MAGA Has a Eugenics Gene

Photo Illustration by The Bulwark / Photos Shutterstock, Getty

Thank you all for your thoughtful questions for our first Triad Video Mailbag. We’re planning another one for Friday, May 8.

This time, the Q&A will be accompanied by a transcript for those who prefer the reading experience. Vote for your favorite questions—or leave your own question—in the comments here.

Now, before we get to the MAGA eugenics stuff, a quick word about the Supreme Court and priorities.

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1. Expand SCOTUS?

Just going to leave this here for my BFF and me to talk about tomorrow on the Secret show: It’s almost as though the Supreme Court is trying to discredit any norms-based opposition to SCOTUS expansion.

I wonder what the history books will say about John Roberts. I believe—truly—that he sees himself as an institutionalist whose highest duty is to safeguard the place of the Supreme Court. And yet, when he leaves the bench, his Court’s reputation and standing will have been so damaged that the citizenry may demand major reforms to it, of the sort that Roberts will almost certainly abhor.

Sometimes when we talk about whether or not Donald Trump is a Russian asset we ask, “If he was taking his orders directly from Putin, how much would he do differently?”

I’d ask a version of that question about Roberts: If he was a radical bent on using the Court to impose his own ideological vision, how much would he do differently?

There are surely some votes he would have changed, here and there. But on the spectrum from radical to institutional, I’m pretty sure he falls closer to one side than the other. Regardless of how he sees himself.

Kill the filibuster, make D.C. a state, and expand the Court. If Democrats can’t do those three things then I’m not sure anything else matters. Now, let’s move on to the really dark stuff.

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2. Eugenics

One of the under-appreciated aspects of Trumpism is its aversion to—what euphemism shall we employ?—dysgenic types.

Trump famously mocked a disabled reporter in front of thousands of people and has a well-documented distaste for disabled or disfigured soldiers.

There is the MAGA movement’s constant murmuring about racial purity—advocating for “heritage Americans,” warning about “vermin” infesting the country, voicing concerns about groups of people who are “poisoning the blood” of the nation with their “bad genes.”

There is the obsession with erasing public acknowledgment that trans people exist.

There is the disgust at neurodivergence and the view of autism as an “epidemic” to be stamped out.

And while everyone is paying attention to the big-ticket stuff—the Iran war, the looming bond-market crisis, the Putinesque levels of corruption—the administration has been quietly doing some soft eugenics.

Let me tell you about “the most pro-life president” in American history . . .