Look for this twist as Trump Fund baby rules are released:

or US eugenics in 1914, etc.

The argument that poverty and crime are caused by intellectual deficits and lack of self-control was made regularly by leaders in eugenics like Walter Fernald. This is Fernald in 1912, giving a lecture about "The Burden of Feeble-Mindedness" printed in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

Just as they also dubbed hookworm “the germ of laziness”

“there is no essential relationship between a symbol and its referent” It was a course in semantics

will look forward to it.

It is a very old lie: see 1913

The first California Constitution (1849) was also printed in both Spanish and English

Or anyone whether their story, article or book is done.

Just a reminder, Buck v. Bell was never overturned! A 2022 report by National Women's Law Center found that 31 states & D.C. still have laws allowing forced sterilization of disabled people (and some of the states where it's still allowed may surprise you) More here: nwlc.org/resource/for...

One of the biggest moments of my career: USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

The message is the same as always:

How it started. How it's going.

ICYMI: Pro-choice nuns? Yes, kinda. In the early 1980s, restoring public funding for abortions was a central plank for the abortion rights movement—and many #Catholic sisters became not-all-that surprising feminist allies in this movement. Read more on @nursingclio.bsky.social ⬇️

To coin a phrase.....

My quote of the day In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. Stephen Jay Gould

Being the First in Your Family to attend College Is Not a Deficit—It’s a Distinction www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view... "It means learning how to do college while doing college—a dual curriculum that tests not only intellect but resilience, adaptability and faith." #edusky #firstgen #college

My new historical essay for @nursingclio.bsky.social tells the story of Mercy Sister Agnes Mary Mansour and a prominent group of Catholic religious sisters who viewed #Medicaid funding for abortion as part of their duty to serve the poor—even when the Vatican threatened their livelihoods.

Every time you hear about "low IQ people" you should realize the eugenic echoes are just getting louder:

Today's lesson in eugenic history

She brought it up for the same reason that the Musker and his overlord did. Ill heath, bad economy, high taxes, etc. are all blamed on immigration, people they want to deport now, or any people not of "racehorse" quality--to their way of thinking the source of poverty, disease, and crime.

Hall's comments were quoted verbatim in an openly white supremacist volume of the era: The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy by Lothrop Stoddard. This book was parodied by Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Stoddard and his ilk wrote the script you are hearing repeated today.

There is a unity of message coming out of this administration. It echoes, sometimes verbatim, the messages of early 20th Century eugenics. Here is an example from a 1919 article by Prescott Hall, a leader of the immigration restriction movement, describing immigrants as a public health threat.

When giving my campus tour of Cal, I like to introduce people to the Neo-Assyrian styled Valley Life Sciences building that was once the largest academic building in the world. And then I let the know this was the home of the University of California Dept. of Eugenics, the world's leading center.

To simplify: We don't call historical geocentrism (earth at the center of the universe) pseudoscience. That's just where science was at the time. People who believe in geocentrism *now* however are pushing pseudoscience.

Italy and Germany, for those who may have forgotten, were run by Mussolini and Hitler, who both had strong ideas about immigration, race, and the role of women.

perhaps the Musker is just reading old newspapers, say from 1934?

For a detailed explanation of the origins of the "race suicide" rhetoric and its connection to US eugenics, see:

Wow it turns out the entire country is not permanently reactionary because Trump won an election by 1.5%

Republicans need to stop talking about bathrooms and junior high volleyball teams and start focusing on issues people actually care about

This podcast just out: relitigated.com/2025/07/16/1...

A college classmate

My latest, just out: “The Craze for Legal Proceedings”: Another Look at Schloendorff v. New York Hospital Paul A. Lombardo scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/healthmatrix...

Apes, Men, and Morons: Eugenics, Evolution, and the Scopes Centennial The “Monkey Trial” Centennial provides an opportunity to examine the widespread misunderstanding about how ideas of evolution and eugenics were implicated in the famous Scopes controversy. baskeptics.org/upcomingskep...