George Mason University has long been known as a right-leaning outlier among large public universities. And because of its proximity to the capital, it has become a home away from home for much of the D.C. Republican elite. GOP megadonors Charles and David Koch gave the university millions of dollars over the years; among the beneficiaries was the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank housed at the university.
Its law school is named for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the school is an outpost of conservative legal thought that counts Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh among its adjunct faculty.
A fair and equal administration of justice is absolutely central to the operation of a democracy, and DOJ’s sweeping powers are supposed to be wielded with extreme care.
In short, it was just about the last university one would have expected the Trump administration to target in its assault on higher education. But maybe that was the point.
The Education Department opened an investigation into George Mason in early July, saying it had received complaints about the university’s efforts to promote diversity. Much of the ire was focused on Gregory Washington, the university’s current, and first Black, president, whom conservative critics have characterized as a dangerous promoter of diversity, equity and inclusion (though none of those three ideals is against the law — at least not yet).
Then the stakes were raised. A week later, the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department announced that it was mounting its own investigation into George Mason. That division has undergone an upheaval since Trump returned to office, discarding its traditional focus on defending minority groups from discrimination and instead becoming an advocate for those who have historically always held power in this country: white people, men, Christians and others whom the Trump administration sees as its constituents. As a result, 70% of the division’s lawyers quit or were pushed out.
When the faculty senate approved a statement defending Washington, the Justice Department responded by opening an investigation of the body, demanding “drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president, Gregory Washington.”
A fair and equal administration of justice is absolutely central to the operation of a democracy, and DOJ’s sweeping powers are supposed to be wielded with extreme care. Which makes the Justice Department’s enthusiastic attack on George Mason so particularly disturbing.
Because under Donald Trump, the idea of an independent Justice Department is a joke. The upper echelons of the department are filled with his close associates, many of whom worked for him personally before he retook the White House, from Attorney General Pam Bondi on down. The department pursues Trump’s policy goals and petty grievances with the same vigor as the White House itself.
Career prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 prosecutions were fired. The office that investigates political corruption was gutted. Bondi created a “strike force” to investigate deranged allegations that then-President Barack Obama tried to rig the 2016 election. She also created a “weaponization working group,” headed by the far-right erstwhile podcaster and hyper-partisan lawyer Ed Martin, specifically to go after anyone who had participated in prior investigations of Trump’s copious misconduct.
Under Donald Trump, the idea of an independent Justice Department is a joke
The DOJ dismissed its corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams in what many saw as a deal to get his support for an immigration crackdown. Charges against politically friendly defendants — including one anti-trans doctor who allegedly violated patient privacy laws and another accused of destroying Covid vaccines and selling fake vaccination cards — have been dropped. The department filed a preposterous misconduct complaint against a judge who held the administration in contempt for defying his legal orders. Another of Trump’s former personal attorneys, Alina Habba, was named interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, then days later told a podcast: “We could turn New Jersey red. … Hopefully, while I’m there, I can help that cause.” Rather than grounds for dismissal, that kind of partisanship appears to be expected and even rewarded in Trump’s Justice Department.
And so it was only natural that power would be mobilized against elite universities, as Trump seems eager to cripple any institution where liberal ideas might gain a foothold. Going after Harvard and Columbia could have been expected; but including a place like George Mason on the target list sends an even more chilling message: Nothing less than complete devotion to the MAGA cause will be tolerated.
As some of us have been saying for years, the conservatives who decried the supposed politicization of justice and trumpeted their support for free speech never believed a word they were saying; they were just waiting until they had power so they could do for real what they accused their enemies of.
If a president wanted to destroy those who criticize him or simply promote values he finds distasteful, there are few tools more potent than the Justice Department. Which is precisely why Donald Trump turned it into a kind of legal brownshirt militia, deploying not cudgels and brickbats but demand letters, subpoenas and (before long) indictments against any who would oppose him. Now we’re seeing what the genuine politicization of justice looks like.