Judge orders Trump administration to restore part of UCLA's suspended funding
US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled the grant funding suspensions violated an earlier June preliminary injunction where she ordered the National Science Foundation (NSF) to restore dozens of grants it had terminated at UCLA.
The order had blocked the agency from cancelling other grants at the University of California system, of which UCLA is a part.
'NSF's actions violate the preliminary injunction,' Lin, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, wrote.
The White House and the university had no immediate comment on the ruling.
UCLA said last week the government froze $584m (R10.2bn) in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over pro-Palestinian student protests against US ally Israel's military assault on Gaza.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported the judge's order asked for the restoration of more than a third of the suspended $584m funding.
The University of California said last week it was reviewing a settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA in which the university will pay $bn (R17.5bn). It said such a large payment would 'devastate' the institution.
The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed anti-Semitism during the protests.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, said the government wrongly equates their criticism of Israel's war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with anti-Semitism and their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism.
Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president's threats. Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom called the Trump administration's settlement offer a form of extortion.
Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last month, UCLA agreed to pay more than $6m (R105m) to settle a lawsuit alleging anti-Semitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Rights advocates note a rise in anti-Semitism, anti-Arab bias and Islamophobia due to conflict in the Middle East. The Trump administration has not announced equivalent probes into Islamophobia.
The government has settled its probes with Columbia University, which agreed to pay more than $220m (R3.8bn), and Brown University, which said it will pay $50m (R877m). The two universities accepted certain government demands. Settlement talks with Harvard University are ongoing.
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IOL News
44 minutes ago
- IOL News
Gaza Conflict: History Will Judge Those Who Looked The Other Way
Protesters hold pictures denoucing the killing of an Al Jazeera news team in an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, during a vigil in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank on August 11, 2025. Condemnations poured in from the United Nations and media rights groups on August 11, after an Israeli strike killed Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal. Also killed were freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi. Image: AFP Reneva Fourie Since 7 October 2023, Gaza has become an open-air graveyard. The staggering figures are echoes of tragedy etched into history. Israel has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, wounded 153,213, and arbitrarily detained 30,000. Among the deceased are 242 journalists who have been deliberately targeted for revealing the truth, seven of whom were murdered this week. This is not war; it is genocide. The Palestinian struggle mirrors South Africa's fight against apartheid. Just as the apartheid regime branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist, Israel smears Palestinians and those who defend them as Hamas sympathisers or antisemites. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies parrots this propaganda, shamefully weaponising Jewish pain to shield a genocidal regime from accountability. The powerful and resourced continue defending a regime that operates with the same impunity as Nazi Germany and the same colonial sadism as apartheid South Africa. When Western powers sanctioned Russia overnight for its invasion of Ukraine, they exposed their hypocrisy. Israel's crimes – indiscriminate bombing, forced starvation, targeted executions of medics and reporters – are far worse, yet they face no accountability. Israel's military juggernaut, fuelled by United States and European weapons, has turned Gaza into a wasteland of mass graves and starving children. Over the past twenty-two months, the US has dispatched a minimum of 800 transport planes and 140 ships to deliver more than 90,000 tonnes of armaments and military equipment to Israel. The Trump administration approved nearly USD12 billion in major foreign military sales within the first two months of taking office this year. Germany supplies 30 per cent of Israel's arms. The United Kingdom provides surveillance flights, training, and arms. Coal from South African companies keeps flowing to Israel despite the ICJ genocide case. Qatar, home to Al Jazeera, whose journalists Israel has murdered, gifts Trump a luxury jet, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates welcome him lavishly while Palestinians dig their children out of rubble. The wealthy are brazenly profiting from Palestinian blood despite their effective complicity in war crimes. What is unfolding is not a tragedy of nature nor an unfortunate by-product of conflict. It is the deliberate dismantling of a people's existence, sustained and accelerated by the wealth, weaponry, and political cover of the world's most powerful nations. The notion that this is a symmetrical war between two sides is a fiction kept alive by media narratives designed to dull outrage and shift blame. The imbalance of power is absolute. One side possesses the most advanced military technology and enjoys unconditional political backing; the other is a captive population, penned into a strip of land without an army, navy, or air force. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ The argument of self-defence collapses under the weight of the evidence. Starvation is not self-defence. The bombing of hospitals and schools is not self-defence. The targeting of journalists, medics, and aid workers is not self-defence. The indiscriminate shelling of refugee camps is not self-defence. It is the language of annihilation dressed in the rhetoric of security. This is the blueprint of settler-colonial violence: dispossess, dehumanise, destroy. Imagine being a 15-year-old in Gaza, watching your siblings dismembered by drones, your school reduced to dust, your parents executed while pleading for food. Or a mother cradling your malnourished baby as Israel blocks aid trucks, deliberately enforcing starvation. This is Israel's final solution for Palestine: erase them, silence them, break them. Western and allied powers might shackle the United Nations, but the history of such regimes shows that they are not invincible. The West initially tried to appease Hitler before finally realising how evil he was, and eighty years ago, Nazism was crushed. The West initially backed apartheid, and thirty-five years ago, it was on the edge of defeat. Every oppressive order eventually meets its reckoning. The people of Palestine are not waiting for saviours; they are resisting in the most extraordinary conditions imaginable. Gaza's women and youth refuse to be broken. Like our youth of the 70s and 80s rose against apartheid, Palestinian teenagers document their annihilation on social media, and women find means to sustain life. Doctors continue to perform surgeries by the light of mobile phones. Their resistance is not terrorism; it is the most profound act of courage in our time. But resistance without global solidarity is condemned to isolation. Israel's regime of terror will fall, but only if we fight with an urgency that appreciates that Gaza has no tomorrow. The machinery of destruction is sustained by money, resources, and political cover, all of which can be disrupted by organised public will. Boycotts can erode economic stability. Divestment can sap the financial underpinnings of the occupation. Sanctions can strip away the veneer of legitimacy. The choice is stark and immediate: act or become an entry in the ledger of complicity. The moral clarity of this moment should be as unmistakable as it was in the fight against apartheid in South Africa or the resistance to fascism. No amount of propaganda can conceal the reality that unfolds daily in Gaza's streets and hospitals. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel's actions are plausibly genocidal. History will judge those who looked the other way. To stand with Gaza is not an act of charity but of justice. It is to affirm the principle that no people should be condemned to live and die under siege, that no child should grow up with drones as their lullaby, and that no journalist should pay with their life for telling the truth. The fate of Gaza will not be decided solely by those who drop the bombs or those who endure them, but by the millions who choose whether to look away or to rise. History has shown that the arc of justice does not bend on its own. It is pulled, often against fierce resistance, by those who refuse to accept that brutality and impunity are the natural order of things. The window to act is not endless, and each day of hesitation costs lives. * Dr Reneva Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development, and security. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
The Citizen
2 hours ago
- The Citizen
US report on human rights abuse in SA rejected
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'We find the report to be an inaccurate and deeply flawed account that fails to reflect the reality of our constitutional democracy. The report's reliance on a-contextual information and discredited accounts is highly concerning. 'It cites an incident involving the deaths of farm workers and, despite the matter being actively adjudicated by our independent judiciary, misleadingly presents it as an extrajudicial killing. 'This is a fundamental distortion of the facts, as the individuals are formally arraigned before a court of law. 'Similarly, incidents of police using force are mentioned without acknowledging the robust processes in place, where institutions to protect our democracy are investigating if due process was followed and if such force was warranted.' ALSO READ: US sanctions may backfire and deepen divisions in SA Dirco added that SA has a transparent system with information freely available from law enforcement agencies and Chapter 9 institutions. 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Their action is a sign of disrespect. This is just being disrespectful.' Breakfast said the relationship between the countries was benefiting SA, therefore Ramaphosa must find a way of restoring harmonious relations while protecting the country's sovereignty. Call for government to address law and order crisis Christo van der Rheede, executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, said the report should be a wake-up call for the government of national unity and the ANC. The country faces a serious breakdown in law and order, and urgent steps must be taken to restore it, he added. 'However, we need to scrutinise how the facts in the report are presented and to agree on the following: first, the report is partially flawed in that it singles out Afrikaners as a minority group specifically targeted. ALSO READ: 'There is no white genocide happening here,' says Trump's top pastor after SA visit It is simply not true. No land is expropriated without compensation and no genocide is happening. 'Particularly worrying is the following statement: 'Significant human rights issues included credible reports of… the repression of racial minorities'. 'Second, the letter and spirit of our constitution, in terms of human dignity, equality, human rights and freedoms, is under attack and urgent steps are required to ensure it is adhered to by all levels of government.' Van der Rheede added it would have been more credible if the 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices were aligned with key constitutional imperatives and values and the failures of the state. 'All South Africans are impacted by ill-conceived economic policies, a stagnant economy, unemployment, crime, erosion of state capacity, poor service delivery and other socioeconomic ills. 'At the heart of this is a breakdown in law and order. And yes, our government must take full responsibility for the state we are in.' Claims of targeted genocide dismissed Political analyst Goodenough Mashego said: 'Most European countries with embassies here do regular checks when it comes to democracy and human rights. 'None has produced a report that says SA has a policy of disenfranchising Afrikaners, taking their land, killing them or committing genocide.' NOW READ: Trump's proof of 'white genocide' in SA contains images from Democratic Republic of Congo
TimesLIVE
3 hours ago
- TimesLIVE
Israel's Smotrich launches settlement plan to ‘bury' idea of Palestinian state
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