California Republicans want to take financial aid from 'violent' protesters

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - As campus tensions escalate over student encampments to protest the war in Gaza -- with canceled classes, violent clashes and mass arrests in recent days -- Republican leaders in the California Legislature are calling for the state to use its upcoming budget process to punish demonstrators who they say have gone too far.

Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones of San Diego and Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher of Chico announced today that they would push to strip state financial aid from protesters found to have committed violent or criminal acts or violated other students' rights.

They did not offer a formal proposal with details, but Jones and Gallagher said at a press conference that students who assault, harass and intimidate their peers or physically block them from attending class -- as reportedly happened to Jewish students at UCLA this week -- did not deserve to benefit from the Cal Grant program.

"You have to earn those," Jones said. "We ought to be rewarding the students that want to use those Cal Grants to go to school, get educated and become productive members of society."

Jones and Gallagher focused their ire on pro-Palestinian demonstrators, whose aggressive tactics they said have left Jewish students feeling unsafe and completely derailed some campuses, including Cal Poly Humboldt, which closed for the rest of the semester after protesters occupied an academic and administrative building. They largely sidestepped the attack earlier this week by pro-Israeli counterdemonstrators on the encampment at UCLA, which was dismantled by police early today.

"No violence should be condoned at all," Gallagher said. "But let's be clear, there was violence on both sides."

The Republican leaders blamed university administrators across the state for not shutting down encampments sooner and Gov. Gavin Newsom for not intervening. They said they would also seek to withhold funding in the upcoming budget from University of California and California State University campuses that did not respond adequately to the protests -- perhaps an amount equal to state resources spent on providing law enforcement and cleaning up damage.

"It's outrageous and it's unacceptable that we've allowed this chaos to ensue over weeks," Gallagher said. "There does need to be accountability. Some people need to be fired."

Any budget plans will require support from the Legislature's Democratic majority, which did not immediately jump on board with Jones and Gallagher's ideas.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat who leads the Assembly budget committee and serves as co-chairperson of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, said he did not want to comment until he saw their proposals.

"These campuses are going to have to figure out how to move forward in a way that works for everybody," Gabriel said. "That's a difficult question and certainly something we're doing a lot of thinking about."

A spokesperson for Newsom's office declined to comment but noted that the state has established a mutual aid system to provide additional law enforcement when college campuses request assistance. He provided a previous statement from the governor affirming that "those who engage in illegal behavior must be held accountable for their actions -- including through criminal prosecution, suspension, or expulsion."

This story was originally published by CalMatters.