Ray Hartmann

The Trump administration is engaging in language similar to that of Nazi Germany when it talks of denying healthcare to migrants in the United States illegally, Dr. Craig Spencer, who lectures on the history of health and eugenics at Brown University, told The Daily Beast on Friday.

"It’s not a stretch to say this administration is touting a eugenics agenda, which was perfected by the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s and later adopted by the Nazis. People don’t want to call it that because it feels unsayable. But it’s real,” Spencer told the outlet. The language of Trump’s government, Spencer said, is “almost the same on immigration, access to healthcare, and who deserves the fruits of government,” and its “logical conclusion—while they won’t say it out loud—is letting certain people die.”

“I’ve been reluctant to compare what’s happening now to the eugenics movement 100 years ago, but as every new day goes by I’m less reluctant,” he added.

In a Truth Social post on Sept. 24, Trump claimed, "The Democrats want Illegal Aliens, many of them VIOLENT CRIMINALS, to receive FREE Healthcare."

The Daily Beast noted that the rhetoric has ramped up during the government shutdown.

The report noted that under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTLA), Medicare-participating hospitals must screen and stabilize anyone who comes through the door, regardless of their ability to pay or their immigration status. It quoted House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune maintaining that EMTLA is not in danger.

But Spencer maintains Trump's rhetoric on immigration is still troubling, according to the Daily Beast report.

Vermont State Sen. Samuel Douglass — the only public official who participated in a Young Republicans group chat that scandalized the party — resigned Friday night under what Politico termed "intense pressure."

Douglass, a Republican from northern Vermont, said in a written statement Friday that he’s resigning his post effective Monday.

"For all concerned, me, my wife, my family, I must resign. I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe. And if my Governor asks me to do something, I will act, because I believe in what he’s trying to do for the state of Vermont.

Politico broke the story Tuesday about the group chat.

"The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.

"Mixed into formal conversations about whipping votes, social media strategy and logistics, the members of the chat slung around an array of slurs — which POLITICO is republishing to show how they spoke. Epithets like 'f----t,' 'retarded' and 'n--ga' appeared more than 251 times combined."

The late Virginia Guiffre wrote in her newly published memoir that Jeffrey Epstein often boasted of blackmailing his friends — and she had wondered if that had to do with his 2019 death in prison, officially classified as a suicide, according to a Friday report at the Telegraph.

“He’d always suggested to me that those videotapes he so meticulously collected in the bedrooms and bathrooms of his various houses gave him power over others,” she wrote. "He explicitly talked about using me and what I’d been forced to do with certain men as a form of blackmail, so these men would owe him favours.

“Could it be that someone who feared exposure by Epstein had found a way to exterminate him?”

Giuffre, Epstein's most prominent sex-trafficking victim and accuser, finished her book — "Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice" — about six months before taking her own life on April 25. In it, she didn't fully discount the possibility that he had indeed committed suicide.

"As the details came out, nearly everything about Epstein’s death seemed fishy,” wrote Giuffre, who concludes: “I can make a case for either suicide or murder,'” the Telegraph reported.

"Being in jail, she explained, stripped him of his power over young girls and the chance to rub shoulders with the rich and influential. “That certainly could have made him want to end it all.”

Giuffre's claims in the book "will reignite questions," the report said, about whether Epstein kept a client list — which the Trump administration suddenly denied early this year, sparking MAGA backlash. As demands for full release of the files persist, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused for more than three weeks to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who won her special election on Sept. 23. Her signature would be the decisive 218th needed to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files through a discharge petition.

The Trump administration's assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs is rattling Atlanta.

Some of the city's largest companies have been "roiled" by Trump's "DEI war" — in contrast to Mayor Andre Dickens' resistance — and major civil rights leaders have reacted with outrage, Bloomberg reported Friday.

"At Coca-Cola Co., references to racial and gender representation have been removed from the corporate website. Home Depot Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc. have replaced mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion with 'respect for all people,' and 'inclusion and belonging,'” Bloomberg reported.

"The corporations are just three of a growing number of household names that are making changes to their DEI policies, after President Donald Trump assailed the initiatives with a series of executive actions that labeled them as illegal."

The report contrasted those actions with Dickens's willingness "to forfeit millions in federal funding by refusing to cancel airport diversity programs," a position that contrasts starkly with the corporate giants' capitulation.

"For Dickens, who’s led the city since 2022, it was worth it. Atlanta is, after all, the place that gave rise to the US civil rights movement; the city that promoted itself in the 1960s with the slogan that it was 'too busy to hate.'"

Some of Atlanta's most prominent civil rights leaders strongly protested the abandonment of DEI, according to the report.

"These companies are backing away from DEI, and it’s hurting their relationships in the communities,” said Reverend Jamal-Harrison Bryant, an Atlanta-area pastor who has led a recent boycott against Target Corp. for eliminating its diversity initiatives. “It’s a real bone-chilling time.”

Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., also told the outlet the White House executive orders targeting diversity were "undoing what my parents and others sacrificed their lives for.'"

The Justice Department has more to worry about than the "stunning pattern" of grand juries pushing back against its political prosecutions of Donald Trump's critics and protesters.

Now it has to worry about trial juries standing in its path as well.

That's the view of MSNBC legal analyst Jordan Rubin, who today cited the DOJ's failure last week to make even a misdemeanor stand in its case of Sidney Reid in Washington, D.C.

"Grand jurors had declined to approve a felony indictment against her a shocking three times," Rubin wrote. "But instead of taking those serial rejections as a sign of serious problems with the case (a rare failure to get past even one grand jury should’ve done that), the DOJ in Jeanine Pirro’s office moved forward with a misdemeanor prosecution, which didn’t require grand jury approval.

Noting that Reid was acquitted of even the misdemeanor charge, Rubin wrote that "as time goes on, we’ll learn what trial jurors think of the politically motivated cases that make it that far."

Rubin also cited the similar situation of Sean Dunn, the Air Force veteran and former DOJ employee who famously tossed a sandwich at a Border Patrol agent during a recent protest. Dunn was also charged by the DOJ with a misdemeanor after it couldn't convince a grand jury to indict him for a felony.

Dunn has filed a motion to dismiss the misdemeanor assault charge based on vindictive and selective prosecution.

Rubin argues that "Powerful statements from Reid and her lawyers following the not guilty verdict frame the stakes in her case — and in Trump’s second term more broadly. She said the verdict 'shows that this administration and their peons are not able to invoke fear in all citizens.' Calling the president 'a crazy person,' she said she even felt sorry for the prosecutors, 'who must be burdened by Trump’s irrational and unfounded hatred for his fellow man.'”

President Donald Trump called into a private meeting of Indiana state senate Republicans to pressure them personally to enact an all-Republican Congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the New York Times reported.

Indiana's Republicans have publicly resisted Trump's extraordinary demands for a mid-decade realignment of the nation's Congressional maps to assure his party retains House control in 2026. State legislators in Texas and Missouri complied with Trump with little or no resistance.

"Mr. Trump was expected to ask the state lawmakers to support a new map that would eliminate the state’s two Democratic districts and give Republicans all nine congressional seats," the Times reported, citing anonymous sources.

"Vice President JD Vance has made two separate trips to Indiana to meet with state lawmakers and make the case for why the state should redraw the maps. Mr. Trump’s involvement signals that the White House is concerned that not all Republican lawmakers in Indiana are on board with the plan."

Trump's call to a private meeting of the Indiana Senate Republican caucus today "follows a new push by late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action this week to ramp up pressure on Indiana lawmakers who oppose mid-cycle redistricting," Politico reported.

Recent polling in Indiana has found state residents overwhelmingly opposed to mid-decade redistricting — by a 53-to-34 percent margin — according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.