It’s a big week in religious circles! A blessed end to Holy Week for all celebrating Easter this weekend, and a belated chag sameach to everyone celebrating Passover. And here’s an ecumenical offering for readers of all faith persuasions: At 11:45 a.m. E.D.T., Catherine Rampell and Sam Stein will be going live on YouTube and Substack to talk about the troubling state of the economy—unfortunately, it’s been a big week for other reasons, too. Happy Friday.

The Sexism of Trumpism

by William Kristol

According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”

Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.

Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.

And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.

Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.

A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.

So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.

The mass-deportation regime, the gutting of the rule of law, purges of the military—these would be serious enough threats to our democracy even if unaccompanied by sexism and misogyny. At the Pentagon in particular, Hegseth’s “sweeping overhaul of how officers are selected for promotion and command” deserves more attention, as does the fact that the man Trump and Hegseth have put in charge of that overhaul, Anthony J. Tata, is so extreme in his views that he could not be confirmed by a Republican Senate to a senior Defense position in 2020.

In any case, it’s striking that Trumpist authoritarianism has been accompanied by gross sexism and racism and that Trumpist autocracy is attended by unabashed hostility to women’s equality and freedom. It’s a reminder that gender and racial equality are part of human equality, that respecting the dignity of every individual is part of the American creed. And it could lead us to recall, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our rebellion against tyranny, the words of Abigail Adams in a March 1776 letter to her husband: “Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. . . . Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”