Pete Hegseth has once again decided to humiliate the American military, this time by claiming the troops need more testosterone. But the defense secretary, armed with his perfectly coiffed hair and alleged makeup studio, is ready to restore their manhood. In a video released Wednesday, Hegseth discovered spoke of how “the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting” and “demands maximum psychological and mental readiness.”

His solution? “High-T,” as he put it. Despite his loathing of “beardos,” Hegseth is excited about “fixing” those he deems falling short in the manhood-measurement department. Since he can’t actually pull out a ruler and demand his “warfighters” drop trou, the former Fox News host is doing the next best thing: making testosterone level testing mandatory for all service members over 30. 

The move is just the latest example of a paradox that plagues MAGA men, from Donald Trump down to the everyday Joe Rogan fan posting workout videos in his Oakley sunglasses. Efforts to prove their masculinity are so over-the-top that they inevitably read more as anxious than tough, revealing the deep well of insecurity fueling the movement.

Hegseth is an especially cringeworthy example, with an attitude toward the troops that is less of a leader and closer to a third-grade boy dressing up his G.I. Joes. He’s fixated entirely on superficial indicators of “manliness,” which gets in the way of the concerns that any normal adult would have in the job, such as how to avoid causing wars and proceeding to losing them.

“There is no magic formula that can tell us what level of testosterone best prepares someone to serve in the United States military,” Dr. Emile Redwood, a urologist with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told me. While “there are broad physiologic parameters of estrogen and testosterone that support our overall endocrine system function,” he said, they don’t correlate to “our mental readiness to be a clear and cogent member of a team.”

“Testosterone levels have no place as a proxy for a myriad of physical and mental readiness tests, where capacity and readiness is directly measured,” Redwood concluded.

But it’s unlikely Hegseth understands or even cares about what the actual medical science says. This is the same man who declared in 2019 that he doesn’t wash his hands because “germs are not a real thing.” He later tried to write his germ denialism off as a joke, but at the Pentagon he has ended flu vaccine mandates for service members, calling them “absurd.” This decision is likely rooted in nothing more than a childish understanding of biology, which equates testosterone with being “manly” and therefore assumes the more “T”, the manlier the man. In reality, artificially boosting testosterone, especially if not medically indicated, can shrink testicles, lower sperm counts and even make it harder to urinate. 

According to the New York Times, women will also be tested, even though women typically have much lower testosterone rates than men, which is not a medical problem. But again, this isn’t about science or health. Hegseth’s hostility to women in the military is well-documented. In his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” Hegseth declared that women aren’t tough enough for “the military, especially in combat units.” As defense secretary, he has a pattern of blocking military promotions for both women and people of color. His new insistence that high testosterone levels are necessary to do the job sends an unmistakable message: that women are categorically unable to serve as “warfighters.”

Women have been serving for decades now, including in front line roles, even if they were only legally recognized as combat soldiers in 2013. But Hegseth can’t seem to accept this reality, which speaks to his immaturity and eagerness to bury himself in reactionary fantasies. He’s not alone, either. This juvenile “no girls allowed” attitude has been growing more toxic in recent years, and has been propelled by Republican leaders, from Donald Trump down to the party’s grassroots, who encourage men to believe it’s somehow more “manly” to play-act being tough guys rather than growing up and living in the real world. The vibes are childish, more like those of 11-year-old boys pretending they’re in an action cartoon than adult men who read books and enjoy the company of women.

Hegseth may believe the military has a “low T” problem, but in fact it’s just the opposite. There have been numerous reports of health problems, and apparently even the 2022 death of a new recruit, due to soldiers taking performance-enhancing drugs, including testosterone and human growth hormone. In response, the Navy SEALS instituted random drug testing in 2023.

Hegseth insists his testosterone push is “not about artificial enhancement,” but the disclaimer is an empty caveat. Young men are bombarded by advertisers and social media influencers selling shady supplements and drugs that promise to give them an edge. Now, the head of the military hyping testosterone like it’s a magical elixir will only enhance the appeal of dangerous performance-enhancing drugs. 

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times noted on Bluesky that Hegseth “cares more about his 1950s aesthetics than a functional and competent armed forces,” right down to micromanaging facial hair and his unscientific assumptions about hormone levels. The disastrous Iran war suggests that Hegseth is not capable of the real work of a defense secretary, which was entirely predictable considering his only previous management experience was in running two non-profits into the ground. The fixation on appearances, especially on facile and exaggerated gender performance, is an obvious attempt at compensating for his own impotence in the job. 

But Hegseth isn’t alone in this. MAGA loves nothing more than a Potemkin village, and Trump has gotten as far as he has because he’s very good at using TV tricks to create the illusion of strength and competence, especially for those who aren’t looking very closely. The belief that reality doesn’t matter if the facade is showy enough reaches into every corner of modern right-wing culture, especially when it comes to gender. The pervasive plague of MAGA men hope to deflect attention from their myriad flaws with ostentatious but empty pantomimes of alleged manliness. From barbed wire tattoos to oversized pickup trucks to yelling “Michelle Obama is a man” at a UFC fight, there are millions of men like Pete Hegseth, hoping their theatrics will hide the anxious little boy inside them.

Not that any of them deserve pity. There is a way to get off this hamster wheel of trying and failing to prove you’re man enough, and it’s not through testosterone injections. It’s through growing the hell up already, and maybe even doing something as “feminine” as getting therapy. By chasing these silly ideas about manhood, MAGA men are ignoring the more realistic and worthwhile goal of being a functional adult, someone who garners love and respect by being decent to other people and handling their own responsibilities.

Granted, that’s also what mature womanhood looks like, but so what? Only insecure boys need women to be inferior to feel good about themselves anyway. Hegseth proves this every day. He wants you to believe he’s a big tough guy, when in fact he can’t even handle the idea that women, people of color, queer people and even “low T” men are just as capable as he ever was at being soldiers.

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On Monday Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ​posted a video on X, the government’s de facto policy platform, explaining that the Pentagon and the Justice Department created a newfangled joint task force to identify and prosecute press leaks. 

The “joint task force” model of all things law enforcement became increasingly popular in the wake of 9/11. Now, under Donald Trump’s administration, it appears press freedom is the new terrorism. 

“George Washington himself battled leaks, insider threats and espionage,” Hegseth noted in the video. However, I’m fairly certain the secretary doesn’t know that a reason Washington disliked leaks was because of the “Conway Cabal” — one of the earliest American political leaks. It involved private letters between two senior Continental Army officers who wanted Washington replaced as commander-in-chief of the army during the Revolution.

If Hegseth dug a little deeper, he would also learn that the Founding Fathers, including Washington, frequently relied on stealth statecraft, planting press stories and other leaky behavior. Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and James Madison were colonial cyberpunks who used various encryption methods and strategically used information to influence politics, public opinion and the course of history. Jefferson was quite literally the nation’s OG cryptographer, a master of codes and ciphers that would make modern-day hackers blush. Benjamin Franklin, of course, was America’s first great newsman — a writer, publisher, editor and champion of an unbridled free press.

Hegseth’s “new” anti-leak task force is a dramatic escalatory reincarnation of older censorship efforts that even Washington would have scorned. The move also drips with hypocrisy, irony and mendacity in light of the secretary’s own leaky tenure and the Justice Department’s near-simultaneous subpoenas of five New York Times journalists who reported on Trump’s Qatari-gifted, inadequately secured designer airplane. 

Government anti-leak campaigns have a long and ignominious history, from Richard Nixon’s illegal “Plumbers” (1971-72) and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s expansion of interagency leak investigations (2001-2008) to Barack Obama’s “National Insider Threat Task Force” (2011) and Donald Trump’s first term “DOJ Leak Task Force” (2017). Obama’s group famously pictured my clients Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake alongside actual spies and mass murderers on a “WANTED”-style poster of “Those that have done us harm.” 

In once again teaming up, the Justice Department and the Pentagon can dust off the Defense Counterintelligence & Security Agency’s training courses, tool kits, templates and videos that discourage employees from choosing their conscience over their career. One McCarthyesque poster encouraged employees to rat on one another for “general suspicious behaviors,” including First Amendment activity like “making anti-U.S. comments.” Anti-leak posters featured cutesy slogans like “There’s no delete when you tweet!” and “Every leak makes us weak!” My personal favorite was “Free speech doesn’t mean careless talk,” when that’s exactly what it means. While you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater, there’s no Supreme Court ruling holding that “careless talk” is exempt from First Amendment protection; otherwise, Trump’s Truth Social posts and X feed would have been shut down long ago.

I am no stranger to government witchhunts for “leakers.” After blowing the whistle in America’s first terrorism prosecution after 9/11, the Justice Department  investigated me as part of an over-the-top leak probe. Despite years of severe and grueling retaliation — including anonymous government officials publicly calling me a “turncoat,” referring me to the state bars where I’m licensed as a lawyer and putting me on the “No-Fly” list — I got lucky because the DOJ had not yet seized upon using the antiquated Espionage Act as its weapon of choice to go after whistleblowers. All I had to do was clear my name, pay enormous legal fees, miss a bunch of flights and rebuild my entire career.

The next batch of civil servants weren’t so lucky. U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning; Air Force whistleblower Reality Winner; CIA whistleblowers Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou; and NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and Daniel Hale faced prosecution under the draconian Espionage Act and stared down decades in prison for revealing serious government malfeasance including war crimes, secret mass surveillance, civilian drone strikes and Russia’s attempts at election interference. (Trump was also charged under the Espionage Act in the classified documents case, but U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the indictment. Special counsel Jack Smith appealed in an attempt to undo the dismissal, but once Trump returned to office, Smith dismissed its appeal.)

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In full hair and makeup, Hegseth started his X video announcing the task force with a telling statement: “As you know, we live in a dynamic and dangerous threat environment where access to and accumulation of closely held information is key to understanding our world.” His words sounded shockingly similar to those of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who recently testified that secret military information helped “educate people about how the world works so that through understanding we might bring about something better.” I agree with both Hegseth and Assange that secret government information has, in fact, been key to understanding larger world dynamics, especially the global impact of war, mass surveillance, torture and other human rights violations. 

When it comes to the deleterious effects of leaking, Hegseth knows this territory well. He’s led the leakiest Pentagon ever and was responsible for one of the biggest leaks in military history. Early in his tenure, he fired three senior Pentagon officials accused of leaking. Then we had Signalgate, in which the secretary and other principals discussed real-time U.S. airstrikes on Yemen in a Signal group chat to which a journalist was added inadvertently. In fact, the Pentagon’s own inspector general issued a scathing report that found Hegseth had endangered troops and violated department policy by using the commercially-available Signal app for official business. Yet the secretary’s indisputable gift is his ability to fail up in direct proportion to his fireable conduct. 

So what will this new joint task force yield? It’s not meant to yield anything. It’s meant to chill the sharing of vital information. There will be a marked increase of federal reporter subpoenas and search warrants in national security leak cases. There will be an increase in FBI agents showing up on reporters’ doorsteps. There will be more armed raids of journalists’ homes, regardless of whether they are the subject or target of an investigation. There will be even more criminal probes and prosecutions of journalists and whistleblowers. The biggest losers of all, unfortunately, will be the public and its right to know what the government is doing, often under a Reflecting Pool-level film of algaescent secrecy.

While the Pentagon and Justice Department stand up their joint anti-leak task force, they should take a look into why leaks are on the rise despite ever more draconian measures like tracking employees’ computer downloads, restricting reporter access to government spaces and polygraphing ordinary civil servants. Such an inquiry would reveal that leaking is a time-honored practice and safety valve in a democracy, as Hegseth actually acknowledged without even realizing it. That’s something worthy of study by a joint task force of two of the largest departments in the U.S. government.

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