“Can we get something going on Twitter in a short bit?” Senior Policy Strategist May Mailman asked several members of the White House communications team in an email late in the day on March 18. “Stephen request,” added Mailman, who works closely with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

“POTUS wants to see more action against universities,” Mailman wrote. Administration officials raced to make it happen.

She CC’d Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum on the email chain, which included Communications Director Steven Cheung and Deputy Communications Directors Alex Pfeiffer and Kaelan Dorr, under the subject line: “Funding yanked from San Jose State + UPenn.” The administration had launched investigations into both campuses over trans athletes’ past participation in sports. (One of those investigations concluded in April, finding the University of Pennsylvania in violation of Title IX.)

NOTUS reviewed the full email chain, which surfaced in court documents in a case targeting DOGE’s funding freezes. The internal communications detail a push fueled by a desire to get media attention, as senior officials rushed to coordinate with various federal agencies, the DOGE teams within them and Fox News to deliver on the president’s wish.

The emails also show that the administration targeted San Jose State University in a previously unreported effort to punish the campus — even before the Title IX investigation into it had concluded.

“We specifically focused on San Jose State and U of Penn at the advice of some of the agencies involved in live investigations and the guidance that it was best to have ongoing investigations and incidents as rationale for the stop work, which is only at these two universities currently,” Gruenbaum wrote in the email chain.

Administration officials were attuned to the possibility of bad optics — particularly when funding cuts touched national security and public health.

“If you all deem we should turn this back on, we can do that immediately given criticality- it’s just a simple email given we didn’t terminate,” Gruenbaum wrote at one point. But ultimately, those concerns did not outweigh the White House’s desire to punish the schools, which it did within hours of Mailman’s first note.

The White House and San Jose State University did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the email chain and the funding cutoffs. A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson directed NOTUS to the campus’ past public statements.

In the following weeks and months, the White House would strip hundreds of millions of dollars from Brown, Cornell, Northwestern and Princeton.

The impacts of the administration’s pressure campaigns are ongoing. Harvard, which has seen billions of federal dollars withheld, is “probably going to settle,” Trump said on Saturday. Last week, Penn joined Columbia University in caving to the Trump administration’s demands, banning transgender athletes from participating on women’s sports teams as well as a series of other concessions, including a “personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer.” In return, the administration unfroze the almost $175 million in funds it had pulled, a White House official confirmed to NOTUS.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called the resolution “the Trump effect in action.”

***

Two of these funding freezes began on March 18, with two bullet-pointed draft social media posts sent to the White House communications team.

“Today, we have paused ALL grant awards to San Jose State which continued to play a male athlete on the female volleyball team, including access to intimate, overnight spaces,” read the first draft post Mailman passed along, according to the internal email chain reviewed by NOTUS.

San Jose State had become the epicenter of the trans athlete debate after an online magazine outed Blaire Fleming, a member of the women’s volleyball team, prompting teams to forfeit matches against the university and lawsuits that targeted her eligibility to play.

Trump had taken an interest in the controversy during his 2024 campaign. At an all-women Fox News town hall, he brought up a viral video in which Fleming, an outside hitter, spiked a ball into an opposing player. “I never saw a ball hit so hard,” he marveled, vowing to “just ban” trans athletes from campus sports altogether. Anti-trans rhetoric had become a focus of his campaign.

(Keira Herron, the San Diego State player on the receiving end of the ball, later told The New York Times Magazine that “It was fine. … Everyone gets hit in volleyball.” Fleming said the season was “the darkest time in my life.”) In December, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified to senators that out of some 510,000 NCAA student-athletes, “less than 10” were transgender.

Mailman’s second draft post mirrored the first, this time announcing the pause of “tens of millions from UPenn” for having permitted a trans athlete to compete on the women’s swimming team years prior. The university receives roughly $1 billion annually in federal funding.

The government held significantly less leverage over San Jose State. Mailman noted that ending “all awards” to the campus meant “$100k of EPA funding,” and asked Gruenbaum to confirm if it was “paused or revoked?” Gruenbaum, from his perch inside the agency that directs federal contracting, acted as the White House’s point person between various agencies.

He was a more than willing partner. Gruenbaum left his post at a global investment firm to join the Trump administration, calling the president’s election and the formation of DOGE “this coming of everything I’ve been trying to put together,” in a profile that ran in Jewish Insider just a few days before the White House accelerated its war against higher education institutions. In it, he said he was brimming at the prospect of using the federal government’s leverage to combat antisemitism, along with cutting “lower-hanging fruit of some things in the DEI category or in the climate and sustainability category.”

The White House team peppered him with questions about the funding cutoffs.

“Are these from every single agency?” Pfeiffer asked. “What are the deets? Once confirmed— we can get a story in a major outlet.” Pfeiffer himself had worked as a White House correspondent for The Daily Caller during Trump’s first year in office — landing the role at just 20 and replacing Kaitlan Collins — before serving a four-year stint as a producer for Tucker Carlson at Fox News.

Gruenbaum explained that there was just one grant that would be paused at San Jose State, and it was for “healthy drinking water so up to you guys if you want to trumpet that.” He added that it was an Environmental Protection Agency grant, and that the agency was “concerned having their name in media but defer to you all…if going to print that will just give them a heads up, so Imk.”

Half an hour later, he wrote that he “Found another $1MM for San Jose St, stand by.”

By then, it was almost 5 p.m. Officials were growing impatient.

“Josh,” Mailman wrote back. “per Stephen, we need to get this on social media TODAY. Please no more piecemeal emails. Just one with clear bullet points on what’s being frozen/paused and from which agency. THANK YOU!!!”

“Yep you got it,” Gruenbaum replied. “I didn’t want you guys tweeting San Jose first before I cleaned up DHS and DoD hence the piecemeal, but understood.”

Gruenbaum, Mailman and Miller are all involved in the administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which directed the stripping of $250 million from Columbia and launched investigations into the University of California system and Harvard University.

Over an hour later, Gruenbaum returned with the details of the funding cuts across the two universities, the specifics of which are reported here for the first time.

At San Jose State, “all” federal awards had been halted under stop-work orders, including a $17,400 Department of Defense contract and the $99,700 healthy drinking water study. A third award, this one with the Department of Homeland Security, raised red flags. The $977,000 contract was for “the terrorist and serious criminal database support.”

But exempting those funds from the stop work, Gruenbaum pointed out, would drop the San Jose State total from $1.093 million to around $120,000. Nobody on the email chain took him up on the offer to reverse the freezes.

There was, however, a problem with Gruenbaum’s math. The $977,000 figure was a theoretical maximum. Only $562,585 had actually been obligated to the university, and of that $448,796 had already been used, federal records show. The campus theoretically lost out on a maximum of $528,204, but the real number was likely closer to $113,789. Ultimately, the total punishment amounted to little more than a rounding error for a campus with a nearly half-billion-dollar annual budget.

At Penn, seven contracts were terminated. Six of them, worth a collective $26.5 million, had been awarded by the DOD and deemed “non-mission critical.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had approved, Gruenbaum noted.

The remaining award was a $146.3 million Department of Health and Human Services IDIQ contract — a type of open-ended contract that other orders are drawn from. At the time of termination, only one task order had been drawn from the massive pool of money: an “animal infectious disease study,” according to Gruenbaum.

Penn President J. Larry Jameson would later say that terminating the funds would impact “research on preventing hospital-acquired infections, drug screening against deadly viruses, quantum computing, protections against chemical warfare, and student loan programs.” Jameson had only officially been Penn’s president for a few days at that point, after serving as interim president.

***

In early February, three former Penn swimmers filed a federal lawsuit against the university and the NCAA for having allowed Lia Thomas, a transgender student, to compete years earlier. The following day, Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.

The day after the bill signing, Trump’s Department of Education opened its Title IX investigations into Penn, San Jose State and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, despite the college athletes at the center of the administration’s ire having concluded their final seasons long before. The administration gave Fox News the exclusive.

“This is NOT the result of the Title IX investigation,” Mailman wrote to Pfeiffer in March. “UPenn and San Jose State are still at risk of losing all of their federal education program funds because of those investigations. This is immediate action to review discretionary funding streams to those universities. Early action!!” Versions of that statement, attributed to an unnamed official, would later appear in coverage of the funding pause.

Pfeiffer replied he would “get this out shortly.” The focus, he said, would be on Penn “since it is a nice big number.” There were still concerns about canceling the DHS grant at San Jose State.

Mailman asked about San Jose State’s absence from the draft.

“If the premise is we want to show we are on top of it — I think the big 175 million number to a known university will make that splash,” Pfeiffer wrote. “I can get San Jose State out separately post UPenn.” Pfeiffer pushed the announcement to the following morning to avoid an already crowded news cycle. The staffers wrapped their work a little after 9 p.m., less than five hours after Mailman first pinged the communications team.

***

At 8 a.m. on March 19, Fox Business, part of Pfeiffer’s old stomping grounds, flashed a breaking news alert. The president’s desire for “more action” became a reality.

“President Trump has promised to protect female athletes, he has threatened to rip federal funding away from any university that defies his executive order banning biological males from infiltrating women’s sports, and he is doing it,” Fox Business’ Hillary Vaughn said on air.

“We are the first to report,” Vaughn continued, looking down to read from her phone as she spoke. “President Trump has paused $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania over its controversial policies.” The language largely mirrored the communications team’s draft statement.

The word “approximately,” which appeared in the administration’s draft statement to couch the fact that the White House had actually paused $172.8 million, did not make it onto Fox. Most other major outlets would also report the $175 million total without any such caveat.

“UPenn is still at risk of losing all of their federal education program funds because of those investigations,” the White House draft statement read.

“The university is still at risk of losing all its federal funding as a result of the ongoing Title IX investigation…” Vaughn said on air. After she wrapped, various Fox personalities took turns lauding the decision.

The announcement completely blindsided Penn.

The campus that day said it was “aware of media reports” that it had just lost out on $175 million, but had “not yet received any official notification or any details.” Penn insisted it “has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies.”

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California lawmakers are among those who are most relieved that they narrowly avoided this provision getting tucked into the legislation. The AI provision would have disproportionately affected California, where most advanced AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are located and legislators are eager to regulate the new technology given its prominence in the tech industry.

“Congress finally came to its senses and voted overwhelmingly to remove the AI moratorium provision,” California state Sen. Josh Becker, a lawmaker who has pushed for regulation of AI in California, told NOTUS in a statement.

“In the absence of a strong federal standard, states must retain the flexibility to advance AI in ways that do not compromise safety, privacy, or the rights of our residents,” he wrote.

Even after several rewrites to comply with Senate procedural rules and concessions to appease opponents, the provision, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, was ultimately cut by a vote of 99-1. Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was the only one to vote against cutting it.

Proponents of the provision said it was important to include in the reconciliation package to avoid a patchwork of different laws across states. Opponents of the provision said it would take power away from the states and block them from passing regulation that could protect their residents.

South Bay, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan wants to explore creating incentives for AI companies to move or expand in the city. He wants to research opportunities to make city services more efficient and accessible through AI.

The city has been integrating the technology into every day government services to improve the lives of residents. Mahan along with other city officials are using it to identify problems and strategize solutions. San Jose is already using AI to optimize public transit, translate languages, review documents and find street issues like potholes, graffiti, broken street lights, illegal dumping and more — all before they’re noticed by residents.

California’s state legislature has advanced several pieces of legislation intended to regulate AI. And several state legislators petitioned Congress in May to strike down the provision.

State Sen. Aisha Wahab — who represents Silicon Valley — said in a statement that the AI provision would have been detrimental to California and that it is important to “balance necessary guardrails while encouraging innovation.”

“Technology evolves at a faster pace than we can legislate, and an AI moratorium would have stifled California’s ability to establish necessary oversight of AI and all the technologies it is embedded in,” Wahab added.

State Sen. Tom Umberg, who like Wahab signed onto the letter asking Congress to strike down the provision, told NOTUS the Senate’s decision would allow the legislature to attend to their constituents.

“We are pleased that California will have the ability to create its own regulatory framework to advance the benefits of Artificial Intelligence while simultaneously mitigating the risks to protect all Californians,” Umber told NOTUS in a statement.

Rep. Ami Bera, a California Democrat, told NOTUS he welcomed the Senate’s decision to leave it out of the package, adding that Congress now needs to work on providing clear guardrails for AI.

“We can’t have a patchwork of 50 different AI laws and regulations. Congress needs to do its job, create a federal regulatory framework and pass sensible and bipartisan AI regulations,” Bera said.

Some federal lawmakers in Congress who supported the AI provision said having different regulations for each state amounted to a commercial obstacle. Others argued it gave the federal government too much power.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican critic of the provision, wrote on X that the Senate’s decision was a “big victory for parents, kids and workers.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, another Republican opponent of the provision, said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that Congress has been unable to regulate AI effectively and that in the meantime the issue should be left to the states.

“This body has proven that it cannot legislate on emerging technology. It is frustrating,” Blackburn said. “There are all of these pieces of legislation dealing with AI and we haven’t passed them. You know who has passed them? It is our states.”

The Senate and House still need to finalize the language of the reconciliation bill before it heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for signing. But back in the House, where the reconciliation package originally passed with the AI moratorium provision, there’s also some pushback.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said last month that she regretted voting for the provision in the reconciliation bill, writing on X that the measure violated states’ rights.

California Rep. Luz Rivas, who introduced an amendment in May to cut the provision from the House reconciliation bill, told NOTUS in a statement that the federal government needs to collaborate with states on this issue as AI becomes more prevalent in American life.

“We should be learning from how states address current and new challenges from Artificial Intelligence systems, not blocking their progress and their ability to innovate,” Rivas said. “We must continue to ensure that all levels of government are able to address current and future challenges emerging technologies like AI can pose.”

Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight

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The California Legislature on June 13 passed a $325 billion preliminary budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, and the state’s main source of homelessness funding — the Homelessness Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program — has been zeroed out. The funding can be used toward homelessness prevention, rental assistance, temporary and permanent housing, outreach, services and shelter improvements. Last-minute budget details are being hashed out before the fiscal year starts on July 1, but the potential axing of the program could have a devastating effect in Santa Clara County and San Jose in coming years.

San Jose will lose about 550 beds and spaces in temporary homeless housing if it doesn’t find other sources of funding, Housing Director Erik Soliván said. Because of the timing of when state dollars are distributed, the impact on the city won’t be felt until fiscal year 2026-27, resulting in a loss of about $30 million.

“What happens to the people who are in (those units)? The impact will be big,” Soliván told San Jose Spotlight. “Those funds are vital to not only the continuation of shelter operations, but also the work we do around outreach and engagement and providing services to encampments.”

The state established its program six years ago to give one-time grants to reduce homelessness. With the funding, California’s 13 largest cities have created 17,000 shelter beds and served more than 150,000 people. This fiscal year, the state set aside $1 billion for the program, and $760 million is left to be allocated.

Since the start of the program, San Jose has received nearly $120 million in grants in five rounds of funding. San Jose applied for $25.3 million this fiscal year, and awards will be announced and distributed next fiscal year. The city has allocated the largest chunk toward interim housing at $39 million and put $23 million toward new emergency shelters and navigation centers. San Jose has also has invested $14 million in street outreach.

“If we walk away from that now, we are not just walking away from progress. We are walking away from people,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. “Because if (the state program) disappears, our ability to respond to this humanitarian crisis goes with it.”

Santa Clara County has received a total of $114 million from the program, with the largest amounts of money being allocated toward funding operations at temporary housing sites, at nearly $50 million, and homelessness prevention at more than $20 million.

Kathryn Kaminski, acting director of the Santa Clara County Office of Supportive Housing, said the county would begin to feel the impacts of cuts starting fiscal year 2026-27.

“The county has been strategic and thoughtful about leveraging (Homelessness Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program) funding with other sources and allocating it over multiple years to prevent immediate disruptions of the system,” Kaminski told San José Spotlight. “However, discontinuation, delay or significant cuts to HHAP funds may require us to wind down or significantly reduce capacity of programs given the fiscal challenges at the local, state and federal levels for critical programming including temporary housing, basic needs and homelessness prevention.”

Nearly 10,000 homeless residents live in Santa Clara County, according to a 2023 count. Results for this year’s count have yet to be released. San Jose has 6,340 homeless residents — the fourth highest population of homeless people per capita in the nation.

While San Jose waits to see if its recent bid for funding is successful, the city will continue construction of its planned temporary housing sites, including Cherry Avenue tiny home site, the expansion of the Rue Ferrari tiny home and the Cerone safe parking site — all slated to open in the fall. The city also has five hotel conversions into temporary housing in its pipeline. San Jose aims to add more than 1,000 shelter beds and spaces this year.

Soliván said the housing department is making contingency plans for future state funding cuts. The preliminary budget outlines $500 million in state program funding to be restored for the 2026-27 fiscal year, half of what was distributed in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Officials are already preparing for a challenging year ahead with the county anticipating $70 million in proposed cuts from the federal budget, which would slash funding for Medi-Cal all the way to housing vouchers.

“It’s absolutely the worst time to see continued reduction in funding and services for our most vulnerable residents,” Ray Bramson, chief operating officer at Destination: Home and San José Spotlight columnist, told San José Spotlight. “My hope would be that we find a path forward to make it a permanent funding source, because we’re going to need this investment for a while to truly make a difference.”

Story updated June 23 at 9:45 a.m. Original story published June 20 at 8:30 a.m.

Contact Joyce Chu at joyce@sanjosespotlight.com or @joyce_speaks on X. 

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President Donald Trump’s weekend post calling for expanded deportation efforts in the biggest U.S. cities raised alarms for the Democratic lawmakers who represent California, Illinois and New York. Some told NOTUS they’re worried the directive could lead to military enforcement in their states, a concern driven by the administration’s unprecedented deployment of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles this month during protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

“If he can deploy the Marines to Los Angeles without justification, he can deploy them to your state, too,” said California Sen. Alex Padilla, who made a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday after he was handcuffed and forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference in California last week.

Trump did not explicitly lay out plans to deploy military forces in other states. But Democrats said Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles without authority from California Gov. Gavin Newsom could be a “slippery slope” toward using military deployment as a form of immigration law enforcement across the country.

For California Sen. Adam Schiff, an expansion of ICE activity means an expansion of the tension that the state has already seen with the Los Angeles protests, arrests and raids outside workplaces.

“It’s only going to inflame matters worse,” Schiff told NOTUS. “To target just Democratic cities also has a terrible partisan cast to it.”

Those worries have persisted after Trump’s social media post — as has Democratic messaging that Trump is taking a political swing at cities controlled by Democrats.

“He’s not going after dangerous people, he’s going after certain immigrants in certain cities that he doesn’t like politically,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin told NOTUS. “A lot of us suspect that that’s what it was always about.”

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth said the directive for ICE to increase detentions and deportations in Chicago means the president is “using ICE to intimidate, especially Democratic states.”

“I’m all for finding and deporting felons, but so far, in this administration’s own data, the number of convicted violent criminals that have been deported are somewhere around 10%,” she told NOTUS.

Trump’s call for ICE to detain more people came just two days before New York City’s comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested and held at an ICE facility on Tuesday. Lander was walking a man out of an immigration courtroom at 26 Federal Plaza, a building that also houses ICE facilities, during his arrest. Multiple members of Congress — some of whom have attempted to visit the building over concerns about ICE arresting immigrants during routine hearings and check-ins — raised alarms about Lander’s arrest, calling it political intimidation.

It’s a refrain Democrats are increasingly adopting as they grapple with what their states and cities could see next.

“He’s done it before. He’ll do it again,” Durbin said of Trump deploying the National Guard.

Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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Industry lobbyists and advocates are in the dark on details, with the White House keeping its plans close to the chest as President Donald Trump focuses his deportation efforts on sanctuary cities.

The president acknowledged last Thursday that his immigration policies were “taking very good, longtime workers away” from farms, hotels and other leisure businesses. The administration then reportedly paused raids in the agriculture and hospitality industries, The New York Times first reported Friday evening.

In Santa Clara County the gross value of agricultural production for 2023 was more than $371 million — an increase of 3.5% from 2022 which was nearly $359 million, according to the 2023 Santa Clara County Crop Report. A report in 2021 stated there are about 8,000 agricultural workers in the county.

But industries have not seen a formal plan from the president, who took to Truth Social on Sunday to urge U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities.”

A White House official declined to confirm the pause, telling NOTUS that “anyone present in the United States illegally is at risk of deportation.”

“Just like President Trump promised, we will deliver the single largest Mass Deportation Program in history by expanding our efforts in the epicenters of illegal immigration — dangerous, Democrat run sanctuary cities,” the White House told NOTUS.

An administration official told NOTUS that, “worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of efforts to enforce federal immigration law. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine workers, destabilize labor market, and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation. As always, the Administration will continue to ensure large-scale worksite actions are properly coordinated through leadership to maintain mission alignment.”

The tumult has left agriculture and hospitality industries, which have been engaging the administration on the challenges deportations are posing for their workforce, in limbo.

Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, sent a letter Saturday to members of Trump’s cabinet and chief of staff praising the president’s post — and emphasizing the need to keep good workers.

“I’m hopeful that we’re going to bring some of the temperature down on some of the farms for some of those workers that have really been frightened by what’s transpiring,” Marsh told NOTUS.

It’s difficult to pin down the true number of people without legal authorization working on farms or in hotels and restaurants, but there are some estimates. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates 42% of hired crop farm workers lack work authorization. Roughly 1.1 million people in the hospitality industry were undocumented in 2023, according to a recent analysis by the American Immigration Council.

Rosanna Maietta, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said in a statement to NOTUS that the hotel industry “directly employs 2.1 million workers across the U.S.” and “members comply with labor laws and immigration requirements, including those focused on recruitment and employment verifications.”

She also said the association has “held numerous meetings with administration officials to convey our acute workforce shortage challenges and underscore the importance of a strong hospitality and tourism sector” since Trump took office.

Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, said in a statement that the agency “will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets.”

“Let’s get some definition, let’s get the details,” said Marsh.

“We really need to know with those comments how this might work and what the president has in mind and how we might be able to remove some of this fear that our workers are feeling, so that they can continue to work and be productive on the farm, and also assuage the concerns of the employers, who’ve got to be terrified that some of their workforce may be gone the next day.”

Taylor Giorno is a reporter at NOTUS.This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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The incident occurred at a press conference Thursday in Los Angeles. It immediately captured the attention of the rest of the California congressional delegation in Washington, which quickly mobilized to respond.

“To see him abused that way … to be mishandled that way, this is an assault not only on the person of Alex Padilla, but it is an assault on our democracy,” Sen. Adam Schiff told reporters outside the Senate before giving a floor speech on the matter. “There ought to be an investigation of the conduct of those officers.”

He added that members are still “in some state of shock” over Thursday’s debacle.

Rep. Sam Liccardo called out the behavior on X , saying ” Shameful @AlexPadilla, is a calm, constructive, and collaborative public servant.  This is what authoritarianism looks like … ”

Padilla demanded accountability afterward. Republicans, who brushed off concerns about the incident, control the agenda on Capitol Hill. But some of Padilla’s Democratic colleagues have called for congressional involvement in the matter anyway.

“Kristi Noem needs to come to our committee and answer questions,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, who serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security, told reporters at a gathering of California Democrats outside the Capitol.

Following the press conference, Noem told CNN she met with Padilla and had a “productive” conversation about DHS’s dealings with the recent protests in Los Angeles. But she added that “people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people during press conferences.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the video of Padilla Thursday on X, saying he should be “ashamed of his childish behavior.”

“He crashed the middle of an official press conference being held by a cabinet secretary, recklessly lunged toward the podium where @Sec_Noem was speaking, and then refused to leave the room and follow the directions of law enforcement officers,” Leavitt posted.

Padilla, meanwhile, said he was there to ask questions, and began to do so before he was pushed out of the room.

“It is a crime to lay your hands on a federal official,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, who added that he thought they had stopped Padilla in an effort to keep Noem from having to answer questions. “That’s what happened today.”

Lawmakers were clearly outraged at what had happened, and called for people to protest.

“The way we hold this administration accountable is for the American people to peacefully rise up and exercise your rights to make your voices heard,” Rep. Ted Lieu said.

The Los Angeles area has been the site of some of the biggest protests against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, and is where the president mobilized National Guard and Marine forces in recent days.

The video of Padilla getting pushed out of the briefing room and then handcuffed was jarring for lawmakers, who warned that it’s a sign that democracy is slipping.

“It had me thinking: Is this what it felt like to be in Germany in 1933? This is not the end, I’m afraid, but the beginning of the outrageous, lawless action being undertaken by this administration,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said to reporters.

This isn’t the first time a member of Congress has had a physical skirmish with federal agents during Trump’s second administration. At least one other Democrat, Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, has also had a confrontation. She was indicted this week following a dispute outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Newark last month. McIver has said she is not guilty.

“To see a United States senator handcuffed with his arms behind his back is not a thing that I ever thought I’d see in the United States of America,” Rep. George Whitesides said of the Padilla incident.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had a similar reaction.

“Don’t ask questions because you’ll probably get beaten up. It’s called a ‘Thug-ocracy,’” Pelosi said.

Others saw it as another sign of how hyper-partisan politics have gotten.

“I’m all about bringing this place together, but it’s hard when this happens,” Rep. Scott Peters told NOTUS. “No one stands up against it on their side and no one apologizes for what happens.”

Amelia Benavides-Colón and Samuel Larreal are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Haley Byrd Wilt contributed reporting. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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After facing criticism over immigration raids that picked up people who have lived in the U.S. for years, Trump said the White House is looking at executive action that would exempt employees of some farmers and hotels from the administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement push.

“You go into a farm and you look at people — they’ve been there for 20, 25, years, and they’ve worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them, and everything else and then you’re supposed to throw them out,” Trump said at the White House.

“We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think,” he added. “We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels.”

The gross value of Santa Clara County’s agricultural production for 2023 was more than $371 million an increase of 3.5% from 2022 which was nearly $359 million, according to the 2023 Santa Clara County Crop Report. A report in 2021 stated there are about 8,000 agricultural workers in the county.

The majority of farm workers are foreign born, and the majority of foreign-born farm workers are unauthorized, according to the USDA. More often than not, they are paid less.

In a post to Truth Social earlier Friday, the president acknowledged that the administration’s immigration policies were taking a toll on farmers and the hospitality industry.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.

In recent weeks, the administration has committed to ramping up removal efforts, setting a target of 3,000 removals per day. The effort is underway nationwide, including in California farmlands, where immigration agents conducted raids earlier this week.

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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

The post Trump may shield undocumented farm workers from deportation appeared first on San José Spotlight.

“I would do it, if I were Tom,” Trump told reporters. “Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing.”

Trump’s comments came as White House border czar Tom Homan told “Fox & Friends” that there had been “no discussion about arresting Newsom.”

Newsom quickly responded on X, posting that “The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor,” and “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation — this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.”

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Los Angeles over the weekend, sparked by immigration raids on Friday and more broadly rallying against Trump’s immigration crackdown. Trump deployed the National Guard on Sunday, which intensified riots; Newsom has said he will sue the administration for activating the Guard and has said Trump created the conditions for the protests to happen.

Homan has previously suggested arresting people who obstruct immigration enforcement. NBC News reported Homan didn’t rule out Newsom or LA mayor Karen Bass when asked explicitly over the weekend.

“I’ll say it about anybody,” Homan said. “You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”

In an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday, Newsom responded to Homan, saying, “He knows where to find me.”

“That kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go,” Newsom said.

“Trump’s border czar is threatening to arrest me for speaking out. Come and get me, tough guy. I don’t give a damn. It won’t stop me from standing up for California,” Newsom also posted on X Sunday night.

Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

The post Trump says he supports arresting California Gov. Newsom appeared first on San José Spotlight.

“We can’t bend the knee,” Rep. Ro Khanna told NOTUS. “You have to take it to court if we need to and make sure that we don’t get intimidated. I think this is part of a government overreach. Trump attacks any state, university or institution he dislikes.”

A trans high school student won two events over the weekend at a statewide track and field event, sharing the first place wins with cisgender competitors. The Trump administration said Monday that by allowing trans student athletes to participate in sporting activities, the California Interscholastic Federation was allowing discrimination against cisgender athletes.

The Department of Justice accused the federation — a statewide institution that organizes sporting competitions between school districts — of potentially violating the equal protection clause, and the president threatened fines.

“A Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so. As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.

California lawmakers said Trump’s attacks are part of a retribution campaign for a state he sees as unfriendly to him politically. They said they stand for LGBTQ+ youth in the state.

“I think California should always be a state that supports all people; we have a long history of supporting the LGBTQ+ community,” Rep. Robert Garcia told NOTUS. “I don’t think that attacking trans youth is the way to go, and I think we should stick to supporting everyone in the state.”

San Jose State University has already dealt with this controversial issue in its athletics department this season. The SJSU women’s volleyball team became a flashpoint in the debate over protecting transgender athletes from being banned from school sports under Title IX. Several colleges in the SJSU women’s volleyball conference refused to play the team and forfeited, citing fairness and safety issues due to the team’s alleged transgender player.

Other Democrats said Trump needs to stop focusing on California policies.

“He’s wading into state issues, and he has larger issues — that he himself created — and that are tanking the economy,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove said. “He needs to get over it, or run for governor.”

Rep. Jimmy Gomez called the whole matter “nonsense”: “People in California didn’t care, and it’s just this guy trying to make this into an issue. We will stand for the people who live in our state.”

California Democrats are in a tough spot when it comes to dealing with Trump’s White House. Many in the delegation believe they need to be the tip of the spear when it comes to leading an opposition to Trump’s policies. But the state needs federal funds, including disaster aid, to help the long-term recovery of Southern California after unprecedented wildfires earlier this year.

California freshman Rep. Sam Liccardo said there might not be many alternatives left when it comes to negotiating with Trump.

“I’m not sure there’s much of a relationship to maintain here,” Liccardo said. “The days of thinking that there was going to be a relationship to maintain are in the past.”

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the California Interscholastic Federation’s recent rule that allows trans female athletes to compete in events but adds a spot for another cisgender female athlete as well.

This is a pivot from when earlier this year, Newsom attracted backlash from the California congressional delegation after saying he completely agreed with right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk on the issue of trans athletes.

“This is all a pretext on Trump’s part to attack our state,” Sen. Adam Schiff told NOTUS. “This just seems to be a deliberate anti-California campaign.”

Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.

This story was produced in partnership with San José Spotlight and with NewsWell, home of Times of San Diego and Stocktonia.

The post California Democrats want their state to hold the line on trans rights appeared first on San José Spotlight.

What’s uncertain is how much that new funding could be offset by the broader cuts.

HUD this month announced a $1.8 million investment in its Foster Youth to Independence Program, an initiative that gives housing vouchers to people transitioning out of foster care. The White House has billed the program — and foster services more generally — as a priority for first lady Melania Trump. The president’s “skinny” budget proposal included $25 million in new funding for foster youth, despite an overall 43% cut to HUD’s funding.

The new FYI money is in addition to the program’s baseline funding. While the increase is smaller than the department has awarded the program in previous years, it’s still a clear contrast to the cuts elsewhere at HUD.

“I think there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, with the announcement of this investment, but in the background (HUD) is doing all these other things that people aren’t aware of … like the community development awards that are on the chopping block,” Sarah Hunter, director of the RAND Center for Housing and Homelessness, told NOTUS.

A HUD spokesperson said in a statement to NOTUS that the idea HUD is hiding behind a smokescreen is “laughable.”

“This program has been going on since the first Trump administration as it was started under then HUD Secretary Ben Carson,” the spokesperson said. “Those who make this claim are more concerned with politicizing a conversation than learning the facts and origin of a successful program.”

HUD Secretary Scott Turner has been a proponent of lowering HUD’s budget, saying in his confirmation hearing he wanted to prioritize finding savings. In the emailed statement, the spokesperson said the latest round of funding “underscores the commitment from the administration to support proven programs to assist child welfare.”

Across the country, there are nearly 370,000 children living in foster care, according to 2023 data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Foster youth aging out of the system qualify for housing choice vouchers for up to 36 months under HUD’s Family Unification Program, created by Congress in 1990.

Trump revamped the program during his first administration by creating FYI, which made housing vouchers available on a rolling basis and added supportive services for enrollees for the duration of the program.

In California, one of nearly a dozen states chosen for the award, the new funding went to the communities with the largest number of transitioning foster youth: Marin, Orange and Los Angeles counties. Los Angeles has one of the largest foster care systems in the country, combined with the state’s tight rental market and low vacancy rate.

The compounding barriers to housing have left California with an outsized need for housing assistance, according to the California Policy Lab. More than 1,000 former foster children age out of the system each year, and 7% of them end up experiencing homelessness or housing instability.

“It’s the kind of a concept that has gotten a lot of support, bipartisan support, because there’s this very specific population that can be helped and there’s this very specific case why that assistance is needed,” Andy Winkler, director of housing and infrastructure projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told NOTUS.

Becks Heyhoe-Khalil, executive director of United to End Homelessness at Orange County United Way, told NOTUS the groups most at risk during this period of transition at HUD are public housing authorities.

“Our public housing authorities are responsible for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and our foster youth make up a significant portion of that population. So, with the recommended changes to policy at the federal level for public housing authority structures and functions, I think it does leave them in this place of uncertainty,” Heyhoe-Khalil said.

California increased its number of housing vouchers through the Family Unification Program by 54% between 2021 and 2023, according to a study by John Burton Advocates for Youth.

While tackling broader housing issues may be more complicated, continued investment and attention can lead to long-term solutions for former foster youth, Thomas Lee, chief executive officer at California-based nonprofit First Place for Youth, told NOTUS.

“There are about 25,000 to 50,000 youth that would benefit from foster care support and housing vouchers,” Lee said. “I feel like that is a small enough number to tackle and solve the problem. There are so few problems you can solve in a lifetime, and this is one I feel is actually solvable.”

Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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