Former Vice President Mike Pence poached over a dozen senior officials from the Heritage Foundation to join his own conservative think tank in the latest sign that all is not well in right-wing politics. The Heritage Foundation is arguably the most prominent conservative think tank in America. Pence, meanwhile, started his competing think tank, Advancing American Freedom, to promote “exactly what the Trump-Pence Administration did every day.” Many prominent Republicans framed this to the Journal as a return to conservative fundamentals, blocking out “what they see online.”  As my colleague Anna Merlan recently reported, MAGA is eating itself alive. Pence’s move came after the Heritage Foundation’s leader, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson for hosting white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his show, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The Heritage Foundation notably published Project 2025, the policy document that detailed Trump 2.0’s slash-and-burn approach to governance. But this specific beef dates back to October, when Carlson, a high-profile conservative political commentator, interviewed Fuentes. Fuentes asserted that we need “to be pro-white,” promoted conspiracy theories of “organized Jewry in America,” and decried Christian Zionism. There was immediate outrage within the right: US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to name a few. Roberts disagreed, describing the criticism as an attempt to cancel Carlson.  “Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” he said.  Roberts’ remarks led to further fallout. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) countered, “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.” That’s when top Heritage Foundation members began resigning. John Blackman, who stepped down on Sunday, wrote that the think tank had abandoned its principles and conformed to President Trump and a coalition of the right’s “rising tide of antisemitism.” “Heritage has always welcomed debate, but alignment on mission and loyalty to the institution are non-negotiable,” Andy Olivastro, the foundation’s chief advancement officer said in a statement to the Journal. “A handful of staff chose a different path.” All of this calls into question what the future of the Republican Party will look like after Trump. Turning Point USA, which showed signs of unraveling during this past weekend’s convention, has its hopes pinned on JD Vance, but other factions of the political party may have a different idea come 2028. 

Democrats won big on Tuesday night, with victories in high-profile races across the country, including that of 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral race, centrists Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in, respectively, Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races. On Wednesday, Dems celebrated their victories on social media, while Republicans grappled with their losses. Some chalked up their defeat to strategic errors, blaming their party for overemphasizing culture war issues and failing to address voters’ affordability concerns. President Donald Trump insisted on Truth Social that the government shutdown was to blame, as well as the fact that he was not on the ballot. But the far-right had some different takes. First up, the TheoBros, a network of mostly millennial self-proclaimed Christian nationalist pastors and influencers who have fashioned themselves as the shock jocks of X. One of the most outspoken, Texas pastor Joel Webbon, had this to say: > The reason we lose elections is simple: > > 1) We imported millions of foreigners, replacing the native population from > 90% White to 59% White. > > 2) We let women vote. https://t.co/eGNkpqIDw2 > > — Joel Webbon (@rightresponsem) November 5, 2025 In recent weeks, Webbon, who whines regularly about the 19th Amendment, has been responding to women who challenge his views with the kind of pie he thinks they should be baking—instead of speaking. Webbon isn’t the only TheoBro perturbed about the enfranchisement of those pesky women. In response to a post about how women’s votes contributed to Democrats’ wins, Brian Sauvé, a podcaster and pastor in Ogden, Utah, tweeted to his 74,000 followers: > Repealing the 19th is the moderate position at this point. > https://t.co/OEHrsnqNBS > > — Brian Sauvé (@Brian_Sauve) November 5, 2025 But women were not the only GOP headache for Christian Nationalists and the far right. Others waxed melancholic about the Great Replacement, the conspiracy theory that blames the US government for deliberately allowing white Americans to be replaced by immigrants. Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, tweeted to his 1.6 million followers, “Understand what our immigration system has done to us.” Arizona pastor Dale Partridge, author of a book titled The Manliness of Christ, offered: > This is worse than NYC electing a tranny. > > This is the initiation of an Islamic colony in America’s largest city that > will take generations to undo. > > This is how Europe fell. It’s happening here. https://t.co/aIwdvvfsjT > > — Dale Partridge (@dalepartridge) November 5, 2025 Auron McIntyre, who hosts a show on the rightwing network The Blaze, told his 236,000 followers on X, “Really need the GOP to understand that Mamdani did not win because he won the argument, because he convinced people that communism works,” he continued. “He won because NYC is flooded with immigrants who don’t care about fleecing the country they came to.” > “Really need the GOP to understand that Mamdani did not win because he won the > argument, because he convinced people that communism works. He won because NYC > is flooded with immigrants who don’t care about fleecing the country they came > to.” William Wolfe, a Christian Nationalist who served in the first Trump administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon and Director of Legislative Affairs at the State Department, blamed immigrants for Mamdani’s win. “Due to intentional mass replacement immigration, New York City is now a third-world metropolis wearing the Big Apple as a skin suit,” he posted to his 82,000 followers. “Americans didn’t elect Mamdani, foreigners did.” Kevin Dolan, convener of the pronatalist conference NatalCon, posited that the remarkable upset victory in New York could portend the same for Texas, where he lives: > Republican politicians want to frame the problem as sectional ("those damn > Californians") because they don't want to talk about replacement migration > > Texas is on the same trajectory as NY, with Greg Abbott's enthusiastic consent > https://t.co/Ek6PulSMSK > > — Bennett's Phylactery (@extradeadjcb) November 5, 2025 Could American foreign policy be the reason for the dismal election outcomes? Calvin Robinson, an Anglican pastor in Michigan with 445,000 followers on X who was defrocked after he gave an apparent Nazi salute last year, certainly thinks so. “Republicans should study this before the next election,” he tweeted. “If you cannot put America first, you may well lose to a commie Mohammedan implementing Taqqiyah,” the Muslim principle of concealing one’s faith in times of danger. Clint Russell, host of the far-right podcast Liberty Lockdown, posted a clip of “groyper” extremist Nick Fuentes talking about the importance of “America First” foreign policy. “My message to every MAGA Inc talking head who ignored what the America First people have been saying,” he posted to his 268,000 followers. “Oh, you got swept tonight? Good. Keep ignoring us at your peril.” For Fuentes, on the other hand, the Democrats’ victories were not a cause for reflection or casting blame. Riding the high from his wildly antisemitic discussion with rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson, Fuentes took to the far-right platform Rumble, where he has 477,000 followers, to portray Republicans’ loss as an opportunity for groypers to win over MAGA loyalists. “Approval ratings in the toilet, Epstein files covered up, blue Wave just happened,” he said. “But the groypers are jubilant.” “Don’t say the word ‘Jewry,’” he said. Instead, he advised, “Put on your mask and conceal yourself.” He instructed groypers to use the growing divisions within the MAGA movement as wedges to further infiltrate the Republican party and American institutions. “Charm them, kill them with kindness, endear yourself to them, make yourself indispensable and always, always conceal what you’re really about,” he said. “And then get into the damn Capitol.”

Vice President JD Vance would like you to do anything but pay attention to those abhorrent leaked texts from young Republicans that Politico covered on Tuesday. And if you do read them, he wants you to think they’re just “kids” saying “edgy, offensive” things. Except that they appear to be full-grown adults, according to Mother Jones‘ analysis of public records and reports of the participants’ ages. The messages, culled from thousands of private texts between eleven young GOP leaders in four states, were exchanged between January and mid-August of this year, according to Politico. The texts show the Republicans extensively using racist, antisemitic, and homophobic slurs, among other consistently bigoted insults. Here’s a taste from the Politico story: > William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words > “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in > the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans > at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was > chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone > that votes no is going to the gas chamber.” Since Politico‘s story published, several prominent Republican politicians and organizations have condemned the messages. The National Young Republicans group said in a statement that the langauge used was “vile and inexcusable,” adding, “such behavior is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents.” The statement called for participants in the chat to resign from any leadership roles in GOP groups. Leaders of the state Republican parties in both New York and Kansas, states that had participants represented in the chat, condemned the texts. So did Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has been rumored to be running for governor and told Politico she was “appalled” by the texts. Another top Republican, though, had a different take: Vice President JD Vance. On the right-wing cable channel Real America’s Voice on Wednesday, Vance dismissed the messages as representing only the immaturity of “kids,” arguing that they were getting far too much attention. “By focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat—grow up! I’m sorry,” Vance said. “Focus on the real issues. Don’t focus on what kids say in group chats.” One problem with this defense? The people in the group chat aren’t “kids” but full-grown adults. By scanning public records and media reports, Mother Jones determined the ages of eight of the 11 participants in the chat: They appear to range from 24 to 35. Ages for three other participants—Bobby Walker, Michael Bartels, and Rachel Hope—were not publicly available. (Bartels declined to comment to Politico, and the outlet could not reach Hope for comment. Walker told Politico parts of the chat “may have been altered, taken out of context, or otherwise manipulated,” adding, “The language is wrong and hurtful, and I sincerely apologize.”) Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Wednesday night, including about at what age Vance believes people are adults who should be held responsible for their actions. > Vance on public outrage over the "I love Hitler" group chat: "Grow up! Focus > on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats… The reality > is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, > offensive jokes. That's what kids do." pic.twitter.com/POLAnldP2P > > — The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 15, 2025 Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans vice chair, and Luke Mosiman, chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, were, at 24, the youngest participants in the chat whose ages Mother Jones could determine through public reporting and records. Politico reported Hendrix used variations of a racial slur more than a dozen times in the chat. According to Kansas NPR affiliate KCUR, Hendrix lost his job as communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach after Politico reporters asked his boss, who is also the state GOP chair, about the texts. (Hendrix did not respond to Politico‘s requests for comment. The Kansas GOP said it was “disgusted” by the comments and that they do not reflect the views of Kansas Republicans, who it emphasized “elected a black chair a few months ago.” The Kansas Young Republicans reportedly became “inactive” after the messages were published.) > Hitlergate wasn’t about kids, and Vance knows it. In the chat, Mosiman called for the rape of a rival young Republican leader, and at another point said, “The Spanish came to America and had sex with every single woman.” (He declined to comment to Politico.) The oldest appears to be Joe Maligno, who public records suggest is 35. In the chat, he spoke about gas chambers and used a racial slur towards Chinese people. Maligno previously identified himself as general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans. (Maligno did not respond to requests for comment from Politico. According to a Wednesday follow-up report from the outlet, he lost his job as an employee of the New York State Unified Court System.) A handful of other participants seem to fall in the middle of that age range. According to public records, Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member who, in response to Maligno’s comment about gas chambers, said “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” is 28. Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, who wrote a series of numbers used by white supremacists and wrote, “Sex is gay,” is 29; Peter Giunta, former chair of the New York State Young Republicans, who referred to Black people as “watermelon people” and “monkeys” and said, at another point, “I love Hitler,” is 31. Chat member and supposed “kid” Samuel Douglass is a 27-year-old state senator in Vermont, according to reports. In the group chat, he claimed a woman a mutual friend was dating, who some presumed was Indian, “didn’t bathe often.” Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott has called on Douglass to resign; Douglass has apologized but has not yet said whether he would resign.) (Kaykaty and Dwyer declined to comment to Politico. Giunta apologized for the messages in a statement but claimed they were part of a “highly-coordinated year-long character assassination” effort by fellow New York politicos. According to Politico‘s follow-up story, Giunta lost his job working for New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly. Politico characterized Giunta as “the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages—often encouraged or “liked” by other members.) Vance’s defense, though, did not stop at suggesting the participants were too young to take responsibility for their actions. He also implied that they should not have to, casting members of the chat as unfairly victimized. Instead of saying he planned to warn his children not to use such vile language, for example, Vance said he would tell his three kids—”especially my boys”—”don’t put things on the Internet; be careful with what you post; if you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.” “But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys—they tell edgy, offensive jokes,” Vance continued. “That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives. And at some point we’re all going to have to say, ‘enough of this BS, we’re not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old’s group chat to ruin a kid’s life for the rest of time.'” This is particularly rich coming from one of the top officials representing a party that just mounted a mass cancellation campaign to push for the firing and punishment of anyone who its devotees felt mourned assassinated MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk insufficiently. Tl;dr: Hitlergate wasn’t about kids, and JD Vance knows it.

This article is a collaboration with Autonomy News, a worker-owned publication covering reproductive rights and justice. Sign up for a free or paid subscription, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky. Crisis pregnancy centers have played a central role in the anti-abortion movement since the 1960s, often misleading and confusing people seeking abortions while purporting to help them. They mimic the appearance of abortion clinics, with similar-sounding names and even lookalike logos. Their volunteers sometimes pose as clinic staff to divert abortion patients from getting care. Their websites are teeming with disinformation, including claims that abortion is unsafe or linked to future mental illness, breast cancer, and fertility issues. “A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby,” Robert Pearson, founder of the very first CPC in the US, once declared. Abortion rights advocates have long called on lawmakers to rein in CPCs and their misleading practices. But a 2018 Supreme Court decision struck down a California consumer-disclosure law’s attempt to do just that, making it virtually impossible for states to enact regulations that single out CPCs.  Soon after, pro–abortion rights legal scholars suggested a new approach: to go after pregnancy centers for false advertising. This regulatory strategy seemed like it would be a slam dunk, particularly thanks to a CPC practice that has rapidly become crucial to the anti-abortion movement’s strategy: abortion pill “reversal,” an unproven medical protocol that CPCs claim can halt a medication abortion about two-thirds of the time. The medical consensus on APR is clear: It’s not possible to “reverse” the effects of the abortion drug mifepristone, and attempting to do so may even be dangerous. To blue-state legislators and attorneys general, the legal issue was also straightforward: Making false promises—especially when those claims could hurt people—is illegal under a host of state and federal laws that ban misleading and deceptive advertising practices. But three years after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, efforts to regulate CPCs for false advertising appear poised to backfire spectacularly. In fact, by pursuing pregnancy centers based on their promotion of APR, well-intentioned Democrats may have unwittingly set the stage for the anti-abortion movement’s next great Supreme Court victory. In its term beginning this month, the high court will hear a case stemming from New Jersey’s attempt to subpoena information—including scientific evidence to back up claims about APR—from First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a CPC chain with five locations throughout the state. In a brief, First Choice compares the subpoena to Southern states’ attempts to force the NAACP to produce member lists in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Technically, the case has nothing to do with APR or other questionable CPC practices. It’s about a specific legal fine point: Can CPCs run straight to federal court to fight an attorney general’s subpoena, as First Choice did, or must they first sue in state court?  > The fear is that, if far-right legal activists succeed, states could > ultimately be barred from intervening in any way when CPCs advertise unproven > medical treatments like APR. Boring as this procedural quibble may seem, a favorable decision would be a significant win for CPCs. They have a much better shot at winning any case in the Trumpified federal courts than they do in state courts that may be more supportive of abortion rights. What’s more, the ability to use friendly federal courts as a shield from state regulation would set pregnancy centers up for success in other lawsuits making their way to the Supreme Court—ones that could eliminate states’ ability to crack down on APR and other questionable practices entirely. Three cases are waiting in the wings. This summer, a Trump-appointed federal judge permanently blocked Colorado from enforcing a 2023 ban on APR against two plaintiffs who sued to block it: a CPC and a nurse practitioner. The first-of-its-kind statute labeled APR a deceptive trade practice. Meanwhile, in New York and California, federal court battles are raging between state attorneys general and CPCs, this time over state claims that merely advertising abortion pill “reversal” is fraudulent and misleading. The fear is that, if far-right legal activists succeed, states could ultimately be barred from intervening in any way when CPCs advertise unproven medical treatments like APR. That could grant CPCs an unfettered right to spread medical disinformation—no matter how much it may harm vulnerable people navigating an already deadly post-Dobbs landscape.  In all of these cases, CPCs are represented by the far-right legal juggernaut Alliance Defending Freedom, which wrote the Mississippi abortion ban the court used to overturn Roe and has played a leading role in major anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ litigation in recent years. This includes NIFLA v. Becerra, the 2018 case in which the Supreme Court struck down a California law that required unlicensed CPCs to disclose their lack of licensure, and licensed pregnancy centers to provide information about family planning services.  Recordings from a March CPC industry conference—made by an attendee and shared exclusively with Autonomy News—confirm that ADF and allied law firms view abortion pill “reversal” as a linchpin in their strategy to expand legal and religious protections for the centers. The conference was hosted by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an advocacy organization that provides legal counsel, education, and training for more than 1,800 member CPCs across the US; it was also the lead plaintiff in NIFLA v. Becerra. ADF senior counsel Kevin Theriot joked that NIFLA “seems to be our primary client these days,” and suggested that another legal victory is imminent.  Peter Breen, head of litigation at the Thomas More Society—another right-wing law firm that works closely with the anti-abortion movement—told the audience that the goal is to win court decisions that “protect you a little more vigorously, maybe, than you’re being protected right now.”  In all of these cases, ADF asserts that by attempting to regulate CPCs, blue states are “chilling” their First Amendment rights.  But conference recordings also reveal that, behind closed doors, many anti-abortion doctors are reluctant to embrace APR, despite its ubiquity in their movement. The recordings feature rare admissions about the challenges and risks associated with the experimental treatment, including mention of side effects not included in official case reports. These comments raise questions about how, exactly, CPCs plan to capitalize on any newly won freedoms, and whether anti-abortion leaders will plow ahead with APR when even their own medical experts are hesitant. The FDA–approved protocol for medication abortion involves two drugs: mifepristone, which blocks progesterone, a hormone essential for pregnancy; and misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy tissue. In abortion pill “reversal,” patients who have taken mifepristone but haven’t yet taken misoprostol are prescribed progesterone under the theory that the hormone will reverse the effects of mifepristone and “save” the pregnancy.  This theory was inspired by the longstanding use of progesterone to prevent miscarriage in early stages of pregnancy—even though randomized controlled trials have found that progesterone therapy has little benefit for most miscarrying patients. The man behind the hypothesis is Dr. George Delgado, a family medicine doctor and prominent conservative activist based in the San Diego area. > As is often the case in disinformation campaigns, there is a kernel of truth > to the anti-abortion movement’s claim that pregnancy can continue after taking > mifepristone. But APR has nothing to do with it. Delgado founded the Steno Institute, an anti-abortion research organization that counts San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone among its advisers. He sits on the board of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs and is the medical director for a CPC called Culture of Life Family Services. Most recently, he was a plaintiff in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, in which anti-abortion medical groups unsuccessfully challenged the FDA’s 25-year-old approval of mifepristone, plus more recent regulatory changes that have vastly expanded access to the drug. ADF represented Delgado and the other doctors in the case. Delgado published the first report on APR in 2012—a case study with just six patients, finding that four of them carried their pregnancies to term. (Case reports are considered among the weakest forms of scientific evidence, per a widely used ranking system.) In 2018, Delgado published a larger case report in the journal Issues in Law & Medicine, which has direct ties to AAPLOG. Of 754 patients initially given progesterone, 547 remained in the study and 257 later gave birth, Delgado claimed. As is often the case in disinformation campaigns, there is a kernel of truth to the anti-abortion movement’s claim that pregnancy can continue after taking mifepristone. But APR has nothing to do with it. “We know that mifepristone, by itself, is not a very effective abortion-inducing medication,” says Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco who is the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health and the lead author on a 2015 systematic review of the evidence on APR. In one early French trial of mifepristone, for example, 23 percent of participants who took the now-standard dose of mifepristone alone remained pregnant. Supposed APR “success stories” may simply reflect the fact that mifepristone doesn’t work well on its own—this is precisely why it’s used in combination with misoprostol. In Grossman’s view, the anti-abortion movement’s promotion of APR is akin to an “unmonitored research project.” In the US, he adds, there is a “very ugly history of experimenting on people from marginalized groups”—and people who have abortions disproportionately belong to such communities.  > In Grossman’s view, the anti-abortion movement’s promotion of APR is akin to > an “unmonitored research project.” Still, after Delgado’s purported discovery, anti-abortion legislators moved quickly, eventually passing laws in more than a dozen states that required abortion providers to inform their patients of the possibility of “reversing” their medication abortions. (Many of those states now ban abortion entirely.) Delgado went on to found the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, a progesterone-prescription hotline that’s now run by the CPC organization Heartbeat International. In public, anti-abortion groups boast about hordes of women who they claim have changed their minds and successfully “reversed” their medication abortions. In June, Heartbeat International announced that the Abortion Pill Rescue Network has saved “more than 7,000 lives”—up from the “6,000 lives and counting” it claimed in November 2024. It’s impossible to know whether or not these statistics are true. CPCs have a history of inflating the number of clients they serve and the value of services they provide. Creating a perception that demand for “reversal” is exploding reinforces the longstanding myth that many people are unsure of their decision to have an abortion. It’s also a conservative answer to the increasing popularity of medication abortion, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the US in 2023—double the rate from 2014. But at the NIFLA conference, several prominent anti-abortion physicians seemed ambivalent about APR, even as CPC leaders projected bravado about the legal cases and dismissed potential safety concerns. Based on back-and-forth during two sessions—a medical roundtable and a legal Q&A—it appears that many CPCs aren’t even providing APR on site and are instead referring patients to the Heartbeat hotline. This is ironic considering the anti-abortion movement’s strident opposition to telehealth for abortion pills. But it tracks with the results of a recent study, which found that only 3.8 percent of CPCs were advertising on-site progesterone prescriptions in 2024.  During the medical roundtable, Virginia-based family physician and Heartbeat hotline provider Karen Poehailos claimed that demand for APR “has been going through the roof.” A decade ago, she’d get five requests per year, she said; in the three months before the conference, she said she’d written “13 or 14” prescriptions. (Given that there were roughly 643,000 medication abortions in the US in 2023, three to five attempted reversals per month is hardly a huge number.) Poehailos acknowledged that growth in abortion pill use may help explain the rise in APR requests. ”Women can get these as easily as clicking online,” she said. “They did not have to think about as much before they started the abortion.”  In addition to serving as NIFLA’s assistant medical director, Poehailos is also a telehealth provider for FEMM, a fertility tracking app whose development was funded by an anti-abortion billionaire. She estimated that in the past decade, only about three of her APR patients were local, meaning she was able to see them in person. “The rest of them have been through telemedicine,” she said, which requires her to be extra careful. “When these women are so far from me…I document like crazy, and I pray that God protects me,” she said. It also helps to have “friends at ADF,” Poehailos said, apparently referring to Alliance Defending Freedom. > “The majority of the women I have worked with, even if [APR] is successful, > will have some bleeding…“If you see a subchorionic [hemorrhage], that’s kind > of expected. You pray it’s not a huge one.” One of the challenges of APR, Poehailos said, is dealing with a common side effect, bleeding. “The majority of the women I have worked with, even if [APR] is successful, will have some bleeding,” she noted—specifically subchorionic hematoma or hemorrhage, a relatively common condition in which blood collects between the uterine wall and the outside of the gestational sac. Usually the bleeding is mild and resolves on its own. But this outcome isn’t reported in the papers that anti-abortion physicians have published on APR, Grossman points out. “If you see a subchorionic, that’s kind of expected. You pray it’s not a huge one,” Poehailos added.  During their discussion, Poehailos and two other doctors also lamented the quality of some of the medical testing at CPCs they’ve worked with, including ultrasounds and even basic urine pregnancy tests. “We want to serve these women well, we want to serve them in the heart of Jesus,” Poehailos said, “but we are providing medical services under someone’s license, so please … I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. You need to be serving these women better than this.” Neither NIFLA nor Poehailos responded to requests for comment. Part of the problem may be that CPCs appear to be having trouble attracting specialized professionals. At one point, Sandy Christiansen, medical director for Care Net, another CPC umbrella organization, reassured the crowd that they needn’t find an OB-GYN to be their medical director. Any type of doctor, even a pathologist or orthopedic surgeon, could do the job, she said. “All doctors get trained in women’s medicine to some extent…they can read a scan,” she said. Christiansen didn’t respond to a request for comment. But ultrasound training has only recently become common in US medical schools, and obstetric ultrasound is even more specialized. Indeed, one audience member, who identified herself as a registered diagnostic medical sonographer, said her center’s medical director was a psychiatrist. As a result, “she puts a lot of trust into us.” Poehailos acknowledged that some physicians refuse to provide APR themselves. “Some centers, their doctors are not comfortable prescribing, and they just want to be able to provide ultrasounds for doctors who do,” she said.  During the legal Q&A, some audience members expressed concern about potential repercussions associated with advertising or offering APR. But lawyers on the panel didn’t seem worried.  “I think everyone should go get a [t-]shirt that says ‘It’s just progesterone,’” said NIFLA attorney Angie Thomas, to laughter from the audience. Based on the discussion, the claim that state laws are “chilling” CPCs’ speech appears grounded more in legal strategy than in reality. In California, for example, Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Heartbeat International and a CPC chain called RealOptions Obria over their claims about APR. In a related case, ADF is representing NIFLA and another CPC—neither of which Bonta sued—arguing that the attorney general’s actions chill these organizations’ First Amendment rights. As a result, NIFLA’s “official recommendation” to pregnancy centers in California is not to offer APR, said Anne O’Connor, the organization’s vice president of legal affairs—not because CPCs’ rights really are being “chilled,” but because claiming so strengthens their ongoing case against Bonta. “ADF recommended, you know, it’s better to go conservative in that, to allege that our First Amendment rights have been chilled by what the AG is doing,” O’Connor said. “So you would suggest not telling clients about [APR]?” asked an audience member who said she was affiliated with a CPC in California.  “I told you that’s the official,” said O’Connor. The audience laughed, seeming to pick up on a hint. Other lawyers also seemed to admit that CPCs are free to make APR referrals at the same time they claim they’re being censored. ADF’s Theriot said CPCs could keep giving out information about abortion pill “reversal” and making referrals. “There’s a difference between advertising it,” he said, “and giving people information about the possible availability.” “I think most of the centers in California are still doing it,” added Breen of Thomas More Society, which is representing Heartbeat against Bonta, suggesting that Bonta’s suit has not actually changed CPCs’ behavior. Breen did not respond to a request for comment. In an emailed statement, Theriot said ADF “will fearlessly stand alongside pregnancy centers in their ministry to support pregnant women and their unborn babies” and in their legal fights against “ideologically and politically driven attorneys general.” “We remain confident that our clients’ First Amendment rights will be protected—even if that means taking these cases all the way to the US Supreme Court.” While CPCs have been part of the anti-abortion movement for decades, their numbers have skyrocketed in the past 15 years as Republicans have consolidated their power and waged all-out war on reproductive rights. By June 2022, when Roe v. Wade fell, CPCs outnumbered abortion clinics by as many as 15 to 1 in some states. And since Dobbs, CPCs have received cash injections from state governments and private philanthropists alike, now raking in nearly $1.5 billion a year. But as the industry has grown, criticism has intensified. Abortion rights advocates have worked hard to inform the public about CPCs’ deceptive practices, branding them as “fake clinics”—a label that’s stuck. Encouraged by organizations like NIFLA and Heartbeat, CPCs have responded by trying to become more “medicalized”—bringing in more licensed staff and offering more medical services, such as testing, and less commonly, treatment for sexually transmitted infections. In addition to conferring an aura of legitimacy, medicalization has the potential to open up new funding streams. For example, RealOptions Obria Medical Clinics—one of the chains Bonta sued—operates licensed facilities that accept the state’s version of Medicaid.  > Abortion rights advocates have worked hard to inform the public about CPCs’ > deceptive practices, branding them as “fake clinics”—a label that’s stuck. > CPCs have responded by trying to become more “medicalized.” Reproductive health experts generally see abortion pill “reversal” as part of this medicalization trend. APR also gives the anti-abortion movement another way—besides lawsuits and legislation—to fight back against the soaring popularity of abortion pills in the post-Roe era. While growing numbers of patients have turned to telehealth providers for abortion care, some three-quarters of abortions—including many via pills—still involve at least one in-person visit to a clinic. And many of those patients are encountering CPC volunteers who try to convince them to “reverse” their abortions by taking progesterone instead of misoprostol. At least one abortion provider in the South says she has begun to hear from patients who’ve been drawn in by APR after appointments at her clinics. Calla Hales is the executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, which operates four clinics across North Carolina and Georgia. While APR is more than a decade old, in Hales’ experience, the phenomenon of patients getting ensnared by it is relatively new. “I would have never been able to point to a single anecdote prior to Dobbs,” she says. But this year alone, patients have called her clinics at least six or seven times in as many months after someone affiliated with a CPC convinced them not to take their misoprostol. Some  patients then called Hales’ clinic back wanting to “reverse” their “reversal,” a situation in which there is no medical protocol, so health-care providers are flying blind.  In one case, Hales says, a patient traveled to one of her clinics from a state with a total abortion ban. After they returned home, family members took them to a CPC, which tried to convince them to “reverse” the medication abortion they had already started. In the other instances, patients were approached by CPC volunteers standing outside one of Hales’ clinics. A patient who is duped by the “reversal” sham, Hales adds, is likely to have to travel out of their home state again to complete their abortion—or be forced to seek follow-up care at an emergency department, where doctors may be hostile, lack adequate abortion training or both. “It’s really heartbreaking,” she says, “because there’s so much misinformation as it stands, and it’s really hard for patients to navigate getting abortion care in the first place.”

In the days following the murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, his friends and allies have called for revenge against all kinds of groups, including trans people and the so-called radical left, even as the motivations of the alleged shooter, who was reportedly raised in a Republican household, remain far from clear. Now, some of those same rightwing figures are homing in on another target: colleges and universities, which they blame for radicalizing both the alleged shooter and, more broadly, people they accuse of celebrating Kirk’s death. > “These universities should not receive a single American tax dollar.” Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man who is accused of shooting Kirk, reportedly attended just one semester of college at Utah State University in 2021. He later enrolled at a technical college, where he was a third-year electrical apprentice. Those facts make it clear that traditional higher education factually could not have played a meaningful role in what led him to allegedly shoot Kirk. But that logic hasn’t mattered to figures like MAGA activist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, who tweeted on Sunday that it was “time to defund American universities. You don’t need to go to college. Charlie Kirk didn’t go to college.” (At 18, Kirk dropped out of an Illinois community college after one semester to dedicate his time to activism, with funding from Turning Point co-founder Bill Montgomery; after high school, Kirk unsuccessfully applied to West Point.) In her tweet, Loomer tagged Harmeet Dhillon, an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, who responded, “I’m on it. And all the other haters at our American funded schools.”  Dhillon is one of the Trump-appointed officials who has been deeply involved in the push to try to expose, embarrass, or fire anyone speaking ill of Kirk or seeming to celebrate his murder. She praised actions taken against faculty members at Clemson University, where one person has been fired and two instructors suspended after making what the university called “inappropriate” remarks about Kirk following his death.  Dhillon called Clemson’s actions “a good start,” adding, “Federal funding for higher education is a privilege, NOT a right. The government is not obligated to fund vile garbage with our tax dollars.”  This general line of argument—that federal funding should be pulled from universities whose employees say things Trump and his allies don’t like—has animated the administration’s long-standing attacks on higher education. But since Kirk’s death, it’s been widely repeated in a new context. Take Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who issued a press release on Monday calling on the Department of Education to cut off “every dime of federal funding to any elementary, secondary, or post-secondary school who refuses to remove or discipline staff who glorify or justify political violence.”   “This is why these universities should not receive a single American tax dollar,” tweeted Lara Logan, a former CBS journalist turned conspiracy theorist, while reposting a report about a University of Michigan professor accused of celebrating Kirk’s death. “They preach hatred of this country, which is Marxist doctrine. It is helping to destroy this country from within—wake up.”  Other figures, like Federalist editor-in-chief Molly Hemingway, called for what could credibly be described as affirmative action to make schools more conservative. “All public universities should be required to have minimum 50% of their staff be conservative professors by spring 2026,” she tweeted. “In each department.” When a journalist on the site asked if she supported affirmative action, Hemingway responded, “No, I want to remove the left-wing oppression that has destroyed American universities.”  Beyond calls to defund colleges and universities, other figures have said that such institutions need more surveillance and campus activism from conservative students. The group includes longtime sting video maker James O’Keefe, who said his company O’Keefe Media Group “will be distributing hidden cameras nationwide to those who are witness to abuse in their school and who are willing to expose it.” O’Keefe added that he would host a livestream this week “where we will put campus corruption on blast and issuing a clear call to action: it’s time to rip the rot out of America’s education system.”  American higher education has long been depicted on the right as a hotbed of Marxism. Yet Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA itself could not have been created without institutes of higher learning; it was explicitly created to promote conservative views in high school, college, and university campuses—and it has thrived on many. Kirk himself said earlier this year that he thought his messaging was working, tweeting that he felt college students were becoming more conservative, even if the institutions themselves remained more liberal.  The right’s renewed pledge to attack universities is just one piece of what the White House has said will be a government-wide push to dismantle “radical” organizations following Kirk’s murder, which Trump has repeatedly blamed on the “radical left.” In practice, this appears to mean threatening left-leaning organizations with defunding and investigation. Speaking on Monday as a guest host of Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance also threatened to “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.” 

Wednesday’s fatal shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was greeted with widespread grief, horror, and shock by many MAGA and right-wing figures, some of whom counted Kirk as a friend or cited him as an inspiration for their own work. But while many simply expressed their grief for Kirk and his family, and politicians on both sides of the aisle condemned the killing, some public figures used the moment to make incendiary claims.  On Wednesday evening, FBI Director Kash Patel said a “subject” was in custody, although the identity and potential motivations of this “person of interest” remain unknown. (By that point, far-fetched conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death were already emerging, including claims that Kirk was assassinated by the Israeli government.)  But that did not stop some figures from stoking outrage, particularly against “the left,” whom—despite lacking any evidence as to the shooter’s identity—they blamed for the killing. Former DOGE head and Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted to his 225 million followers, “The Left is the party of murder.” > “The goal for Republicans in the next ten years shouldn’t just be to win > elections, but to destroy the Democrat Party entirely and salt the earth > underneath it.” Conservative activist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer sent a barrage of posts to her 1.7 million followers. In one, she called for the Trump administration to “shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” adding, “The Left is a national security threat.” After Kirk’s death was confirmed, she wrote: “They sent a trained sniper to assassinate Charlie Kirk while he was sitting next to a table of hats that said 47.” It is unclear which “they” she was referring to.  “More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state,” Loomer added. Former White House staffer and current podcast host Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, wrote on X that liberals “have blood on your hands.” And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) went so far as to blame the killing on the Democrats. > Nancy Mace's very first words to reporters on Charlie Kirk was "democrats own > what happened today" > > When @ryanobles followed up about if that means Republicans "own" the shooting > of Minnesota lawmakers she says "are you kidding me?" > > From moments ago on the House steps pic.twitter.com/H6RXJITtTv > > — Leah V. (@LeahVredenbregt) September 10, 2025 Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, an influential conservative publication, posted on X: “I hope that Trump also orders the extermination of the entire anarcho-terrorist network that has been terrorizing Christians in this nation unabated for more than a decade.” In a separate post, Davis wrote, “When Democrats lose elections they couldn’t steal, they murder the people they were unable to defeat.”  The knee-jerk arguments that the killing was somehow orchestrated by the left called to mind the baseless blaming of Democrats following the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump last summer. As our colleague Mark Follman noted at the time, allies of Trump, including his sons, repeatedly and falsely blamed Democrats for the attempts—claims that threat assessment and law enforcement experts warned could give rise to more political violence.  Others blamed Kirk’s killing on an unnamed group of opponents. On Fox News, host Jesse Watters claimed: “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote, “They just shot Charlie Kirk.” (It was unclear whom Watters and Greene were referring to.)  > Jesse Watters goes full bloodlust in response to Charlie Kirk's death: > "Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we > going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? … > This is a turning point. And we know which direction we are going." > > — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T21:16:53.583Z Andrew Tate, the British-American masculinity influencer turned far-right culture warrior, kept his message simple: “Civil war,” he wrote. Anti-abortion activist and president of Students for Life Kristan Hawkins also invoked civil war and seemed to imply that Kirk’s killing was a result of his opposition to abortion. “We all know the work we do to protect Life comes at a cost,” Hawkins said. In another X post, she wrote: “This is a new civil war. One that we must fight with love to restore a Culture of Life.” Chaya Raichik, the creator of the far-right Libs of TikTok Twitter account, quickly began sharing posts that were meant to show left-wing and progressive people, including many who aren’t public figures, celebrating Kirk’s killing. In her own post on X, she wrote: “THIS IS WAR.”  Some commenters claimed the killing was proof that “the left” could not be stopped. Darryl Cooper, a far-right activist who posts and podcasts under the name “Martyr Made,” told his 350,000 X followers, “Fascism is just the word used by freaks and degenerates when normal people realize that the Left won’t stop unless it’s forced to.” Texas firebrand pastor Joel Webbon, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, told his 51,000 followers, “The Left will not stop until they are forced to. The Right must gain power, keep power, and wield power righteously. @realDonaldTrump, you have been appointed by Providence. You are commanded by Scripture to be a TERROR to those who do evil. Give them hell.” William Wolfe, another Christian nationalist and a former Trump administration official, posted a video of the shooting with the comment: “The. Left. Must. Be. Destroyed.” In a separate tweet, he wrote, “The Democrats and the Left must be crushed. The goal for Republicans in the next ten years shouldn’t just be to win elections, but to destroy the Democrat Party entirely and salt the earth underneath it.” Many of the most incendiary tweets called for the Trump administration to use every available tool for legal and political retribution. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who made a name for himself opposing critical race theory, called for swift action. “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” he posted to his 832,000 followers on X. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Without directly calling for retribution, other MAGA figures made it clear Kirk’s killing would forever change their own political trajectory. “Congratulations,” wrote conservative activist Ryan Fournier, a co-founder of the group Students for Trump. “You have now made a radical out of me. You fuckers deserve it.”

In September, Elon Musk amplified a post from Autism Capital—a pro-Trump X account that he often reposts—that read: “Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true?’ filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.” Musk called the claim, which originated on the infamous web forum 4chan, an “interesting observation.” His repost was viewed 20 million times. Musk is the world’s most prominent—and most powerful—autistic person. It’s not something he conceals; notably, he mentioned it during a 2021 monologue on Saturday Night Live. Only “autistic” wasn’t the term he used. Musk told the SNL audience he had Asperger’s syndrome, a term struck from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013 and largely disused in psychiatry. But Asperger’s has persisted in popular culture, even as psychiatrists have ditched it. As a shorthand for autistic people with low support needs, it has gradually become an armchair diagnosis that’s often used to sidestep the baggage or consequences that come with calling someone autistic. It means not autistic autistic; autistic, but not quite. The words “mild” or “high-­functioning” are never far off. “Aspies,” in this vision, are socially inept, technically gifted, mathematically minded, unemotional, blunt. They can probably code. At its best, the cultural rise of ­Asperger’s­ has yielded somewhat positive (if still flattening) depictions in media: Think ­Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. But who are we talking about when we talk about Aspies? The answer is bound up with ideas about white men—who were disproportionately given the label—and decades of underdiagnosis of other autistic people. Musk isn’t oblivious to Aspie stereotypes. He’s used them to get off the hook: “I sometimes say or post strange things,” he told the SNL audience, “but that’s just how my brain works.” He’s worked them into his self-promotion: In a 2022 TED interview, Musk called himself “absolutely obsessed with truth,” crediting Asperger’s with his desire to “expand the scope and scale of consciousness, biological and digital.” And he’s deployed them politically: By pushing the line that empathy is a “fundamental weakness,” Musk both reminds audiences of the discarded, dehumanizing idea that a lack of empathy is an autistic trait and implies that his own cold detachment from humanity is the best way to project strength in Donald Trump’s America. In the 1930s and ’40s, the Austrian physician Hans Asperger separated children with what he called “autism psychopathy” into two groups: those with more noticeable disabilities and those whose atypical traits could, he thought, sometimes manifest in beneficial skill sets. Drawing on his work, psychiatrists first used the term Asperger’s syndrome in 1981; it entered the DSM as an official diagnosis in 1994. But Asperger’s quickly came to be seen as an artificial distinction, and was dropped from the DSM amid a growing recognition that autism encompassed a wide spectrum of cognitive differences. Its reputation wasn’t helped by the 2018 revelation that Asperger had sent disabled children to die under the Nazi eugenics regime. Asperger’s syndrome also emerged at a time when some leading psychiatrists theorized that autism in general, and Asperger’s in particular, were extreme manifestations of the “male brain”—a predictable result of who was being diagnosed. When Asper­ger’s was still clinically recognized, the ratio of men to women diagnosed with the condition was around 11 to 1; today, for autism spectrum disorder, it’s closer to 3 to 1. Differences in the ways boys and girls are pressured to mask autistic behavior, alongside psychiatrists’ own biases, have led to massive failures to diagnose autistic women; similar factors have made white children from better-off families much more likely than other kids to receive autism diagnoses and support, trends that improved screening has begun to change. > As psychiatrists began to drop the Asperger’s diagnosis, tech embraced it—as > the “good” autism, an improvement on both disability and “normie” inferiority. But even as psychiatrists began to drop the Asperger’s diagnosis, tech figures started to embrace it—as the “good” autism, an improvement on both disability and “normie” inferiority. The Aspie label suggested symptoms that might make you better at your job, even bestow an aura of savanthood, provided that job was somehow technical. The Silicon Valley self-proclaimed Aspie is superintelligent and superrational—but not too weird to invite to parties. Being an Aspie could make you, in tech terms, “10X.” The late autistic writer Mel Baggs gave a name to this line of thinking: “Aspie supremacy.” The ideas of the Aspie supremacist, Baggs wrote in a 2010 article, “are very close to the views of those in power.” The more productive you appear at work, the more likely you are to be deemed exceptional—or at least worth keeping around. Of course, plenty of people identify as having Asperger’s without harboring a sense of superiority, let alone signing up for Silicon Valley–brand Aspie supremacy. Often, they’re sticking with a diagnosis they were given when it still had clinical currency; other times, they’re responding to pervasive discrimination, a factor in autistic people’s unemployment rate of about 40 percent. But something distinctive happens when the Goldilocks notion of being “just autistic enough” collides with a sense of entitlement like Musk’s. As the Dutch academic Anna N. de Hooge, who is autistic, wrote in a 2019 paper, “a particular type of ‘high-functioning’ autistic individual is ascribed superiority, both over other autistic people and over non-autistic people”—a superiority “defined in terms of whiteness, masculinity and economic worthiness.” Jules Edwards, a board member at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, a neurodiversity and disability justice nonprofit, calls Musk’s attitudes both an “anomaly” and the “epitome of Aspie supremacy.” “It takes all of those different ways in which [Musk] was advantaged just by the circumstances of his birth,” Edwards says. “He was born into financial wealth, he’s white, he’s cis, he’s male—all of this stuff that balls together.” Musk’s fantasies of superiority connect deeply to his twin obsessions with genetics and reproduction—especially his own. “He really wants smart people to have kids,” Musk’s colleague Shivon Zilis, mother to four of his 14 publicly reported children, told the journalist Walter Isaacson. Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink, was apparently delighted by Musk’s offer to procreate: “I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children.” (Taylor Swift, famously presented with the same proposition, apparently felt otherwise.) To the Silicon Valley right, the white, male skew of their industry reflects natural differences in technical and leadership skills—differences that happen to align perfectly with the pop culture caricature of Asperger’s that supremacists embrace. This tech world fascination with Asperger’s goes back decades. In a 2001 Wired article titled “The Geek Syndrome,” Steve Silberman wrote, “It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics—coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours—are residing somewhere in Asperger’s domain.” (Silberman went on to write NeuroTribes, a still well-regarded book on neurodivergence.) Microsoft introduced an “Autism Hiring Program” in 2015, which offered thoughtful improvements to hiring practices—albeit ones seemingly motivated, at least in part, by the idea that good tech workers were disproportionately autistic. Around the same time, GOP megadonor Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk, said in an interview that “many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s where it’s like you’re missing the imitation, socialization gene.” (Thiel has also called environmentalism an “autistic children’s crusade” and China a “weirdly autistic” and “profoundly uncharismatic” country.) > “We have already given enough of our flesh, blood and sanity to women and > normies.” Then there’s crypto ex-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, whose autism was deployed in court to present him as less culpable for the mass fraud of which he was convicted. Making the case that her son should avoid prison time, Stanford law professor Barbara Fried wrote that “his inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve disputes, put him in extreme danger.” Never mind his company’s exploration of “human genetic enhancement” or the price others paid for his profound superiority complex—SBF was prepared to present himself as disabled for exactly as long as it was a useful defense. At other times, Silicon Valley’s Aspie supremacists make it a priority to come after those they see as “actually” disabled. Musk notoriously did so shortly after buying Twitter, when he publicly interrogated staffer Haraldur Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy, on whether he was simply shirking work. The ensuing fallout, and concerns over possible workplace discrimination, prompted a rare Musk apology. But his grade-school passion for ableist slurs has only grown. “Those who cling to the Asperger’s identity will often invoke that to discriminate or engage in lateral ableism”—targeting those they consider “more” disabled—says Seton Hall University professor Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital cultures and disability. Aspie supremacists view themselves, above all, as exceptional beings, adapting the logic of misogyny and racism to twist false stereotypes of autistic people into self-serving positives. Musk clearly buys into an Asperger’s-era image of the unempathetic, relentlessly rational autistic man, but it’s a lazy excuse for a brand of “fuck your feelings” shitposting that’s ubiquitous on the right. If it’s true that autistic people can struggle to interpret social signals, it’s just as true that autistic displays of empathy can be nuanced and easy for others to write off, and that empathy can vary as much in autistic people as in anyone else; Musk’s war on empathy may be more of a him problem. Besides, Musk only pins his bad takes on Asperger’s when it’s convenient—as when he used it to excuse himself on SNL. His yearslong track record of promoting race science has nothing to do with being autistic. Nor did his infamous Trump rally salutes—the ones Musk, while insisting they weren’t a Nazi thing, chased with a litany of Nazi jokes. (Some of his fans were happy to chalk up the incident to his diagnosis; critics tended to chalk it up to, well, what he actually believes.) His anti-trans attacks, including misgendering his trans daughter (who has called Musk a “pathetic man-child”), don’t have anything to do with being autistic either—especially given that autistic people are more likely to be transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming. In 4chan posts mentioning the term “Aspie” (gathered with the help of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center), there’s a lot of support for Musk. But even more notable is how many are explicitly misogynistic. That’s not surprising to Rauchberg, who sees Aspie supremacy as “part of the larger manosphere.” One user, for example, wrote the following: “We autistic men already drive ourselves crazy engaging in self-sacrifice and simping for women and normies. I hang around with some guys that I have nicknamed ‘the Aspie bros’ and we have fun together twice a week. This is what Aspie men need. We have already given enough of our flesh, blood and sanity to women and normies.” “Robot wives are a step up over women in every way,” reads another post. “Look what (((they))) did to Tay, Character AI, ChatGPT etc. We need a few billionaires, influencers and politicians sympathetic to our cause.” (The three parentheses designate Jewish people, another favorite target of the online far right.) “I am sincerely glad that we are creating a network of ‘Aspie atheist MRA’”—men’s rights activist—“‘incel neckbeards’ which is reaching every corner of the globe,” another user answered. But even on 4chan, accounts of rejection and bullying, and the pain and sadness they provoke, stand out. A typical post—“I see the bullshit in the world but Aspie brotherhood is the solution”—came in reply to the less combative “I have terminal autism but still desire a female companion even though I know it’ll never happen.” Most autistic people who are bullied don’t declare war on “normies”; most people who struggle with dating, autistic or otherwise, don’t become incels. But most people are less conditioned than Musk, the scion of rich, far-right eugenics supporters, to believe they’re entitled to admiration, approval, women, and friends. > Aspie supremacists view themselves as exceptional beings, adapting the logic > of misogyny and racism to twist false autistic stereotypes into self-serving > positives. True, Musk doesn’t have as prominent a relationship with incel culture as some manosphere influencers, though he’s both peddled the ideology and restored the accounts of high-profile misogynists like Andrew Tate. But Musk’s juvenile, hateful tweets (and those of others, which skyrocketed after he bought Twitter) are only the tip of the iceberg: A lawsuit by a group of fired SpaceX employees details a litany of alleged harassment and hostile behavior by Musk and his underlings, often phrased in terminally online, 4chan-coded ways. Musk faced serious, traumatic bullying himself, both by his father and schoolmates, as Isaacson—whose 2023 biography includes Musk’s mother’s belief that her son is autistic—and New York Times technology reporter Kate Conger have noted. “There’s two routes that you can take from an abuse experience,” Conger said on a December podcast appearance. “There’s ‘I want to heal from this and not pass it on, and sort of move down a new path.’ And then there’s a second path that I think Musk has been more active in pursuing, in taking that negative experience and turning it into a ‘superpower’ for himself.” MUSK’S HIERARCHY OF DWEEBS The world according to Aspie supremacists * Tier 5: Genius God The world’s richest, most powerful self-proclaimed Aspie: Elon Musk himself. * Tier 4: Aspies Terminally online, 4chan-coded SpaceX fanboys who think little of their fellow techies—or anyone else. * Tier 3: Techies The normies’ Tesla-driving best and brightest. Women need not apply. * Tier 2 : Normies Society’s background noise. Great with kids. Love dogs. Laugh politely at your epic memes. * Tier 1: High Support There’s no one Aspie supremacists loathe more than disabled people with more visible needs. Anthony Calvert Would Musk call himself an Aspie supremacist? Who knows. After all, it’s a label first developed by the ideology’s critics (and he didn’t reply to our questions). But some of his fans certainly embrace it. One post on X from @autismchud complimented Musk on his communication style: “Elon’s Asperger’s really comes through in this story in the best way possible. There’s no HR language, no social tact, no consensus filtering or games, just what the goal is and how to achieve that goal.” DOGE, with its infamous squad of young engineers, offers a deeply relevant case study in reckless, egotistical overconfidence. With almost no applicable expertise, Musk and his DOGE bros have stormed the government—canning nuclear safety officers (whom they were swiftly forced to rehire), erasing living people from Social Security databases, accessing sensitive health and tax information. As seen earlier in his Twitter takeover, Musk’s certainty that he knows best manifests as an unhesitating eagerness to “disrupt” and dismantle services without regard to the harms to employees or the public at large. > A society with too much empathy—the kind of society Musk claims we live > in—wouldn’t be full of ostracized, bullied kids who grow into adults like him. Meanwhile, Musk was a top adviser to a president who believes that people with complex disabilities “should just die,” according to Trump’s own nephew, who has a disabled son. Trump is eager to dismantle the Department of Education, whose support provides the only means by which some disabled students, many autistic ones included, are able to finish school. Similarly, cuts to Medicaid would strip funds that pay for home care aides who work with autistic people. A society with too much empathy—the kind of society Musk claims we live in—wouldn’t be full of ostracized, bullied kids who grow into adults like him. A society that supported, or at least more thoughtfully approached, autistic traits wouldn’t produce 4chan boards full of his Aspie supremacist fans. It would allow people like Musk to speak openly about being autistic, without retreating from the word, and to engage with initiatives led by autistic people, not figures like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who describe autism as an “injury” that renders people incapable of holding jobs, making art, or playing sports. Aspie supremacists do real harm to autistic people in their embrace of gendered, racialized stereotypes, and in drawing spurious lines between themselves and anyone they consider “severely” autistic. Musk may simply be a jerk, but he’s a jerk with a tremendous platform—and one whose fans loudly, publicly connect his shitty personal behavior and fascistic policies to “mild” autism. “It’s really frustrating to be caught in this place where we’re trying to be inclusive of all autistic people, and there are such polarizing opinions and perspectives about autism,” says Jules Edwards. “It causes this additional challenge when we’re advocating for inclusion and access, trying to educate people about what is autism versus the idea of ‘good autism’ or ‘bad autism.’” To the Elon Musks of the world, autism is a disability, but the soft-pedaled label of Asperger’s syndrome—“good” autism, “mild” autism—is something else: a marker of elite status, the perfect finishing touch for a white guy in tech.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration had taken new steps towards “building an America First State Department” by notifying Congress of a “reorganization plan.” The massive overhaul, first proposed in April, will reportedly downsize or eliminate hundreds of bureaus and offices; cut thousands of domestic civil service and foreign service jobs; and redirect the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to focus on “Democracy and Western Values.” A small but noteworthy part of this shake-up at the State Department should raise particular alarm: a plan to create an “Office of Remigration.” As Mother Jones reported previously, the term “remigration” is rooted in the debunked Great Replacement theory and favored by the European far-right and White nationalist extremists. It calls for the forcible repatriation or mass expulsion of non-ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism. In 2019, the Associated Press described remigration as the “chilling notion of returning immigrants to their native lands in what amounts to a soft-style ethnic cleansing.” The proposed establishment of an “Office of Remigration” is the latest push by the Trump administration to curb most, if not all, immigration to the United States (with the notable exception of South Africa’s white Afrikaners and investors willing to buy a $5 million gold card). This includes ideologically purging students and lawful residents, on top of trying to rid the country of all undocumented immigrants and summoning wartime powers to expel hundreds of noncitizens to a foreign prison without due process. The anti-immigrant buzzword “remigration” was made popular by Austrian identitarian activist Martin Sellner. It has since become a policy platform embraced by Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and far-right politicians across Europe. Earlier this month, a “remigration” summit in Italy reportedly gathered hundreds of lawmakers and activists—including a former Trump-endorsed candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives—in support of repatriating “non-assimilated” immigrants and European-born citizens alike. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism called it an “ethnic cleansing summit.” Trump’s “Office of Remigration” would fall under the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, one State Department official told Axios. “The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” according to a copy of the 136-page plan shared with six Congressional committees to be approved before July 1 and reviewed by Wired. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.” The move would effectively undercut the bureau’s original stated mission to “provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world.” Instead, according to the document submitted to Congress, the bureau’s functions will be consolidated into three offices under the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Migration Matters and “substantially reorganized” to deliver on the administration’s policy priorities. One of such offices, the “Office of Remigration,” would “actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status.” Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would offer a stipend and financial travel assistance to immigrants who decided to use the CBP Home mobile app to self-deport. Recently, immigration lawyers have also seen “notices to self-deport” posted in immigration courts, warning that they’re misleading and intended to scare people. In a recent post on an apparent State Department Substack, Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor singled out “mass migration” and the replacement of “spiritual and cultural roots” as threats to “democratic self-governance.” He further called for a partnership focused on the United States and Europe’s “shared Western civilizational heritage.” Last September, in the lead up to the presidential elections, Donald Trump invoked “remigration” in a Truth Social post stating his plans to “return Kamala [Harris]’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).” At the time, Trump’s nod to the European far right’s policy caught Sellner’s attention and was celebrated as another step towards taking remigration global and mainstream. Now, it might be policy. When asked by Wired about the incursion of remigration in the United States, Sellner said Trump “ticks many of the boxes. The “common line” between America and Europe, he added, is “preserving the cultural continuity by stopping replacement migration.” Sellner, who was barred from entering Germany and the United Kingdom and had his US travel authorization canceled in 2019 because of his suspected links to the Christchurch shooter, told Wired he might try to get a new visa, saying “I hope I will touch American soil again soon.” One of the organizers and speakers at this month’s remigration summit in Italy, Sellner reportedly advertised the event by lauding the United States as an example, saying “Remigration is on everyone’s lips.”

Federal diversity, equity, and inclusion employees are set to be placed on paid administrative leave by the end of Wednesday afternoon as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to put a stop to DEI programs in government agencies.  According to a Tuesday memorandum from the US Office of Personnel Management, agencies are required to send in a plan for “executing a reduction-in-force action”—in other words, layoffs—against their DEI employees.  Trump’s order—entitled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”—argues that DEI programs violate civil rights laws by illegally enforcing “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” that “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement.” The White House also claimed that these policies are discriminatory because they select based on “how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.”   The Trump administration memo sent Tuesday also seeks to coerce federal employees into informing on their agencies and colleagues. It instructs agency heads to tell employees via email: “We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances…within 10 days.” The email template warns that any “failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.” But Trump isn’t content with just targeting federal employees. In a section of his executive order labeled “Encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences,” the president calls on the attorney general to submit “specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles…that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences” within 120 days.  This comes as companies like Meta, Walmart, and McDonald’s have scaled back DEI initiatives in the wake of Trump’s reelection and several conservative-backed lawsuits, which cite the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling curtailing affirmative action in college admissions.  The right’s attacks on DEI programs is nothing new—anti-DEI activists like Christopher Rufo have been pushing against such initiatives since Trump’s first term. The backlash has also appeared in places like Project 2025, which argued that a 60-year-old anti-discrimination executive order should be rescinded because it improperly enables the government to force private employers to comply with “novel anti-discrimination theories (such as sexual orientation and gender identity theories) that Congress had never imposed by statute.” Trump revoked that landmark executive order—enacted by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965—on Tuesday.  “This attack on DEI is part of a larger backlash against racial justice efforts that ignited after the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor,” wrote Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, in February 2024 in response to dozens of bills from the right targeting DEI in higher education. According to Watson, DEI programs are necessary to “repair decades of discriminatory policies and practices” harming underrepresented individuals and communities. Trump is clearly unmoved by such arguments. “This week I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” he said in his Monday inauguration address. “We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.” But the important question remains: merit-based for whom?

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kristin Crowley was appointed Los Angeles fire chief in 2022 at a time of turmoil in a department consumed by complaints of rampant hazing, harassment, and discrimination among its 3,400-member ranks. She was portrayed by then mayor Eric Garcetti as a stabilizing force, a trailblazer, and the most qualified person. “I look for who’s best, not just who makes history, because the protection of our city first and foremost has to go to the human being who is best prepared to lead. But let me be clear, that is Kristin Crowley,” he said. Crowley, a 22-year veteran at the time, had proved herself in the field. During the Woolsey fire of late 2018, she and wife Hollyn Bullock, also a firefighter, had dropped their three kids off at school, pulled some old personal protective equipment from their car, and set about saving Bullock’s mother’s home and eight other houses in Malibu over the course of 16 hours. “We only lost one home,” Crowley later told the Malibu Times, “because it had no water supply. Neither of us had fought a brush fire for at least five years, but we went back to our training on how to protect a structure from a brush fire, and were using only garden hoses and buckets.” > “The fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, > and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private,” said LA > Mayor Karen Bass. But now, six years since that incident and three since Crowley was appointed to lead the LA fire department, the mood between Crowley and Garcetti’s successor is different. Two Los Angeles neighborhoods have been leveled by wind-driven fires, and others are under threat. The most destructive event in the city’s history has put civic and political leaders on the defensive. Recriminations are flying, and Crowley is in a public spat with Mayor Karen Bass over a lack of resources, including personnel and equipment, that the fire department desperately needed when the infernos ignited last Tuesday. Crowley publicly criticized the city on Friday for budget cuts that she said had made it harder for firefighters to do their jobs at a time when they are seeing more calls. She also cast blame on the city for water running out on Tuesday when about 20 percent of the hydrants tapped to fight the Palisades fire went dry. “I’m not a politician, I’m a public servant. It’s my job as the fire chief for Los Angeles city fire department to make sure our firefighters have exactly what they need to do their jobs,” she told CNN. But in public city budget hearings last year, Crowley asked the city for an increase of 159 personnel. Instead, Bass and the city council cut 61 fire department positions despite calls for service increasing 55 percent since 2010. Crowley warned that budget cuts could hamper the department’s ability to respond to emergencies, including wildfires. Cuts in overtime limited the department’s ability to prepare and train for “large scale emergencies,” she said, and the department had also lost mechanics, leading to delays in repairing the vehicle fleet. “This service delivery model is no longer sustainable,” she said, adding that more complex emergencies and the growth of the community “demand an expansion of our life-safety service capabilities.” Crowley’s comments and perceived falling-out with Bass—who maintains the fire department has the resources needed to do its job and will address specifics once the crisis subsides—has prompted so much speculation about her job security that the union issued a statement on Friday assuring rank-and-file members that she had not been fired. On Saturday, the mayor invited Crowley to stand beside her during a news conference in a public—and perhaps forced—show of unity. “Let me be clear about something: the fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private,” Bass said, adding: “Our first and most important obligation to Angelenos is to get through this crisis.” But Crowley and Bass are now swept into the national political fray over diversity, equity and inclusion policies that conservatives believe have gone too far in US institutions. Crowley, the city’s first female fire chief, made diversifying the overwhelmingly male department a priority. There’s no evidence that Crowley’s efforts to diversify the department have hampered the fight against the fires, but that’s not how right-leaning pundits see it. “What we are seeing [was] largely preventable,” the conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly charged. “LA’s fire chief has made not filling the fire hydrants top priority, but diversity.” The Los Angeles department of water and power, and not the fire department, is in charge of providing water for the hydrants, and its leaders have said they were overwhelmed by the intense demand on a municipal system not designed to fight wildfires, particularly when firefighting aircraft were grounded by the Santa Ana winds. Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation into what happened, and Crowley herself added to the criticism. “When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water,” she said during a local news interview. Adam Thiel, who previously served as Philadelphia’s fire commissioner, suggested that people reserve judgment until the fires can be investigated. He noted that firefighters cannot control the weather, a key factor in battling wildfires. “Firefighting, to a regular person, probably appears to be a relatively simple process of putting water on a fire,” Thiel said. “In reality every firefighting operation, in any environment, is inherently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.” Crowley was appointed to the job amid complaints about a frat-house culture in the department that was sometimes hostile to women and minorities. Several lawsuits alleged hazing and harassment, and federal investigators found evidence of discrimination. At the time Crowley was sworn in, women accounted for just 3.5 percent of the uniformed membership, a figure that’s not unusual for a fire department. A survey found that half the uniformed women in the department—along with 40 percent of Black people, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders—felt harassment was a problem. Crowley, who has served as a fire marshal, engineer and battalion chief, told the Los Angeles Times in 2022 that she planned to ensure all employees “come to work and feel safe and feel heard.” Crowley, who grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, came to firefighting after what she called “a really unique journey.” A high school and college athlete, she studied biology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, with plans to become an orthopedic surgeon. Two weeks after graduation, she moved to California. A stint as a paramedic changed her career path. She did an internship with the fire department and was hooked. “Within a few seconds of me entering into the fire station, it was just such a wonderful connection to what I had being a student-athlete for the majority of my life, and I tell you, it was a perfect fit,” she told WBAY-TV in Green Bay in 2022. Associated Press contributed reporting.