I am embarrassed to say, the first time I had any interest in educating myself on Eugenics was when disability blogger and activist, Imani Barbarin, (Crutches and Spice on instagram. I highly recommend you follow her.) used the phrase in her content. I went looking for the history. What I found was a blueprint for cruelty that never really went away. Researching this piece gave me horrible anxiety. As you read it, I hope you feel something too. 

The Return of Eugenics (Just Without the Lab Coats)

Under Donald Trump, that old eugenic philosophy hasn’t just made a comeback — it’s wearing a suit, a stupidly long tie, and writing horrendous policy. Policy with almost no checks and balances, I might add.

A Quick Refresher: What “Eugenics” Really Means

Classic eugenics wasn’t fringe. Somehow, I thought it was. Or maybe I just wanted it to be fringe. The U.S. government–sanctioned sterilization programs that operated for over 70 years, roughly from the early 1900s through the 1970s and, in a few states, even into the 1980s. Listen to me. They forcibly sterilized people, disproportionately poor, disabled, and Black and brown, while figures like Harry Laughlin drafted “model” sterilization bills that later inspired Nazi Germany’s “race hygiene” laws.

Eugenics was never just about genes. It was about power: deciding whose lives are “fit,” whose are a “burden,” who gets resources, and who’s written off as too expensive to save.

Trump’s Policies Through the Eugenics Lens

1. Make the poor hungrier (SNAP)

During shutdown, the administration fought a court order to fully fund November’s food benefits for 42 million people. Hunger shortens lives and narrows futures — selection by scarcity disguised as “fiscal responsibility” or “Democrats care more about immigrants than Americans.”

2. Choke off reproductive health (Title X)

Trump’s “gag rule” gutted the Title X network by half, expelling Planned Parenthood and stripping millions of contraception and cancer screenings. Clinics closed; patients vanished. When reproductive care becomes a luxury, that’s population control by class.

3. Weaponize “public charge”

The 2019 rule didn’t just change policy, it weaponized fear. Millions of immigrant families backed away from Medicaid or WIC, terrified that getting their kids a check-up or baby formula could cost them a green card. Proof that cruelty doesn’t have to be loud to do obvious damage. It was a bureaucratic version of the old “unfit immigrant” trope. At its core, it’s eugenics in a suit: using health and hunger as filters for who gets to belong, who gets to thrive, and who’s deemed “worthy” of America.

4. Engineer the population at the border

Families are torn apart, leaving scars that won’t heal in a single lifetime. Watchdogs uncovered unauthorized surgeries in ICE custody — as if the body itself were state property.

And now, they’re peering directly at the body as border policy. A new Trump directive tells consular officers to deny visas to people who are obese, diabetic, or living with other health conditions — as if illness or imperfection makes someone less human, less deserving of a future here. This is demographic shaping by design: exclude, harm, deter. A system built to control who gets to belong and rewrite America’s DNA at the border.

5. Deregulate pollution — and poison the poor

EPA enforcement collapses under Trump 2.0. The result? More toxins in Black, brown, and poor neighborhoods. More asthma. More cancer. More quiet deaths the headlines don’t count. Differential survival by ZIP code — environmental eugenics hiding behind deregulation and corporate smiles.

And it doesn’t stop there. His administration has rolled back food safety inspections, cut staff at the USDA, and let meatpacking plants run faster lines with fewer checks. Inspectors warn that contaminated food is slipping through, but profit wins.

It’s another quiet form of discrimination: who gets clean food and who doesn’t. The wealthy eat organic and imported. Everyone else gets deregulated dinner and hopes for the best.

6. Treat a pandemic like a “let-it-rip” experiment

Congressional probes reveal how Trump officials pressured scientists to push “herd immunity by infection.” Mass death as public-health strategy. They downplayed fatalities in long-term care facilities and ignored the suffering of elders, disabled people, essential workers, and the uninsured. That wasn’t incompetence. It was intent — eugenics in real time. The belief that some lives are expendable if it keeps the economy humming and donors happy. 

7. Starve the science that saves ordinary lives

Trump’s budgets go after lifelines. He slashes double digits from the NIH and guts global-health programs. He even pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, as if solidarity itself were the disease!

The National Cancer Institute lost nearly $3 billion. Cancer research grants vanish. Early-career scientists see their projects defunded overnight. Heart, lung, and diabetes prevention programs disappear. Even the CDC’s basic disease surveillance sits on the chopping block. Congress blocks some of it, but intent still matters. Starve public science, and you privatize survival. Cures become luxury goods. It isn’t accidental neglect. It’s a slow dismantling of the systems that keep ordinary people alive while the rich buy health.

8. Ration care and legalize discrimination

Trump’s health policies boil down to this: make care harder to get healthcare services, especially for the people who need it most. Fewer doctor visits. More skipped meds. Sicker families. And then comes the cruelty dressed as “religious freedom.” In 2020, his administration rewrote a key part of the Affordable Care Act to let hospitals and insurers discriminate against LGBTQ+ patients. A doctor can legally refuse to treat someone simply for who they are. Withholding gender-affirming care from trans people drives depression, self-harm, and suicide, turning identity itself into a life-or-death condition. That’s eugenics too, when policy decides who’s allowed to survive as themselves.

History Repeats in Modern Dress

1. Mussolini’s Battaglia per le Nascite criminalized birth control for the “unfit” and subsidized “healthy” families.
2. Franco’s Spain stole babies from political dissidents and single mothers. “Los niños robados,” to be raised by “morally pure” families.
3. American eugenicists wrote sterilization laws adopted in 32 states; Nazi Germany used them as models.
4. Trump’s eugenics: decide who belongs, punish “weakness,” and call it efficiency.What You Can Do

Share this piece with someone.

Follow @crutches_and_spice on instagram.

Call your representatives: demand full SNAP funding during any shutdown, oppose Medicaid caps, insist on real EPA enforcement.

Support local clinics and legal-aid groups repairing the Title X gap.

Remember: every moral collapse starts with “those people matter less.”

Fact-Checked Highlights (via google and chat GPT)

• SNAP litigation (Nov 2025): active federal case, SCOTUS stay
• Title X losses: KFF & Guttmacher verified network cut by half
• Public-charge chilling: Urban Institute data 2020
• Environmental enforcement drop: EPA IG 2025 report
• “Herd-immunity” interference: House Subcommittee report 2022
• NIH budget proposals 2017–2020: documented –19 % cuts proposal
• ACA §1557 rollback 2020: HHS Final Rule 85 FR 37160