Welcome back, Rulers! It’s been a jarring week, to say the least. I fortunately had a jubilant weekend celebrating my (our) birthday with my twin, but I’m happy to be back with you to take a look at the fallout from this weekend’s events and what it could mean for women. Let’s get into it. Right after a shooter attempted to kill former President Donald Trump at a weekend campaign rally, the finger pointing commenced with a vengeance. Some Republicans blamed President Joe Biden for the shooting because of his campaign rhetoric. Some on the left insisted the whole thing was staged. Both Democrats and Republicans warned the divisions in this country mean more political violence is all but inevitable — and blamed each other for it. Others on the far right pointed the finger squarely at DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — and the female Secret Service agents tasked with protecting the former president. “DEI got someone killed,” the far-right account Libs of TikTok said on X. “DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe,” influencer Benny Johnson wrote on X. “There should not be any women in the Secret Service,” far-right commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X. Women have been protecting presidents since Abraham Lincoln was in office. But the sight of women Secret Service agents rushing a wounded Trump off stage was apparently shocking to many. On Sunday, Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told Fox News that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, one of two women to serve in her position, was a “DEI initiative person” and “this is what happens when you don’t put the best players in.” On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that Cheatle should step down. Critics on the left say members of the MAGA movement are using Trump’s assassination attempt as an excuse to reinforce women’s limited role within the Republican party, while Trump allies dismiss those concerns, pointing to GOP women in leadership positions as evidence of gender equity. DEI initiatives, they argue, are wholly unnecessary. “To me it’s not about DEI, it’s about common sense,” Dana Perino, Fox news anchor and former White House press secretary under the George W. Bush administration, says in an interview with Women Rule. “We have so many different problems in America, that percentages are not one we should worry about right now. People can waste a lot of time with angst over the end of DEI.” The attacks on DEI in the wake of the shooting, Cheatle’s outcome and the ensuing conversation about women entering previously male-dominated spaces may signal the beginning of the Republican party’s plans to reject DEI as a whole, argues Nina Burleigh, journalist and author of “The Trump Women: Part of the Deal.” As she writes in her newsletter, American Freakshow, “‘DEI’ has been a MAGA rallying cry for the last few years, code, like ‘woke,’ for resentment over nonwhites and women in positions of power.” Kristen Drybread, professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of “Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era,” tells Women Rule the recent anti-DEI rhetoric is “an excuse to tell the people who are entering spaces that were traditionally coded masculine and upending that order to, ‘Get back, get down in your positions.’” Some worry this anti-DEI rhetoric is the Republican Party’s attempt to stifle women’s progress. “The centerpiece of the MAGA movement is a backlash towards women,” Burleigh says in an interview with Women Rule. “When Trump was a young man, in the 60s, women’s careers were limited to nurse, teacher or secretary. It was Mad Men — that is what he is.” Perino fervently disagrees with that assessment. “This idea that Republicans are not pro-women is insane to me,” Perino says, “why undermine people by saying ‘I want to hire a woman.’ You’ve already undermined her.” Yes, Perino says, having people from different walks of life on a team is an advantage. “When you have a lot of different viewpoints, when you have different talents and backgrounds, that makes for a good team,” she says. But she declined to tether “background” to race or gender, adding, “that might mean the team is all Black, that might mean the team is all white.” Law enforcement groups are defending the women in their workforce. “Statements blaming this shooting on efforts to promote gender equity are disingenuous at best and deeply dangerous at worst,” the 30x30 Initiative and Women in Federal Law Enforcement, along with other law enforcement groups, write in a letter in response to the backlash. “It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender,” Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service communications chief, told NBC News. Those “who are intent on preserving a patriarchal status quo, any excuse that they can find to reinforce the rightness of that, they’ll take,” Drybread says. Cheatle on Wednesday privately acknowledged in congressional briefings that the agency had made mistakes, but Congressional leadership is still calling for her resignation. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced on Monday that his panel will hold a hearing with Cheatle on July 22. POLITICO reports this week that Trump and some close to him opted not to join in on the criticism of the women Secret Service agents.
| 
