What The Hell America!

As President Donald Trump has made clear in the first month of his second term, one of the major goals of his administration is to reinscribe the hierarchies of race and gender. The result would be to, once again, privilege those who are white and male in a country that has spent decades moving, if haphazardly, toward integration and equity.  

In line with this agenda, Trump has appointed Cabinet members and staffers who have actively embraced conspiracy theories, bigotry and racism. These are people who could further dismantle the country’s hard-won civil rights infrastructure, deepening structural inequalities for Black Americans, Latinx people, women, LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities and others.   

“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Darren Beattie, tapped for a Department of State role, posted on X the month before the 2024 presidential election. Beattie’s words, at least their focus on race and gender, could become a mantra for the administration, with Trump’s Cabinet nominees making it the least diverse Cabinet since the Reagan administration. That lack of diversity, however, extends beyond the Cabinet.

People in the Trump administration have appeared on podcasts hosted by antisemites, paid a Proud Boys member as a campaign consultant, spread the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory and shared the work of such white supremacists as Nick Fuentes. Extremist ideas have not been limited to low-level staffers. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for example, wrote in his 2020 book American Crusade that Islam “is not a religion of peace, and it never has been” and that Muslim countries are “no-go zones for practicing Christians and Jews.”

As an increasing number of intellectuals, academics and commentators have argued, this administration’s policies are not just racist, but also segregationist. The people running this administration are not simply overlooking these racist and bigoted views — they are actively embracing them. 

Here are some of the people joining the administration who, as revealed through outside reporting and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s research, have expressed a variety of racist, misogynistic and bigoted ideas, or have ties to racist activists. Those listed have been tapped to work at all levels of the federal government — from running massive agencies to serving as staffers — demonstrating that the administration is giving real political power to people who actively embrace ideas that, in the recent past, would have been disqualifying for a government employee.

Darren Beattie

On Feb. 3, Trump named hard-right activist Beattie acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department. Nine days later, he said he would instead nominate New York attorney Sarah Rogers to the post. Beattie’s bio is still listed on the State Department website, and reporting from Raw Story suggests he could remain in the role on a temporary basis or receive a different role in the department.

As the acting undersecretary, Beattie occupies one of the highest-ranking positions in the State Department, where he is tasked with performing diplomatic outreach, including “messaging to counter terrorism and violent extremism,” according to the department’s website.

Beattie was a speechwriter for Trump during the president’s first term but was fired after CNN reported that he gave a speech at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference — an annual white nationalist gathering that has, since 2008, brought together academics and others looking to launder their racist views through scholarly language. Beattie spoke on a panel called “The Right and Its Enemies” alongside notorious white nationalist Peter Brimelow, who founded the anti-immigrant website VDARE.      

In recent years, Beattie has consistently used racist rhetoric and promoted racist conspiracy theories on social media. On X in November 2023, he wrote, “Enforced diversity is just as evil as any war crime. Properly understood, it is a war crime.”  

Beattie has consistently promoted the so-called “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy theory that white people in the United States and Europe are being systematically “replaced” by non-white populations through immigration, diversity initiatives and apparent efforts to suppress white birth rates. “Massive replacement level immigration is biological warfare against host population,” he wrote in October 2024. Earlier that year, he argued on X that the “demoralization of the white british [sic] population, and the replacement of this population via massive, hostile third world immigration are two of the very top national security priorities of the British government.”

Beattie has also voiced support for eugenicist policies, arguing that “feral” populations should undergo sterilization. “When a population gets feral, a little snip keeps things in control,” he wrote on X in 2023, appearing to refer to vasectomies. “We could offer incentives (Air Jordans, etc.),” he continued. In a post from May 2024, he complained that “Higher quality humans are subsidizing the fertility of lower quality humans.”

After leaving the White House, Beattie founded the right-wing conspiracy site Revolver News. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the site argued that it was “time for the authorities to consider the unthinkable: deadly force,” and has, since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, insisted that the riot at the U.S. Capitol was an “entrapment operation.” In his new position, an editorial on his site celebrating his appointment noted, “Darren will be shaping messaging to counter terrorism and combat violent extremism, something he’s been doing at Revolver for years now.”

Marko Elez

Marko Elez was reportedly working within the Department of the Treasury as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a political entity created by the Trump administration to dismantle federal agencies. Though according to National Public Radio, Elez resigned after a series of racist posts from X came to light, he has, as of Feb. 21, reportedly been reinstated at the Social Security Administration. From that position, he could have access to extensive personal data for most Americans.  

At the beginning of February, The Wall Street Journal reported that an account connected to Elez reportedly made numerous racist posts on X.  

In a post from July 2024, he wrote: “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”

Other posts read, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” “Normalize Indian hate,” and “I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask.”

After his resignation, Musk said on X that Elez would be rehired. Vice President JD Vance also supported rehiring Elez, posting on the same site, “I don’t believe stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.” Elez is 25.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a prolific conspiracy theorist who has spread dangerous ideas about health care, and especially vaccines, since the early 2000s. He has promoted long-debunked claims that vaccines cause autism, that the government uses 5G technology to “control our behavior,” and that Wi-Fi “opens your blood-brain barrier.”

On Feb. 13, the Senate confirmed Kennedy as secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy now has vast control over the administration of U.S. health care, including Medicaid and Medicare, as well as the future of health research, vaccine recommendations and access to reproductive health care, including abortion.

Kennedy has been particularly vocal in his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine, falsely calling it “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” He has also attempted to spread mistrust of government health officials and institutions, suggesting they were acting to achieve personal gain and totalitarian control of the U.S. population. In his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, Kennedy claimed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, government institutions acted “in concert to generate fear, promote obedience, discourage critical thinking, and herd seven billion people to march to a single tune, culminating in mass public health experiments.” He has compared the work of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “Nazi death camps.”

Kennedy has also made dangerous and erroneous claims that people of different races do not respond to vaccines in the same way. “We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites because their immune system is better than ours,” Kennedy claimed in a 2021 appearance shared on the website for his group Children’s Health Defense, promoting the racist belief that Black and white people are biologically different — a myth that has led to great medical harm for Black people, including the belief that Black people possess a higher pain tolerance.

In the same vein, Kennedy has claimed that COVID-19 causes greater harm for people from different ethnic groups, calling it “ethnically targeted.” “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he said at a 2023 New York City press event for his campaign. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”   

Kennedy has also made conspiratorial claims about psychiatric drugs, claiming, for example, that they lead to mass shootings. He has proposed creating “wellness farms” where young people could stop taking “illegal drugs” as well as prescribed antidepressants and other psychiatric medications — and specifically promoted these “farms” for Black children as places to be “re-parented.” “Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens. You’ll actually have to talk to people,” Kennedy said on an online show in June, according to The Washington Post.

Joe Kent

Trump named Joe Kent, a twice-rejected congressional candidate from Washington, to be director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Occupying one of the most prominent intelligence roles in the administration, Kent would shape which individuals and organizations the administration views as terrorist threats and how it counters them.   

Kent has a history of affiliating with extremists. Campaign finance disclosures showed that his 2022 congressional campaign had paid over $11,000 to Proud Boy Graham Jorgensen for “consulting” for at least four months. He also has ties to Joey Gibson, who, well before promoting Kent’s congressional campaign, had made a name for himself as a far-right activist by regularly organizing and leading violent rallies in West Coast cities with his group Patriot Prayer. These events frequently attracted antigovernment activists and white supremacists and were often organized with local Proud Boys chapters. Gibson also spoke at one of his fundraisers where Kent was also in attendance.

Kent has also crossed paths with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, with whom he had a call in 2021 to discuss his campaign’s social media strategy. Fuentes endorsed him in 2022, though Kent later rejected his endorsement on X due to Fuentes’ “focus on race/religion.” He was also interviewed by Greyson Arnold, a racist and antisemitic streamer, in June 2022.   

According to The Guardian, Kent has suggested that the FBI surveil leftist activists, tweeting in 2020 amid protests against racist policing that the agency should track “leaders & financiers of antifa.”

Gavin Kliger

Gavin Kliger is a staffer for the Department of Government Efficiency and, according to his résumé, a “special advisor” at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). OPM serves as the government’s human resources department, whose responsibilities include vetting every member of the federal workforce.

As reported by Reuters, Kliger has reposted content from Nick Fuentes, a prolific white supremacist and antisemite whose racist followers refer to themselves as “groypers.” On the post Kliger shared on X, Fuentes denigrated interracial adoption.

Kliger also shared content from Andrew Tate, a British male supremacist influencer who has been charged with rape and human trafficking. “I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist,” Tate has said. In the post Kliger shared on X, Tate told migrants to “respect British culture, standards of hygiene and social norms. You operate within our parameters … Problem? leave … Multiple complaints of the contrary? Visa revoked.”

Andrew Kloster

Andrew Kloster, an attorney who has spent his career aiding the conservative movement through organizations that include The Heritage Foundation, has returned to the OPM as general counsel. He previously worked at the agency at the end of Trump’s first term.

Kloster has a history of making racist and misogynistic statements on X. He declared himself “a raging misogynist” in February 2023 on X, where he posted only days earlier: “You know what I need? I need a woman who looks like she got punched.”

On X, Kloster interacts with known white nationalists and anti-immigrant activists, including Steve Sailer, a proponent of scientific racism (or what he calls “human biodiversity”) and contributor to VDARE, and Kevin DeAnna, a longtime racist activist who writes under the pseudonym “James Kirkpatrick,” responding to and reposting their content. When DeAnna, under his Kirkpatrick pseudonym, wrote on X, “Post suggestions for the White National Anthem,” Kloster responded with a link to Marty Robbins’ 1966 anti-communist anthem “Ain’t I Right.” The song attacks civil rights activists who worked to desegregate the South, saying, “all you’ve shown the folks around here is trouble.”

When hard-right operative Jack Posobiec asked on X in February 2024 — Black History Month — “Are you ready for White History Month[?],” Kloster responded “November 2024,” the month of the presidential election. He has also said that “Slaves built America. Therefore ,,, Slaves owe us reparations.”  

Kloster has also discussed “cleaning house” within the federal government on a podcast episode with Auron MacIntyre titled “Replacing the Deep State.” “People need to understand that they need to clean house. So we need barnburners, people with backbone. It needs to be government-wide,” he said in response to a question about how a conservative administration can “strip out entrenched leftist ideology” to implement Trump’s agenda.

Seemingly anticipating the slate of Trump administration hires with a history of troubling rhetoric, Kloster said they should be prepared to stand their ground when past comments from social media come to light. “If they hire someone who gets media blowback for saying something based” — meaning something that expresses far-right sentiment — “on Twitter eight years ago, their immediate instinct is not going to be fire the person.” Instead, he suggested, the administration should “wait two weeks and it will blow over.” 

Stephen Miller

In November 2024, Trump announced that Stephen Miller would be elevated from senior policy adviser — his position in the first Trump White House — to deputy chief of staff, a position in which he will develop and implement the administration’s immigration agenda.

Miller is the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, including separating migrant children from their parents. During the campaign for the 2024 election, he spoke frequently during public appearances and interviews about his plans to implement mass deportation camps and deputize the National Guard as immigration enforcement.

As the SPLC revealed in 2019, Miller has an affinity for white nationalist literature. A review of over 900 emails Miller sent to editors at the conservative outlet Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016 showed that Miller shared a link from VDARE, a white nationalist and anti-immigrant site. He also recommended that Breitbart write about what was then an obscure white nationalist novel, The Camp of the Saints, in which non-white refugees invade France and embark on a rampage of rape and murder. The novel is regularly touted by white nationalists as a warning for the future.

Additionally, dozens of the emails Miller sent to Breitbart contain material related to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), an anti-immigrant hate group that circulated white nationalist and antisemitic writers and has regularly characterized immigrants as criminals and terrorists. Miller used debunked statistics from CIS to defend the Trump administration’s 2017 Muslim ban.

Kash Patel

On Feb. 20, the Senate confirmed Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the FBI, the nation’s premier investigative law enforcement agency that has vast surveillance powers.

Patel has consistently promoted the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He has also promoted false claims about the FBI itself, suggesting that the agency helped instigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.  

Patel has threatened to “come after” the people he alleges have harmed Trump. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast in December 2023. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” he said. “We’re going to come after you. Whether that’s criminally or civilly, we’re going to figure that out.”  

On the Oct. 27, 2022, episode of Bannon’s podcast, Patel said, “we will conduct a full-scale overhaul of the intelligence and law enforcement communities, whether it’s with — through a Church-like commission or otherwise,” in a possible reference to congressional subpoena power to investigate federal intelligence agencies.

“No, we’re going to do it by bayonet,” Bannon replied.

Patel has repeatedly appeared on podcasts and at events alongside racists and antisemites. He appeared at least six times on the podcast of antisemite Stew Peters. The podcast host has engaged in Holocaust denial (“The gas chambers, the crematoriums, so often discussed — they were destroyed at the end of World War II, if they were ever there in the first place”), promoted the white supremacist “great replacement theory” (“Minute by minute, the American people are being replaced, specifically White American people. … Most Americans still have absolutely no idea just how unprecedented the scale of this foreign takeover is”), and called for the executions of Anthony Fauci, Hunter Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas.

In his appearances, Patel and Peters expressed consistent agreement while critiquing what they saw as corrupt media and liberal politicians. “Always love coming on your show,” Patel told Peters.

While Patel’s last appearance on Peters’ show was in 2022, the two appeared together at the 2024 ReAwaken America tour, a conspiracy-minded road show headed by Michael Flynn.    

Noah Peters

Noah Peters, an attorney who has previously represented the National Rifle Association and written for multiple conservative publications, has been appointed a senior adviser at the OPM. According to metadata from an online PDF, Peters reportedly authored an OPM memo on reinstating one of Trump’s executive orders that would, as Democracy Forward characterized it, make “it easier to fire career civil servants” and “enable a political leader to replace these nonpartisan public servants with partisan ideologues.”  

In 2018, Peters represented Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent figures in the American white nationalist movement, when he sued Twitter (now X) for suspending his account over allegations that he violated the company’s policy prohibiting affiliations with “a violent extremist group.” (The SPLC has long advocated that social media and other internet companies actively work to reduce hateful activities on their platforms, including posts that engage in “harassment, threats, or defamation targeting an individual or group based on their actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.”)

Taylor has been publishing his racist magazine, American Renaissance, since the 1990s, and hosts a notorious annual white nationalist conference. He is today one of the foremost propagators of the racist notion that Black people are more prone to criminality and antisocial behavior, arguing in 2005 in American Renaissance that “Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.”

One of Taylor’s other attorneys in the Twitter lawsuit was Marc Randazza, who represented neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin in the SPLC’s lawsuit against him, and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones when he was sued for making false claims against parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.    

In an article in the conservative publication Daily Caller, Peters characterized Taylor’s views as “highly controversial … on many issues.”

Image at top: Clockwise from top left: Darren Beattie, Andrew Kloster, Marko Elez, Gavin Kliger, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stephen Miller and Joe Kent. (Photo illustration by the SPLC)