President Joe Biden has stocked his administration with individuals tied to prominent anti-Asian institutions, an exclusive Politico analysis has determined.
According to the analysis, more than 40 percent of senior and mid-level staffers in the Biden White House have degrees from Ivy League universities, institutions plagued by accusations of anti-Asian discrimination.
Nearly 20 percent of White House staffers, including Biden chief of staff Ron Klain, have degrees from Harvard. The elite university is embroiled in ongoing litigation over its controversial admissions practices, which the plaintiffs allege are unjustly biased against Asian-American applicants. Some analysts expect the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court.
About 15 percent of Biden aides have degrees from Yale, which could explain the administration's decision to drop the Trump-era Justice Department's civil rights lawsuit against the university for illegally discriminating against Asian Americans. Withdrawing the lawsuit was one of the first actions taken by the Biden administration. The decision came just weeks after Inauguration Day, amid a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes. A coalition of Asian-American groups has since urged the Biden administration to reinstate the lawsuit.
In spite of the troubling rise in violent attacks against Asian Americans, the Democratic Party has rejected Republican-led efforts to penalize anti-Asian discrimination. Last month, the Senate narrowly rejected a GOP amendment that would have denied federal funding to universities that discriminate against Asian Americans. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of the anti-racist bill.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's ideological allies at media outlets such as MSNBC have been criticized for their biased coverage of Asian-American candidate Andrew Yang, the frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race. MSNBC's coverage of Yang's candidacy in the 2020 Democratic primary was especially bad. Yang blasted the Democratic-aligned network for "trying to suppress and minimize my campaign because there are certain other candidates that they might favor."
It remains unclear why the Democratic Party does not want Asian Americans to succeed.