Trump freezes $867 million in California Medicaid, targets UCLA research Play

The Trump administration is blocking $867 million in Medicaid funds to California, citing suspected fraud in in-home care and immigrant eligibility. Gov. Gavin Newsom denounced the freeze as a political stunt.

Closer to home, evidence is being introduced that UCLA has been a particular target of Trump budget cuts. More than a thousand research grants were terminated at the University of California last year.

The Trump administration has admitted that the programs were terminated if a computer showed the words diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy or COVID-19. Diversity is a common scientific term, not necessarily referring to the human race.

Evidence has also emerged that the Department of Energy terminated 283 grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, while leaving untouched hundreds of grants that went to Republican-leaning states.

Punishing researchers for merely living in states that Trump did not carry would be unconstitutional, the UCLA researchers say. That's a major development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration to permanently restore their grants.

UCLA is the largest economic engine in western L.A. County. The National Institutes of Health alone suspended or canceled more than 700 grants at UCLA related to vaccines, cancer research and disparities in health outcomes.