Roger Severino’s bio in the Mandate for Leadership states that he “is Vice President of Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation” and served as “Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2017 to 2021” during the Trump administration. Severino is credited as the author of the chapter on HHS in the book.
In the introductory paragraph of his chapter on HHS, Severino highlights the contrast between HHS policy under President Trump and President Biden. Severino does his best to make President Trump’s HHS seem fair and equitable and President Biden’s HHS seem fixated on categorizing Americans according to their differences. Apparently unaware of the irony, Severino then goes on to point out that, after the worst of the COVID pandemic had passed, “white populations” lost “7 percent of their expected life span in just one year. Nothing less than America’s long-term survival is at stake.”
According to Harvard Medical School, “COVID-19 and drug overdoses are the biggest contributors” to the recent downward trend in life expectancy in the United States. While COVID hit Americans especially hard in 2020, ABC News reports that, according to the CDC, as of December 2023, 1,500 Americans were still dying from COVID every week. In an attempt to make Biden’s HHS look bad, Severino glosses over the fact that COVID (which pays no attention to the political affiliations of presidents) has continued to kill Americans and thus contributed to lowered life expectancy averages. While a decline in life expectancy is worrisome, it is not a threat to America’s long-term survival. One may wonder that Severino’s specific mention of “white populations” is intended to imply that the Biden administration has neglected whites in favor of other categories of Americans.
Severino goes on to touch on some familiar conservative grievances that arose from the COVID pandemic: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As Media Matters puts it, Dr. Fauci became the target of “relentless propaganda” from “the right-wing press, which needed a coronavirus scapegoat.” Severino writes: “Unaccountable bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci should never again have such broad, unchecked power to issue health ‘guidelines’ that will certainly be the basis for federal and state mandates.” Note that Severino acknowledges that Dr. Fauci merely issued guidelines (aka gave advice), which is exactly what doctors concerned with public health should do. That is not a case of “broad, unchecked power.” The authority to impose mandates rested with public officials. It should also be noted that Severino’s career as an “unaccountable bureaucrat” (in reality, both Severino and Dr. Fauci worked under supervision) was much shorter and much less distinguished than Dr. Fauci’s. (Dr. Fauci “was the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world [and] was the world’s 10th most-cited HIV/AIDS researcher in the period 1996-2006.” Dr. Fauci has won the Maxwell Finland Award, the Ernst Jung Prize, the Lasker Award for Public Service, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Robert Koch Gold Medal, the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the Public Welfare Medal, and the Dan David Prize. The reprehensible Republican vilification of Dr. Fauci has had a chilling effect that goes beyond the death threats he has faced.)
As for a more realistic alternative to the hyperbolic attacks on the CDC by conservatives, a detailed analysis of the agency’s handling of the COVID pandemic may be found in a report published by the National Library of Medicine that does mention the CDC’s shortcomings in addressing the pandemic but does not spare the Trump administration.
As for the NIH, the Mandate for Leadership has this to say: “Despite its popular image as a benign science agency, NIH was responsible for paying for research in aborted baby body parts, human animal chimera experiments”—in which the genes of humans and animals are mixed, “and gain-of-function viral research that may have been responsible for COVID-19.” “Aborted baby body parts” sounds horrific—the reality is quite different. Reproduced cells of fetal origin are widely used in research that is vital for advancing human health. Similarly, “human animal chimera experiments” conjures up The Island of Dr. Moreau or perhaps Oryx and Crake; the reality, once again, is more dull and routine. It involves scientific research and medical use of organisms (think cells) with more than one genetic source. (Humans have learned to manipulate DNA. This does not mean that scientists are creating science fiction monsters.) As for gain-of-function research, the goal is to better understand the virulence of pathogens, and it remains a matter of speculation that the COVID-19 coronavirus arose from a lab. In sum, the conservative backlash against science is a matter of fearmongering and appeals to ignorance.
Among conservatives, Severino’s rhetoric against Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the NIH is relatively muted. This is not the case, however, when it comes to LGBTQ people and especially trans people. In this area of conservative bigotry, Severino stands in the leading ranks. His appointment to, of all things, the Office of Civil Rights was widely derided. Arguably, among the religious right terms such as “civil rights” or “religious freedom” imply the right to discriminate, for example against LGBTQ people, on religious grounds.
According to an article titled “Meet Roger Severino, the Trump Bigot Working to Erase Trans People,” published by the Advocate, Severino has “opposed marriage equality, defended ‘ex-gay’ therapy, and objected to allowing transgender people to serve in the military. Before joining HHS, he worked at the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation. ‘At Heritage, Severino vigorously argued against legalizing same-sex marriage.’”
The article credits Severino with “overseeing the effort to define transgender people ‘out of existence,’ as The New York Times put it…in a story breaking the news of a memo circulating among federal government agencies to legally define gender as something immutable and fixed at birth, as indicated by a person’s genitalia.”
According to the article, Severino cowrote a report for the Heritage Foundation arguing that “Many people reasonably believe that maleness and femaleness are objective, biological realities.” The article points out that “Many scientists and physicians…have held that maleness and femaleness are complicated characteristics affected by numerous factors other than genitalia.” (For example, some women have “male” XY sex chromosomes, some women have three X chromosomes rather than the usual two, intersex people exist, and transgender and nonbinary people also exist and have existed throughout history.)
Among the authors of the Mandate for Leadership and associates of the Heritage Foundation, Severino is not an outlier when it comes to his views on LGBTQ people and human rights. If Project 2025 shifts from a plan to its implementation, LGBTQ people can expect to have their rights taken away and their existence officially denied. They should not even be surprised if they are deemed criminals. Further, as Severino’s chapter on HHS shows, Americans can expect science to be subject to political ideology.
