To Avenge White “Victims”, Trump Goes To War Against Diversity

Navarrette Nation Substack — Issue #0081 (March 31, 2025)

Critical Thinking At A Critical Time

[Every Monday]

3520 words; 38 min read

Monologue —

Donald Trump will never be a super president. But the real-estate-mogul-turned-political- savant does fashion himself a superhero. Behold, the White Avenger.

Last week, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice said that it will investigate whether four California universities — Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine — are complying with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in admissions. The DOJ is calling its series of probes “compliance review investigations.”

That’s Washington talk for: “We’re going to jam you up, you blue state liberals.”

The attack on affirmative action in college and university admissions is an extension of the administration’s crusade against programs that promote DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

“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.

Merit? I thought the “m-word” had been laughed out of town after the Trump clown cabinet was chosen.

There ought to be a law that says that no president whose first choice for Bondi’s job was former Congressman Matt Gaetz – a moral trainwreck – should ever again be allowed to even utter the word “merit.” Ditto given that Trump’s idea of merit includes someone like Pete Hegseth to head the Defense Department, Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, and Kash Patel to take charge of the FBI.

I’ll go further. Because that is my way. That same president gave us a Cabinet that is heavy on testosterone, but then somehow landed on the idea that Bondi — the former Florida Attorney General — was the most meritorious choice to head the Justice Department, and the fact that she was a woman and the Cabinet desperately needed more of those wasn’t a factor at all in her selection?

And these people — after all that bullshit — have the gall to throw around the word “merit.” Because they believe that white people are being systematically discriminated against and disadvantaged at four prestigious colleges and universities in California where, the last time I checked, white people were still doing fine.

And if you expand the grievance choir to include Asians, as opponents of affirmative action have done in recent years, the case gets even more difficult to make. At UC Irvine, one of the schools being investigated by the DOJ, Asians make up 37% of the student body. That group only makes up about 20% of the population of California. Meanwhile, Black students make up only 2% of the student body at UC Irvine. Part of the reason for that could be Proposition 209, which California voters passed in 1996 and which prohibits public colleges and universities from employing racial preferences in college admissions. As a result of the initiative, Black enrollment figures plummeted and Asian numbers went up.

Question: Will the DOJ be investigating whether the school is discriminating against Black students so it can let in more Asians?