WHEN MEGAN GRANT sits in the front row of her Intro to Gender Studies class at UCLA, she's enjoying the only rest she'll get all day. It's game day for the UCLA women's basketball team. Grant has 10 hours until she'll take the court for the Bruins. But before putting on her basketball jersey, the UCLA dual athlete will have weight training, class and softball practice. The senior softball star has a career .727 slugging percentage, .978 fielding percentage and earned the Big Ten single-season record for home runs with 26 in 2025.
Instead, the Bruins played with the intensity and focus characteristic of an NCAA Tournament game, dominating from start to finish in a 96-48 triumph Wednesday night at Pauley Pavilion. The third-ranked Bruins ( 18-1 overall, 8-0 in Big Ten) won for the 12th straight time and are more than halfway to tying the program record of 23 in a row set last year. The 48-point win marked the sixth straight by 18 points or more.
On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed. Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but his new office was on the line with disturbing news: The Trump administration was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at UCLA, UC's biggest campus.
The legal battle between the University of California, Los Angeles, the City of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Company continues as the school mulls potentially abandoning its lease to play football at the Rose Bowl. The school is reportedly looking to decamp to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood to take advantage of its proximity to the university campus as well as increased revenue generation opportunities with more premium seating and luxury suites.
Amid a funding blackout at one of California's largest universities, a San Francisco federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore more than $500 million in research grants to UCLA. The decision was made Monday by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin after U.S. President Donald Trump cut off $584 million in funding to the university at the end of July over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations.
The opinion by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California added hundreds of UCLA's National Institutes of Health grants to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that had already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to UC campuses.
Perkins, who could not be reached for comment, issued a statement through Linkedin - which has since been taken down - stating that he had deactivated all social media accounts with the exception of Instagram and that he had received multiple death threats. He said his home address and phone number had also been made public by critics because "I said it's okay to be happy when a racist who called for your eradication dies."
The Trump administration's settlement proposal to UCLA - which includes a nearly $1.2-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations - seeks to drastically overhaul campus practices on hiring, admissions, sports, scholarships, discrimination and gender identity, a Times review of the document shows. The 28-page letter - whose full contents have not been made public - also lays out in sweeping detail how it wants the university to enforce new policies that adhere to the president's conservative agenda.
UCLA scientists, medical professors and graduate students are accustomed to presenting their research - into cancer, stroke, brain injury, nerve regeneration - at conferences of their peers with the aid of high-tech audio and visual equipment. But in back-to-back events in Westwood Village and on a campus courtyard this week, they tapped into their high school memories, erecting hand-made posters on easels and bringing in props from their labs - including a human brain - to simply explain their complex work.
UCLA, which earned the No. 1 spot last year, was bumped down to the second-best public university in the nation, just behind the University of Michigan, in Niche's 2026 Best Colleges in America rankings, published Monday. ( Niche considers factors such as student reviews, academics, professors, the campus, diversity, safety and student life.) The only other California school that cracked the top 10 on the list of best public universities was UC Berkeley at No. 9.
Berkeley fans have flooded UCLA's Instagram with GIFs of Oski the Bear dancing. This playful rivalry showcases the spirited competition between the campuses as they claim top public university status.
