Trump Justice Department Targets California Over College Admissions

on Apr 10, 2025

SAN DIEGO -- The Trump administration sees a golden opportunity to play the race card against California.

The Department of Justice plans to investigate whether four California universities -- Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine -- are complying with the Supreme Court's 2023 decision prohibiting schools from considering race and ethnicity in admissions.

"President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Hold on. Did Bondi say merit? Administration officials should strike the "m-word" from their lexicon given that Trump's mediocre Cabinet of underachievers looks like it belongs on the Island of Misfit Toys.

With regard to California, conservatives seem to be worried that crafty university administrators on the left coast are either defying the Supreme Court decision outright or finding creative workarounds to get past it. Either way, the DOJ plans to get to the bottom of it through what it calls "compliance review investigations."

In plain English, that means that Trump -- through his own private law firm, aka the government agency formerly known as the U.S. Justice Department -- is gearing up to pick a fight with what has to be his least favorite state in the union.

Part of Trump's beef with California is political, but a lot of it could be personal.

First, the politics. California is a dark blue state. The population is now 40% Latino. And for the last 30 years, the GOP brand has been toxic with much of that demographic group.

In the 1990s, Republicans used different ballot initiatives in three successive elections to advance a narrative that Latinos were taking over the state and someone had to stop it.

In 1994, the GOP went after immigrants. In 1996, it was affirmative action. In 1998, it was bilingual education.

One of those measures was Prop. 209, which banned state colleges and universities from employing racial or ethnic preferences in the admissions process. Voters passed the initiative in 1996.

Eventually, Latinos in California got the message: The Republican Party didn't like them much. The feeling soon became mutual.

But the president also seems to hold a personal grudge against the Golden State. In the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris, a California native, easily beat Trump, 58.5% to 38.3%.

Both California senators (Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff) are Democrats. This week, Trump refused to recognize them at a White House reception for the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers. "I just don't particularly like them," Trump quipped, prompting laughter from the ballplayers.

Yet there's nothing funny about the fact that the White House seems to think that California's most prestigious public universities -- which draw students from across the country, and around the world -- are cheating white people out of their rightful place at the top of the pile by giving away their seats to less-deserving people of color.

This is happening, the argument goes, despite the fact that the Supreme Court -- in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina -- banned race-based affirmative action in college and university admissions. And the fact that all this is allegedly occurring in California is doubly egregious, the administration will likely claim, since racial and ethnic preferences were outlawed there nearly 30 years ago.

It's obvious that Trump sees himself as the White Avenger, a superhero who saves the day for a beleaguered population of victims that now must put up with the nuisance of sharing a pie that they -- just six decades ago -- devoured whole.

There is only one problem. It's called math. For those who believe that whites are victims of systemic discrimination at colleges and universities in California, the numbers are not on their side. Let's look at the statistical reality -- in Black and white.

At Stanford, white people account for 24% of students, while Black people make up only 4%. At UC Berkeley, white people make up 30% of students, while Black people account for 4%. At UCLA, white people account for 25% of students, while Black people make up 6%. Finally, at UC Irvine, white people make up 15% of students, while Black people account for just 2%.

Of course, Black people make up only about 6% of California's population. And white people make up 34%. Still, the figures seem off.

If the Trump administration is really concerned about young people being shortchanged by institutions of higher learning in California, it should abandon its preferred narrative and consider the possibility that it is defending the wrong cohort of victims.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.