Stephen Miller's legal group asks DoJ to look into ‘illegal DEI practices' at Johns Hopkins
In a letter to the justice department's civil rights division, America First Legal asked assistant attorney general Harmeet K Dhillon to investigate and issue enforcement actions against the prestigious medical university for embracing 'a discriminatory DEI regime as a core institutional mandate'.
The legal complaint accuses Johns Hopkins of 'systematically infusing race and other identity-based preferences into medical school admissions, scholarships, faculty hiring, academic curricula, residency programs, and governance.
'Johns Hopkins is not training the next generation of physicians,' the complaint reads. 'It is indoctrinating them.'
America First Legal specifically criticized the university's financial aid program, which began offering full scholarships to all students from families earning less than $300,000 after a $1bn donation from alum Michael Bloomberg in 2024
The complaint alleges: 'Johns Hopkins is Using 'Socioeconomic Status' as a Proxy for Race-Based Admissions' to circumvent the supreme court's ruling ending affirmative action.
'Johns Hopkins has constructed a facade of legality around a deeply illegal system. They have replaced explicit race-based admissions with upstream sorting, downstream subsidies, and bureaucratic double-speak designed to preserve racial preferences,' America First Legal attorney Megan Redshaw said in a statement announcing the complaint. 'This is not only unlawful under the Constitution and federal civil rights statutes – it has no place in medicine where competence must come first.'
Founded by Miller in 2020, America First Legal focused on advancing a legal agenda for a second Trump administration. As a White House adviser under the first Trump administration, Miller led work on the Muslim travel ban and family separation policy. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Miller launched America First Legal to continue pursuing the administration's agendas.
It succeeded in winning a 2021 lawsuit blocking implementation of a $29bn Covid-era Small Business Administration program for restaurants owned by women, veterans and people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups; another against CBS and Paramount alleging discrimination against a white, straight man who wrote for the show Seal Team; and a case this year allowing Maryland parents to have their children opt out of lessons using LGBTQ books.
America First Legal addressed its complaint regarding Johns Hopkins directly to Dhillon, head of the justice department's civil rights division and a conservative attorney known for her lawsuits opposing Covid-19 restrictions and gender-affirming care for minors.
The letter accuses Johns Hopkins of evading the supreme court's affirmative action ruling by focusing on pathway programs.
The letter alleges: 'The use of DEI-based discrimination in medical education isn't just illegal, it's especially indefensible. No sector demands greater adherence to merit and objectivity than medicine, where decisions made by physicians can mean the difference between life and death.'
Emerging research shows that diversifying the medical workforce may end racial disparities in healthcare: one 2023 study in the Journal of American Medicine found that Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer, and guidance from the American Medical Association explains why Native American patients may not trust white doctors.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
Only about 5% of US doctors are Black, even though Black Americans make up 14% of the US population. Medical school applications from Black and Hispanic students fell sharply after the supreme court's affirmative action ruling.
In 2020, Johns Hopkins University announced that its founder owned slaves during the 19th century. At the time, university officials wrote they decided to share the development as part of the school's effort 'to deepen our historical understanding of the legacy of racism in our country, our city, and our institutions'.
America First Legal's complaint asks the justice department and the Department of Health and Human Services to require Johns Hopkins end all offices, residencies, outreach initiatives, scholarships, admissions pipelines and other programs that focus on race. It also calls for the federal government to suspend funding streams 'currently supporting discriminatory practices' and conduct an audit on all funding awarded to the university since 2021.
A major recipient of federal research dollars, Johns Hopkins announced in March that it would cut more than 2,000 jobs after the Trump administration slashed $800m in grants to the administration through the now dismantled US Agency for International Development.
The institution is also currently under investigation alongside nine other elite universities set to be visited by the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
JD Vance hits the road to sell Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful Bill'
Vice President JD Vance will visit his home state of Ohio on Monday to continue promoting the GOP's sweeping tax-and-border bill. His office confirmed he will be in Canton, Ohio, to discuss the bill's 'benefits for hardworking American families and businesses'. While his aides offered little detail in advance about the visit, NBC News reported that his remarks will take place at a steel plant in Canton, located about 60 miles south of Cleveland. The visit marks Vance's second trip this month to sell the legislative package, filled with a hodgepodge of conservative priorities that Republicans have dubbed the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' as the vice president becomes its chief promoter on the road. In West Pittston, Pennsylvania, Vance told attendees at an industrial machine shop that they should be able to keep more of their pay in their pockets, highlighting the law's new tax deductions on overtime. Vance also discussed a new children's savings program called Trump Accounts and how the new law promotes energy extraction, while decrying Democrats for opposing the bill that keeps the current tax rates, which would have otherwise expired later this year. The legislation cleared the GOP-controlled Congress by the narrowest of margins, with Vance breaking a tie vote in the Senate for the package that also sets aside hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump's immigration agenda while slashing Medicaid and food stamps. The vice president is also stepping up his public relations blitz on the bill as the White House tries to deflect attention away from the growing controversy over Jeffrey Epstein. The disgraced financier killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein's death before Trump returned to the White House and are now reckoning with the consequences of a Justice Department announcement earlier this month that Epstein did indeed die by suicide and that no further documents about the case would be released. Questions about the case continued to dog Trump in Scotland, where he on Sunday announced a framework trade deal with the European Union. Asked about the timing of the trade announcement and the Epstein case and whether it was correlated, Trump responded: 'You've got to be kidding with that.' 'No, had nothing to do with it,' Trump told the reporter. 'Only you would think that.' The White House sees the new law as a clear political boon, sending Vance to promote it in swing congressional districts that will determine whether Republicans retain their House majority next year. The northeastern Pennsylvania stop is in the district represented by Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a first-term lawmaker who knocked off a six-time Democratic incumbent last fall. On Monday, Vance will be in the district of Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes, who is a top target for the National Republican Congressional Committee this cycle. Polls before the bill's passage showed that it largely remained unpopular, although the public approves of some individual provisions, such as increasing the child tax credit and allowing workers to deduct more of their tips on taxes.
Daily Mail
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
White House made 'misstep' on Epstein files, MAGA ally confesses
The Trump Administration's refusal to release any more files about Jeffery Epstein has dominated the news cycle in recent weeks, and both the President's political allies and adversaries are growing weary. Progressive Democrat Ro Khanna (pictured) appeared on Meet The Press Sunday, when he told host Kristen Welker that he considered the issue of the Epstein filed a winning one for his party. 'This is about trust in government. When John F. Kennedy was president, trust in government was 60%. Today it's in the teens. Speaker Johnson and I came to Congress together. He was on the reform side too. He wanted to make government work,' Khanna noted. 'This is a perfect opportunity for him to say, "Look, the past is the past." Okay, I didn't love that he shut down government. Maybe on your show today he'll commit that when we come back, let's have a vote. Remind him of what were like, the conversations we had in our freshman class. This is about being a reform agent of transparency,' Khanna continued, doing his best to put additional pressure on the Republican Speaker. Voters as well are not happy with Trump's handing of the files, with only 16% of respondents to a recent Emerson College poll saying that they approve 'of the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.' Emerson College Polling director Spencer Kimball noted Thursday that the Epstein files issue was the one Trump fared the worst on. Khanna and libertarian-minded Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky teamed up earlier this month to introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would compel Attorney General Pam Bondi to publicly release all unclassified materials relating to Jeffery Epstein. The duo's resolution is receiving the the backing of a diverse set of members, including New York socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan 'Squad' member Rashida Tlaib , as well as Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Greene of Georgia. Khanna noted during a media appearance last week that his resolution had the backing of all 212 of his Democratic colleagues in the House. Even if only the 10 GOP co-sponsors of the resolution were to support it, it would easily pass the House as just a simple majority is need, which is 218 votes out of 435. Speaker Mike Johnson had choice words for the uncanny duo's push to release the files during his own Meet The Press appearance Sunday. 'The Massie and the Khanna discharge petition does not have adequate protections. For example, in the way that it was drafted, they cite that they don't want child abuse, sexual abuse information uncovered, but they cite the wrong provision of the Federal Code, and so it makes it unworkable,' Johnson told Welker. 'It requires the DOJ to release grand jury testimony. They are prohibited by law from doing so. So it is not the right approach. There is another approach out there. The House Republicans on the Rules Committee have a resolution that is well drafted, that is thoughtfully drafted by lawyers, that would make this workable. That's the approach, we have to protect the innocent. We'll do it at all cost,' Johnson added. Yet, even members of the President's own political party are calling the Administration's handling of the files a 'political mistake' and 'misstep.' Eric Burlison (pictured left), a Missouri Republican, told CNN's Manu Raju Sunday that part of the issue is 'that there were false expectations that are created, and that's a political mistake.' 'I think that saying that you're going to be able to deliver when you haven't even looked at all of the files, what's available, was probably a misstep,' Burlison told Raju.
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Murdoch v Trump: why the flawed media titan could be the final protector of press freedom
Years before Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, the writer John Lanchester suggested that his primary motivation – more than ideology or even money – was a 'love of crises, of the point when everything seems about to be lost'. More than two decades later, is the crisis in the US media, one in which everything seems about to be lost, motivating Murdoch to take on the most powerful man in the world? It is as good a reason as many of those given over the past week for the fact that the billionaire whose Fox News channel has acted as a Trump cheerleader throughout is now, alone among US media titans, preparing to do battle in the courts. Trump's onslaught on the US media – withdrawing federal funds, banning reporters and launching multi-billion-dollar lawsuits – has led once-renowned defenders of media freedom such as the Washington Post, ABC News and CBS to crumple, either changing their editorial policies or agreeing to apparently frivolous settlements. Yet ranting calls to both the WSJ editor, Emma Tucker, and his old frenemy Rupert failed to prevent the publication of a story suggesting he had sent a hand-drawn picture of a naked woman to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with the words: 'Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.' Last week, he launched a $10bn lawsuit over this 'fake'. After the WSJ doubled down with stories saying Trump had been told he was in the Epstein files, sources close to Murdoch report that, at 94, he refuses to be 'intimidated'. He is also enhancing his reputation as the most mercurial media titan. Media veteran Tina Brown asked how the world had come to depend on 'the Darth Vader of media' to stand up for press freedom, while a thoughtful friend asked: 'Suppose Murdoch had a Damascene conversion and sought to atone for his many sins – would we welcome him as an ally?' Can a man whose companies have paid out more than a billion pounds for either knowingly broadcasting lies or for hacking phones be preparing to die as the Severus Snape of the media world, the final protector of press freedom? Two years ago, when Murdoch announced he was standing down (sort of), he told staff to 'make the most of this great opportunity to improve the world we live in', a line that seemed ridiculous to me at the time. Is his battle with this madman in the White House really his final chance at leaving the world a better place? Before Murdoch watchers get carried away, there are of course a number of rational and personal reasons for Murdoch's decision not to kowtow to Trump. Throughout his long career at the nexus of media and power, one thing that has been consistent is Murdoch's desire to pick the winning side. Trump's friendship with Epstein is the only issue currently close to dividing him from a Maga power base that also forms the heart of the Fox News audience. And Murdoch's enthusiasm for the former real estate mogul has never been wholehearted. After the 6 January attack on the US Capitol in 2021 he sent an email to a former executive, saying: 'We want to make Trump a nonperson.' Despite this, the support of his Fox News channel helped elect a man he has little respect for. Not only is he spreading his bets on the Epstein fallout, Murdoch is also riding two horses by allowing his respected financial news organisation to defend its reporting, while Fox continues to downplay the story over Trump's card. A newsman at his core, Murdoch is just as likely to give his editors stories as ask for them to be spiked. But Murdoch is also known to have kept a particularly respectful distance from the Journal's editorials since buying it in 2007; one called Trump's tariff plans 'the dumbest trade war in history'. Besides, defending its journalism is good for business in a landscape in which the owners of CBS cancel a hit show critical of Trump and pay millions to his presidential library just days before receiving a government blessing for a huge deal. As always with Murdoch, there is also the psychodrama of an old man whose life is closer to Shakespearean than most. Michael Wolff, responsible for several of the many books on both men, tells me that Murdoch's support for his journalists is an 'old man's revenge' after the Fox fallout divided his family and prompted an inheritance battle still playing out in the family courts. Besides, says Wolff, Murdoch wants revenge on Trump simply for winning when Murdoch did 'everything to make sure [he] didn't'. Trump's behaviour in his second term – using his powers to further any whim or grievance, and approaching absolutism – could also have revealed to Murdoch the end result of a truly free market. What is to stop Emperor Trump from stripping his commercial empire of the protection of the rule of law once the old man is gone, for example? Murdoch is undoubtedly a flawed hero. And there is a chance after all that the drawing is a hoax, as Trump insists, despite the Journal's robust defence. Murdoch's papers have been tricked before. But for now, he is the closest thing journalism has to a Trojan horse, invited into the inner sanctum yet still apparently ready to do battle. Jane Martinson is professor of financial journalism at City St George's and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group
