Inflation is up. 4.2%. Affordability is an issue.

Women hating. Who Me?

Welcome to Data Central , if you are counting women in Trump's cabinet...or anywhere in Trump's world except as scenery or source of insults.

From the 19: For 28 years, military service women and women veterans have been honored at an annual bipartisan wreath laying in Arlington National Cemetery. But this year it was canceled, after several military branches said they could not participate — citing an executive order against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The Bipartisan Hatred of All Things Feminine.

President Trump’s cabinet has been breathtakingly incompetent and horribly destructive, but the members who are suffering the biggest consequences seem to be women.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, either were fired or stepped down under pressure this year; Trump picked men to fill their spots. Beyond cabinet positions in the second Trump administration, only 12 percent of Senate-confirmed appointees are women.

Trump’s second term in office has been less volatile than his first, and some high-profile men have been canned. Nonetheless, some of the women hired to run large parts of the federal government have already flamed out.

I don’t mourn the loss of their service, but the anti-woman bias of many in our current leadership is overt and constant, and it will have lasting effects on female political achievement — not just for Republicans.

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, has gone out of his way to demean women in the military and block their promotions, and the founder of his religious denomination thinks women with husbands shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Trump attacks the female reporters who ask him tough questions, commenting on or criticizing their looks — just recently he stomped out of an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, telling her, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.”

But Trump and his cronies aren’t content just to put down actual women. Anyone whose behavior is deemed insufficiently manly is trashed. James Talarico, the mild-mannered seminarian Democrat who is running for a Senate seat in Texas, has been called “James Talafreako” by his opponent, the corrupt Republican Ken Paxton, in part because Talarico has embraced meat alternatives. The Trump henchman Stephen Miller has gone further, repeatedly claiming that Talarico is “transitioning” to female on both Fox News and his X account.

If that weren’t awful enough, some leftists and liberals seem to be aping Republican-style insults, implying that anything outside an old-fashioned vision of masculine behavior is weak, womanly and should be avoided. In response to new revelations about the Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner’s past relationships, prominent progressive Matt Stoller defended him, posting on X that “Graham Platner represents a rejection of Dem HR lady politics.” Which is to say, any objection to Platner’s history is somehow coded as female.

This defense tactic from Platner’s staunchest supporters is not new. Moira Donegan, writing in The Guardian in October, noted that many liberal men loudly defended Platner then, in spite of his Nazi tattoos and his Reddit comments about women and minorities, on the ground that the party had become too feminized. “The idea is that in catering too much to women, and in being insufficiently deferential to domineering, gruff, physically imposing and implicitly white, rural men, the party has come to seem hectoring, inauthentic and whiny, and lost the voters they need to most recruit.”

If I lived in Maine, I would certainly vote for Platner over Susan Collins in a general election, so that Democrats can have a chance to take back the Senate and oppose Trump. I also understand why people are excited about Platner’s progressive stances and his ability to connect in person, and I get the calculus around choosing him as the nominee among the other options.

But it isn’t even true that it’s “Dem HR lady politics” to look askance at his behavior — according to Gallup polling from 2025, 89 percent of Americans think adultery in a marriage is morally wrong, and Republicans and independents are more likely to think it’s morally wrong than Democrats. Adultery is not just a subject of interest to women.

While I know that Trump has broken our sense of ethics when it comes to political behavior, it’s actually pretty normie and not especially feminine to worry that Platner sexting as many as a dozen other women while married could be a liability for him in a general election, and to wonder if there are going to be other shoes dropping for him in the next few months.

I also find it impossible to believe that a female, gay or nonwhite politician with Platner’s background would be given the amount of grace that he is receiving. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, got dragged across the internet last year for simply holding a folder in front of her face in the Oval Office, with one headline asking, “How Politically Devastating Is The Blue Folder Picture?” and some speculating that her future in politics was basically over.

It is profoundly depressing to see people on both sides imply that only “masculine” behavior, defined in the narrowest, most chest-thumping way, is worthy of power and respect, and the only way to win elections. It makes the expectations for female candidates even more onerous and complicated. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the past year, the few female Democrats — Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and the New Jersey congressional hopeful Rebecca Bennett — who have been able to break through tend to have traditionally masculine career backgrounds in the military or the C.I.A.

I called Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, an organization that recruits young progressive candidates like Talarico to run for office, to ask her if she was seeing some of the same barriers for female candidates that I have noticed. “I think one of the broader challenges is that we do not have a definition of authentic or compelling that includes women,” she said. And the second a female Democrat does eke out a place for herself, Litman added, the right-wing media ecosystem makes her into a monster, the way it has with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi.

I usually try to end my newsletters on a hopeful note, because I am generally optimistic about the state of gender relations in this country. But I am not feeling bullish on female politicians gaining real power on the national level in the near future.

We’re still more than two years out from the next presidential election, but none of The Washington Post’s “standout” candidates on either the left or the right are women. On “Pod Save America,” a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers, the co-host Dan Pfeiffer recently came to a similar conclusion, saying, “You could end up with an all-male field, which would be kind of gross in 2028.”

It may be gross, but it’s also a logical conclusion, if you’re paying attention. If we’ve defined authentic power as male, then there’s no way for a woman to claim it.(Jessica Grose, New York Times column).

What will happen to 60 Minutes?

Paramount C.E.O. Promises Editorial Independence for ‘60 Minutes,’ Lesley Stahl Says.

David Ellison told Ms. Stahl, one of three remaining correspondents for the news program, that he would respect the show’s editorial decisions after a tumultuous stretch.

Paramount’s chief executive, David Ellison, and the “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl.

David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount, promised to respect the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” in a call with Lesley Stahl, one of the show’s correspondents, she told The New York Times on Tuesday.

The call to Ms. Stahl, made on Sunday, was one of the first signs that Mr. Ellison was personally taking steps to calm the turmoil at the news network after the firing of the show’s leadership and several of its star correspondents. The overhaul, overseen by Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, was met with a rebuke from Scott Pelley, a star correspondent at “60 Minutes” who has since been fired.

Ms. Stahl told the news program’s staff about Mr. Ellison’s call during a champagne toast she held at the “60 Minutes” offices in Midtown Manhattan on Monday in an attempt to shore up morale at the program.

She, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, the remaining stars of the program, had agonized about whether to stay in the aftermath of the staff changes and Mr. Pelley’s firing. But in a letter to the show’s staff Friday, they concluded that they had to remain at the show because they didn’t “want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.”

“My toast was, ‘to us,’ meaning the survivors,” Ms. Stahl said in a text message on Tuesday. “Maybe ‘us’ with a twinge of survivor’s guilt.”

Mr. Ellison’s takeover of Paramount last year raised questions about the kind of steward he would be for CBS News. Mr. Ellison has been friendly with President Trump as his company, Paramount, seeks federal sign-off on a $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. He has said he wants CBS News to appeal to what he describes as the 70 percent of Americans who consider themselves center-right or center-left.

In an interview with The Times, Mr. Pelley also said that Ms. Weiss had put her “thumb on the scale” for Mr. Trump during the last season of “60 Minutes,” a charge the network has denied. That assertion echoed a complaint from Sharyn Alfonsi, another correspondent, who said Ms. Weiss’s editorial guidance on one of her stories was “political.”

Last week, scores of prominent journalists, including well-known veterans of CBS News, signed an open letter to Mr. Ellison, who took over Paramount’s CBS last year, asking him to commit to the show’s independence. He has not yet weighed in publicly.

Paramount had no immediate comment.

The tumult at “60 Minutes” has raised questions about the future of the program, which must forge ahead without many of its biggest stars or longest-tenured leaders.

Three of the show’s seven correspondents — Mr. Pelley, Ms. Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega — were fired; a fourth, Anderson Cooper, left. Nick Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker who is the show’s new executive producer, has no broadcast experience. And the firings have widened a rift between the leaders of CBS News and the staff at “60 Minutes,” who are used to operating with a high degree of independence from the network.

There are more pressing concerns, too: “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air reruns until the next season begins in September. The show typically has correspondents record new introductions to their segments to update anything that has become outdated. But many of the recent segments involved the correspondents who were recently fired.

One example is an interview with the filmmaker Christopher Nolan, conducted by Mr. Pelley, that was scheduled to air again alongside the premiere of “The Odyssey” this summer.

During Ms. Stahl’s toast on Monday, Mr. Wertheim also weighed in. He turned to Mr. Bilton and told him that he had been dealt “a hell of a hand,” noting that there were “bridges to build and fences to mend and assorted other structural metaphors,” according to two people familiar with his remarks.

“But there’s a path here,” he told Mr. Bilton. (New York Times).

It’s the Knicks’ City.

The rest of us just live here.

Down 29 points, last night the New York Knicks stormed back to beat the San Antonio Spurs by 1. 107-106. The biggest comeback in NBA history.

The tally is now Knicks 3 games. Spurs 1 game.

Back to San Antonio for game 5, Saturday night, 8:30PM E.T.

The Knicks can bring home the championships in 5 games. First championship in 57 years.

Other than the Knicks, the best thing at the game last night. Another New Yorker.👇

As to the memory of Trump at game 3, clearly all the sage burned in Madison Square Garden before Game 4 worked.