Despite having so recently lived through a worldwide pandemic that killed over a million Americans, Republicans have decided that what the world needs now is even more deadly contagious diseases. That much was made clear this week, as congressional Republicans blessed further efforts by Donald Trump's administration to block both domestic and international efforts to prevent the transmission of infectious illnesses.
On Tuesday, Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voted to move forward with Trump's nominee to run Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert Kennedy, the world's most famous and, sadly, effective vaccine denialist. Kennedy has spent two decades diving so far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole that he now sounds like he doubts even basic germ theory. Although Kennedy repeatedly claimed that he's not anti-vaccine throughout his hearing, his statements about vaccines are loaded with weasel words and caveats that are common deflection strategies from vaccine denialists.
This came right after reports that, despite reassurances that HIV/AIDS programs would not be affected by Trump's "pause" in funds disbursement, unelected tech billionaire Elon Musk stopped the money anyway, as part of his effort to install himself as what amounts to a secret dictator. The impact is dramatic and immediate. As one aid worker told Wired, "At a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn’t have had HIV, now do," because they didn't have the drugs to prevent the virus from taking hold in babies born to HIV-positive mothers. Every day this drags on, more unnecessary transmissions will occur.
On top of that, Musk's illegal efforts to destroy USAID without congressional approval are stopping international efforts to curtail the spread of disease. The situation is so dire even Fox News reported on it. They quoted Atul Gawande, former USAID head of Global Health, explaining that both ebola and bird flu outbreaks are happening, but, "Our efforts to contain them have all been shut down." He explained, "We were on the verge of ending HIV, TB, and malaria. That has all ended with this pause." These aid shutdowns come on the heels of other pro-plague actions from Trump, including halting research funding at the National Institutes of Health and cutting off ties with the World Health Organization.
One would think the viruses and bacteria that have tormented humanity since time immemorial would never find a friend in the species — human beings — they so routinely sicken and kill. But right now, Republicans are protecting these germs like they were big campaign donors. It's as if they want people to get sick and die, the way they are waging war on anyone who would interfere with the transmission of disease.
This new affection Republicans have for infectious disease seems to stem directly from the right's reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. From the very beginning, Trump dismissed it as a "hoax" or floated conspiracy theories that the "deep state" was blocking some miracle cure. For the larger MAGA movement, the virus became a culture war flashpoint. Liberals took COVID-19 seriously, so refusing to accept the reality of the pandemic became a crucial identity marker for MAGA, leading to refusals to wear masks or get vaccinated, even as their communities lost people by the thousands.
This childish rejection of medical science seems to have since metastasized into a larger MAGA loathing of not just vaccines, but any effort to prevent the spread of disease. (Even washing your hands is stigmatized on the right now, adding one more reason to the pile not to shake their hands.) It's all tied up in a longer MAGA project of demonizing facts, shunning science, and valorizing know-nothings over experts. But there may be an even darker edge to this new affection for disease among Republicans: eugenics.
"Eugenics is the Rosetta Stone for so much of Trump’s agenda," noted political scientist Omar Wasow on Bluesky Monday. It's not hyperbole. He was talking about Darren Beattie, who got fired as Trump's speechwriter in 2018 after his white nationalist activities were outed, but is now the acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department. Beattie has a long history of suggesting he believes only white men are biologically capable of being leaders.
The eugenicist impulse has always been part of MAGA. Trump campaigned in 2024 by arguing that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" and suggesting they have "bad genes." He's escalated since taking office into open longing for genocide, promising he will "clean out" Gaza of Palestinians and offering Israel U.S. forces to do it. As Heather "Digby" Parton documented during the first Trump administration, Trump has hinted at his belief in eugenics for decades now, unsubtly suggesting white people have "good genes" and arguing in favor of breeding humans like a "racehorse." Trump is so committed to the view that intelligence comes from white people's genes that he brags he doesn't need to read or learn anything because he knows how to do everything automatically. During the infamous moment where he suggested people bleach their lungs to cure COVID-19, he referred to this view, pointing to his head and saying his "good you-know-what" meant he understood medical science better than doctors.
As usual, the people who believe most in the superiority of the white race disprove it by their existence, but there's good reason to fear this eugenicist impulse has taken root and grown in MAGA circles. As journalist Naomi Klein documented in her book "Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World," the pandemic gave rise to large numbers of people arguing that infectious disease is good because it supposedly culls the weak from the gene pool. While many who felt this way knew better than to say so in public, there was an explosion of coded versions of this argument from right-wing and right-coded "wellness" influencers, who would often argue that "healthy" people don't need the vaccine. But while they didn't say so outright, this argument often carries an implicit assumption that those deemed "unhealthy" don't deserve to live.
Kennedy's confirmation hearing was rife with these eugenicist implications. As I documented last week, Kennedy refused to acknowledge the true reasons for high healthcare costs, namely our for-profit system of healthcare and wealth inequalities that exacerbate medical problems. Instead, he painted people with chronic diseases as parasites sucking up all our resources. He also blamed them for their conditions, which he ascribed almost solely to poor diets. In his opening statement, he even went as far as to deny the full humanity of people with chronic illnesses, by saying, "A healthy person has a thousand dreams. A sick person has only one." For some reason, the statement passed most people's notice, but it was an explicit assertion that someone in a wheelchair or with diabetes cannot have a full life with ambitions, love, or plans for their future.
This attitude, intermingled with MAGA racism, goes a long way toward explaining the unhinged hostility towards USAID and other programs that do so much to stop the spread of disease around the world. Bluntly put, white supremacists don't see the problem in letting deadly diseases tear through populations of countries where most citizens aren't white. They see that as more "culling the herd" to allow what Trump calls the "good genes" of white people to flourish.
One doesn't have to scratch much past the surface to see this. As I documented Tuesday, Musk's eagerness to shut down USAID is being shaped by his white nationalist followers on X, especially Michael Benz, a MAGA influencer who has previously written that "Hitler actually had some decent points." Both Benz and Musk have championed the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, a neo-Nazi idea that nefarious forces — usually Jews or Democrats — are secretly orchestrating a campaign to increase the numbers of non-white people to wipe out white people. Benz has lamented what he sees as "white demographic suicide." Musk has 11 children and often hypes pro-natalist ideas. He spins these as race-neutral, but it isn't a coincidence that the alt-right circles obsessed with raising birth rates tend to be lily-white.
Racism is gross and immoral, but it's also profoundly unscientific and downright stupid. The COVID-19 pandemic was just the most recent reminder that viruses do not check your racial identity on your paperwork before deciding to infect you. Before that, HIV was the globe's dramatic reminder that viruses do not care about social constructions over what skin color puts you in what group of people. But MAGA refused to listen during the COVID-19 pandemic, carrying on as if whiteness would protect them, even as they died by the thousands. The eugenicist impulse has always rejected science, even as it pretends to be "scientific." And the whole world will pay the price if people like Musk and Kennedy get their way.
