Leaving disabled people behind is not new to the American political landscape; the US has a history of eradicating the disabled. Eugenics – the pseudoscientific belief that humans should breed for “desirable traits” and suppress the undesirable ones – rose to popularity in the US and globally during the late 19th century.

The first eugenics-based law in the world was passed in the US: Indiana’s 1907 Act to Prevent the Procreation of Confirmed Criminals, Idiots, Imbeciles and Rapists targeted disabled people in state schools and institutions and incarcerated people by mandating sterilization for “criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles in state custody”. The Nazis would go on to praise the US’s codified eugenics and racism in their 1934 handbook.