Just when you thought you’d talked enough about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos for one lifetime, this week Hegseth revealed a new one: a tattoo on his left bicep of the Arabic word “kafir,” which is usually translated as “infidel” or “unbeliever.”
A Catholic vice president shouldn’t bless war crimes
Officials in the Trump administration are facing intense scrutiny this week after it was revealed that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, in a group chat on the Signal encrypted messaging app. The…
Judge appears skeptical of Trump ban on transgender service members
A federal judge appeared reluctant March 12 to comprehend the legality of a Trump executive order that bans transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes repeatedly questioned the government’s lawyers for what she…
Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection is now a coup
On Feb. 2, private actors reportedly employed by Elon Musk took over U.S. Treasury computer systems that control the nation’s payments for government benefits. That action followed a Trump-ordered takeover of the USAID independent federal agency responsible for distributing foreign…
White evangelical men weaponize the gospel against women because they don’t respect women
“Do men desperately need respect, while women desperately need love?” This was the question posed by Sheila Gregoire on a recent episode of the “Bare Marriage” podcast. “That is the thesis of a lot of bestselling books in evangelicalism like Love and…
When worship becomes an act of cruelty
Why are white evangelicals so conditioned for cruelty? After all, the debacle that was Donald Trump’s first day in office included ending birthright citizenship, erasing transgender and intersex people, threatening to colonize our neighbors, lying about the 2020 election results,…
Senators clear the way for Hegseth’s Christian nationalist crusade
It’s hard to find strong enough adjectives to describe the unmitigated disaster the Senate hearing on the nomination of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense was. Even the few Republicans who had expressed previous concerns about his nomination handled him…
Here’s the real reason Hegseth should not be confirmed
Pete Hegseth is unfit to lead the U.S. Department of Defense, but not for the reasons most liberals are highlighting. Even if he’s a drunk misogynistic ass — which his critics contend — that’s not enough to get Republicans in…
Why Pete Hegseth nomination is a milestone for the rightwing Christian movement he follows
To his brotherhood within a theologically conservative, hard-right church coalition, Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s ascension as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department wasn’t merely opportunistic.
As long as MAGA evangelicals are in power, sexual ethics will be in exile, but that’s not the end of the story
During Thanksgiving week, I watched two movies: Wicked and Gladiator II. Both movies reminded me of evangelicals up to their television satellites and steeples in secular politics. I watched the citizens of Oz pour into the streets, singing, “The wicked…
It’s Pete Hegseth’s theology that ought to concern us
You may or may not like Pete Hegseth’s politics, but it’s his theology that ought to concern you more. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. Secretary of Defense has ties to one of the most chauvinistic and vitriolic…
Hegseth’s nomination fits the TheoBro pattern creating abuse culture
Given the state of their churches, it makes total sense that conservative evangelicals would elect a president who has a history of bragging about sexual assault. And it also makes sense that this sexually abusive president would nominate five people…