Episode Details

Hey fam, welcome back to the Gilead Gazette, where every Saturday I add up what the men running this country took from women in the last seven days, and every Saturday the number goes up.

Coming up. Murders are down all over America except the ones happening inside people’s houses. The Secretary of Defense pulled an Army officer off the promotion list over a women’s parachute jump, then spent Monday night making fun of a teenager’s body. Idaho’s attorney general got caught misdescribing the state’s abortion ban on the official ballot, and four days later got that ban restored at full strength. And Kentucky’s attorney general is suing a nonprofit because an airplane made him mad.

Let’s get into it.

Homicides Down, Domestic Violence Up - Thanks Trump!

Donald Trump calls a man beating his wife a little fight.

Here’s what’s actually happening, and we know it from reporting out this week from The Guardian. Homicide is falling all over this country. Chicago went from 805 killings in 2021 to 425 last year, the kind of number a mayor gets a parade for. In that same city, over those same years, killings tied to domestic violence went up fifteen percent. Kansas City’s homicides are down since 2023, and last year was its second deadliest ever for domestic violence. Ohio tracked the national drop and had its worst year on record.

America got safer. Houses didn’t.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline took about 637,000 calls in 2020. Last year they answered a million. Nikhita Ved, who runs their programs, says the thing callers ask for first is housing and the thing they ask for second is a lawyer. Somewhere to sleep, and somebody to file the paperwork.

The proposed 2027 budget cuts nearly thirty million dollars from transitional housing and legal assistance grants. One and two. He went straight down the list.

That’s after this administration already stripped hundreds of millions from domestic violence groups serving women of color, disabled women, and LGBTQ women. The termination letters explained the work no longer aligned with the administration’s goals. Keeping women alive, off mission. Which tracks, because we already knew how they feel about a woman bleeding out in a parking lot.

And here’s the President of the United States on what any of this even is. Quote. “Things that take place in the home they call crime.” And then, “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime.”

The Guardian asked the White House about the rising numbers. The White House said go ask the budget office. The budget office said nothing at all.

Speaking of men going down a list.

Sec Hair Gel Blocking Top Promotions for Women

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pulled an Army officer off the two star promotion list this week because somebody in his office heard there was a mentorship group for female paratroopers in the man’s unit.

There was. It was there before he got there. He didn’t start it and he didn’t approve it, and the group had done an all women’s jump at some point, which is apparently what got flagged. Nobody in that office checked a single date. A board of senior Army leaders picked this man for two stars, and the Pentagon took him off the list over something that predated his command, and the entire investigation required to catch that was looking up when he took the job.

He was one of seven officers Hegseth pulled on Monday. The Army Secretary quit the same week.

Hegseth has now fired or blocked more than eighty generals and admirals. About one in ten of everybody at the top of the United States military.

And here’s what it’s for. Four percent of this year’s nominees for general and admiral are women. When Hegseth walked in the door it was thirteen percent, the highest it had ever been. Meanwhile, down at the ranks he doesn’t personally review, captain and major, thousands a year, women took twenty three percent of n