If you're not furious about this yet, you should be

Wake up, America! While we’ve been distracted by the daily chaos of the Trump administration, something far more sinister has taken root in our country. It’s called Structural Eugenics (and a hat-tip to Qasim Rashid for putting this on my radar), and if you’re not furious about it yet, you damn well should be.

This isn’t some fringe conspiracy theory: it’s a coordinated assault on our most vulnerable citizens happening in broad daylight with deadly consequences.

Let’s be brutally honest here: the MAGA movement isn’t just pushing bad policy, they’re implementing a modern form of eugenics through selective attention and neglect.

Consider what the Trump administration is obsessively tracking: They’re monitoring autistic children, trying to build databases of women’s menstrual cycles, creating blacklists of anyone who criticizes Donald Trump or questions Israeli policies, surveilling transgender Americans, and targeting anyone who dares mention diversity or inclusion.

They’re establishing the infrastructure of authoritarian control with surgical precision.

Yet what are they deliberately NOT tracking?

— They’ve abandoned monitoring of vaccination rates as measles returns to kill our children.
— They’ve stopped counting Covid deaths even as hundreds of Americans still die weekly.
— They refuse to track gun violence despite firearms becoming the leading killer of American children.
— They’ve gutted environmental monitoring as our planet burns.
— They’ve dismantled food safety regulations while tens of thousands of Americans get sick and hundreds die every year from contaminated products.

This selective attention isn’t random: it’s strategic and deadly. It’s the implementation of a 21st-century form of eugenics through bureaucratic means. Rather than directly eliminating “undesirable” populations through the horrors of the 20th century’s firing squads and gas chambers, this approach simply withdraws protection from targeted groups while amplifying imaginary threats.

The Trump-Kennedy alliance represents the perfect storm for this deadly agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s dangerous anti-vaccine propaganda will inevitably lead to the deaths of vulnerable children while Trump systematically disassembles the regulatory infrastructure that keeps Americans safe.

Meanwhile, they’re constructing elaborate systems to monitor and control the bodies and behaviors of anyone who challenges their worldview, particularly “uppity women.”

Consider Virginia, where Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin blocked legislation that would have prevented law enforcement from demanding, viewing, and compiling women’s menstrual histories. Think about that for a moment: Republicans want to track your daughter’s periods!

What possible legitimate purpose could that serve? It’s about control, surveillance, and, ultimately, determining which Americans get to fully participate in society without monitoring or harassment.

Women are downloading period tracking apps to understand their health, and now those very tools could become weapons of state control, with Trump brazenly telling TIME magazine that states “might” monitor women’s pregnancies to enforce abortion bans, as if such invasive surveillance is perfectly acceptable in what’s supposed to be a free country!

The treatment of transgender Americans under this regime is particularly telling. With nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills moving through state legislatures nationwide, we’re witnessing a coordinated campaign to legislate certain Americans out of existence. Eugenics, in other words.

This isn’t about protecting children or preserving sports; it’s about erasing people who don’t fit into their narrow vision of a straight, white, Christian, male–run America.

Perhaps most chilling is the Trump regime’s approach to political dissent. Palestinian students and other people of color who criticize American or Israeli policy face expulsion from school, imprisonment, and — after Trump decides they’ve spent enough time in jail to be appropriately punished for speaking out — eventual deportation. They’re holding Rümeysa Öztürk in jail right now, for example, for co-authoring an anti-Netanyahu editorial in the Tufts’ student paper over a year ago.

Trump has explicitly stated his intention to deport American citizens he dislikes, shredding due process protections enshrined in our Constitution. These aren’t the actions of a democratic government: they’re the hallmarks of fascism and dictatorial strongman rule.

The complete elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from federal agencies is another glaring sign of what’s happening and Trump’s embrace of white supremacy.

On his very first day back in office, Trump signed the executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” systematically dismantling decades of progress toward a more inclusive society. The Department of Education has already canceled over $2.6 million in DEI-related contracts and removed hundreds of guidance documents from its website.

Their Project 2025 agenda isn’t about fiscal responsibility; it’s about ensuring that America’s institutions remain dominated by one certain group (wealthy straight white male Christians) while systematically excluding others.

Meanwhile, public health emergencies that threaten all Americans go unaddressed. Measles — a disease we had virtually eliminated — is back, killing children because of vaccine misinformation spread by the very people now running our health agencies. And whooping cough is quickly catching up.

At least three children have died in Texas from a measles outbreak while Kennedy, with his long history of dangerous anti-vaccine rhetoric, has been sending mixed messages about vaccination by promoting quack “healers” who push unproven and potentially harmful treatments.

And it gets worse: there are credible reports that the Trump administration has directed NIH officials to stop all research involving mRNA vaccine technology, a devastating blow to cancer research and treatments for numerous diseases.

Gun violence continues its grim harvest, particularly in communities of color, while Republicans literally prohibit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even studying the problem.

Climate change — the existential threat of our time — is treated as a liberal conspiracy rather than scientific reality. Trump is reportedly considering an executive order to strip tax-exempt status from climate justice organizations, effectively silencing those fighting to save our planet. This isn’t governance; it’s the vindictive destruction of our future to enhance the profits of fossil fuel billionaires.

The gutting of food safety regulations might seem like a minor issue until you realize how many Americans — particularly the elderly, children, and immunocompromised — die from food-borne illness each year. These aren’t just policy disagreements; they’re life-and-death decisions being made with callous disregard for human suffering.

The most vulnerable Americans are being targeted through this structural eugenics approach. Low-income communities, Black and brown Americans, women, LGBTQ+ individuals: they’re all in the crosshairs of policies designed to determine who thrives and who suffers or even dies in Trump’s America.

This should concern all of us, regardless of political affiliation. When a government begins selecting which populations deserve protection and which don’t, no one is ultimately safe. Today it might be transgender kids or Palestinian students, but tomorrow it could be anyone who falls outside the ever-narrowing definition of Republican-acceptable Americans. Including you and yours.

We must recognize this for what it is: an attempt to reshape America through neglect, surveillance, and targeted harassment. We must fight back through every means available: in the courts, at the ballot box, in our communities, and in our daily lives.

Because make no mistake: structural eugenics isn’t just a theoretical concern for some distant future.

It’s here now, being implemented by people who believe some Americans are more valuable than others. And if we don’t stand against it with everything we have, we’re complicit in allowing this new form of eugenics to take root in the 21st century.

The time for polite disagreement and “strongly worded letters” is over. Our lives — and the soul of our democracy — quite literally depend on stopping this deadly experiment before it’s too late.

Also read: 'Lock her up!' Trump is determined to arrest democracy — and the women who defend it