On Tuesday, an internal Justice Department memo was obtained and written about by the New York Times. Another day, another Trump leak, right? Except that this piece of paper showed that the Justice Department's civil rights division was looking for lawyers to try to end affirmative action at colleges and universities.
That's right. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, not satisfied with trying to imprison medical marijuana users, gut the Voting Rights Act, and let police departments run wild, is now attempting to kill affirmative action. The memo sought legal eagles for "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions."
Lest you think this is Justice trying to stop actual discrimination, the Times notes that the phrase "intentional race-based discrimination" makes abundantly clear that they're getting ready to attack affirmative action admissions policies. To make things even more clear, the effort is not going to be run by the civil rights division's Educational Opportunities Section, which is staffed by civil servants who actually do things like deal regularly with colleges. Instead, it's headed by their front office, which is full of people appointed by the president.
The Times, because they had to, went and got a quote from Roger Clegg, who is an old racist fool a former official in the civil rights division and now the head of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
"The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well," he said, even though discrimination against Asians in university admissions is because of a preference for whites, not other minorities.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, pointed out the obvious to the Times: that the civil rights division was originally put in place to deal with, well, civil rights. She called the new effort "misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities."
The Justice Department is running scared from the Times story, refusing comment and denying interview requests.
