Too many Americans cleave to the idea that if someone works in caregiving, they must be trustworthy.
Social media has been abuzz for more than a week over the cruelty on display by some disturbing nurses. Marvel at how brazen these “selfless care workers” are in suggesting that colleagues let agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement just die. You may especially enjoy nurse “Chadrick13again” who sounds exactly like the stereotyped gay guy from the cartoon Family Guy but more murderous:
Meet Chad Malinowski, a Chicago area nurse. Chad appears to suggest letting ICE agents bleed out and call on nurses to target them. He also says hospitals should fire all MAGA employees because they’re racists.
Chad works at Midwest Express Clinic and Carle Hospital according to… pic.twitter.com/jdi8yGeUtn
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2026
That compilation from LibsofTikTok is just the latest in a wave of grotesque postings from the heirs of Florence Nightingale. In the past week, three other nurses have posted videos on social media wishing harm and injury on people they see as their political opponents. One urged fellow nurses to put a paralyzing drug into syringes and stick them into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
Is this truly shocking? Five years after the world saw dancing “TikTok nurses” making music videos at their supposedly overrun hospitals, the public may be less willing to give medical professionals the benefit of the doubt. There’s also evidence that long-overdue consequences for this kind of behavior are coming; one of those three nurses mentioned above was fired, and the state of Florida suspended the license of another.
This raises the question: Is there something about the caregiving professions that attracts not just the altruistic, but also a minority of the sadistic? Published literature on this is mixed, and there aren’t very many papers or studies that look at the issue of dark personality traits in medical and related professions. But some of that literature suggests the healing fields may be attractive to a minority of people who would rather hurt than heal.
Let’s look at what caused the online furor last week. Labor and delivery nurse Lexie Lawler of Florida donned her chunky black glasses to look into a camera and wish disfiguring injury on White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. She expressed the hope that the upcoming birth of Leavitt’s child would result in disabling genital injuries: