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discrimination
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Makes Eugenics Great Again at Health and Human Services
RFK Jr. has embarked on policies that frighteningly resemble those of eugenicists: They seek to identify and disempower the underprivileged, they serve anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, and they embrace pseudoscience.
May 17, 2025
Charles Fremont Dight has been reincarnated in the worm-gnawed brain of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. A medical professor at the University of Minnesota, Dight hoped to rid society of its unfit members. Dight, an eccentric who lived for a time in a treehouse, wrote about these unfit people in such publications as "Increase of the Unfit, A Social Menace," and "A Proper Function of Society is to Control Reproduction." Like other eugenicists, Dight believed in stronger immigration laws to keep the unfit aliens, but emphatically not people of Anglo-Saxon "stock," out of the country. In 1933, Dight wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler praising the Fuhrer's efforts to "stamp out mental inferiority."
Eugenics, a mainstream science in the early 20th century, sought restrictive marriage laws, isolation of the "unfit" in special colonies for the "feeble minded," and forced sterilization to shield society from the cost of caring for its most vulnerable citizens. Recent immigrants with poor English, children who had what are now recognized as learning disabilities, Down syndrome Americans, and many others were at risk of being paraded before eugenics courts for summary judgment and sent off to isolation colonies. Once removed from society, the eugenicists claimed, those with better bloodlines would be freed of their burden to care for them.
A Registry of Eugenic Discrimination
Bobby Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has embarked on policies that frighteningly resemble those of eugenicists: They seek to identify and disempower the underprivileged, they serve anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, and they embrace pseudoscience. Bobby Jr. wants to identify citizens with autism and place them in some kind of registry. He ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to build "a real-world data platform enabling advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records, and consumer wearables," to determine the root causes of autism spectrum disorder, and to give Bobby and his team of autism falsifiers data drawn from public and private sources in violation of federal privacy and security rules. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed an executive order to block the federal government from collecting these data related to autism and to protect "dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination" of Illinois residents.
Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded."
The HSS database, like those of the eugenicists, will be subjective and impressionistic. U.S. eugenicists built a registry for the unfit at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York under director Harry Laughlin. Laughlin and his poorly trained minions assembled index cards about American families, often from a cursory glance at a person's face and carriage, to create genetic family trees. The ERO believed they had proved a huge number of people carrying hereditary disease who could be identified to be isolated or sterilized; 80,000 Americans were sterilized.
Racism and Pseudoscience in HHS
Bobby Jr. shares the eccentricities and racism of the eugenists. He cut up whale skull found on the beach near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, apparently because he likes to study animal skulls and skeletons, tied it to the roof of the family car, and drove it back to New York, while the rank "whale juice" poured into the car and onto his children. Bobby's interest in skulls may have been kindled by the work of craniologist Samuel Morton (1799-1851). In his Crania Americana Morton set forth a hierarchy of intelligence with Native Americans and Blacks at the bottom to justify their enslavement, removal, and other disturbing acts of violence against them.
Building on Morton's thesis, racist scientists and eugenicists documented lack of mental acuity among African Americans. They assigned Blacks special diseases and susceptibilities, one of which, drapetomania, led slaves to run away from cruel owners; another ordained syphilis as a "Negro disease." These racists believed that Blacks have a higher pain tolerance and weaker lungs that could be strengthened through hard labor (slavery). Bobby Jr. claims that Black people have a stronger immune system than white people and thus should receive vaccines on a different schedule. He observed that "to particular antigens, Blacks have a much stronger reaction." Bobby Jr. has said that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS, and he reiterates the fiction that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Another leg in the eugenicists' program was anti-immigration laws. ERO director Laughlin testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Immigration Act of 1924 and its restrictions on admission to the U.S. of "races" considered inferior to the Anglo stock. On the basis of flawed data, Laughlin told Congress that recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were "socially inadequate," and tended to "degeneracy, shiftlessness, alcoholism, and insubordination," all of which were supposedly genetic traits. The 1924 act was easily passed signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge who believed that "America must be kept American" and that "biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
No wonder Donald Trump selected Bobby Jr. to head HHS. Trump began his first presidential campaign commenting with conviction that Mexican immigrants were drug dealers and rapists. Trump draws on the work of criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso and the racial hygienists of Nazi Germany where a person's genes or bloodline determine his or her capacity for success or violence. Trump said, "You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes." But the Trump family has good genes, although his convictions for sex and financial crimes might offer counter evidence: "We're smart people… We're like racehorses." During his ongoing campaign against undocumented aliens and citizens with foreign-sounding names, Trump ordered white South Africans to be given asylum in the U.S., but pointedly not Afghans who fought for freedom against the Taliban, Mexicans, or any other "races."
The Pseudoscience of Mercury-Caused Autism
The entire premise of Bobby's registry is the fully discredited assertion that vaccinations cause autism which is based on a retracted and discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Wakefield combed his data, weeded out some children who didn't fit, and carefully included others. Further, his research was funded by lawyers acting for parents who were involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.
Like Dight, Laughlin, and other eugenicists, Bobby lies and misinterprets data to fit his predetermined and erroneous conclusions that vaccines cause autism. In one article Bobby "claimed that the amount of ethyl mercury in vaccines was 187 times greater than the recommended limit, when it was only 1.4 times greater." He cited one study to contend that tuna sandwiches laced with mercury being fed to two-month-old babies. There is nothing of the sort in the study.
Eugenics and the Decline of Public Health
Bobby's strange mix of false science will exacerbate such public health crises as the ongoing measles epidemic as confused parents deny their children life-saving vaccinations. Bobby Jr. hates vaccines. He referred to the Covid-19 vaccine as "the deadliest vaccine ever made." The vaccine saved perhaps as many as 20 million lives. Kennedy has said that he only drinks raw milk. Doing so puts people at risk of foodborne illness, since pasteurization kills off pathogens. Drinking it may increase the risk of the spread of bird flu. Bobby wants to remove fluoride from drinking water and claims bone cancer, IQ loss, thyroid disease, and other things may result from its use. This is untrue. Fluoride prevents cavities.
Kennedy's fabrications about autism, mercury, and other topics recall the misguided work of eugenicist Henry Goddard. Goodard was the director of research at New Jersey's Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. He opened an early clinical laboratory to study intellectual disabilities. Tracing the lineage of one of his young patients and building her family tree back to the Revolutionary War, Goddard concluded that intelligence, sanity, and morality were hereditary, and every effort should be undertaken to keep the "feeble-minded" from procreating to eliminate them from the breeding pool. His study on the "Kallikaks" (1912) used touched-up photos to show the Kallikaks as inferior creatures.
Always lurking in the minds of this MAGA government are racist scientific ideas about breeding and innate intelligence; about the evils of immigrants; and about the need to revitalize science away from rigorous hypothesis and testing toward conspiracy, pseudoscience, and eugenics. Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded." Perhaps the registry will confirm what is well known: that increasing numbers of people identified with autism is largely to do with increased screening for and greater identification of people with autism. There is no epidemic. But, like a good eugenicist, he has determined his conclusions before the study begins.
Happy measles, everyone! Or, as Donald Trump says, he only hires the best people.
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First They Came for the Arabs... Because They Knew No One Would Speak Out
From Reagan to Trump, when a U.S. president or Congress has sought to take measures curtailing a range of civil liberties, they have exploited the perception of the danger posed by Arabs to justify their actions.
Apr 26, 2025
For decades now, Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian rights have been the weak link in the civil liberties chain.
During this period, when a U.S. president or Congress has sought to take measures curtailing a range of civil liberties, they would exploit the perception of the danger posed by Arabs to justify their actions. They feel comfortable in doing this because they understand that the negative stereotypes associated with Arabs make the measures more acceptable and opposition to their efforts less likely to occur. Examples abound.
On three separate occasions in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration sought to roll back civil liberties, they began their assault with an attack on Arabs’ rights. Having established the identity of Arab or Palestinian with terrorist, they assumed no public support would be forthcoming in defense of Arab civil liberties. On the other hand, if their targets had been persons of another ethnicity, opposition would have been more likely.
In 1981, the Reagan administration issued an executive order that dismantled all earlier reforms by the Carter administration to outlaw domestic surveillance by the CIA and FBI, using Arabs as the scapegoats to justify this measure. As a result, for five years, the FBI infiltrated and disrupted Palestinian student groups nationwide—finally disbanding the effort with nothing to show but agents’ hours wasted and millions of dollars spent.
What Trump’s administration policies share in common with his predecessors is the use of Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and their supporters, as convenient scapegoats to justify the erosion of rights and liberties.
Reagan’s Department of Justice was also able to rewrite U.S. extradition law, making it easier to fulfill the requests of foreign countries to extradite individuals without due process protections. They did so using the case of a Palestinian visa holder whose extradition had been requested by Israel. Based on this case, Congress rewrote the laws affecting all extradition requests.
It was also under former President Ronald Reagan that the Immigration and Naturalization Service released its “Alien Terrorist and Undesirables Contingency Plan,” detailing steps under provisions of the McCarren Walter Act to imprison, try in secret, and deport large numbers of aliens based solely on their ethnicity or their political beliefs or associations. Consistent with the approach taken, the “Plan” makes several references to Arab immigrants. In fact, the test case used to lay the groundwork for this “Plan” was the arrest of seven Palestinians and the Kenyan wife of one of them, charging them with nothing more than their political beliefs and association.
In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton issued an executive order “Prohibiting Transactions with Terrorists Who Threatened to Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process” and followed by the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act of 1995. Both efforts introduced draconian measures that would seriously erode civil and political rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens and residents under the Constitution and international law. The law, for example, gave far-reaching powers to law-enforcement agencies, removed the presumption of innocence for those under investigation, made it easier for the government to conduct surveillance against persons suspected of violating conspiracy laws, allowed for prohibition of “material support deemed by the president to benefit terrorist organizations,” established procedures allowing the government to detain and deport individuals based on secret evidence with no opportunity for the detainees to defend themselves, and allowed law-enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance on individuals or groups, based purely on their beliefs and associations. Using the executive order and new legislation the Clinton administration unleashed a nationwide profiling program at airports, which harassed and questioned hundreds of Arab and Arab American airline passengers, even before checking in for their flights, based solely on their dress, appearance, or Arabic names.
After 9/11, the Bush administration and Congress upped the ante. While intelligence failures and lax airline safety requirements were at fault in allowing terrorists to be trained in the U.S. and carry out their horrific attacks, then-President George W. Bush issued a series of orders that resulted in the roundup and deportation of thousands of innocent Arab students, workers, and visitors. They also ordered tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim visa holders to report to immigration offices where many more were held for deportation. The anti-terrorism legislation that passed through Congress allowed expanded surveillance by law enforcement, including warrantless wiretapping, searching library records, and an expanded use of profiling. Using the expanded powers given to them by the administration, law enforcement agents infiltrated mosques and Arab social clubs, entrapping a few gullible individuals in plots that were often organized by the law enforcement agencies themselves.
This is only a partial history, but it lays the predicate for the actions being taken by the Trump administration: threats to civil liberties like freedom of speech, assembly, and academic freedom; expanded authority given to law enforcement agencies to use unconstitutional measures to detain and deport individuals based on their ethnicity or political beliefs; and an expanded interpretation of the “material support” argument used by the Reagan and Clinton administrations to violate the protected rights of citizens and residents.
There are differences to be sure. While the measures taken during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations were based on exaggerated fears of terrorism in the U.S., it’s important to note that a review of the profiling, surveillance, and immigration programs established during these administrations did little to uncover or prosecute actual cases of terrorism. At the end of the day, despite billions of dollars spent and precious law enforcement resources expended, these programs did nothing more than contribute to an expansion of law enforcement powers and erosion of rights. In the case of the Trump orders, there’s not even the pretense of fighting terrorism—rather, an exercise in the brutal use of power to create fear and force institutions and individuals to cower and submit.
What Trump’s administration policies share in common with his predecessors is the use of Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and their supporters, as convenient scapegoats to justify the erosion of rights and liberties. What Trump knows is that in the midst of Israel’s war on Gaza, his support base will enthusiastically back his efforts. He also knows that liberals in Congress, who might otherwise oppose his policies, will be hesitant to offer full-throated support to the victims of his policies if it appears they are defending Palestinians or critics of Israel. For Trump, it’s the perfect storm. For those who care about defending rights and liberties, it’s just another example of Arabs, Palestinians, and those who defend them being the weak link in the civil liberties chain.
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Governor Vows to 'Vigorously Defend' Maine From Trump Attack on Trans Women
"This is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a president can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation," said Janet Mills.
Apr 16, 2025
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills responded Wednesday to a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the state for defying President Donald Trump's efforts to ban transgender women and girls from female sports by vowing to defend the rule of law against what she called the White House's illegal attacks.
"Today is the latest, expected salvo in an unprecedented campaign to pressure the state of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law," Mills said in response to the lawsuit, which accuses state officials of "openly and defiantly flouting federal anti-discrimination law by enforcing policies that require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions designated exclusively for girls."
The suit comes days after the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced it would begin cutting off federal K-12 education funding following an agency investigation and after the state rejected a list of the Trump administration's demands regarding transgender student-athletes.
"This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls."
Mlils argued Wednesday that "this matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law."
The Trump administration's sweeping war on transgender rights includes redefining Title IX anti-discrimination law to cancel protection for trans and nonbinary people, trying to reinstate his first-term ban on openly transgender people from military service, ending "X" gender markers on passports, banning federal support for gender-affirming healthcare, pressuring schools to censor lessons and materials about trans and nonbinary people, erasing transgender people and stories from government-run institutions and websites, and much more. Hundreds of anti-trans bills have also been passed or proposed in nearly every state.
Announcing the lawsuit at a DOJ press briefing, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi—who warned that other noncompliant states including California and Minnesota might also be sued—said that i"this has been a huge issue" for Trump.
"We have exhausted every other remedy," Bondi added. "We tried to get Maine to comply. We don't like standing up here and filing lawsuits, we want to get states to comply with us."
However, Mills said that U.S. District Judge John Woodcock's April 11 order for the Trump administration to unfreeze funding for a children's nutrition program that was suspended over the transgender athlete issue "reinforces our position that the federal government has been acting unlawfully."
Mills stoked Trump's ire for resisting his threats to cut off federal funding if she did not move to ban transgender women and girls from female teams—an action that would violate state law explicitly prohibiting gender identity-based discrimination. During a February White House meeting with governors, Trump called out Mills for her defiance and again threatened to cut off funding.
"We're going to follow the law, sir," Mills replied. "We'll see you in court."
This further incensed Trump, whose demand for Mills to apologize was widely mocked. The Trump administration then temporarily forced new Maine parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a government office rather than at hospitals, a policy quickly rescinded amid public uproar.
Earlier this month, Maine sued the Trump administration in a bid to stop it from implementing any funding freeze.
"For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents, and countless Maine people," Mills said Wednesday. "We have been subject to politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion, leaving little doubt that their outcomes were predetermined."
"Let today serve as warning to all states: Maine might be among the first to draw the ire of the federal government in this way, but we will not be the last," Mills said.e "My administration and Maine's attorney general will vigorously defend our state against the action announced today from the Department of Justice."
"This is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a president can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation," she added. "I believe he cannot."
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