College campuses have proved fertile territory for culture war agonism in the Trump era, feeding a constant demand for outrage porn on Fox News. So it is perhaps unsurprising that the Trump administration, in its latest mind-meld with the right-leaning network, is reportedly weighing a campaign to bring lawsuits against colleges for alleged discrimination against white applicants, according to a White House memo obtained by The New York Times. The document, an internal announcement to the civil-rights division of the Justice Department, invites applications from lawyers interested in working on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” and requests résumés are submitted by August 9, which indicates the project could start imminently, in tandem with the beginning of the next school year.

The memo does not explicitly outline whom the Justice Department considers at risk from affirmative action admissions policies. But the wording employed (“intentional race-based discrimination”) clearly targets programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses, which critics argue favors their applications against others with similar or higher test scores. (In a statement later Wednesday, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores described press reports about the job posting as inaccurate. “The posting sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations in May 2015 that the prior Administration left unresolved,” Flores said, suggesting that the project would be about protecting Asians, and “all Americans,” from discrimination. “The complaint alleges racial discrimination against Asian Americans in a university’s admissions policy and practices. This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general.”)

Center for Equal Opportunity president Roger Clegg, a former top official in the civil-rights division during the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration, declared the project a “welcome” and “long overdue” development, reports the Times. “The civil-rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said. Believing the project will focus on investigating complaints received by the civil rights division about university admissions programs, he also said it would scour for clear gaps in test scores and dropout rates among different racial groups, arguing this could be evidence that admissions offices are paying too much attention to the race of applicants. The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits of a diverse student body justify using race as one factor among many, but have rejected racial quotas or points-based systems as unconstitutional.

Kristen Clarke, president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, challenged Clegg’s stance, noting that the civil-rights division was created specifically to deal with the discrimination faced by America’s most oppressed minority groups, which are, despite Clegg’s insinuation, not whites. “This is deeply disturbing,” she said, as reported by the Times. “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”

Typically, work involving schools and universities is handled by the Educational Opportunities Section, run by civil servants. It is unusual for such a project to be handled by the division’s front office, peopled by Donald Trump’s political appointees. Dovetailing recent shifts in Justice Department policy related to voting rights, police reforms, and gay rights, this project fits into a broader effort by the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to restructure the civil-rights division as a bulwark, not a vanguard, of progressive change.