The energy markets, which typically favor stability and predictability, responded with little more than a shrug.
Crude prices dipped slightly and gas prices remained steady. Even as the war stretches past the six-month mark and the midterms creep closer, Trump has been able to keep retail prices lower than experts say they should be through the sheer power of promises – which have yet to come through – of a swift end to the conflict. On Monday, he took that a step further, chastising the major oil companies for “making too much money” off global oil shortages as a result of the war.
“They better cut the retail price, the consumer price,” Trump said. “I’ll say it loud and clear. I’m not happy about it.”
But Trump’s ability to jawbone the markets may be diminishing at a critical time, three months before the midterm elections when control of Congress is hanging in the balance and his approval is sinking to new lows amid voter anger over cost of living concerns. It comes as global crude oil supplies are running low, the war threatens more energy flows, refiners are running out of spare capacity and the administration has few tools to keep gas prices low.
“Labor Day is the point where gas prices are baked into the election,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “That last summer trip determines how voters evaluate their cost of living.”
And the higher gas prices come at a time when Trump repeatedly promises to escalate the war and then says it’s almost over a few hours or days later. That is starting to degrade his ability to cause price drops, a former adviser cautioned.
“His credibility has been a little bit shot,” said a former Trump adviser close to the White House, granted anonymity to avoid reprisal.
“The markets aren’t paying attention to him, they’re paying attention to what’s happening and, with respect to oil prices, it is a huge liability for the Republicans,” the adviser said.
Trump on Monday acknowledged that dynamic but expressed no urgency. He told reporters in the Oval Office that he was in no rush to end the conflict, though he acknowledged the need to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global energy supplies flowed before the war. He hinted at the midterm stakes for his party if the conflict does not end soon.
“I’m under no time constraint,” he said. “I don’t happen to be running, but a lot of very good Republicans are running.”
Trump’s ability to move the markets may be the only tool the administration has left to keep gas prices in check, said Rory Johnston, an oil market researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter.
The Trump administration has drawn down the U.S. Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level since President Ronald Reagan’s first term. Oil majors are warning that the lack of refinery capacity could keep prices high for the foreseeable future.
“The market is so entrenched on this idea that eventually this will resolve by Trump deciding and ceding some ground on some issue, likely kind of even symbolic control of the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “So the market’s going to be constantly watching for any sign that he’s shifting there.”
While experts continue to marvel at Trump’s ability to get the markets to bend to his whims, there is little consensus on when that power will dissipate.
Trump has “less credibility” in terms of moving markets, but it has not totally dissipated, Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum analysis at pricing service GasBuddy.
“I don’t think credibility completely goes to zero,” he said. “Hard to know though when it really bends.”
Trump’s push to keep energy prices low has also been buoyed by reduced Chinese oil imports, the successful rerouting of about 7 million barrels per day of Saudi Arabian crude through the Red Sea and releases from strategic petroleum reserves.
The administration released nearly 3 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last week, bringing the reserves down to their lowest level since February 1983, according to Department of Energy data. About half of the 218.5 million barrels the Department of Energy said it would make available to the market have now left the salt caverns along the Gulf Coast.
As the summer driving season winds down, consumers expect gas prices to fall as well.
If the national average price of a gallon of gas is still above $4 by Saturday, de Haan noted, it will set a new record for the latest in the calendar year that prices are so high.
President Donald Trump turned up the heat on Exxon Mobil and Chevron over high gasoline prices on Monday, blasting his longtime industry allies for “making too much money” while Americans struggle with higher prices at the pump.
Oil majors have reported bumper quarterly earnings, buoyed by higher crude prices caused by the supply disruptions in the Middle East and the soaring profit margins for refineries. That has put targets on the backs of companies as the Trump administration faces mounting pressure to show it is working to bring down high gas prices ahead of the midterm elections.
“Based on a shortage, they’re making too much money,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday. “I don’t like it, and I should be the last one to say because I’m a big free enterprise guy — nobody bigger.”
Trump specifically called out the two biggest U.S. oil producers by name after both reported strong earnings on Friday.
“Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobil, too much, too much money,” Trump said. “They ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.”
The average U.S. retail gasoline price has hovered near $4.10 a gallon for the past week, up from less than $3 before the United States and Israel launched their attacks against Iran in February.
In late June, Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate big oil companies for not bringing gasoline prices down fast enough as crude oil prices weakened. Pump prices are generally set by the retailers, often sole proprietors, who own gas stations, rather than major oil producers.
Chevron declined to comment on Trump’s remarks, and Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The two companies’ chief executives warned in earnings calls Friday that a shortage of refining capacity could keep gasoline prices high through the fall.
Andrea Woods, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, which represents major oil producers, said in a statement that higher prices are “driven by global supply, demand and continued uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz and other critical shipping lanes—not by any one company.”
“Our industry shares the goal of delivering affordable, reliable energy for consumers,” she said.
Trump also criticized Chevron CEO Mike Wirth in a social media post Monday morning for failing to credit the administration’s policies for the company’s record quarter.
“The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!” Trump wrote, adding that all oil companies must “get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!”
The Justice Department filed a motion Friday asking a federal judge to dismiss the felony case, acknowledging that peeling and deterioration at the recently renovated pool stemmed from “flawed installation by the contractor” and not from Hearn’s actions. The reversal follows the discovery of Interior Department records showing the project had experienced significant installation problems before Hearn was accused of damaging the site.
Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was charged last month after surveillance footage showed him stopping at the Reflecting Pool and touching sections of the blue liner that had begun peeling away. Prosecutors initially alleged he intentionally damaged the newly renovated surface, a felony offense carrying a potential prison sentence.
According to court filings, however, federal prosecutors later learned that contractor records documented widespread failures in the installation process. The Justice Department also said key information about the renovation problems was not provided before the indictment was returned.
The Reflecting Pool renovation became a high-profile project after the Trump administration ordered a makeover ahead of the America 250 celebrations. Soon after reopening, however, visitors documented algae blooms, bubbling surfaces and peeling liner, prompting questions about the quality of the work.
Hearn has maintained that he merely touched material that was already separating from the surface and did not cause any damage. His attorneys have called on the government to apologize, arguing he was wrongfully prosecuted based on incomplete information.
Hours after the charges were dropped, Trump disputed the Justice Department’s conclusion in a Truth Social post, writing that “vandals” were responsible for the damage and criticizing prosecutors for abandoning the case. Federal prosecutors, however, cited newly obtained Interior Department records and additional evidence in concluding the damage was caused by problems with the Reflecting Pool’s installation rather than Hearn’s actions.
Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, promises Americans that he has no intention of going forward with a $1.8 billion slush fund designed to funnel money out of the Treasury and into the pockets of right-wing attorneys. The outcry that followed the Justice Department’s May 19 announcement of the fund, which would pay the legal bills of political allies charged with crimes ranging from fraud to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, was deafening. In addition to blowback from many congressional Republicans, a federal judge halted the administration’s disbursement of the money, which was created as part of Trump’s agreement with the federal government stemming from his lawsuit for the leak of his tax returns. Blanche, in his role as acting attorney general, claimed the administration would voluntarily walk away from using the money.
Now, months later, he has resolutely avoided putting this promise in writing, and his failure to formally give up the slush fund is putting at risk his Senate confirmation to permanently head the Justice Department.
The reason behind Blanche’s refusal is obvious: He and Trump want to keep the option to re-open the fund at a later date, along with the ability to write fat checks, paid for with taxpayer money, to the lawyers working on behalf of unsavory right-wing figures.
Blanche knows that world quite well; he has become personally wealthy doing exactly this kind of work.
Blanche knows that world quite well; he has become personally wealthy doing exactly this kind of work. Before taking his job at the Justice Department, first as Pam Bondi’s deputy attorney general, and then as her replacement, Blanche was making millions representing Trump in everything from a civil rape case to criminal fraud. Blanche also knows how such funds pay for that type of work. According to ABC News, between March 2023 and December 2024, his law firm was paid almost $10 million, not by Trump personally, but by a political action committee that was supposed to be funding Republican campaigns.
Blanche’s nomination is imperiled by his refusal to let go of the chance to flood the coffers of right-wing lawyers defending shady characters like his former client and current boss. Thursday’s vote to approve his nomination by the Senate Judiciary Committee was delayed. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex. and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both who are leaving the Senate at the end of the year, are threatening to vote no unless Blanche formally commits to rolling back the deal that created this slush fund and also gave Trump and his family eternal immunity from IRS audits.
“This is not popular,” Tillis told the New York Times. “It is killing some of our candidates because they can’t explain it. And now it looks like they weren’t being honest when they said it was inoperative.”
It’s not just a “looks like” issue. Anyone who said the fund was inoperative because of Blanche’s informal say-so is either ignorant or lying. As the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote in June, Blanche and Trump remain committed to funding a “pipeline of taxpayer-funded payouts to political allies and convicted criminals.” Even the conservative National Review’s Andrew McCarthy agrees, writing on Wednesday that “Blanche has resisted memorializing in writing his claim that the fund is kaput, because President Trump wants the fund.”
The White House has already been funneling taxpayer funds to these bad actors through a slightly different but related process. As the Washington Post reported in June, the Justice Department has paid out millions to Trump allies who claim victimization because they were investigated or even convicted of crimes. The family of Ashli Babbitt got a nearly $5 million check over baseless claims that her shooting death during the Jan. 6 riot was unwarranted, even though video footage clearly showed her climbing through a window in an apparent attempt to chase down congressional members and staff fleeing in fear. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on a seven-figure check written to Paul Vaughn, who was convicted of a federal crime in 2024 for conspiring to blockade an abortion clinic before being pardoned by Trump last year.
Vaughn’s legal representation by the Thomas More Society is a reminder of who really benefits if Blanche and Trump succeed in reviving the fund after the midterm elections: right-wing lawyers, who started licking their lips within moments of the Justice Department’s announcement.
“Everybody’s very excited about it,” Mark McCloskey, a lawyer representing Jan. 6 defendants, told the Washington Post. Even though his clients have been pardoned by Trump, he has been lobbying for the fund, hoping to see a big payday by claiming wrongful prosecution. Such a claim would be all but certain to fall apart in a court of law. But as the existing track record shows, the goal is to get the Justice Department to “settle” these claims by writing checks to people who otherwise wouldn’t see a dime. Clients would get money, but so would the lawyers — especially those who, like McCloskey, would get a cut of check after check.
At this point, it’s unclear if Blanche would be able to personally benefit from various schemes to pay off Trump’s political allies with government money. He could return to private practice and start taking on those kinds of clients after leaving the Justice Department. By then, though, it’s possible a Democrat will be in the White House again, and will have either shut down the fund or started blocking payments for phony claims made by right-wing operatives. But, as someone who was on a similar gravy train not that long ago, Blanche knows full well how rich his fellow right-wing lawyers could get from this.
And it’s not just private practice lawyers, either. Groups like the Thomas More Society, Alliance Defending Freedom and other far-right legal nonprofits need funding for their legal crusades, as seen by the lawsuit that overturned Roe v. Wade, or the ongoing cases meant to curtail voting rights or LGBTQ+ equality. Taking on right-wing clients with baseless claims of victimization could be an easy way to get money, which could then be used to fund cases attacking reproductive rights or religious freedom.
That Cornyn and Tillis are taking this stand is surprising. The pair have a long history of supporting the right-wing legal organizations that could find themselves flush with slush money. As Tillis’s comments about the midterm campaigns show, it may not be anything deeper than a sense that this is politically toxic. Trump’s consideration of withdrawing Blanche’s nomination would be nothing more than a pause until after the midterm elections, when he is banking on new Republican senators to replace Cornyn and Tillis — and put his payola scheme back into action.
It may not even come to that. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was assuring reporters that Blanche’s nomination would be back as soon as next week, after “a resolution on the issues that Senators Cornyn and Tillis raised.” Thune’s comments suggest that as long as Trump does a slightly better job at deflecting attention from the fund, the two senators can claim victory and give Blanche their support.
Or perhaps this will really be the moment that Republicans, two of them at least, stand up to Trump for real, instead of just doing so as quickly-dispatched political theater. If so, it’s a hopeful sign that Republicans can read a poll and see his corruption is starting to wear thin, especially for a public struggling to make ends meet while the president enriches himself and his cronies.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.
From the Epstein files to gun rights to immigration enforcement, senior Justice Department officials keep running to Fox News to freelance policy and signal loyalty to Donald Trump. But in the process, they are also riling up the MAGA coalition. Each media appearance creates a new mess that career lawyers then have to clean up. At this point, the most responsible thing Attorney General Pam Bondi could do is confiscate the department’s television remotes and log everyone out of their social media accounts. But restraint has never been the MAGA brand.
Consider Jeanine Pirro, the former co-host of “The Five” on Fox News before she was confirmed as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Pirro recently returned to her old network and vowed to arrest gun owners who bring firearms into the District, even if they are licensed elsewhere. “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” she told Fox’s Martha MacCallum on Monday. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.”
The reaction was swift and furious on the right.
“What is Pirro talking about here, and why is a Fox anchor cheering her on?” asked conservative firearms reporter Stephen Gutowski. The National Association for Gun Rights decried Pirro’s warning as “unacceptable and intolerable comments by a sitting US attorney.” Right-wing gun hero Kyle Rittenhouse concluded that “Pirro should be fired.”
The U.S. attorney’s stance also angered several Republican members of Congress.
“I bring a gun into the district every week… I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others. Come and Take it!” Florida Republican Rep. Greg Stuebe said. “Second Amendment rights are not extinguished just because an American visits DC,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on X.
The damage was done. A senior federal prosecutor had used a Fox News appearance to issue what sounded like a blanket threat to gun owners, contradicting both conservative orthodoxy and the administration’s own efforts to promote permitless carry and national reciprocity.
Pirro eventually tried to clean up the mess on X, clarifying that D.C. law requires firearms to be licensed locally and that her office is focused on unlawful carrying. But the damage was done. A senior federal prosecutor had used a Fox News appearance to issue what sounded like a blanket threat to gun owners, contradicting both conservative orthodoxy and the administration’s own efforts to promote permitless carry and national reciprocity.
The Fox News habit shows up again in the handling of the Epstein files, where senior officials seem desperate to minimize embarrassment to the powerful. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general and Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, went on the network this week to reassure viewers that partying with Jeffrey Epstein “is not a crime.” He offered this absolution in the context of revelations that CBS News’ new hire Peter Attia, a health and wellness influencer, appears more than 1,700 times in newly released Epstein documents.
The Epstein files were supposed to be Trump’s transparency moment, a chance to finally reveal what powerful men knew about a serial sexual predator. Instead the president echoed Blanche’s sentiment from the Oval Office, declaring that it was “really time” for the country to move past Epstein. Podcast host Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, dutifully dismissed the files as a “Democrat hoax.” FBI Director Kash Patel went even further, going on Fox News’ “Special Report” this week to declare that he was done with the Epstein matter entirely. This coordinated shrug comes as Trump’s inner circle keeps popping up in Epstein-adjacent reporting.
Meanwhile, Bondi’s Justice Department is hemorrhaging prosecutors, and nowhere is the crisis more visible than in Minnesota. The state’s U.S. Attorney’s office has been decimated, shrinking from 70 assistant federal prosecutors under Biden to as few as 17 now. The four prosecutors who spearheaded the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case all resigned within days of each other, joining more than a dozen others in resigning rather than defending an immigration enforcement campaign so aggressive and sloppy that federal judges are openly threatening contempt citations on a near-routine basis.
The breaking point for many was the department’s refusal to open a civil rights investigation into the January killings of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were fatally shot by federal immigration agents. Prosecutors raised alarms internally about the administration’s efforts to block state and local authorities from investigating the shootings as potential homicides, as well as about orders to rush through charges against defendants accused of assaulting federal officers without full investigations. One retiring attorney described it plainly: “This was the ultimate example of selective prosecution.”
More than 300 former Justice Department attorneys have now urged Bondi to allow local investigators to do their jobs, warning that blocking state and local probes into possible violations of state law “poses a threat to the rule of law.”
While prosecutors are drowning in habeas corpus petitions and judges are losing patience, Bondi herself is finding time to go on Fox News and threaten journalists. Discussing the recent arrest of Don Lemon, who was charged with federal civil rights violations for entering an evangelical church in St. Paul to report on an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest, Bondi did not hedge or walk anything back. “We’re going to prosecute you, and you will be held accountable,” she said on “Hannity” this week. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a failed journalist with a camera in your hand, you can’t do it.”
Chad Mizelle, a former top DOJ official, took to X to openly solicit “pro-Trump” lawyers for assistant U.S. attorney positions, asking applicants to support Trump’s “anti-crime agenda.” Stephen Miller amplified the call, declaring that “patriots” were needed. Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney in Miami, shared Mizelle’s post with his own message: “We are hiring!”
These messages amount to a public declaration that loyalty to Trump is now a hiring criterion for federal prosecutors.
These messages amount to a public declaration that loyalty to Trump is now a hiring criterion for federal prosecutors. For her part, Bondi has just hired a new chief of staff after leaving the position vacant since September, but no staffing shuffle can solve a leadership problem this fundamental.
The move triggered alarm even among conservatives, with the National Review warning about politicized prosecution. Andy McCarthy, a writer for the magazine and a Fox News contributor, said the Justice Department should be defunded if support for the incumbent president is a condition of enforcing the law. The department “should only exist if it’s nonpartisan,” the former federal prosecutor wrote, warning it would be “too dangerous to liberty otherwise.” Commentary editor and National Review contributor John Podhoretz agreed.
The brain drain has been catastrophic at the department, which is engulfed in personnel chaos. Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump personal attorney with no prosecutorial experience, washed out of the Eastern District of Virginia after failing to deliver cases against Trump’s enemies and “masquerading” as a U.S. attorney, in the words of a federal judge. Alina Habba met a similar fate in New Jersey, disqualified after courts ruled she was unlawfully serving. Ed Martin, Trump’s interim U.S. attorney in D.C., was demoted and sidelined after a review found he had shared secret grand jury material related to mortgage fraud inquiries involving Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. He is expected to leave the department after being demoted earlier this week, and Schiff would be well within his rights to file a bar complaint.
As loyalists flame out, career lawyers are fleeing. The Trump administration tried to offset the attrition in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office by creating emergency jump teams, demanding that offices rapidly designate prosecutors for short-term surges in unspecified critical situations.
Judges, meanwhile, are openly complaining that filings are late, orders are ignored and basic constitutional requirements are being violated. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz noted with barely concealed exasperation that the Trump administration decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions that were certain to follow. One prosecutor, Julie Le, told a judge that the system was so broken she sometimes wished to be held in contempt just to get a full night’s sleep. She described begging ICE to comply with court orders, emailing in 24-point font and threatening to name names in filings. “I am not white, as you can see,” she told the judge, explaining that her own family was at risk of being swept up in the same dragnet she was being forced to defend.
The administration is carrying out more arrests than it has the capacity to process humanely or legally, and it’s doing so on purpose. At any moment, they could slow down, ensure people’s rights are respected and give their own attorneys time to prepare cases properly. They have refused.
The Department of Justice used to be a career aspiration, a place where lawyers of all backgrounds believed they could serve the public and the law. Under Trump, it is increasingly becoming an agency of career suicide. Experienced attorneys are fleeing. The post-Watergate norms — that the Justice Department should operate with a degree of independence from political pressure, that it shouldn’t be used as a weapon against the president’s enemies and that the attorney general works for the American people and not as the president’s personal lawyer — is being incinerated. Bondi and her deputies are treating every legal crisis like an opportunity for a cable news hit, and turning our constitutional project into a plotline in their ongoing MAGA reality show.
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.
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.
On Monday Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsethposted 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.
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.
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 gruelingretaliation — 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 antiquatedEspionage 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 whistleblowerChelsea Manning; Air Force whistleblowerReality Winner; CIA whistleblowersJeffrey Sterling andJohn Kiriakou; and NSA whistleblowersThomas Drake,Edward Snowden, andDaniel 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.)
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 recentlytestified 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 scathingreport 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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