Pete Hegseth just took his personal crusade to a new level | Arwa Mahdawi

Apart from money and McDonald’s, there’s nothing Donald Trump seems to love more than a “big, beautiful” wall. The government is currently spending billions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill the president’s fantasy of lining the US-Mexico border with 30ft steel bollard walls and high-tech surveillance.

What the Trump administration is apparently not so keen on is the wall of separation between church and state. While the president may hawk bibles as a side hustle, he is not exactly devout; he serves only mammon. The top levels of his government, however, are stuffed full of religious fanatics who appear hellbent on remaking the country as a Christian theocracy.

Chief among these is the defense secretary and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth. When he isn’t screeching about “beardos, weirdos, and wimps”, the man is cosplaying as a megachurch pastor. Hegseth, who has been married three times and paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of rape in 2017 (he denies the accusation), found God relatively recently. He joined an evangelical church in 2018 and is now busy imposing his own brand of religion on the Pentagon, framing the war on Iran as a modern crusade and instituting monthly prayer services.

Sometimes he blends Pulp Fiction with the Bible at these services; other times he prays for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. The Jesus that told people to love their enemies, it seems, is far too woke (and bearded) for Hegseth.

This week, Hegseth took his personal crusade to a whole new level, announcing a new Pentagon Office of Religious Affairs, which reports directly to him. The military he said, was putting on “the full armor of God”. The Pentagon insists that it will not “compel religious participation”, but given Hegseth’s broader efforts to imbue Christianity into the armed forces, it’s hard not to be alarmed. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has sued the Pentagon over its worship services, is certainly worried. “All of [Hegseth’s] actions combined with this latest announcement make clear that Hegseth is advancing a Christian Nationalist agenda in the military,” the group said in a statement.

And that agenda seems to go well beyond the military. Hegseth has close ties to Doug Wilson, an extremist pastor and self-described Christian nationalist who thinks that women should not be allowed to vote. In an interview with NPR, Wilson said he doesn’t think his full vision for turning the US into a Christian theocracy will be realized for about 250 years, but he’s taking it step by step. His main focus now is banning abortion and same-sex marriage. While he’s still not a mainstream figure, the likes of Hegseth are pushing him out of the fringes fast. The defense secretary invited Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon in February and has amplified a CNN video where the pastor said women should submit to their husbands.

It’s also not just Hegseth and his extremist pastor that we have to worry about. The Missouri senator Josh Hawley proudly said in a 2024 speech that he is “advocating Christian nationalism” and has been pushing to overturn access to abortion medication in the name of these beliefs. The House speaker Mike Johnson is connected to strongly Christian nationalist views. Meanwhile, JD Vance recently appeared on an evangelical podcast where he said is doing as much of “God’s work as possible” and is OK “if that leads to the end times”, which are apparently “coming”.

I’m an atheist, but the way things are going, the end times are beginning to sound appealing. Let’s just pray it starts with the end of this administration.

The underground world of US abortion pill mules

Nineteen states and Washington DC have codified shield laws that protect health providers who prescribe and mail the abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol to people in states with abortion bans. But these protections are under attack: in the latest attempt to curtail access to the medication, three attorneys general in anti-abortion states (Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas) filed a lawsuit with the US supreme court challenging these laws. It’s not surprising then that some activists are bypassing the legal and medical systems and taking matters into their own hands: using volunteers to obtain abortion pills abroad and then distribute them to community support networks across the US. “It really doesn’t matter what [state and federal authorities] do legally – we will continue,” one activist told Mother Jones. They added: “There may come a time where we are one of the only, if not the only, option for the nation.”

Margot Robbie is changing her legal name after a decade of marriage

“We don’t know why she has done this, but it has nonetheless caused a stir,” writes the always hilarious Rebecca Shaw in the Guardian about Margot Robbie becoming Margot Ackerley. “We got the usual discourse of blah blah tradition, blah blah patriarchy, blah blah women’s individual choice and so on.” Instead of engaging in this discourse, Shaw has a very practical solution for how married couples should choose a surname.

Laws on intoxication and consent scrutinized after Cornell rape allegations

New York is one of 19 states that has “voluntary intoxication” laws, which some people argue effectively serve as a legal loophole protecting sexual offenders. If you as a victim were voluntarily under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you cannot claim that you were mentally incapacitated during an assault unless you can show that you were unconscious or otherwise physically helpless. After the Cornell gang-rape allegations became national news, this law is now facing increasing scrutiny. The prosecutor Matthew Van Houten has said that that the fact the Jane Doe in the case voluntarily took drugs is partly why criminal charges were never brought. Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, has criticized this aspect of the law and appointed the state attorney general Letitia James to oversee the case after she “lost faith” in Van Houten.

The horror of the Cornell rape case is how ordinary it is

“Sexual assault … reveals that law is applied selectively, according to the needs of power,” writes Moria Donegan. “Every court and every university, and every institution will say: ‘We take sexual violence extremely seriously.’ And every one will find, with uncanny consistency, reasons not to take it very seriously at all.”

Take a look at the latest Google Maps satellite images of Gaza

… and then tell me this isn’t a genocide. While it isn’t a mainstay of the news, South Lebanon is also systematically being wiped off the map by Israel.

Influencer Alix Earle says she’s never read a book

“Like, maybe Dr Seuss,” she added in a chat with Interview Mag. I had never actually heard of Earle before seeing this headline, but I have certainly heard about the US literacy crisis. No doubt Earle is exaggerating for attention, but this sort of proud anti-intellectualism is so depressing. No wonder Trump is the president.

The US is spelled wrong in a White House accord on ‘super intelligence’

The president and some top tech titans signed a voluntary accord on “super intelligence” this week to allay fears about AI. Alas, they managed to misspell the United States as “Unites States”. Is the “super intelligence” in the room with us now? Forget AI, it’s Trump’s intelligence I’m worried about.