Ann Coulter Wants to Kill Native Americans (So Do Some on the Left)

The live music had come to an end, and my friend Janene Yazzie, a brilliant organizer with the NDN Collective, looked up from her phone in disgust, horrified by what she had just read.

Someone wished her people dead.

A group of us were sitting around a small wooden table at an old watering hole in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood when Janene was alerted to a tweet by the vile Ann Coulter that went beyond the usual provocations. While she’s known for repulsive commentary, this one from Coulter’s polluted mind revealed her as the murderous zealot she’s long been accused of being.

“We didn’t kill enough Indians,” Coulter raved in a post on X in response to a video of a well-known Indigenous activist at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago.

Never mind that the video was not recorded at Socialism, which we were all in town to attend, but from a completely different, earlier discussion on Palestine. No matter, too, that the activist in question, a fellow left traveler, was rightly condemning settler colonialism, U.S. complicity in genocide, and the importance of resistance. But Coulter is not one to fret over such matters. It’s more advantageous to misconstrue and levy death threats than it is to listen and absorb the stories of empire’s victims — tsk-tsk to such “woke” trivialities.

Madam Evil wasn’t just calling for the murder of the activist in the video, but of all Native Americans, especially those who stand up to their colonizers.

We were shocked at her bluntness, but perhaps should not have been, as everything is fair game in Trump’s dystopian America. As Coulter has made clear, those swimming in the MAGA cesspool want to finish what our European ancestors started. This sick racism, simmering in many households across this stolen land, is now openly discussed without consequence. In fact, it’s celebrated (the tweet has been liked over 1,000 times). Coulter was just stating the quiet parts of the right-wing American psyche out loud.

The tweet quickly went viral, drawing the attention she no doubt sought. As of this writing, Coulter’s words have not been deleted or removed by X. Apparently, calling for the murder of an entire group of people doesn’t qualify as hate speech.

As grotesque as Coulter is, what’s just as horrific is that the genocidal violence she advocates has never actually ceased. The legacy of uranium mining, not far from where Janene lives, continues to harm the Navajo Nation and her people; over 500 abandoned uranium mines remain unremediated, posing endless radioactive dangers. Groundwater contamination from uranium mining, in particular, heightens the risk of kidney disease, diabetes, and other severe health issues. This is especially true for the 30-40% of homes on the Navajo Nation that lack access to clean running water.

For those residing near abandoned uranium mines, the myriad impacts from these sites are not contested—it’s their lived reality.

“It’s really a slow genocide of the people, not just Indigenous people of this region,” the late Diné activist Klee Benally told Amy Goodman in 2014. “[It’s] estimated that there are over 10 million people who are residing within 50 miles of abandoned uranium mines.”

Klee was highlighting a critical issue that many in the pro-nuclear movement downplay or flat-out ignore: the effects of uranium mining in areas like the Navajo Nation, which some have called a genetic genocide.

Prolonged exposure to radioactivity (like drinking contaminated water or breathing in dust from mines and mills) can damage DNA, resulting in gene mutations that may be passed down through generations. Research indicates that “virtually all mutations have harmful effects. Some mutations have drastic effects that are expressed immediately … Other mutations have milder effects and persist for many generations, spreading their harm among many individuals in the distant future.”

Three uranium mines in the Southwest have reopened in recent years, located relatively close to the White Mesa Mill processing facility, situated next to the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation in southeast Utah. One of those mines, the Canynon Mine, is a mere six miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

“The White Mesa Mill has done just extraordinary amounts of damage,” explains activist and filmmaker Hadley Austin, who recently directed the documentary film Demon Mineral, which explores the history of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. “The White Mesa community, a small tribal community, has been working to literally survive in this proximity to the White Mesa Mill since it opened.”

Uranium, now considered a critical mineral by the Trump administration, is in high demand (and highly profitable), primarily driven by the ravenous appetite of AI data centers. If the major tech companies propelling the AI surge—including Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon—have their way, nuclear power production will increase in the years ahead. Any such growth would, in turn, boost the demand for uranium, a vital fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. This is alarming news for communities near current and proposed mining operations.

On the Navajo Nation alone, 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted between 1944 and 1986, with tragic consequences. It’s estimated that 600,000 Native Americans live within six miles of abandoned hard rock mines, resulting in severe health disparities. Cancer rates, for instance, doubled on the reservation from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Opening new mines while permitting old ones to keep polluting Indian Country is the real-world manifestation of Ann Coulter’s plea to kill Natives. Sadly, some on the “tech bro left” have little problem with this persistent, methodical genocide, and have called for increased uranium mining and resource exploitation on Native lands, based on the fatal assumption that nuclear energy has the potential to solve the climate crisis. It does not.

“All of the impacts from nuclear colonialism can be simplified by explaining it as environmental racism,” says anti-nuclear Diné activist Leona Morgan, who organizes with Haul No!. “My family lives in areas where there was past uranium mining. We’re still dealing with the legacy of all of the mining that fuelled World War II and the Cold War. This legacy is still unaddressed — not just in New Mexico, but in the entire country.”

The genocide of Native Americans is ongoing, and we should be just as outraged at those who endorse nuclear colonialism, along with the death and destruction that accompany it, as we are with Ann Coulter.

The post Ann Coulter Wants to Kill Native Americans (So Do Some on the Left) appeared first on CounterPunch.org.