Trump DOJ: Yale’s Medical School Has Way Too Many Black Students
The administration’s view is that the mere presence of students of color at elite schools is incontrovertible proof of discrimination against white people.
By Madiba K. Dennie
May 18, 2026

In April 2025, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into Yale University, accusing its medical school of making admissions decisions based on race and, in so doing, violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On Thursday, May 14, the agency published its predictable findings: “Yale discriminated against other applicants to benefit preferred race classes of Black and Hispanic.” About a week earlier, Trump’s DOJ reached the identical conclusion about UCLA School of Medicine.

In both cases, there was no real doubt it would do so. The conservative legal movement has spent decades arguing that laws designed to remedy the effects of white supremacy—in education, elections, and elsewhere—require the entrenchment of white supremacy instead. And throughout his second term, Trump has aggressively built on this legal foundation for resegregation. The DOJ’s latest findings treat the mere existence of Black students as legal grounds for threatening a school’s federal funding—a standard that could make other medical schools more reluctant to admit Black students, which would have a devastating impact on the health of Black communities.

The DOJ first purports to show Yale’s “intent to discriminate” through a review of the medical school’s internal policies and practices. Specifically, the government alleges that Yale conducts interviews “that enable the committee to know applicants’ race and ethnicity,” and considers applicants’ socioeconomic status, which functions as a “racial proxy.”

The Trump administration’s smoking-gun evidence for this conclusion is an orientation packet that Yale provided to admissions personnel, which included a “holistic metrics model” produced by the Association of American Medical Colleges, an organization that helps accredit medical schools. The DOJ findings letter complains that AAMC’s model “shows a myriad of factors that appear unrelated to medicine.” And it features an image of AAMC’s graphic, with the most offensive characteristics—“race” and “national origin”—circled in red.

From there, the DOJ provides the results of its own “preliminary statistical aggregation” of Yale’s medical school admissions data for the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025, and found “no change in racial disparity between admitted students” before and after Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision restricting race-conscious admission programs. In an amicus brief in that case, Yale argued that “no workable race-neutral alternatives” to affirmative action would produce a sufficiently diverse student body. “Given this statement,” the DOJ wrote, “the lack of any change in Yale’s admissions outcomes” demonstrates the school’s “willful failure to comply with that decision.” Put simply, there are more Black students at Yale than the Trump administration expected, and so, it suspects Yale is breaking the law.

The Yale findings show that the Trump administration is literally treating the presence of Black students as evidence of illegal racial discrimination. Because the Civil Rights Act prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance from engaging in such discrimination, this means that schools’ federal funds are at risk unless they reduce their Black student population to something Trump is more comfortable with. The report did not specify what this level might be, which means that for schools, the safest way to avoid suspicion is to not admit Black students at all.

jamelle

‪@jamellebouie.net‬
The Trump administration will not rest until every elite institution has purged itself of black people. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics…

jamelle

‪@jamellebouie.net‬
Trump has purged federal agencies of black workers, the military of high-ranking black officers, supports GOP efforts to purge Southern states of black representation and wants elite universities to discriminate against black applicants, lest they admit too many (who obviously don’t deserve it.)
1:39 PM · May 18, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3mm5jlezbvs25

Dr Terry Simpson
@drterrysimpson
I understand why many Asian families feel frustrated in elite admissions systems. In intensely competitive environments, there is a real perception — and sometimes evidence — that exceptional academic performance still does not guarantee admission.

That feeling should not be dismissed.

But admissions committees also confront another reality: if you have 100 applicants from privileged, high-performing educational pipelines with nearly identical scores, resumes, research access, tutoring, and opportunities, it is not irrational to also value the applicant who achieved similar academic success despite poverty, instability, underfunded schools, family hardship, or lack of institutional advantages.

That is not abandoning merit. It is recognizing that achievement exists in context.
And medicine especially is not merely selecting expert test takers. It is selecting future physicians who will care for human beings across every class, culture, language, and circumstance in society.

The irony is that many people who defend “objective merit” often become deeply uncomfortable the moment merit is evaluated in anything broader than a percentile ranking.
https://x.com/drterrysimpson/status/2056038456074387811?s=20

Continuing bringing the fire:

Dr Terry Simpson
@drterrysimpson
One of the things I continue to find remarkable in this debate is how many people look at Black students scoring in the 95th percentile on the MCAT — often higher than the average matriculant at most American medical schools — and still conclude they were admitted “only because of race.”

These are objectively elite academic performers. Many scored higher than applicants admitted to excellent medical schools across the country.

And yet some people persist in speaking as though the mere existence of Black students at Yale is proof that standards collapsed and that unnamed “more deserving” Asian applicants were robbed.

At that point, the conversation is no longer about MCAT scores. It is about an inability to imagine that highly accomplished Black students belong in elite institutions.
What also fascinates me is how quickly social media pundits become absolute authorities on physician selection, while dismissing the judgment of admissions committees at institutions that have spent generations training world-class physicians and scientists.

Medicine is harder — and more human — than sorting percentiles on a spreadsheet.
2:16 PM · May 18, 2026
https://x.com/drterrysimpson/status/2056453812198822141?s=20

LunchCounterPunch
‪@theultrasecret.bsky.social‬
We are moving from the already malignant narrative of anti-discrimination efforts being harmful to white people to the very existence of non-white people as being harmful to white people. The natural progression of enslavers, segregationists, and those thirsting for American apartheid.
1:44 PM · May 18, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/theultrasecret.bsky.social/post/3mm5jtwm75224

davidfrye.bsky.social
‪@davidfrye.bsky.social‬
They don’t just want to fire all the Black people (and women). They want to hire the most useless, incompetent white men AND make it clear to them that maga is their only meal ticket. Building up a loyal maga-only base. There are parallels…
http://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w…
https://bsky.app/profile/davidfrye.bsky.social/post/3mm5k2sxwfs2o

Christoph Mergerson
‪@mergerson.bsky.social‬
Serious historical question: How does this compare to the Wilson administration’s efforts to exclude Black Americans from public life?
1:45 PM · May 18, 2026
https://bsky.app/profile/mergerson.bsky.social/post/3mm5jv7tfy22b