 4x100m relay squad in Espoo, Finland.

At least 679 titles blacklisted, including texts on human rights, women’s rights and Western political thought.

Afghanistan‘s Taliban-run government plans to remove books written by women from university curricula.

A member of the committee reviewing textbooks confirmed the ban to BBC Afghan on Friday. The blacklisting is part of an educational decree that also prohibits education courses “deemed in conflict with Islamic Sharia”.

The committee member told BBC Afghanistan that “all books authored by women are not allowed to be taught.”

At least 679 titles were banned due to their “anti-Sharia and Taliban policies”, he added.

The books affected cover every field of study, including texts on constitutional law, Islamic political movements and the political system, as well as human rights, women’s studies and Western political thought.

A final list of banned books will be issued to universities at a later date.

A directive, which was seen by BBC Afghan, was signed by the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister, Ziaur Rahman Aryoubi, and the 50-page list of banned books was sent to Afghan universities at the end of last month.

Aryoubi said in a letter to the universities that the decisions had been taken by a panel of “religious scholars and experts” and that the banned books should be replaced with course materials that “do not conflict with Islam”.

The decree is the latest in a series of restrictions the Taliban has imposed since returning to power four years ago.

The Taliban has cracked down on many aspects of education, from firing hundreds of professors on the grounds that they “opposed” the group’s ideology to increasing mandatory religious coursework across all faculties.

Women have been particularly affected. They are no longer allowed to attend school past the sixth grade (age 12).

Universities have also been ordered to stop teaching 18 subjects, six of which are specifically about women, including gender and development. Another 201 courses were under review.

‘Misogynistic mindset’

Zakia Adeli, the former deputy minister of justice before the Taliban’s return in August 2021 and author of Political Terminology and International Relations, one of the banned books, told BBC Afghan that she was unsurprised by the move.

“Considering what the Taliban have done over the past four years, it was not far-fetched to expect them to impose changes on the curriculum,” said Adeli.

“Given the Taliban’s misogynistic mindset and policies, it is only natural that when women themselves are not allowed to study, their views, ideas and writings are also suppressed.”

Sources in the capital Kabul told the Independent Persian outlet that the ban on such a large number of textbooks would cripple the country’s higher education system, as universities will now have to dedicate significant resources to finding and acquiring replacements.

Alongside the female-authored books, a further 300 written by Iranian authors or issued by Iranian publishers are being targeted.

Sources, including one on the book review committee, said this was to “prevent the infiltration of Iranian content” into the country’s curriculum.

In recent years, the relationship between the two neighbouring countries has been strained, particularly over water rights. This tension has been further compounded by Iran’s ejection of more than 1.5 million Afghans who had been living in the country.

A federal judge Thursday said she was “inclined to extend” an earlier ruling and order the Trump administration to restore an additional $500 million in UCLA medical research grants that were frozen in response to the university’s alleged campus antisemitism violations.

Although she did not issue a formal ruling late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin indicated she is leaning toward reversing — for now — the vast majority of funding freezes that University of California leaders say have endangered the future of the 10-campus, multi-hospital system.

Lin, a judge in the Northern District of California, said she was prepared to add UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grant recipients to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that has already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to UC campuses.

The judge’s reasoning: The UCLA grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.

Though Lin said she had a “lot of homework to do” on the matter, she indicated that reversing the grant cuts was “likely where I will land” and she would issue an order “shortly.”

Lin said the Trump administration had undertaken a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of the grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”

The possible preliminary injunction would be in place as the case proceeds through the courts. But in saying she leaned toward broadening the case, Lin suggested she believed there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.

The suit was filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. The University of California is not a party in the case.

A U.S. Department of Justice lawyer, Jason Altabet, said Thursday that instead of a federal district court lawsuit filed by professors, the proper venue would be the U.S. Court of Federal Claims filed by UC. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not properly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.

Altabet said the administration was “fully embracing the principles in the Supreme Court’s recent opinions.”

The hundreds of NIH grants on hold at UCLA look into Parkinson’s disease treatment, cancer recovery, cell regeneration in nerves and other areas that campus leaders argue are pivotal for improving the health of Americans.

The Trump administration has proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded campus changes over admission of international students and protest rules. Federal officials have also called for UCLA to release detailed admission data, ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors and give the government deep access to UCLA internal campus data, among other demands, in exchange for restoring $584 million in funding to the university.

In addition to allegations that the university has not seriously dealt with complaints of antisemitism on campus, the government also said it slashed UCLA funding in response to its findings that the campus illegally considers race in admissions and “discriminates against and endangers women” by recognizing the identities of transgender people.

UCLA has said it has made changes to improve campus climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Its chancellor, Julio Frenk, has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.

UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.

“Recent federal cuts to research funding threaten lifesaving biomedical research, hobble U.S. economic competitiveness and jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on cutting-edge medical science and innovation,” a UC spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “While the University of California is not a party to this suit, the UC system is engaged in numerous legal and advocacy efforts to restore funding to vital research programs across the humanities, social sciences and STEM fields.”

A ruling Lin issued in the case last month resulted in $81 million in NSF grants restored to UCLA. If the UCLA NIH grants are reinstated, it would leave about $3 million from the July suspensions — all Department of Energy grants — still frozen at UCLA.

Lin also said she leaned toward adding Transportation and Defense department grants to the case, which run in the millions of dollars but are small compared with UC’s NIH grants.

The hearing was closely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.

In interviews, they said they were hopeful grants would be reinstated but remain concerned over the instability of their work under the recent federal actions.

Lydia Daboussi, a UCLA assistant professor of neurobiology whose $1-million grant researching nerve injury is suspended, observed the hearing online.

Aftewards, Daboussi said she was “cautiously optimistic” about her grant being reinstated.

“I would really like this to be the relief that my lab needs to get our research back online,” said Daboussi, who is employed at the David Geffen School of Medicine. “If the preliminary injunction is granted, that is a wonderful step in the right direction.”

Grant funding, she said, “was how we bought the antibodies we needed for experiments, how we purchased our reagents and our consumable supplies.” The lab consists of nine other people, including two PhD students and one senior scientist.

So far, none of Daboussi’s lab members have departed. But, she said, if “this goes on for too much longer, at some point, people’s hours will have to be reduced.”

“I do find myself having to pay more attention to volatilities outside of our lab space,” she said. “I’ve now become acquainted with our legal system in ways that I didn’t know would be necessary for my job.”

Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience PhD candidate at UCLA, lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.

“If there is a chance that these suspensions are lifted, that is phenomenal news,” said Rathbun, who presented at UCLA’s “Science Fair for Suspended Research” this month.

“Lifting these suspensions would then allow us to continue these really critical projects that have already been determined to be important for American health and the future of American health,” she said.

Rathbun’s research is focused on a potential treatment that would be injected into the brain to help rebuild it after a stroke. Since the suspension of her grant, Rathbun, who works out of a lab at UCLA’s neurology department, has been seeking other funding sources.

“Applying to grants takes a lot of time,” she said. “So that really slowed down my progress in my project.”

Sept. 16 (UPI) — A group of Scouts from underserved communities will get a chance to earn up to 40 merit badges in one day at Morehouse University in Atlanta.

The event, Alpha Merit Badge University, was created and is managed by members of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. The event will host 300-350 youth from Scouting America and local councils on Sept. 27.

While earning their badges, including some Eagle-required badges, Scouts can engage with accomplished Alpha brothers, college students and community professionals who serve as merit-badge counselors, mentors and role models.

AMBU Chair Derek Smith said the event has been happening since 2023, and the fraternity’s affiliation with Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, has been in place since 2015.

Smith said that, as the father of a son who is working to become an Eagle Scout, he noticed some inequities.

“I just saw that Black Eagle Scouts are a unicorn,” Smith said in an interview. “[They’re] very hard to find. A half of 1% of all Eagle Scouts are Black Eagle Scouts.”

Smith spoke to former Scouts of different ages, and “they all said the same thing — that they were not given the same access or the same resources as the other Scouts. If they were told about merit badge clinics, it would be at the end and they were all filled up, or they would be so far out. So, I wanted to establish and create a merit badge clinic in metro Atlanta, where Scouts on the south side of Atlanta can get to because there was nothing for them.”

This year, the event has something new. Scouts who have partial badges completed but need someone to sign off on them can get that accomplished. The event also has combined several badges so that Scouts can use classes to apply for more than one badge.

The Scouts can’t just attend and load up on badges, though. They must take what they’ve learned at the AMBU and then do the work back home. Or, in some cases, they can do the work in advance and come in and take the class at AMBU. For example, a Scout working on an aviation merit badge would have to visit an airport or aviation museum to complete their learning for the badge, Smith said.

Smith said the event is going national and even international. Other cities are planning to host their own AMBU events. Some cities Smith mentioned include Charlotte, N.C.; Houston; central New Jersey; Oakland, Calif.; and Birmingham, Ala.

Next year, Smith said the organization hopes to have Alpha Merit Badge University Day the first Saturday in October, on which there will be AMBU events in each of the fraternity’s five regions.

Some classes available to participants include: environmental science and energy; safety and fire safety; crime prevention and fingerprinting; citizenship in the nation and world; engineering and inventing; entrepreneurship and sales; disability awareness and more.

The day includes an opening ceremony, Alpha Merit Badge classes, collaborative Alpha chapter strolling performances, a Real Talk panel and closing ceremony.

Alpha Phi Alpha partners with Scouting America because of the fraternity’s goal of encouraging leadership, Smith said.

“At Alpha, we develop leaders at college and professionally, but also, Boy Scouts develops leaders at a younger age,” he said. “So it just makes sense that we have similar missions that we would help out to start developing leaders at a younger age. And it’s a win-win for everyone. It’s a win-win for the youth. It’s a win-win for the community. It’s a win-win for us. It’s all about creating and developing future leaders.”

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out forcefully Monday against the partisan effort to redraw California’s congressional districts that voters will decide in a November special election.

“They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California,” Schwarzenegger told hundred of students at an event celebrating democracy at the University of Southern California. “It is insane to let that happen.

The Hollywood action star turn Republican governor urged the students to vote against the redistricting measure, Proposition 50.

The special election in November would redraw the districts and probably boost the number of Democrats California sends to Congress, an effort championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to counter efforts in GOP-led states such as Texas to send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Schwarzenegger has long championed political reform. During his final year as governor, he prioritized the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting. Four former members of the independent commission were recognized by Schwarzenegger at the event, and he had lunch with them and members of the university’s student governmentafterward.

He said he grew interested in the esoteric process of redistricting when he was governor and realized that districts drawn by politicians protected their political interests instead of voters.

“They want to dismantle this independent commission. They want to get rid of it under the auspices of we have to fight Trump,” Schwarzenegger said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because we have to fight Trump, [yet] we become Trump.”

Since leaving office, Schwarzenegger has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation. The governor’s remarks were being recorded by the anti-Proposition 50 campaign in what could easily be turned into a television ad.

Outside, student Democrats passed out fliers in support of Proposition 50.

The event, a discussion with USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim marking the International Day of Democracy, was scheduled to take place before conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at a Utah college campus.

Schwarzenegger reflected on Kirk’s death as he warned about the fragile state of democracy.

“That someone’s life was taken because they had a different opinion, I mean it’s just unbelievable,” Schwarzenegger said, noting that Kirk was a skilled communicator who connected with young people, even those who disagreed with him. “A human life is gone. He was a great father, a great husband, and I was thinking about his children — they will only be reading about him now instead of him reading to them bedtime stories.”

He warned that the nation’s political climate was spiraling.

“We are getting hit from so many angles and we have to be very careful we don’t get closer to the cliff. When you fall down there, there is no democracy,” Schwarzenegger said, blaming social media, the mainstream media and the political parties for dividing Americans. “It’s very important that we turn this around.”

He urged the hundreds of students who attended the event to show that people can disagree politically without demonizing one another.

With the Taliban barring women from college in her native Afghanistan, Bahara Saghari set her sights on pursuing higher education in the United States.

Saghari, 21, practiced English up to eight hours per day for several years, eventually winning an offer to study business administration at a private liberal arts college in Illinois. She was hoping to arrive this fall, but her plans were derailed again, this time by President Trump’s travel ban.

“You think that finally you are going to your dream, and then something came up and like, everything’s just gone,” Saghari said.

Thousands of students are among the people affected by the Trump administration’s travel ban and restrictions on citizens from 19 countries, including many who now feel stranded after investing considerable time and money to come to the U.S.

Some would-be international students are not showing up on American campuses this fall despite offers of admission because of logjams with visa applications, which the Trump administration slowed this summer while it rolled out additional vetting. Others have had second thoughts because of the administration’s wider immigration crackdown and the abrupt termination of some students’ legal status.

But none face bigger obstacles than the students hit with travel bans. Last year, the State Department issued more than 5,700 F-1 and J-1 visas — which are used by foreign students and researchers — to people in the 19 ban-affected countries between May and September. Citizens of Iran and Myanmar were issued more than half of the approved visas.

U.S. still the first choice for many

Pouya Karami, a 17-year-old student from Shiraz, Iran, focused his college search entirely on the U.S. No other country offers the same research opportunities in science, he said. He was planning to study polymer chemistry this fall at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, but he had to shelve those plans because of the travel ban.

Karami deferred admission until next year and is holding out hope. He is still preparing for his embassy interview and reaching out to U.S. politicians to reconsider the travel ban’s restrictions on students.

“I’m doing everything I can about it,” he said.

The full travel ban affects citizens from 12 countries spanning Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. It blocks most people from obtaining new visas, although some citizens from the banned countries are exempt, such as green card holders, dual citizens and some athletes. Seven other countries have tighter restrictions that also apply to student visas.

When Trump announced the travel ban in June, he cited high visa overstay rates and national security threats from unstable or adversarial foreign governments as reasons for putting countries on the list. He has called some of the countries’ screening processes “deficient” and said he plans to keep the ban in place until “identified inadequacies” are addressed.

‘This kind of breaks my heart’

In Myanmar, the family of one 18-year-old student made his education their top priority, saving paychecks for him to go abroad for college. They risked their stability so he could have the chance to live a better life, said the student, who asked to be identified by only his nickname, Gu Gu, because he is worried about being targeted by the Myanmar or U.S. government for expressing criticism.

When he shared a screenshot of his acceptance letter to the University of South Florida in a family group chat, it exploded with celebratory emojis, Gu Gu said. He had been waiting for visa appointments to be announced when, one night, his mother woke him to ask about news of a U.S. travel ban. In an instant, his plans to study at USF this fall were ruined.

Many students his age in Myanmar have been drafted into the military or joined resistance groups since the military ousted the elected civilian government in 2021. While a civil war rages, he had been looking forward to simple freedoms in the U.S. like walking to school by himself or playing sports again.

“I was all in for U.S., so this kind of breaks my heart,” said Gu Gu, who was unable to defer his acceptance.

Students forced to look elsewhere

Saghari, the Afghan student, postponed her July visa interview appointment in Pakistan to August after learning of the travel ban, but ultimately canceled it. Knox College denied her request to defer her admission.

She later applied to schools in Europe but encountered issues with the admissions process. A German university told Saghari she would need to take another English proficiency test because an earlier score had expired, but taking the test the first time was already a challenge in Afghanistan’s political climate.

She has been accepted to a Polish university on condition she pay her tuition up front. She said her application is under review as the school validates her high school degree.

Amir, a 28-year-old Iranian graduate who declined to provide his last name for fear of being targeted, wasn’t able to travel to the U.S. to take a position as a visiting scholar. Instead, he has continued to work as a researcher in Tehran, saying it was difficult to focus after missing out on a fully funded opportunity to conduct research at the University of Pennsylvania.

His professor at Penn postponed his research appointment until next year, but Amir said it feels like “a shot in the dark.”

He’s been looking at research opportunities in Europe, which would require more time spent on applications and potentially learning a new language. He still would prefer to be in U.S., he said, but he isn’t optimistic that the country’s foreign policy is going to change.

“You lose this idealistic view of the world. Like you think, if I work hard, if I’m talented, if I contribute, I have a place somewhere else, basically somewhere you want to be,” he said. “And then you learn that, no, maybe people don’t want you there. That’s kind of hard to deal with it.”

Seminera writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Todd Feathers contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries.

“We have much bigger and better cards than they do,” he said of China last month. Compared with Canada, he said in June, “we have all the cards. We have every single one.” And most famously, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in their Oval Office confrontation earlier this year: “You don’t have the cards.”

The phrase offers a window into the worldview of Trump, who has spent his second stint in the White House amassing cards to deploy in pursuit of his interests.

Seven months into his second term, he’s accumulated presidential power that he’s used against universities, media companies, law firms and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in many ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents.

And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re egging him on.

“Weaponizing the state to win the culture war has been essential to their agenda,” said David N. Smith, a University of Kansas sociologist who has extensively researched the motivations of Trump voters. “They didn’t like it when the state was mobilized to restrain Trump, but they’re happy to see the state acting to fight the culture war on their behalf.”

How Trump has weaponized the government

Trump began putting the federal government to work for him within hours of taking office in January, and he’s been collecting and using power in novel ways ever since. It’s a high-velocity push to carry out his political agendas and grudges.

This past month, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops fanned out across Washington after Trump drew on a never-used law that allows him to take control of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. He’s threatened similar deployments in other cities run by Democrats, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. He has also moved to fire a Federal Reserve governor, pointing to unproven claims of mortgage fraud that she denies.

Trump, his aides and allies throughout the executive branch have trained the government, or threatened to, on a dizzying array of targets:

—He threatened to block a stadium plan for the Washington Commanders football team unless it readopted the racial slur it used as its team name until 2020.

—He revoked security clearances and tried to block access to government facilities for attorneys at law firms he disfavors.

—He revoked billions of dollars in federal research funds and sought to block international students from elite universities. Under pressure, Columbia University agreed to a $220-million settlement, the University of Pennsylvania revoked records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and presidents resigned from the University of Virginia and Northwestern University.

—He has fired or reassigned federal employees targeted for their work, including prosecutors who worked on cases involving him.

—He dropped corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams to gain cooperation in his crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.

—He secured multimillion-dollar settlements against media organizations in lawsuits that were widely regarded as weak cases.

—Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is pursuing a grand jury review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and appointed a special prosecutor to scrutinize New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

That’s not weaponizing government, says White House spokesperson Harrison Fields; it’s wielding power.

“What the nation is witnessing today is the execution of the most consequential administration in American history,” Fields said, “one that is embracing common sense, putting America first, and fulfilling the mandate of the American people.”

Use of power

There’s a push and a pull to power. It is both given and taken. And through executive orders, personnel moves, the bully pulpit and sheer brazenness, Trump has claimed powers that none of his modern predecessors came close to claiming.

He has also been handed power by many around him. By a fiercely loyal base that rides with him through thick and thin. By a Congress and Supreme Court that so far have ceded power to the executive branch. By universities, law firms, media organizations and other institutions that have negotiated or settled with him.

The U.S. government is powerful, but it’s not inherently omnipotent. As Trump learned to his frustration in his first term, presidential powers are limited by the Constitution, laws, court rulings, bureaucracy, traditions and norms. Yet in his second term, Trump has managed to eliminate, steamroll, ignore or otherwise neutralize many of those guardrails.

Leaders can exert their will through fear and intimidation, by determining the topics that are getting discussed and by shaping people’s preferences, Steven Lukes argued in a seminal 1974 book, “Power: A Radical View.” Lukes, a professor emeritus at New York University, said Trump exemplifies all three dimensions of power. Trump’s innovation, Lukes said, is “epistemic liberation” — a willingness to make up facts without evidence.

“This idea that you can just say things that aren’t true, and then it doesn’t matter to your followers and to a lot of other people … that seems to me a new thing,” at least in liberal democracies, Lukes said. Trump uses memes and jokes more than argument and advocacy to signal his preferences, he said.

Trump ran against ‘weaponization’

Central to Trump’s 2024 campaign was his contention that he was the victim of a “vicious persecution ” perpetrated by “the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice.”

Facing four felony criminal cases in New York, Washington and Florida, Trump said in 2023 that he yearned not to end the government weaponization, but to harness it. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 4, 2023.

“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’” he said in a Univision interview on Nov. 9, 2023. And given a chance by a friendly Fox News interviewer to assure Americans that he would use power responsibly, he responded in December that year that he would not be a dictator “except on Day One.”

He largely backed off those threats as the election got closer, even as he continued to campaign against government weaponization. When he won, he declared an end to it.

His victory essentially ended the felony criminal indictments against him, including his role in the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which led to his second impeachment. Long-standing Justice Department policy says that sitting presidents may not be charged with crimes.

He still entered the White House in January as the only felon to ever occupy the office, after his conviction last year on fraud charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star just before his first election, in 2016.

One of Trump’s first acts of his new term in January was to issue pardons or commutations for more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to Jan. 6, including sedition and attacks on police officers.

“Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about,” Trump said in his second inaugural address.

A month later: “I ended Joe Biden’s weaponization soon as I got in,” Trump said in a Feb. 22 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. And 10 days after that: “We’ve ended weaponized government, where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent, like me.”

Two days later, on March 6, Trump signed a sweeping order targeting a prominent law firm that represents Democrats. And on April 9, he issued presidential memoranda directing the Justice Department to investigate two officials from his first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.

With that, the weaponization has come full circle. Trump is no longer surrounded by tradition-bound lawyers and government officials, and his instinct to play his hand aggressively faces few restraints.

Cooper writes for the Associated Press.

The University of California’s top leader has raised the “distinct possibility” that financial losses due to the Trump administration’s funding cuts could amount to billions of dollars and extend beyond UCLA to the entire 10-campus system, telling state legislators Wednesday that “the stakes are high and the risks are very real.”

In a letter to dozens of lawmakers obtained by The Times, UC President James B. Milliken said the university is facing “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history” after the Trump administration cut off more than $500 million in grants to UCLA before demanding a $1.2-billion fine over allegations of campus antisemitism.

Milliken outlined the potential losses at the nation’s preeminent public university system under Trump’s higher education agenda in his strongest and most detailed public words since starting the job Aug. 1, days after funding troubles hit UCLA.

UC “receives over $17 billion per year from the federal government — $9.9 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funding, $5.7 billion in research funding, and $1.9 billion in student financial aid per year,” Milliken wrote in the letter addressed to Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. If such funds were lost, Milliken wrote, “we would need at least $4-5 billion per year to minimize the damage.”

“A substantial loss of federal funding would devastate our university and cause enormous harm to our students, our patients, and all Californians. Classes and student services would be reduced, patients would be turned away, tens of thousands of jobs would be lost, and we would see UC’s world-renowned researchers leaving our state for other more seemingly stable opportunities in the US or abroad.”

Milliken, who met with lawmakers in Sacramento last month, penned his message in response to an Aug. 31 letter from Wiener and 33 other legislators, who urged UC leaders to “not to back down in the face of this political shakedown” from President Trump, whose actions the lawmakers said were “an extortion attempt and a page out of the authoritarian playbook.”

In a statement about the letter, a UC spokesperson said the university “is committed to working with leaders in Sacramento and across the country to ensure we have the resources we need to continue generating jobs, life-changing discoveries, and economic opportunity in the face of historic challenges.”

In addition to grant cuts and the $1.2-billion fine demand from UCLA, the Trump administration has also proposed sweeping changes at the Westwood campus. They include the release of detailed admissions data — the government accuses UCLA of illegally considering race when awarding seats — restrictions on protests, and an end to race-related scholarships and diversity hiring programs. The Department of Justice has also called for a ban on gender-affirming care for minors at UCLA healthcare systems.

The Trump administration accuses UCLA of violating civil rights law by not taking antisemitism seriously. Although there have been complaints of antisemitism on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza, a number of influential faculty members, staff and students, including many in the Jewish campus community, have said UCLA has made progress on addressing the campus climate.

“Free speech, academic freedom, scientific research, and democracy are values that have led to Jewish flourishing. These attacks on California, on our immigrant communities, on science, and on LGBTQ people stand in stark contrast to Jewish values,” Wiener wrote in the letter whose signatories included members of California Legislative Jewish Caucus, of which Weiner is co-chair.

Wiener’s letter urged UC leaders to fight the government’s demands as the university negotiates with the DOJ.

“Acceding to these reprehensible demands won’t stabilize the UC system; it will betray our values of protecting and celebrating our most vulnerable communities. Giving in will only encourage further unconstitutional behavior by this administration,” said the letter, addressed to Milliken, the UC Board of Regents and UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk.

“Concessions by UCLA would establish a damaging precedent for extorting public schools in states with leadership that does not bow down to this President,” Wiener and others wrote, who described federal demands as “extortion,” echoing statements by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We must resist Trump’s extortion to protect public higher education, the economy, our students and California’s values,” the lawmakers wrote.

Although the university has engaged with the Trump administration to restore UCLA funding, no settlement has been reached and there is a wide gulf between the two sides on what terms would be acceptable.

Newsom has called the government’s proposed fine “ransom,” saying he wants UC to sue the administration and not “bend the knee” to Trump.

But the decision over a lawsuit rests with the independent UC Board of Regents. The governor has appointed many but not all of the regents and sits as a voting member on the 24-person board. Newsom can exercise political sway over its moves but, aside from his vote, has no formal power over the body’s decisions.

The Islamic University of Bandung’s student body says security officials ‘brutally attacked’ the campus with tear gas.

Indonesian police have used tear gas on crowds of protesters near two universities, student groups and authorities said, amid ongoing nationwide protests targeting government spending, and burgeoning fury following a motorcycle taxi driver’s death after being hit by a police car.

On Tuesday, authorities deployed tear gas around the campuses of the Islamic University of Bandung (UNISBA) and nearby Pasundan University, more than 140km (86 miles) west of the capital, Jakarta.

Muhammad Ilham, a Pasundan student, told the Reuters news agency that authorities fired tear gas canisters from outside the campus gates as well as rubber bullets.

“There was a student who got hit by the rubber bullet, two shots,” he said.

At least eight people have died in the protests since last week, Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said on Monday.

According to police official Hendra Rochmawan, authorities on Tuesday did not enter the campuses but tried to break up crowds of non-student protesters who had been seeking protection within the university grounds.

UNISBA rector Harits Nu’man echoed the police statement and confirmed that the campus had been used as a medical hub for protesters.

Nevertheless, the UNISBA student body accused security forces of seeking to silence dissent, saying they “brutally attacked” the campus as tear gas caused breathing problems for some students.

Mass unrest

Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from a crowd of motorbike taxi drivers in central Jakarta, said they were gathering to honour the 21-year-old driver who was killed after being hit by an armoured police vehicle during the protests.

“There are thousands of them. They say to demonstrate the power of peaceful assembly so they can honour their colleague, that they can call for their various demands, including economic inequality and do it peacefully,” Washington said.

She added that many civil society groups in Indonesia were currently “raising the alarm” over a civil society leader who was arrested late last night in Jakarta.

More protests are expected on Tuesday outside parliament in Jakarta, organised by a coalition of women’s groups.

Since the protests began last week, at least 20 protesters have gone missing as anger increased due to mass overspending by lawmakers and police violence, according to the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS).

The group said 20 people were reported missing in the cities of Bandung and Depok on Java Island, and the administrative cities of Central Jakarta, East Jakarta and North Jakarta.

University students have long been regarded as vanguards of Indonesia’s democracy, having taken a leading role in protests that helped topple President Soeharto in 1998.

Current President Prabowo Subianto, a military leader under Soeharto, is facing the first major test of his leadership. He met labour unions, some of which joined last week’s protest pushing for a rise in the minimum wage, and said he told lawmakers to discuss labour laws, according to a statement from his office.

Indonesians have added pink and green hues to their social media profile pictures in response to the protests, with some using the hashtag #ResetIndonesia and outlining their demands for the government.

E.C. Robinson turned 80 earlier this month. He was head coach at Locke High when Darian Hagen and Sirr Parker were standout City Section football players in the 1980s and 1990s. Then he went to coach at University.

Now one of his sons, Bryan, is head coach at University, with another son, Jason, the offensive coordinator, and he’s serving as a proud “consultant.”

Together, they’re trying to resurrect a University program that was down to less than 25 players three years ago. The roster has increased to more than 70, with the return of a junior varsity team, and the Robinsons are committed to “restoring pride” in the program.

University coach Bryan Robinson (left) and brother Jason Robinson, an assistant, with their father, 80-year-old EC Robinson, a former Locke and University coach.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s a true Los Angeles story, with Bryan calling it “about homecoming, mentorship and generational impact.”

Like his father, Bryan became a teacher. He has been making frequent visits to Emerson Middle School, the feeder school for University, trying to convince students to come out for football.

When he was playing some 20 years ago, most of his classmates started in youth football. These days he must teach from scratch, showing kids how to put on shoulder pads, block and tackle.

“It’s not a lot of guys who’ve played,” he said. “It’s fun but also challenging. I get to instill all our football knowledge while they are raw.”

Bruce Davis, a former UCLA All-American linebacker who went on to win the Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers, is also on the coaching staff.

“My brother, coach Davis and I are big on development,” Bryan said. “We’re not just herding them out there. We’re really spending time fine-tuning these athletes, really developing them so they can compete on a higher level.

University quarterback Jeremy Pacheco (left) and defensive back Tareq Abdul.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The team won its opening game against Lincoln 21-19, with junior Tareq Abdul making two interceptions and sophomore linebacker D’Elliott Jones contributing 12 tackles. Quarterback Jeremy Pacheco returned from a knee injury in 2024 to throw a touchdown pass.

This past week, University improved to 2-0 with a 19-8 win over Fremont. Abdul had another interception, returning it for a touchdown.

EC Robinson said the game has changed since the 1980s, when the focus was on running the football. Now passing is prominent, even in youth football.

He largely stays in the background, observing and offering advice when needed.

“I did a lot when they first got the job a couple years ago,” he said. “I wanted to make sure they were doing the right things with the kids. Paperwork is a big issue, making sure the kids are cleared. During the game, I monitor when you call a timeout. I’m trying to make sure they learn practice structure.”

It’s pretty fun when your father is serving as a mentor and is close by to answer questions about a game he has taught for decades.

As Bryan said, “We’re not just building a team — we’re restoring pride in a program with deep roots in Los Angeles football history.”

One international student after another told the University of Central Missouri this summer that they couldn’t get a visa, and many struggled to even land an interview for one.

Even though demand was just as high as ever, half as many new international graduate students showed up for fall classes compared with last year.

The decline represents a hit to the bottom line for Central Missouri, a small public university that operates close to its margins with an endowment of only $65 million. International students typically account for nearly a quarter of its tuition revenue.

“We aren’t able to subsidize domestic students as much when we have fewer international students who are bringing revenue to us,” said Roger Best, the university’s president.

Signs of a decline in international students have unsettled colleges around the U.S. Colleges with large numbers of foreign students and small endowments have little financial cushion to protect them from steep losses in tuition money.

International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student, according to an Associated Press analysis. Many are small Christian colleges, but the group also includes large universities such as Northeastern and Carnegie Mellon.

The extent of the change in enrollment will not be clear until the fall. Some groups have forecast a decline of as much as 40%, with a huge impact on college budgets and the wider U.S. economy.

International students face new scrutiny on several fronts

As part of a broader effort to reshape higher education, President Trump has pressed colleges to limit their numbers of international students and heightened scrutiny of student visas. His administration has moved to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian activism, and new student visa appointments were put on hold for weeks as it ramped up vetting of applicants’ social media.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it will propose a rule that would put new limits on the time foreign students can stay in the U.S.

The policies have introduced severe financial instability for colleges, said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University who studies the politics of immigration.

Foreign students are not eligible for federal financial aid and often pay full price for tuition — double or even triple the in-state rate paid by domestic students at public universities.

“If an international student comes in and pays $80,000 a year in tuition, that gives universities the flexibility to offer lower fees and more scholarship money to American students,” Gest said.

A Sudanese student barely made it to the U.S. for the start of classes

Ahmed Ahmed, a Sudanese student, nearly didn’t make it to the U.S. for his freshman year at the University of Rochester.

The Trump administration in June announced a travel ban on 12 countries, including Sudan. Diplomatic officials assured Ahmed he could still enter the U.S. because his visa was issued before the ban. But when he tried to board a flight to leave for the United States from Uganda, where he stayed with family during the summer, he was turned away and advised to contact an embassy about his visa.

With the help of the University of Rochester’s international office, Ahmed was able to book another flight.

At Rochester, where he received a scholarship to study electrical engineering, Ahmed, 19, said he feels supported by the staff. But he also finds himself on edge and understands why other students might not want to subject themselves to the scrutiny in the U.S., particularly those who are entirely paying their own way.

“I feel like I made it through, but I’m one of the last people to make it through,” he said.

Colleges are taking steps to blunt the impact

In recent years, international students have made up about 30% of enrollment at Central Missouri, which has a total of around 12,800 students. In anticipation of the hit to international enrollment, Central Missouri cut a cost-of-living raise for employees. It has pushed off infrastructure improvements planned for its campus and has been looking for other ways to cut costs.

Small schools — typically classified as those with no more than 5,000 students — tend to have less financial flexibility and will be especially vulnerable, said Dick Startz, an economics professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Lee University, a Christian institution with 3,500 students in Tennessee, is expecting 50 to 60 international students enrolled this fall, down from 82 the previous school year, representing a significant drop in revenue for the school, said Roy Y. Chan, the university’s director of graduate studies.

The school already has increased tuition by 20% over the last five years to account for a decrease in overall enrollment, he said.

“Since we’re a smaller liberal arts campus, tuition cost is our main, primary revenue,” Chan said, as opposed to government funding or donations.

The strains on international enrollment only add to distress for schools already on the financial brink.

Colleges around the country have been closing as they cope with declines in domestic enrollment, a consequence of changing demographics and the effects of the pandemic. Nationwide, private colleges have been closing at a rate of about two per month, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Assn.

The number of high school graduates in the U.S. is expected to decline through 2041, when there will be 13% fewer compared with 2024, according to projections from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

“That means that if you lost participation from international students, it’s even worse,” Startz said.

Vileira, Seminera and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Republican and Democratic voters share common ground when it comes to the University of California: Both sides express widespread support for UC, its research, medical centers and ability to elevate the lives of students, a statewide poll shows.

Strong majorities of registered voters across demographic groups — urban and rural, racial, education levels — said UC research was good for their communities, including 62% of Californians with only high school diplomas. Voters in their 20s have the most favorable view of research.

The survey results, from the nonpartisan UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, come as the university system faces major battles with the Trump administration over deep research funding cuts and President Trump’s demand of a $1-billion fine to resolve federal charges of antisemitism at UCLA.

“In an era where the benefits of public higher education are being questioned, the polling results suggest that California’s residents see the value in a UC education and recognize the many different ways the UC system contributes positively to the state,” said G. Cristina Mora, the institute’s co-director .

For months, the University of California has been enveloped in the nationwide drive by Trump to reshape higher education, which he sees as a bastion of liberalism hostile to conservative thinking. The 10-campus UC system has faced hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to federal research support that the Trump administration derided as wasteful spending. Last month federal officials suspended more than half a billion dollars in medical study grants to UCLA. Negotiations with the federal government to restore the grants are ongoing.

The Berkeley poll of 6,474 registered California voters showed a more nuanced political picture between Democrats and Republicans against the backdrop of White House invective that accuses selective universities of being hotbeds of race- and gender-based discrimination rooted in diversity, equity and inclusion movements that Trump says don’t match the will of the American people.

UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Irvine have been accused by the Trump administration of illegally using race in admissions. The entire UC system is also under federal investigation for allegations that it has discriminated against Jewish employees and practiced sex- and race-based hiring discrimination.

Berkeley pollsters found strongest support for UC from Democrats, people with college degrees and state residents who are not white.

But majorities of Republicans also showed support for UC across the board:

• 58% of Republicans agreed or strongly agreed that UC “produces important research that benefits communities in California,” compared with 78% of Democrats.

• 75% of Republicans agreed or strongly agreed that UC academic health centers, such as UCLA Health, are “important to the communities they serve,” while 80% of Democrats said the same.

• 54% of Republicans agreed or strongly agreed that the UC system is “important for helping students to get ahead.” Among Democrats, 74% gave the same responses.

Mora said it was “surprising” that Californians appeared to know enough about UC research to support it.

“Usually, you may think of the UC system as one about teaching and giving degrees. But there was strong approval of research and medical centers.”

The university has six academic health centers and, in Los Angeles County alone, more than a dozen UCLA Health locations. Mora, a UC Berkeley sociology professor, said she thought people’s personal experiences with UC doctors in local communities may have contributed to positive views of UC health programs throughout the state.

IGS co-director Eric Schickler said the data were starkly different from national surveys on higher education.

“If you look at national polling, the story is pretty clear: Republican confidence in higher education has gone down a lot and there’s even some erosion among Democrats in terms of confidence or approval,” said Schickler, a UC Berkeley political science professor. “What you are seeing in California is very strong support in despite those trends.”

One prompt that showed a large gulf between the parties was on taxpayer funding for UC.

Asked whether California should give more or less money to the system, 74% of Democrats said UC should get more. Only 30% of Republicans agreed. UC gets about 9% of its budget from the state, a percentage that has declined over the years amid state budget crunches and payment deferrals.

The institute did not ask Californians about Trump or his education agenda. Instead, the questions were framed in apolitical terms focused on how respondents valued different parts of the UC experience.

Schickler said the Institute of Governmental Studies, while contained within a UC campus, does not take sides in the current political conflict over colleges and universities.

“Our philosophy has always been that the IGS poll is a nonpartisan poll,” he said. “The sample and survey has the same process as any survey we do. This is not a survey UC asked us to do.”

The poll also asked whether Californians would tell a close friend who was admitted to a UC school to enroll or not. In total, 70% of respondents said they would advise enrolling. However, there was a political split: 82% of Democrats said they would share such advice, compared with 51% of Republicans.

Researchers conducted most of the polling in early June, months into cutbacks to U.S. campus grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other federal agencies as the government curtailed research into racially diverse groups as well as LGBTQ+ populations, among other areas.

The surveying largely took place before the Trump administration’s conflict with UC came to a head this month, when the White House demanded $1 billion and sweeping campus changes to restore more than $500 million in research grants at UCLA.

Pollsters asked an additional question in mid-August to a separate set of 4,950 voters who were UC degree recipients. That survey took place after Trump’s latest cuts to UCLA.

It asked UC degree holders whether, “considering the costs of getting your degree from a UC school versus the benefits to you personally, in your opinion was getting your degree worth it or not?”

In response, 82% of Democrats said a UC degree was worth the money, compared with 64% of Republicans.

Aug. 24 (UPI) — Police descended upon Pennsylvania’s Villanova University on Sunday in response to reports of an active shooter on campus, making it the second time in less than a week that a hoax attack has been reported at the private Catholic school.

The Radnor Township Police Department said officers were responding to reports of an active shooter at the university’s Austin Hall.

“Law enforcement has confirmed that call to be false,” it said in a statement published on X at about 11:40 a.m. EDT.

“Officers are working to clear the campus and restore normal operations. At this time, the investigation is ongoing.”

Monday is the start of classes for the fall semester of the 2025-26 academic year at Villanova University, where about 10,000 students, including 6,700 full-time undergraduate students, attend. Villanova is a Philadelphia suburb.

Kathleen Byrnes, vice president of student life at the school, has announced in a letter that Sunday evening’s Mass and Commissioning has been canceled “given the whirlwind of emotions over these last few days.”

“With all that has transpired on campus in recent days, we feel our first-year students are best served by an evening with time to pause before classes start tomorrow,” Byrnes said.

“For our new students: Please take this evening to relax, talk with new friends and get a good night’s sleep — all of which will help you feel prepared for your first day of college tomorrow.”

The first false call of an active shooter on campus occurred Thursday late afternoon. Students were warned at about 4:30 p.m. to shelter in place. The shooter was reported to have been at the university’s law school.

University President Peter Donohue announced the Thursday active shooter report was a “cruel hoax.”

In a letter to students Sunday following the second false report, Donohue said he wished he had more answers for them.

“I do not know why this is happening, but I assure you the authorities are working tirelessly to find out who is behind these calls,” he said.

“I know it may not seem like it after the past couple of days, but I assure you that campus is safe, and there is no evidence of a legitimate threat to our community.”

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Administrators at the state university’s campus in Colorado Springs thought they stood a solid chance of dodging the Trump administration’s offensive on higher education.

Located on a picturesque bluff with a stunning view of Pikes Peak, the school is far removed from the Ivy League colleges that have drawn President Trump’s ire. Most of its students are commuters, getting degrees while holding down full-time jobs. Students and faculty alike describe the university, which is in a conservative part of the blue state of Colorado, as politically subdued, if not apolitical.

That optimism was misplaced.

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of emails from school officials, as well as interviews with students and professors, reveals that school leaders, teachers and students soon found themselves in the Republican administration’s crosshairs, forcing them to navigate what they described as an unprecedented and haphazard degree of change.

Whether Washington has downsized government departments, rescinded funding or launched investigations into diversity programs or campus antisemitism, the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs has confronted many of the same challenges as elite universities across the nation.

The school lost three major federal grants and found itself under investigation by the Trump Education Department. In the hopes of avoiding that scrutiny, the university renamed websites and job titles, all while dealing with pressure from students, faculty and staff who wanted the school to take a more combative stance.

“Uncertainty is compounding,” the school’s chancellor told faculty at a February meeting, according to minutes of the session. “And the speed of which orders are coming has been a bit of a shock.”

The college declined to make any administrators available to be interviewed. A spokesman asked the AP to make clear that any professors or students interviewed for this story were speaking for themselves and not the institution. Several faculty members also asked for anonymity, either because they did not have tenure or they did not want to call unnecessary attention to themselves and their scholarship in the current political environment.

“Like our colleagues across higher education, we’ve spent considerable time working to understand the new directives from the federal government,” the chancellor, Jennifer Sobanet, said in a statement provided to the AP.

Students said they have been able to sense the stress being felt by school administrators and professors.

“We have administrators that are feeling pressure, because we want to maintain our funding here. It’s been tense,” said Ava Knox, a rising junior who covers the university administration for the school newspaper.

Faculty, she added, “want to be very careful about how they’re conducting their research and about how they’re addressing the student population. They are also beholden to this new set of kind of ever-changing guidelines and stipulations by the federal government.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Misplaced optimism

Shortly after Trump won a second term in November, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs leaders were trying to gather information on the incoming president’s plans. In December, Sobanet met the newly elected Republican congressman who represented the school’s district, a conservative area that Trump won with 53% of the vote. In her meeting notes obtained by the AP, the chancellor sketched out a scenario in which the college might avoid the drastic cuts and havoc under the incoming administration.

“Research dollars — hard to pull back grant dollars but Trump tried to pull back some last time. The money goes through Congress,” Sobanet wrote in notes prepared for the meeting. “Grant money will likely stay but just change how they are worded and what it will fund.”

Sobanet also observed that dismantling the federal Education Department would require congressional authorization. That was unlikely, she suggested, given the U.S. Senate’s composition.

Like many others, she did not fully anticipate how aggressively Trump would seek to transform the federal government.

Conservatives’ desire to revamp higher education began well before Trump took office.

They have long complained that universities have become bastions of liberal indoctrination and raucous protests. In 2023, Republicans in Congress had a contentious hearing with several Ivy League university leaders. Shortly after, the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned. During the presidential campaign last fall, Trump criticized campus protests against the war in Gaza, as well as what he said was a liberal bias in classrooms.

His new administration opened investigations into alleged antisemitism at several universities. It froze more than $400 million in research grants and contracts at Columbia, along with more than $2.6 billion at Harvard. Columbia reached an agreement last month to pay $220 million to resolve the investigation.

When Harvard filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s actions, his administration tried to block the school from enrolling international students. The Trump administration has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Northwestern University, Penn, Princeton and Cornell have seen big chunks of funding cut over how they dealt with the protests about Israel’s war in Gaza or over the schools’ support for transgender athletes.

Trump’s decision to target the wealthiest, most prestigious institutions provided some comfort to administrators at the approximately 4,000 other colleges and universities in the country.

Most higher education students in the United States are educated at regional public universities or community colleges. Such schools have not typically drawn attention from culture warriors.

Students and professors at UCCS hoped Trump’s crackdown would bypass the school and others like it.

“You’ve got everyone — liberals, conservatives, middle of the road” at the college, said Jeffrey Scholes, a professor in the philosophy department. “You just don’t see the kind of unrest and polarization that you see at other campuses.”

The purse strings

The federal government has lots of leverage over higher education. It provides about $60 billion a year to universities for research. In addition, a majority of students in the U.S. need grants and loans from various federal programs to help pay tuition and living expenses.

This budget year, UCCS got about $19 million in research funding from a combination of federal, state and private sources. Though that is a relatively small portion of the school’s overall $369-million budget, the college has made a push in recent years to bolster its campus research program by taking advantage of grant money from government agencies such as the U.S. Defense Department and National Institutes of Health. The widespread federal grant cut could derail those efforts.

School officials were dismayed when the Trump administration terminated research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Defense Department and the National Science Foundation, emails show. The grants funded programs in civics, cultural preservation and boosting women in technology fields.

School administrators scrambled to contact federal officials to learn whether other grants were on the chopping block, but they struggled to find answers, the records show.

School officials repeatedly sought out the assistance of federal officials only to learn those officials were not sure what was happening as the Trump administration halted grant payments, fired thousands of employees and closed agencies.

“The sky is falling” at NIH, a university official reported in notes on a call in which the school’s lobbyists were providing reports of what was happening in Washington.

There are also concerns about other changes in Washington that will affect how students pay for college, according to interviews with faculty and education policy experts.

While only Congress can fully abolish the Department of Education, the Trump administration has tried to dramatically cut back its staff and parcel out many of its functions to other agencies. The administration laid off nearly 1,400 employees, and problems have been reported in the systems that handle student loans. Management of student loans is expected to shift to another agency.

In addition, an early version of a major funding bill in Congress included major cuts to tuition grants. Though that provision did not make it into the law, Congress did cap loans for students seeking graduate degrees. That policy could have ripple effects in the coming years on institutions such as UCCS that rely on tuition dollars for their operating expenses.

DEI and transgender issues

To force change on campus, the Trump administration has begun investigations targeting diversity programs and efforts to combat antisemitism.

The Education Department, for example, opened an investigation in March targeting a PhD scholarship program that partnered with 45 universities, including the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, to expand opportunities for women and nonwhites in graduate education. The administration alleged the program was only open to certain nonwhite students and amounted to racial discrimination.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news UCCS is included on the list” of schools being investigated, wrote Annie Larson, assistant vice president of federal relations and outreach for the entire University of Colorado system.

“Oh wow, this is surprising,” wrote back Hillary Fouts, dean of the graduate school at UCCS.

UCCS also struggled with how to handle executive orders, particularly those on transgender issues.

In response to an order that aimed to revoke funds to schools that allowed trans women to play women’s sports, UCCS began a review of its athletic programs. It determined it had no transgender athletes, the records show. University officials were also relieved to discover that only one school in their athletic conference was affected by the order, and UCCS rarely if ever had matches or games against that school.

“We do not have any students impacted by this and don’t compete against any teams that we are aware of that will be impacted by this,” wrote the vice chancellor for student affairs to colleagues.

Avoiding the spotlight

The attacks led UCCS to take preemptive actions and to self-censor in the hopes of saving programs and avoiding the Trump administration’s spotlight.

Emails show that the school’s legal counsel began looking at all the university’s websites and evaluating whether any scholarships might need to be reworded. The university changed the web address of its diversity initiatives from www.diversity.uccs.edu to www.belonging.uccs.edu.

And the administrator responsible for the university’s division of Inclusive Culture & Belonging got a new job title in January: director of strategic initiatives. University professors said the school debated whether to rename the Women’s and Ethnic Studies department to avoid drawing attention from Trump, but so far the department has not been renamed.

Along the same lines, UCCS administrators have sought to avoid getting dragged into controversies, a frequent occurrence in the first Trump administration. UCCS officials attended a presentation from the education consulting firm EAB, which encouraged schools not to react to every news cycle. That could be a challenge because some students and faculty are calling for vocal resistance on issues from climate change to immigration.

Soon after Trump was sworn in, for example, a staff member in UCCS’s sustainability program began pushing the University of Colorado system to condemn Trump’s withdrawal from an international agreement to tackle climate change. It was the type of statement universities had issued without thinking twice in past administrations.

In an email, UCCS’ top public relations executive warned his boss: “There is a growing sentiment among the thought leadership in higher ed that campus leaders not take a public stance on major issues unless they impact their campus community.”

Tau writes for the Associated Press. AP education writer Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.

Aug. 21 (UPI) — Students at Villanova University near Philadelphia received an active shooter alert and were warned to stay in secure locations late Thursday afternoon, but it was a hoax.

University officials issued an active shooter alert to students and warned them to shelter in place at 4:30 p.m. EDT, after being alerted to an alleged shooter at the university’s law school.

Many police responded to the scene, but no injuries were reported before University President Peter Donohue announced it was a “cruel hoax” at about 6:15 p.m., WCAU reported.

“Panic and terror ensued as news of a possible shooter at the Law School,” Donohue said in a letter to students and family.

“Mercifully, no one was injured, and we now know that it was a cruel hoax,” Donohue continued. “There was no active shooter, no injuries and no evidence of firearms present on campus.”

Donohue said the hoax has “shaken our entire community” and thanked the Villanova Public Safety department, the Radnor Police and other local police departments for rapidly responding to the report of an active shooter.

The university lifted its shelter-in-place order after police reported the matter was a hoax.

Police had barricaded Scarpa Hall, which houses the university’s law school, after being notified of an active shooter situation.

The university was placed under lockdown as police investigated the matter, but no information has been provided regarding what triggered the active shooter alert.

The nearby Lower Merion School District moved all students and staff indoors after being notified of the active shooter situation.

Thursday was Villanova’s opening day for fall classes, and many students were undergoing orientation when the active shooter alert was issued.

WASHINGTON — A year after being lauded for its plan to replace thousands of aging, gas-powered mail trucks with a mostly electric fleet, the U.S. Postal Service is facing congressional attempts to strip billions in federal EV funding.

In June, the Senate parliamentarian blocked a Republican proposal in President Trump’s massive tax-and-spending bill to sell off the agency’s new electric vehicles and infrastructure and revoke remaining federal money. But efforts to halt the fleet’s shift to clean energy continue in the name of cost savings.

Donald Maston, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Assn., said canceling the program now would have the opposite effect, squandering millions of dollars.

“I think it would be shortsighted for Congress to now suddenly decide they’re going to try to go backwards and take the money away for the EVs or stop that process, because that’s just going to be a bunch of money on infrastructure that’s been wasted,” he said.

Beyond that, many in the scientific community fear the government could pass on an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming when urgent action is needed.

Reducing emissions

A 2022 University of Michigan study found the new electric postal vehicles could cut total greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20 million tons over the predicted, cumulative 20-year lifetime of the trucks. That’s a fraction of the more than 6 billion metric tons emitted annually in the United States, said Professor Gregory A. Keoleian, co-director of the university’s Center for Sustainable Systems. But he said the push toward electric vehicles is critical and needs to accelerate, given the intensifying effects of climate change.

“We’re already falling short of goals for reducing emissions,” Keoleian said. “We’ve been making progress, but the actions being taken or proposed will really reverse decarbonization progress that has been made to date.”

Many GOP lawmakers share Trump’s criticism of the Biden-era green energy push and say the Postal Service spending should focus only on delivering mail.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said that “it didn’t make sense for the Postal Service to invest so heavily in an all-electric force.” She said she will pursue legislation to rescind what is left of the $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act allocated to help cover the $10-billion cost of new postal vehicles.

Ernst has called the EV initiative a “boondoggle” and “a textbook example of waste,” citing delays, high costs and concerns over cold-weather performance.

“You always evaluate the programs, see if they are working. But the rate at which the company that’s providing those vehicles is able to produce them, they are so far behind schedule, they will never be able to fulfill that contract,” Ernst said during a recent appearance at the Iowa State Fair, referring to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense.

“For now,” she added, “gas-powered vehicles — use some ethanol in them — I think is wonderful.”

Corn-based ethanol is a boon to Iowa’s farmers, but the effort to reverse course has other Republican support.

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), a co-sponsor of the rollback effort, has said the EV order should be canceled because the project “has delivered nothing but delays, defective trucks and skyrocketing costs.”

The Postal Service maintains that the production delay of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles was “very modest” and not unexpected.

“The production quantity ramp-up was planned for and intended to be very gradual in the early months to allow time for potential modest production or supplier issues to be successfully resolved,” spokesperson Kim Frum said.

Modernization efforts

The independent, self-funded federal agency, which is paid for mostly by postage and product sales, is in the middle of a $40-billion, 10-year modernization and financial stabilization plan. The EV effort had the full backing of Democratic President Biden, who pledged to move toward an all-electric federal fleet of car and trucks.

The “Deliver for America” plan calls for modernizing the ground fleet, notably the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, which dates to 1987 and is very fuel-inefficient, at 9 mpg. The vehicles are well past their projected 24-year lifespan and are prone to breakdowns and even fires.

“Our mechanics are miracle workers,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “The parts are not available. They fabricate them. They do the best they can.”

The Postal Service announced in 2022 it would deploy at least 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028, including commercial off-the-shelf models, after years of deliberation and criticism it was moving too slowly to reduce emissions. By 2024, the agency was awarded a Presidential Sustainability Award for its efforts to electrify the largest fleet in the federal government.

Building new postal trucks

In 2021, Oshkosh Defense was awarded a contract for up to 165,000 battery electric and internal combustion engine Next Generation vehicles over 10 years.

The first of the odd-looking trucks, with hoods resembling a duck’s bill, began service in Georgia last year. Designed for greater package capacity, the trucks are equipped with airbags, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors, 360-degree cameras and antilock brakes.

There’s also a new creature comfort: air-conditioning.

Douglas Lape, special assistant to the president of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers and a former carrier, is among numerous postal employees who have had a say in the new design. He marvels at how Oshkosh designed and built a new vehicle, transforming an old North Carolina warehouse into a factory along the way.

“I was in that building when it was nothing but shelving,” he said. “And now, being a completely functioning plant where everything is built in-house — they press the bodies in there, they do all of the assembly — it’s really amazing, in my opinion.”

Where things stand now

The agency has so far ordered 51,500 New Generation vehicles, including 35,000 battery-powered vehicles. To date, it has received 300 battery vehicles and 1,000 gas-powered ones.

Then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in 2022 the agency expected to purchase chiefly zero-emissions delivery vehicles by 2026. It still needs some internal combustion engine vehicles that travel longer distances.

Frum, the Postal Service spokesperson, said the planned electric vehicle purchases were “carefully considered from a business perspective” and are being deployed to routes and facilities where they will save money.

The agency has also received more than 8,200 of 9,250 Ford E-Transit electric vehicles it has ordered, she said.

Ernst said it’s fine for the Postal Service to use EVs already purchased.

“But you know what? We need to be smart about the way we are providing services through the federal government,” she said. “And that was not a smart move.”

Maxwell Woody, lead author of the University of Michigan study, made the opposite case.

Postal vehicles, he said, have low average speeds and a high number of stops and starts that enable regenerative braking. Routes average under 30 miles and are known in advance, making planning easier.

“It’s the perfect application for an electric vehicle,” he said, “and it’s a particularly inefficient application for an internal combustion engine vehicle.”

Haigh writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines contributed to this report.

In downtown Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference with Democratic leaders when the Border Patrol showed up nearby to conduct a showy immigration raid.

In Washington D.C., hundreds of National Guard troops patrolled the streets, some in armored vehicles, as city officials battled with the White House over whether the federal government can take control of the local police department.

President Trump has long demonized “blue” cities like Los Angeles, Washington and New York, frequently claiming — often contrary to the evidence — that their Democratic leaders have allowed crime and blight to worsen. Trump, for example, cited out-of-control crime as the reason for his Washington D.C. guard deployment, even though data shows crime in the city is down.

But over the last few months, Trump’s rhetoric has given way to searing images of federal power on urban streets that are generating both headlines and increasing alarm in some circles.

While past presidents have occasionally used the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in response to clear, acute crises, the way Trump has deployed troops in Democratic-run cities is unprecedented in American politics. Trump has claimed broader inherent powers and an authority to deploy troops to cities when and where he decides there is an emergency, said Matthew Beckmann, a political science professor at UC Irvine.

“President Trump is testing how far he can push his authority, in no small part to find out who or what can challenge him,” he said.

State and local officials reacted with shock when they learned Border Patrol agents had massed outside Newsom’s news conference Thursday. The governor was preparing to announce the launch of a campaign for a ballot measure, which if approved by voters, would redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms.

Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter: “We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves.” When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”

However, local law enforcement sources told The Times that the raid was not random and that they had received word from the federal authorities that Little Tokyo was targeted due to its proximity to the governor’s event. The raid, the sources told The Times, was less about making arrests and more of a show of force intended to disrupt Democrats.

Whatever the reason, the raid generated news coverage and at least in the conservative media, overshadowed the announcement of the redistricting plan.

Trump’s second term has been marked by increased use of troops in cities. He authorized the deployment of thousands of Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June after immigration raids sparked scattered protests. The troops saw little action, and local leaders said the deployment was unnecessary and only served to inflame tensions.

The operation reached a controversial zenith in July when scores of troops on horseback wearing tactical gear and driving armored vehicles, rolled through MacArthur Park. The incident generated much attention, but local police were surprised that the raid was brief and resulted in few arrests.

After the MacArthur Park raid, Mayor Karen Bass complained “there’s no plan other than fear, chaos and politics.”

Beckmann said the situation is a “particularly perilous historical moment because we have a president willing to flout constitutional limits while Congress and the court have been willing to accept pretext as principle.”

UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies, said the recent military displays are part of a larger mission to increase the power of the president and weaken other countervailing forces, such as the dismantling of federal agencies and the weakening of universities.

“It all adds up to a picture of really trying to turn the president into the one dominant force in American politics — he is the boss of everything, he controls everything,” Schickler said. “And that’s just not how the American political system has worked for 240 years.”

In some way, Trump’s tactics are an extension of long-held rhetoric. In the 1980s, he regularly railed against crime in New York City, including the rape of a woman in Central Park that captured national headlines. The suspects, known as the Central Park Five, were exonerated after spending years in prison and have filed a defamation suit against Trump.

Trump and his backers say he is simply keeping campaign promises to reduce crime and deport people in the country illegally.

“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Federal agents “patrol all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make L.A. safe,” she said.

In Washington D.C., where the federal government has began assuming law enforcement responsibilities, the business of policing the streets of the nation’s capital had radically transformed by Friday. Federal agencies typically tasked with investigating drug kingpins, gunrunners and cybercriminals were conducting traffic stops and helping with other routine policing.

Twenty federal law enforcement teams fanned out across the city Thursday night with more than 1,750 people joining the operation, a White House official told the Associated Press. They made 33 arrests, including 15 people who did not have permanent legal status. Others were arrested on warrants for murder, rape and driving under the influence, the official said.

Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice, said the administration’s actions not only threaten democracy, but they also have real consequences for local leaders and residents. Citizens often can’t distinguish between federal or local officers and don’t know when the two groups are or aren’t working together.

“That breeds a lot of confusion and also breeds a lot of fear,” Johnson said.

Thomas Abt, founding director of University of Maryland’s Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, emphasized that pulling federal agents from their jobs can hurt overall public safety.

“There’s a real threat to politicizing federal law enforcement, and sending them wherever elected officials think there’s a photo opportunity instead of doing the hard work of federal law enforcement,” Abt said.

Already, D.C. residents and public officials have pushed back on federal law enforcement’s presence. When federal officers set up a vehicle checkpoint along the 14th Street Northwest corridor this week, hecklers shouted, “Go home, fascists” and “Get off our streets.”

On Friday, the District of Columbia filed an emergency motion seeking to block the Trump administration’s takeover of the city’s police department.

“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement on Friday. “The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful. They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD.”

The show of force in L.A. has also left local officials outraged at what they see as deliberate efforts to sow fear and exert power. Hours before agents arrived in Little Tokyo, Bass and other officials held a news conference calling for an end to the continued immigration raids.

Bass said she believes the recent actions violated the temporary restraining order upheld this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting agents from targeting people solely based on their race, vocation, language or location.

The number of arrests in Southern California declined in July after a judge issued the order. But in the past two weeks, some higher profile raids have begun to ramp up again.

In one instance, an 18-year-old Los Angeles high school senior was picked up by federal immigration officers while walking his dog in Van Nuys. On Thursday, a man apparently running from agents who showed up at a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia was hit by a car and killed on the 210 Freeway.

Bass appeared to be seething as she spoke to reporters after Newsom’s press conference on Thursday, calling the raid in Little Tokyo a “provocative act” and “unbelievably disrespectful.”

“They’re talking about disorder in Los Angeles, and they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now,” she said.

What’s the difference between Harvard and UCLA when it comes to fighting President Trump’s attacks?

It may come down to how much Gavin Newsom wants his shot at the White House.

Harvard appears to be on the brink of caving to the president’s demands around claims of antisemitism and a host of issues that most would describe as policies for inclusiveness and diversity, but which Trump derides as “woke,” whatever that means.

The storied university may pay out a huge settlement — rumored to be about $500 million — to pacify an administration increasingly bent on domination of American institutions. Armed with that success, the president has targeted UCLA by freezing more than $500 million in federal grants and demanding a payout of about $1 billion.

“We will not be complicit in this kind of attack on academic freedom on this extraordinary public institution,” Newsom said recently. “We are not like some of those other institutions that have followed a different path.”

Let’s hope that’s true.

Technically, the University of California is run by the Board of Regents, of which Newsom is a member. But Newsom has so far appointed or reappointed several voting members, and you’re not going to convince me that the rest will go rogue on this decision on how to battle for the soul of UCLA, one of the most important the board will ever make.

So Newsom will be the decider, to steal a phrase from President George W. Bush.

And deciding to capitulate not only looks bad, but has terrible consequences that would dog a candidate Newsom. Not to mention crippling California as a whole.

Harvard may hold a place in the American psyche as the best of the best, but when it comes to actual impact, UCLA and the University of California system are in an entirely different league. More than 1 million Californians hold a degree from a UC, with about 200,000 currently enrolled across the system. Each year, UCLA alone contributes more than $2 billion to the local economy, and adds to the body of human knowledge with its unparalleled research in ways that money cannot quantify.

“With all respect to Harvard, the University of California dwarfs Harvard in terms of size and scale and the impact on the country,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told me. “When you look at the UC just in terms of science and healthcare and helping to birth Silicon Valley, helping to birth the pharmaceutical industry, the UC has a cultural, educational and economic relevance unlike any other institution on the planet.”

The stakes are simply higher for California. Harvard, a private university, can not only withstand more financially, but ultimately matters less. UCLA, with great respect to UC Berkeley, is the “people’s university,” as Zev Yaroslavsky puts it. He’s a former L.A. County supervisor and current director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“There is a difference between a Harvard and a UCLA, or UC Berkeley or UC San Diego or University of Michigan,” he said, and if the president managed to extract his pound of flesh, “it would bankrupt the No. 1 public university in the United States.”

The problem is this is a lose-lose situation. If the university settles, it is going to be forced to pay a tribute of hundreds of millions of dollars. While it may be able to lower the purposefully debilitating $1 billion Trump is demanding, it will still pay a price that damages it for years to come. But at least it will know the number.

If the university doesn’t settle, it risks years of litigation with no certainty of an eventual win.

On Tuesday, a federal court in a separate lawsuit ordered the administration to unfreeze more than $80 million in funding that is currently being withheld. But even with that win, the entire UC system remains in jeopardy of the president’s agenda, and there is no reason to believe the Supreme Court would side with California if or when the case made it that far.

But even if UCLA were to settle, what’s to stop Trump from coming back next year for another bite? As Yaroslavsky points out, give a bully your lunch money once, and they’ll keep coming back for more.

“There’s always a temptation to negotiate and work it out,” said Wiener, the state senator. “I don’t think that that’s an option here.”

Neither do I, though the business-minded decision would be to cut a deal. But we also have a larger issue to consider.

Education is resistance to authoritarianism, and crushing it has long been a goal of the far right. Point being, educated, free-thinking folks often prefer diversity and democracy.

In 2021, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy,” which summed it up well.

“We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” he said. And here we are.

If the university of the fourth-largest economy on the planet signals that it can’t stand up to this, what university will risk it?

“California needs to say, ‘No, we’re not going to give him control over the UC, we’re not going to pay him taxpayer dollars as extortion,’” Wiener said. “If California can’t say no, then I don’t see who can.”

So once again, California — and Californians — are a line of defense. It’s up to us to let our leaders know that we don’t want our taxpayer-funded universities to cave to this assault, and that we expect our governor to fight.

It’s in his best interest, and ours.