A sit-in outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at the campus of UCLA in May 2024. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

A US federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release some of the taxpayer-funded grants and contracts it confiscated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as punishment for allegedly violating the civil rights of Jewish students by exposing them to antisemitism.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration impounded a reported $584 million from UCLA’s coffers, citing numerous complaints of antisemitism on the campus — some of which the institution recently settled in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. The move came only days after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.

On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Rita Lin, appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden in 2023, ruled that the measure violated a previous preliminary injunction she granted the University of California (UC) system in June when other grants were taken from it by the National Science Foundation (NSF), over which the administration wields authority.

“NSF’s action violate the preliminary injunction,” Lin wrote in a 12-page judgement. “NSF communicated the suspensions by means of a form letter that failed to provide the requisite grant-specific reason for halting funding, and that failed to adequately consider grant-specific interests, including the reliance interests. Therefore … NSF’s suspension of the grants at issue here is vacated.”

Some one-third of the $584 million is due for restoration by Aug. 19.

In July, UCLA agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit which accused it of fostering a discriminatory and antisemitic learning environment during the 2023-2024 academic year.

The sum includes $2.33 million in donations for a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Academic Engagement Network (AEN), and UCLA’s Hillel International campus chapter; another $320,000 will be awarded to the UCLA Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. The accusers — Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian, who were UCLA students at the time of filing, as well as UCLA Health Dr. Kamran Shamsa — will split the remaining $3.6 million.

Filed in June 2024, the suit excoriated UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up. According to the complaint, students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.

Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality.” In doing so, it continued, UCLA allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.

Numerous antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the spring encampment, the complaint added.

Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the complaint said, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”

Since coming into office in January, the Trump administration has leveraged universities’ reliance on federal funding, to the tune of billions of dollars, to extract major policy concessions on campus antisemitism, transgender participation in sports, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In July, Columbia University resolved to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secured the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration froze to pressure the institution to address the issue.

Commenting on the agreement, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said it represents a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”

Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practices, and [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI] programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race” — which, if true, could mark the opening of a new era in American higher education.”

Choosing a similar path, Brown University agreed a week later to pay $50 million dollars and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism. The government rewarded Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million it froze in April.

Per the agreement, shared by the university, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”

Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.

Another major provision shutters any Brown initiatives which may advance the aims of the DEI movement.

“Brown shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts,” the agreement continues. “Brown will cease any provision of benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association, or element within the entire Brown University system.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the United States is actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a key ideological backer of Hamas, as a foreign terrorist organization, a step that could bolster US support for Israel’s fight against regional extremist networks.

Speaking on “Sid and Friends in the Morning,” the top US diplomat said the process of labeling a new terrorist group is complex, requiring the careful evaluation of the organization’s various branches to ensure any designation can withstand legal challenges.

“All of that is in the works, and obviously there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them,” Rubio said when asked about desginating the global Islamist network.

Rubio predicted that attempts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would be met with legal challenges.

“These things are going to be challenged in court,” Rubio said. “Any group can say, ‘Well, I’m not really a terrorist. That organization is not a terrorist organization.’”

“You have to show your work like a math problem when you go before court,” he continued. “All you need is one federal judge — and there are plenty — that are willing to do these nationwide injunctions and basically try to run the country from the bench. So we’ve got to be so careful.”

Rubio’s comments came amid growing bipartisan momentum in the US Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the House, Florida Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D) and Mario Díaz-Balart (R) last month reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.

“The Muslim Brotherhood has a documented history of promoting terrorism against the United States, our allies, and our society,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “Countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Austria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and France have already taken important steps to investigate and crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. The US government has to have the authority to crack down on the serious threats posed by this group as well.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has spearheaded an effort in the Senate to designate the Brotherhood.

A terrorist designation would align the US with several key allies, including many in the Middle East. Governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Austria have already banned the Brotherhood. Jordan outlawed the organization in April.

Hamas, the internationally designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades and perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust with its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, the US has yet to designate the organization, despite several attempts by Congress over the years. During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, officials in both the White House and Congress took initial steps toward sanctioning the group’s international branches, but a formal designation was never finalized.

US lawmakers believe they have identified multiple pathways to economically cripple the internationally designated terror organization. Congress could combat the Muslim Brotherhood by designating it a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or placing it on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list. Both options would levy heavy penalties on the group through methods such as freezing its assets or sanctioning its leadership.