Dem
47
GOP
53
The financial relationship between the federal government and private entities/universities is a very complicated area of law, covered by a very, very long list of federal rules (actually, several long lists of federal rules). That means we can hardly do justice to the subject here.
That said, we CAN point out that, generally, the government has far more power to cancel contracts and grants than any other entity. It can do so for "default," which means that the terms of the contract were not fulfilled by the contracted entity (this would generally be called for "cause" in the non-governmental world). It can also do so for "convenience," if there have been budget cuts, or the work is no longer needed by the government.
That said, there are (complicated) limits to this power of the government (and those limits are a little different if we are talking about a contract vs. a grant). Broadly speaking, the government cannot act in bad faith, and must have a clear justification for its termination decisions. Further, there is a process that must be followed, one that takes quite a bit of time and paperwork. Finally, the government generally has the duty to pay the costs of its termination decision.
The important thing, for our purposes, is that the Trump administration is long on vague explanations and arbitrariness, and short on following the rules, and so there is plenty of room for universities to go to court and try to get the administration's decisions overturned. UCLA, which we wrote about yesterday, was one among many schools that did so. And just hours after that post went live, a judge ruled in the university's favor, ordering the White House to un-cancel at least 300 of the 800 grants it had frozen.
This is probably not the final word, as this administration tends to pursue every appeal it possibly can. Still, the point is that there is some basis for fighting back in court, and some reasonable hope of success, very possibly on a fairly expedited timeline. All of these things, not to mention the fact that the UC Regents held an emergency meeting and were not inclined to approve a $1 billion bribe, suggest UCLA might become the school that decides to try to hold the line, rather than giving in.
There's also one other thing worth passing along. We wondered, yesterday, what finally caused the administration to set its sights on UCLA. Our guess was that it might have been that football season is about to begin. Now, we have another possible explanation. There was a speech at graduation in June where a student said some harsh, and quite crude things, about the administration. And it's been circulating in the last week or so among MAGA types on social media. For example:
The most interesting image here is the bearded UCLA administrator nodding and applauding. The Trump administration should make sure that gesture alone is extremely costly for the university pic.twitter.com/jrsIyRhCGd
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 11, 2025
If Trump saw this—and he lives much of his life on MAGA social media—it is exactly the sort of thing that would cause him to blow his top.
As chance would have it, (Z) is going to the Angels-Dodgers game tonight with the very professor who has D'Souza's knickers in a twist. That means (Z) is one step closer to his goal of being declared an enemy of the state. (Z)