The Dictatorship
Stephen Miller’s advocacy group just made an egregious request from Johns Hopkins University
It was the turn of the millennium, and the schools in North Carolina’s Wake County had a problem.
Like many other school systems in the South that started desegregation efforts in the 1970s, they had long bused students from their neighborhoods to schools around Raleigh, the state capital.
Race-based busing was unpopular. But the county remained stubbornly segregated by neighborhood, so ending the system entirely would have meant a return to unequal schools.
The solution was simple: use class instead of race. Wake County began assigning students to ensure that no school had more than 40% of students coming from a low-income neighborhood or more than 25% of students studying below grade level.
It was hailed as ‘the next kind of integration.’
The innovation led to national news coverage, with The New York Times hailing it as “the next kind of integration.” What’s more, it worked. A 2021 study by scholars from the University of North Carolina School of Education found that reassigned students had higher math scores and were less likely to be suspended. There was no evidence of negative effects, which was reinforced by the fact that few parents opted out of the assignments, even though they had the choice.
When I lived in Raleigh from 2003 to 2008, it seemed like Wake County’s system pointed a way forward, and not just for K-12 schools. The Supreme Court had already begun questioning strictly race-based affirmative action, striking down an undergraduate admissions policy at Columbia University in 2003 while narrowly upholding a separate admissions policy for its law school.
Class-based affirmative action would not only address the continuing effects of slavery and segregation, but also give a boost to other students facing economic struggles. It seemed like a solution that both liberals and conservatives could agree on, bypassing contentious arguments about race in order to focus on helping make America the land of opportunity that it always claims to be.
But in 2010, the Wake County school board overturned the income-based program amid conservative opposition. The school system now uses a hybrid model that assigns students to neighborhood schools while using special-interest magnet schools to draw them to other parts of the county. By emphasizing parental choice, the new system has ruffled fewer feathers.
At the time, I found it odd that the county’s professional conservatives — many of whom I knew personally from covering state politics — expended so much energy to fight the program. Sure, there were some parents who were unhappy, but nothing like the groundswell that would justify the amount of organizing around it. But a recent letter from America First Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group started in 2021 by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, finally gave me an answer.
The foundation opposes affirmative action, running ads accusing the Biden administration of “anti-white bigotry” and representing white farmers opposing a loan program for minorities. The July 17 letter requests that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigate the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for anti-white discrimination.
Among the expected complaints about programs to encourage diversity, there’s one targeting a tuition policy started in 2024 thanks to a $1 billion donation from a charity started by billionaire Mike Bloomberg. Under the program, students coming from families earning less than $300,000 a year pay no tuition, and those whose families make less than $175,000 get help with room and board too. Nearly two-thirds of enrolled students meet those standards.
As far as class-based affirmative action goes, this is quite generous; it covers both lower-income and middle-class families. But the group objects because the dean once said it would enhance “socioeconomic diversity.”
It’s worth reading America First Legal’s argument in full:
It is well recognized that race and ethnicity are inseparable from socioeconomic status. They are ‘intimately intertwined’ and, in terms of stratification, often determine a person’s socioeconomic status. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, wealth and income gaps vary significantly between racial groups, with Black and Hispanic households possessing a fraction of the wealth held by White and Asian households. By leveraging these disparities, Johns Hopkins masks racial preferences behind income thresholds.
In short, the group claims, Johns Hopkins is trying to help poor and middle-class students of all races, but since that would help Black and Hispanic students more, it’s racist.
This logic is toxic. It would mean the government not only doesn’t have an obligation to fight poverty, but is actually barred from even trying by civil rights laws. The only race-neutral option, it appears, would be helping maintain the status quo — at all costs.
It’s tempting to think of Miller’s group as an outlier, but it may be more of an advance guard, like the conservatives I knew who fought so hard against Wake County’s schools policy. Because if you agree with this, by extension you would also want to raise taxes on the poor and reduce them on the richmake it harder for lower-income and middle-class students to go to college and add barriers to immigration from countries in Central and South America while creating new ways for rich Europeans to move to the U.S. And in fact, the Trump administration has done all those things.
Today, America First Legal’s letter is an egregious request from a far-right advocacy group. Tomorrow, it may be government policy.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.
The Dictatorship
Iran moves to take permanent control of Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping choke point
Iran announced on Thursday that it was drafting a “protocol” that would allow it to “monitor transit” by oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuzthe strategic waterway Tehran has shut downsending oil and gas prices soaring in the U.S. and across the world.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said tanker traffic through the narrow route “should be supervised and coordinated” between Iran and Oman, the two countries that border the strait, according to a translation of a report from Iran’s state news agency cited by CNBC.
“Of course, these requirements will not mean restrictions, but rather to facilitate and ensure safe passage and provide better services to ships that pass through this route,” Gharibabadi said according to the report.
President Donald Trump has suggested that the U.S. may leave it to other countries to end Iran’s de facto blockade of the strait, which it enforces by firing missiles at tankers. Trump has called on European nations to do so, but experts say Europe lacks the military resources to halt Iranian attacks on tankers for the long term.
Iranian and Omani officials did not respond to requests for comment from MS NOW.
For decades, the strait has been an international waterway, controlled by no country, that ships from all nations could transit.
Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group, said that if Iran manages to take control of the Strait of Hormuz permanently, it would be a “colossal win” for the country.
“It’s a massive strategic win, given that Iran has demonstrated that it can close the strait,” Brew told MS NOW. “It’s a huge financial win.”
Brew added that if Iran gains long-term control of the straitit would be more powerful than it was before the Trump administration attacked it. Iran’s parliament passed a law to begin charging “tolls” of up to $2 million per ship, which could mean as much as $100 billion in annual revenue — or the equivalent of Iran’s current annual oil export earnings.
“It’s not innocuous,” Brew said, referring to the protocol announced on Thursday. “Iran has passed legislation and is now claiming to be coordinating with Oman in establishing joint management of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Brew predicted that Oman, which has less oil and wealth than other Gulf nations, may be willing to accept a temporary arrangement that could help end the conflict.
“The Omanis are probably hedging; they’ve always tried to manage their relationship with Iran, and they lose relatively little by cooperating with Iran right now to ease pressure on the strait,” Brew said. “The bigger question is whether they continue to cooperate after the war.”
Ted Singer, a former senior CIA official who oversaw the agency’s operations in the Middle East, said Iranian officials are likely trying to see what they can achieve.
“I wouldn’t see this as a fork in the road,” Singer told MS NOW.
Singer, who served as a CIA station chief in five different countries over a 35-year career, said Iranian officials could be trying to stoke division between gulf countries.
“The Iranians are good at doing more than one thing at a time,” he said. “Why not stake out a maximalist position on tolls, then toss out options to roil the waters?”
The United Arab Emirates, for example, is adamantly opposed to Iran taking control of the strait.
“The Iranians play multi-dimensional chess,” said Singer, now a senior adviser to the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm run by Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration.
“Try to create division between Oman and the rest of the Gulf countries,” Singer said. “Why not fiddle around with this and see if something sticks?”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Ian Sherwood is the director of international newsgathering for MS NOW, a former executive editor for NBC News and a former deputy Washington bureau chief for the BBC.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Targeting Iranian infrastructure: “President Trump celebrated the destruction of a bridge near Tehran on Thursday, warning on social media that there was ‘much more to follow.’ The attack on the B1 bridge between Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj killed eight people and wounded 95, according to Fars, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.”
* I don’t think the speech worked: “The price of oil rose sharply and stocks wavered on Thursday after President Trump, in an address from the White House the day before, said the war against Iran was ‘nearing completion’ but failed to offer a concrete timeline and committed to more attacks. In the 19-minute address, Mr. Trump said U.S. forces would hit Iran ‘extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.’”
* Reversing one of Noem’s worst ideas: “Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Wednesday rescinded a rule that DHS expenditures over $100,000 be personally approved by his office, ending a widely criticized policy implemented by his predecessor Kristi Noem that critics said put a particular burden on the Federal Emergency Management Agency ’s work aiding disaster response and recovery.”
* The latest on the ballroom: “Donald Trump’s handpicked National Capital Planning Commission voted Thursday to authorize the president’s plan to erect a gilded 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom in place of the historic East Wing, which was destroyed last fall to make way for the ballroom.”
* Remember when Congress, by constitutional mandate, had the power of the purse? “President Donald Trump said Thursday he will soon sign an order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees who have gone without paychecks during the record-long partial government shutdown that has reached 48 days.”
* A year after “Liberation Day,” there’s fresh tariff news: “President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will levy tariffs as high as 100 percent on some name-brand pharmaceuticals and is adjusting tariffs on products that contain steel and aluminum, the administration’s first move to expand duties since the Supreme Court dealt his trade agenda a blow in February.”
* The latest from Artemis II: “NASA’s latest update about the Artemis II moon mission shows a breathtaking view of Earth as the Orion capsule with four astronauts on board orbits tens of thousands of miles above. Hitching a ride beyond Earth’s atmosphere atop NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, the three Americans and one Canadian selected for the mission are preparing to begin heading toward the moon.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
A federal judge is weighing whether the Trump administration can legally build a 250-foot arch just across the Potomac River from the Vietnam and Lincoln memorials, as three veterans who fought in Vietnam have argued the project would violate federal law and permanently alter one of the country’s most sacred landscapes.
Judge Tanya Chutkan declined on Thursday to issue a preliminary injunction, instead asking the parties to report by 5 p.m. on Friday whether they can agree to halt groundbreaking while the case proceeds. If no agreement is reached, she will ask the executive branch to provide supplemental sworn declarations disclosing any awards, grants, contracts, permits or other relevant information related to the arch’s construction.
The suit was brought by three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian, who argued the project would obstruct views of the Vietnam War and Lincoln memorials from Arlington National Cemetery. The plaintiffs contended the planned arch would violate federal laws governing historic sites and monuments, and the White House cannot lawfully proceed without congressional authorization.
The plaintiffs cited Trump’s various Truth Social posts and public statements to support their claim that construction is underway, pointing to design specifications, a target completion date of July 4 and renderings backed by a White House fact sheet. They also argued the National Park Service must sign off on any use of the land before construction begins.
President Donald Trump told reporters in January that his proposed arch “will be the most beautiful in the world,” and is already “being built.” He also shared renderings of the arch on his Truth Social account.
The government’s attorney, Bradley Craigmyle, argued that Trump’s media and social media statements constitute hearsay. Chutkan pushed back sharply, saying Trump’s posts are admissible as statements by a party. Throughout the hearing, Craigmyle argued the project is in the conceptual phase despite the president’s statements.
Today’s hearing comes as the National Capital Planning Commission voted 9-1, with two abstentions, to approve construction for Trump’s 90,000-square foot ballroom at the White House, clearing the final procedural hurdle for the project. Chutkan referenced the ballroom case during the hearing, saying, “If we haven’t had the whole White House ballroom situation, this might be a little more academic than it is now.”
Selena Kuznikov contributed to this article.
Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.
- Iran moves to take permanent control of Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping choke point
- Thursday’s Mini-Report, 4.2.26
- Judge weighs legality of Trump’s planned arch near Arlington National Cemetery
- Paula White sparks MAGA backlash after comparing Trump to Jesus
- LeBron James is doing something Michael Jordan could and would never do
- Ousted AG Bondi could still be on the hook to testify in Epstein case
- Hegseth ousts top Army general
- Iran war puts Cuba on the back burner
- Trump vows to keep attacking Iran. But he’s running out of targets to hit.
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