From the NY Times: A federal judge in New York declined in a ruling on Friday to order the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in terminated funding that had been awarded to research institutions by the National Science Foundation. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in May in which a coalition of 16 states argued that the grants were critical to maintaining the United States as a leader in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, subjects, and that the cuts were “in complete derogation of the policies and priorities set by Congress.” The science foundation had announced policy changes meant to align its mission with that of the broader Trump administration. The changes included updating what the plaintiffs call the foundation’s priority directive to exclude the funding of activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The suit asked the court to find the foundation’s new priority directive unconstitutional and to issue an injunction blocking further cuts to universities and other higher education institutions. The judge, John P. Cronan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, found that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the suit because it sought monetary damages from the federal government. Such cases, he wrote, must be brought before the Court of Federal Claims in Washington. In his 78-page opinion, the judge also noted that plaintiffs seeking an injunction must, among other things, show a likelihood of success on the merits of a case. The states had not done that, he said...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/nyregion/nsf-trump-stem-research-cuts.html.
In his video message to the campus (see below), Chancellor Frenk referenced a contingency plan that UCLA has put in place for federal research cuts. But he gives no hint as to what that plan is, and in fact seems to say that there is a special committee meeting daily to come up with a plan. The reference to a contingency plan is at minute 1:34 - 1:56.
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It might be noted that there are certain parallels between UCLA and Columbia. Both had encampments that led to external police intervention and much surrounding national publicity as a result. Both later came in conflict with the Trump administration, in part because of those events. Columbia, as blog readers will know, eventually made a deal with the administration to restore funding with a penalty payment of $221 million. But Columbia is administered privately by a board of trustees. UCLA is a public institution and part of a larger system administered by a Board of Regents. The Regents include ex officio members such as the governor (who has been running a campaign against Trump and a non-campaign for a presidential run in 2028). While the political ex officio Regents have only one vote each and could in theory be outvoted by the other Regents, it is hard to imagine that happening. In any case, it is hard to imagine the non-political Regents being OK with large payments to the feds - particularly during a budget squeeze. Thus, it is hard to imagine there is a majority of votes on the Regents for a Columbia-type deal.
While UCLA and UC might use available resources to keep researchers with frozen grants going for a short time, that is not a sustainable solution. As noted above, counting on the courts to fix the situation is iffy at best, although some other court might eventually reverse the freeze on funding for existing grants. But even that type of decision would leave the question of grant renewals and new grants on the table. Relief from non-renewals and unfavorable treatment of new proposals will be still harder to obtain from courts.
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