MAGA Eugenics Should Alarm Us All

Throughout history, malicious regimes have risen to power and, thinking they are superior, have targeted groups of people they have decided are a threat to their economy, their society, or their race. These governments then proceed to disenfranchise and eliminate those they decree as inferior, the “out-groups.” This is eugenics, the discredited beliefs and practices that claim to improve the genetic quality of a specific group by eliminating the propagation of the “out-groups.” This has been accomplished in the past by forced sterilization, inhumane institutionalization, or outright euthanasia. In reality, the practice of eugenics is about preserving the power of the dominant group or government, not genetics.

The United States has a dark history of eugenics targeting people of color and those with disabilities. Though it may be less glaringly obvious today, eugenic thought and policies have been empowered by the MAGA movement. In 2024 the Trump administration defined “out-groups” both nationally and internationally, with massive funding cuts to social programs, healthcare, and research directed at reducing health disparities—efforts that they call “woke.” As ever, these actions will have the deadliest effects on their designated “out-groups”: immigrants, the elderly, the poor, those with disabilities, people with mental illness, retirees, and Black and brown people. These are all groups that the administration and MAGA Republicans see as using the social services they want to eliminate, or as not being important to the economic growth of the US. The end result is the eugenic cleansing of US citizens defined by the regime as being useless, needy, and inferior.

How did they do this? In the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Republicans succeeded in undermining social programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This greatly affects the health of those they disfavor, such as those who experience poverty and struggle for adequate healthcare and nutrition. These actions also directly harm people with disabilities, who are more likely to live in poverty and to require food assistance. Additionally, people with mental health conditions, as well as people who are unhoused, are being targeted by administration policies aimed at institutionalizing them. Institutionalization has a dark history in the US and is just one step from state-mediated sterilization and elimination.

To further assure poor health for the “out-groups” the administration, in league with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his HHS cronies, has methodically weakened the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Vital disease monitoring programs have been halted, lifesaving research has been crushed, vaccine uptake has been attacked, and fact-based science and medical practices have been exchanged for conspiracy theories and the promotion of unproven supplements. All of these actions will most severely damage the health of the most vulnerable, the “out-groups.”

The administration, right-wing politicians, and the MAGA movement seem to have taken it upon themselves to eugenically cleanse the Earth of poor, non-white people.

And it doesn’t stop in the United States. Immediately after the inauguration, the Trump administration began with severe cuts to foreign aid through the elimination of US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other destructive policies. It has been predicted that this will ultimately end in the deaths of millions across the globe. It is already happening.

This is eugenics—many of the millions who die, or become permanently disabled, will be children, who will be eliminated before they can reproduce. And the greatest effects of the withdrawal of aid are directed against Black and brown people, the “out-group” who, according to the crude language of the US president, live in “shit-hole” countries—as if these countries and the human beings who live there are worthless and expendable, a burden to the US and the world.

The administration, right-wing politicians, and the MAGA movement seem to have taken it upon themselves to eugenically cleanse the Earth of poor, non-white people. Apparently, they believe they have the power and the right to reduce the world’s population by promoting terrible suffering through fatal diseases and starvation in places far out of their view.

Let’s say it outright—this is state-sponsored eugenics and it is happening in the America which was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The actions of the current administration have disgraced those principles. Even hard-core MAGA followers should be opposed to the behavior of their chosen leaders, who are resorting to eugenics, using the infliction of terrible suffering, pain, diseases, and starvation for political power, economic gain, and supremacy. And MAGA followers should remember you are not immune; a small change in status will bring you into the crosshairs of state-sponsored eugenics. We should all be alarmed.