“It was very painful, I didn’t know how to respond,” Sessions once said in response to accusations that he is racist. Sessions also once joked that he thought the KKK was ok until he learned they smoked pot, and reportedly called a black attorney “boy.” Now, as our attorney general, he has decided to take on discrimination—against whites.

According to The New York Times, a leaked document suggests that Sessions’s Justice Department intends to begin suing universities over their affirmative action policies:

The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.

If the Trump administration possesses any guiding philosophy, it is white grievance. In fact, college admissions—especially at elite colleges—tilt heavily in favor of whites. This is due largely to the racial wealth gap. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the median household wealth for white families is $134,230; it is only $11,030 for black families. College degrees do not eliminate that racial wealth gap, either. Meanwhile, The Harvard Crimson reports that the median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800. (It’s $204,200 at Brown.)

And wealthy students have long benefited from their own form of affirmative action. In a 2016 piece for Town and Country magazine, journalist Daniel Golden explained:

One [study] put the advantage of being an alumni child at 160 points on the SAT, which had a possible range of 400 to 1600. Another examined admissions decisions at 30 highly selective colleges and universities and concluded that the odds of a legacy being accepted at the alma mater of one of his or her parents are more than seven times better than an ordinary applicant’s.

But facts, as we know, matter little to Trump or to the rest of his administration. Call it government by Daily Caller comment section: The right-wing base believes it’s true, so by God the Trump administration is going to tell them it is true. In doing so, they behave like typical Republicans. The administration’s war on minorities is simply the culmination of a decades-long political project. Lee Atwater would be proud.