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Commentary: 'Eugenics' comes out of the shadows in recent political rhetoric
On Sept. 2, in a comment from the White House aimed at justifying sending federal troops into Baltimore, President Trump said this about his targets:
“These are hard-core criminals. …They’re not going to be good. In 10 years, in 20 years, in two years, they’re going to be criminals. They were born to be criminals. Frankly, they were born to be criminals. And they’re tough, and mean, and they’ll cut your throat and they won’t even think about it the next day, and they won’t even remember that they did it and we’re not going to have these people.”
Not a few Americans probably took Trump’s words at face value, given public stereotypes of the urban underworld and the exaggerated fears of urban downtowns that the administration has excited.
But for students of race and class warfare in America, Trump’s words evoked a line from one of the most notorious opinions ever delivered by the Supreme Court: Oliver Wendell Holmes’ decision in the 1927 case Buck v. Bell, upholding Virginia’s compulsory sterilization law aimed at the “feeble-minded.”
Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.
— Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, explaining his resignation from the CDC
Holmes wrote of the plaintiff, “Carrie Buck is a feeble minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony. She is the daughter of a feeble minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble minded child. … Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Holmes’ words were a quintessential expression of “eugenics,” a pseudoscientific notion that social problems can be alleviated by focusing on heredity, and sequestering, forcibly sterilizing or even murdering those whose genetic heritage jeopardizes civilization. In other words, “guilt by geneological association,” biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote in 1984.
Eugenics fell out of favor when the Nazis used it to rationalize the Holocaust and other genocidal policies.
But it has come out of the shadows in recent political rhetoric.
“Many eugenic ideas that may have been under the surface for a while are back with a vengeance,” says Alexandra Minna Stern, a professor of English and history at UCLA who is one of our leading historians of the eugenics movement.
Trump’s relentless campaign against transgender people (including banning transgender individuals from serving in the military and defunding gender-affirming care coverage in government programs), for instance, has echoes of eugenicists’ traditional hand-wringing about those deemed defectives infiltrating society.
“Eugenics was initially focused on disability, intellectual incapacity, mental illness,” Stern told me. “Now we see the idea that there are ‘fit’ people and there are ‘unfit’ people — there’s a bit of the idea of ‘survival of the fittest,’ that those who have natural immunity will rise to the top and will survive; and for those who before needed to be coddled by the state, that will no longer be an option.”
The implications of this kind of thinking aren’t lost on legitimate scientists.
“The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” Demetre Daskalakis wrote last month in his resignation letter as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.”
Before digging deeper, let’s examine the history of eugenics thinking. I’ve asked the White House and Department of Health and Human Services for comment on the echoes of eugenicist thinking in contemporary government policies but haven’t received replies.
The term “eugenics” was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, who aimed to apply the findings of his cousin, Charles Darwin, to better society. Galton “advocated the regulation of marriage and family size according to hereditary endowment of parents,” Gould noted in his classic 1981 book “The Mismeasure of Man.”
Eugenics became popular among the educated elite in the 1920s and 1930s. As I reported in 2020, among its advocacy groups was the California-based Human Betterment Foundation, which advocated “eugenic sterilization.” California became one of the first states in the nation to enact a forced sterilization law, in 1909. By 1938 its more than 12,000 involuntary sterilizations accounted for nearly half of all those nationwide.
Among the foundation’s members and trustees were Caltech President Robert A. Millikan; Rufus von KleinSmid, then the president of USC; Lewis Terman, a Stanford psychologist who pioneered the study of IQ; and Harry Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times.
Their affiliation with the foundation ultimately became institutional embarrassments. Caltech announced in 2021 the removal of the names of Millikan, Chandler and four other foundation members from its campus. USC removed von KleinSmid’s name from a campus building in 2020.
Current eugenics rhetoric is, like its forebear, fundamentally incoherent. Trump’s targets when he talks about people who are “born to be criminals” are chiefly low-income non-whites, but the conservative campaign against abortion results in fewer low-income women having access to abortion, while the better-heeled are better positioned to find means of terminating their pregnancy.
Justice Clarence Thomas tried to characterize abortion itself as tool of eugenicists in an concurring opinion to an abortion case in 2019, citing what he said was the historical record. But his claim was roundly refuted by experts on eugenics history. In interviews with the Washington Post, they noted that eugenicists were traditionally and overwhelmingly opposed to birth control and abortion.
“They knew that the women who would use it were the type of women they would want to encourage to reproduce, so-called ‘better’ women — upper-middle-class women,” said historian Daniel Kevles.
Today’s eugenic thought does deviate from the version that prevailed in the 1920s.
“Eugenics, after all, implies the active removal of those thought to be inferior, either through sterilization or outright killing,” observed the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski. “Say what you will about RFK Jr. and the antivaccine movement, it’s difficult to accuse them of actively doing that. What the antivaccine movement does — and has always done — is basically ‘let nature take its course’; i.e., let nature do the culling. The child who survives was ‘fit,’ and the child who doesn’t wasn’t. “
Gorski and others prefer the term “soft eugenics,” which the podcasters Derek Beres and Matt Remski defined as “more of a shrug and sigh than a battle cry,” as when “you hear someone … talk about only malnourished children dying of measles and healthy children have nothing to worry about.”
The “survival of the fittest” agenda permeates the cutbacks in food stamps, housing and heating assistance, which are based on beliefs about the “undeserving poor” — those who are supposedly lazy, or unmotivated, or greedy.
That’s also the core of the GOP’s efforts to drive “able-bodied” people off the Medicaid rolls — by which they mean beneficiaries of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which brought childless low-income adults into the program. Mehmet Oz, who heads Medicare and Medicaid, asserted on Fox News in July that “Today the average able-bodied person on Medicaid who doesn’t work, they watch 6.1 hours of television or just hang out.”
There’s no factual basis for that assertion. The truth, as detailed by KFF, is that almost all Medicaid recipients who aren’t receiving disability payments of some type or aren’t on Medicare are working (64%), caregiving (12%); sick or disabled (10%); retired or unable to find work (8%); or attending school (7%).
But those facts aren’t what the conservatives want the public to know.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
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