Feds Target Elite Schools Over Race Policies

Group of students ascending outdoor stairs on a campus

The Justice Department’s civil-rights chief is now targeting elite medical schools, big-city gun permit games, and men in women’s prisons—and the left is furious.

Story Snapshot

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon says the Civil Rights Division is probing 30 medical schools for possible illegal race-based admissions and aid policies.^[3]^[4]
Federal investigators have already accused Yale and UCLA medical schools of giving racial preferences that may violate federal civil-rights law.^[1]^[2]
Civil-rights groups and progressive activists attack Dhillon as “dismantling” civil rights, exposing a deep fight over what equal protection really means.^[2]
The same Justice Department team is also digging into gun permit abuses and men housed in women’s prisons as potential civil-rights violations.^[3]

Trump’s Civil Rights Division Puts Elite Medical Schools Under the Microscope

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, appointed under President Trump, has turned a bright spotlight on elite medical schools that, for years, bragged about “equity” in their admissions. The Justice Department has opened civil-rights investigations into at least 15 medical schools over “potential race discrimination” in how they admit students, on top of earlier probes.^[1] Dhillon recently said the number has now climbed to about 30 schools being investigated for diversity, equity, and inclusion style violations.^[3]^[4] That means a large share of America’s top training grounds for doctors may be bending or breaking federal law in the name of woke racial balancing.

Federal officials have gone beyond quiet data requests in some cases. The Department of Justice alleged that medical schools at Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles, unlawfully gave Black and Hispanic applicants an edge in admissions, which would violate civil-rights rules that forbid discrimination in programs receiving federal funds.^[1]^[2] One Dartmouth interview even notes that the Civil Rights Division found Yale Medical School did in fact discriminate based on race in admissions.^[1] Dhillon’s office says its job is simple: no student should be denied access to opportunities because of race, color, or national origin. That stance lines up with the Supreme Court’s warning that racial preferences in admissions cannot stand.

A Deep Fight Over What “Civil Rights” Should Mean in 2026

This tougher line on race-based preferences has triggered a backlash from long-time civil-rights groups that grew used to a very different Justice Department.^[2] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights accused Dhillon of “dismantling” civil rights and claimed she has turned the Civil Rights Division against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans and voting protections.^[2] The American Civil Liberties Union says it worries about her past work and positions on voting laws and transgender issues. These critics see her focus on race-neutral law and religious liberty as an attack on their broader political agenda.^[2] But supporters argue she is finally enforcing civil-rights statutes as written, rather than stretching them to fit fashionable causes.^[5]

Dhillon and her team present a very different vision of civil rights, one that many conservatives have wanted for years.^[5] The official Civil Rights Division mission statement says it enforces laws against discrimination based on race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, national origin, and citizenship status. Under Dhillon, the division’s public messaging stresses equal treatment for all and a duty to step in whenever schools, governments, or prisons deny that equal treatment. In one Justice Department video highlighting her first 100 days, the division says it has “returned to enforcing the law as written: fairly, equally, and without political agenda.” For readers tired of double standards and selective enforcement, that is a welcome shift from the activist approach of prior administrations.

From Voter Rolls to Gun Permits and Prison Safety, a Broader Crackdown

The medical-school probes are only one piece of Dhillon’s wider effort to restore basic rule-of-law standards across the country.^[3]^[5] In a one-on-one interview about election integrity, she explained that the division has launched about one hundred civil-rights investigations, many focused on voter rolls and access.^[3] Her team forced roughly one-third of states to hand over voter data, uncovering hundreds of thousands of duplicate registrations, dead voters on the rolls, and even tens of thousands of non-citizens listed—some of whom voted.^[3] Dhillon stressed that litigation is the last resort, but she made clear that sloppy or corrupted systems are a direct threat to every lawful voter.^[3]^[5]

That same mindset now extends to gun rights and prison safety, two areas where conservatives have watched blue-state officials ignore both the Constitution and common sense.^[3] Local reporting shows that the Justice Department has opened a civil-rights investigation into Philadelphia’s gun permit and revocation practices, which raised questions after residents claimed their licenses were pulled or delayed without good reason following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. Dhillon has also spoken about prison policies that place biological men who identify as women into women’s facilities, calling that an “open and shut” civil-rights violation because it endangers female inmates and tramples their privacy and safety rights. In each of these fights, her division is using the same basic test: who is being denied equal protection under the law, and who is being forced to carry the risk.

Why This Matters for Everyday Conservatives

For many years, conservatives watched the Department of Justice act like an arm of the left, cheering race preferences, ignoring election rules, and pushing radical gender policies in schools and prisons.^[2]^[7] Under Trump’s second term, the leadership of Harmeet Dhillon shows how a different approach to civil rights can look—one that puts race-neutral law, voter confidence, religious liberty, and women’s safety first.^[5] The blowback from progressive groups is loud, but it also reveals how much they came to count on the old system never being questioned.^[2] These new medical-school probes, gun-permit cases, and prison challenges are not just legal footnotes; they are the front lines in a larger fight over whether the words “equal protection” still mean what they say.

Big respect to @AAGDhillon for doing exactly what we need right now.

In parts of California, schools are refusing to let parents opt their kids out of sexual orientation and gender identity lessons.

That’s not education, that’s keeping parents in the dark on purpose.

Harmeet… pic.twitter.com/Syx78edhGy

— Gina Beana Fofina (@Ginasassyass) June 10, 2026

As the investigations move forward, expect more leaks, more protests, and more claims that enforcing the law “as written” is somehow an attack on civil rights.^[2] But the facts uncovered so far—from biased medical admissions to chaotic voter rolls—suggest that the real threat has been years of one-sided enforcement and ideological favoritism.^[1]^[2]^[3] For readers who care about the Constitution, the rule of law, and basic fairness, the work of this Civil Rights Division is worth watching very closely.