Department of Justice says it intends to sue UC over alleged antisemitism
In a May 27 interview with Fox News, Senior Counsel for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice Leo Terrell said the administration intends to sue the University of California over allegations of antisemitism.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Terrell is leading President Donald Trump’s legal battle against Harvard University’s lawsuit. On April 21, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration arguing that its “funding condition” aimed to “assert governmental control over Harvard’s research, academic programs, community, and governance.” In a letter released the same day, Harvard University President Alan Garber said the administration froze $2.2 billion in funding and made other demands regarding “whom [they] hire and what [they] teach.”
Terrell said to “expect massive lawsuit against [the] UC system.” He also said there will be lawsuit “on the East Coast, on the West Coast, in the Midwest.”
“Expect hate crime charges filed by the federal government. Expect Title VII lawsuits,” Terrell said.
Title VII “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”
According to a statement from a UC to the LA Times, the University “abhors antisemitism and is diligently working to address, counter and eradicate it in all its forms across the system.”
First human bladder transplant operated at UCLA
The world’s first human bladder transplant was successfully performed at Ronald Reagan UC Los Angeles Medical Center on May 4, according to a UC press release on May 22.
Inderbir Gill, executive director of the Institute of Urology at the University of Southern California and Nima Nassiri, assistant clinical professor of urology at UCLA, performed the surgery for eight hours. According to Nassiri, the procedure has been “over four years in the making.”
The surgery was done on Oscar Larrainzar, 41, who lost most of his bladder in the process of removing a tumor. In addition, both of his kidneys had been removed almost four years ago due to cancer and kidney disease. This means he was undergoing certain treatments, such as dialysis, that facilitated the procedure.
“I was a ticking time bomb,” Larrainzar said to the New York Times. “But now I have hope.”
According to Nassiri and Gill, bladder transplants haven’t been performed before due to the vascular structure of the pelvis and the procedure’s complexity.
Larrainzar has remained in stable condition, and Nassiri and Gill said they hope to perform more bladder transplants soon.
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the May 29, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
