Episode Details

Hey fam, welcome back to the Gilead Gazette, where I spend all week watching powerful men explain women to women, so you can scream into a pillow on your own schedule.

This week: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. handed the country’s birth control training to people who don’t like birth control. Pete Hegseth is getting sued over a study on whether women can fight. A Republican running for Congress thinks a child’s rape can turn into “something incredible.” And AI chatbots will take a Muslim woman’s hijab off for anyone who asks. Let’s get into it.

RFK Jr. Puts Birth Control Skeptics in Charge of Birth Control

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health department just gave nearly $9 million in family planning money to two groups with anti-abortion ties. The money comes from Title X, the only federal family planning program for low-income people, and it pays for the centers that train the staff at Title X clinics. Those clinics see nearly 3 million patients a year.

One winner is a Georgia group called Reproductive Health Mission, which is getting $4.28 million. According to IRS data, it has never taken in more than $50,000 in a single year, and its website doesn’t list any staff. So it’s a raise of more than 80 times its best year, for a staff its own website can’t name. I’ve seen Etsy shops with a deeper bench.

Its CEO is listed as a medical director for a chain of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, and he has a history of discouraging hormonal birth control. The other $4.5 million goes to a group that teaches fertility awareness, which means tracking your cycle, a method about as reliable as a man who says he’ll pull out. They replace the University of Missouri center that’s done this job since 2006.

Hegseth Studies Women in Combat, Hides the Homework

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is being sued for hiding his study on whether women belong in combat. He ordered it last December to measure women’s “effectiveness” in ground combat jobs. About 5,000 women have already served in those jobs, so he’s studying whether women can do something women are currently doing. It’s like ordering a study on whether planes can fly while you’re sitting in one.

It started as a six-month study at one research institute. In April the Pentagon moved it to a different lab and stretched it to a year. Maybe the first lab was about to come back with the wrong answer. According to the ACLU, the lead researcher there wrote a 2015 Marine Corps study that criticized women’s combat performance, was widely criticized for its methods, and happens to be one Hegseth likes to cite. Pick the answer first and the researcher second, and the science goes great.

The Service Women’s Action Network, the National Women’s Law Center and the ACLU asked for the records in August. The Pentagon never answered, so on Thursday they sued. The Law Center’s response was, “If Hegseth wants to push women out of the military, he cannot hide from the public.”

GOP Nominee Sees “Something Incredible” in a Child’s Rape

Ryan Elijah, the Republican nominee for Congress in Florida’s 7th district, says a child’s rape can turn into “something incredible.” He was on a show called Pro-Life Radio in June, and the host told him about a 13-year-old who was raped by her uncle and had the baby.

Elijah’s response was:

“I’m a big believer that God can take a mistake, in a crime in this case, and turn something incredible out of it.”

He started with “mistake.” He did upgrade it to “crime” halfway through the sentence, so somebody give that man a ribbon.

In the same interview the host called exceptions for the life of the mother “a moot point,” and Elijah said, “I think so.” So the mother’s life is a moot point, on a show called Pro-Life Radio. He also told a voter guide there is no circumstance where an elective abortion should be allowed. He’s on the ballot November 3. If he wins, what he thinks should happen