If you want a photo that perfectly catches this moment in what TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg now calls Trumpland, try this one. It shows a championship women's tennis team from the University of Georgia on a recent visit to the White House. The nine women on the team, though on a riser, are nonetheless distinctly overshadowed by President Donald Trump offering a thumbs up, with five male coaches and staffers all carefully positioned in front of them.
No less symbolically, arriving on scene before the photo, Trump can be seen shaking hands with each of the men, but none of the women, and then saying a few words to the team before posing in an overshadowing fashion for the photo. And, of course, there's nothing new here. Just consider his comments on inviting the Olympic gold medal-winning women's and men's hockey teams to the White House in February. He called into the men's locker room celebration after their victory and, among other things, said: "I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team. You do know that. I do believe I probably would be impeached [if the women's team wasn't invited]."
And, of course, when it comes to almost literally overshadowing women in his world, as Greenberg reports today, all of that is distinctly the least of it. After all, we're talking about the president who, last year, as the Guardian reported, "assembled the least diverse U.S. government of the 21st century, filling the corridors of power with white men at the expense of women and people of colour." Mind you, that was before, as Greenberg reports so vividly today, he began firing women in his cabinet. And don't for a second imagine that things can't get even worse in the next two-plus years of Donald J. Trump's presidency. Tom
Now You See Them" Now You Don't
Women Leaders and Trump 2.0
It's been a tough couple of months for women officials in Washington -- or, more accurately, in Trumpland. In early March (Women's History Month, by the way), in a Truth Social post, the president fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the second woman ever to hold that title. Weeks later, also in a social media post, he fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, the third woman ever to serve as head of the Department of Justice.
While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both -- no surprise -- were replaced by men. And just as I was writing this piece, Trump removed another female cabinet official, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Meanwhile, speculation lingers about the possible firing of a fourth female cabinet member, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the second woman to hold that job.And whether or not Gabbard is formally dismissed, she has recently been effectively sidelined, as her absence from White House meetings on the war in Iran suggests.
Notably, Noem, Bondi, Chavez-DeRemer, and Gabbard are, of course, all women. As Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic House of Representatives member from Texas, recently tweeted, "Well" first it was Kristi Noem, now it's Pam Bondi" it would be too much like right that Pete [Hegseth] be next. I see a theme. He [Trump] will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men."
Equal Opportunity Failure
Crockett has a point. Pete Hegseth's leadership at the Department of Defense (now all too appropriately retitled the Department of War) has erased time-honored rules and norms in staggering ways. He has, for instance, drastically reduced media access to the Pentagon,purged employees who disagreed with him, as well as those he deemed to be DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) appointees, and is now exerting his leadership in a war against Iran for which the exit strategy seems elusive at best, despite his assurance that, as the Guardian reported, "the U.S. would not get bogged down in the conflict." The U.S. operation, he insisted, was not a "democracy-building exercise," adding that 'this is not Iraq. This is not endless.'"
Hegseth's behavior has led Arizona Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari to file articles of impeachment against him on six charges. They include the commission of war crimes, especially the killing of at least 165 people, including many children, at a girls' primary school in Iran hit by a U.S. missile; negligence with sensitive information; and conducting an unauthorized war without congressional approval. In the Senate, Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren has followed up with a letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins asking for an investigation into whether Hegseth attempted to profit from his financial investments in the run-up to the war in Iran.
Crockett might just as easily have highlighted the wayward behavior of FBI Director Kash Patel, recently exposed in a piece in The Atlantic describing "excessive drinking" that interfered with his job (an article over which Patel immediately filed suit for $250 million in damages), or the trashing of health standards by Health and Human Resources Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
But whatever the future of those reprehensible men in cabinet positions, it's unfortunately difficult to defend either Bondi or Noem for their actions while in office. Like their male counterparts, both defiantly tossed professionalism and decency to the winds. Under Noem, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leading the way, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was weaponized and transformed into President Trump's version of a homeland militia. It's hardly a stretch to make the comparison to Hitler's Brownshirts.
So far, in Trump's second term in office, ICE has terrorized schools and businesses, while cruelly imprisoning migrants without due process of any sort. It has held children in detention centers under abhorrent conditions, attacked peaceful protesters, and killed citizens on the streets of America. Worse yet, Noem appropriated tens of millions of dollars to cover the costs of a pro-ICE ad featuring herself riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore saying, "Break Our Laws, We'll Punish You." (Nor should we imagine that things will get any better without her.)
Bondi's ouster followed failures of a different order -- namely, her stumbling, wildly inept efforts to fulfill Trump's agenda. She proved unable even to make the case of Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein go away, while what she had to say when releasing documents related to him led to accusations that her statements were riddled with falsehoods.Meanwhile, prosecutions under her watch of federal prosecutor Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, high-priority items for the president, fell apart.
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