As President Donald Trump continues shaking up his administration, a striking pattern has emerged in who's been shown the door.
The high-profile officials who have left Trump's second-term administration, whether by resignation or firing, have been overwhelmingly women, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The latest is Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was pushed out as U.S. ambassador to Greece this week in an ouster announced on live television during the new White House press secretary's first briefing.
Guilfoyle was asked to step down after The Wall Street Journal reported she had asked a donor to cover a $100,000 American Express bill ahead of her confirmation vote, an allegation she denies. Trump said Tuesday that while she "was doing a good job," he "didn't like what I read." He also distanced himself from the former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., telling reporters, "She wasn't a member of my family."
Her exit follows a spring shakeup in which four of Trump's eight female cabinet-level officials resigned or were fired over roughly three months. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were all replaced by men.
Meanwhile, several of Trump's male appointees have weathered controversies of their own. FBI Director Kash Patel has faced allegations of excessive drinking and misuse of a government plane, which he denies. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared in Justice Department files as a visitor to Jeffrey Epstein's private island, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared secret war plans in a private messaging chat that included a journalist.
Even former national security adviser Mike Waltz, who added that journalist to the chat, landed softly as ambassador to the United Nations, a post Trump had promised to Elise Stefanik, The Times noted.
"I've never seen a situation where all of the first set of cabinet departures have been of one gender," Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a Brookings Institution fellow who has tracked administration diversity since the Reagan era, told The Times.
Trump critics have noticed too. "Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said after Bondi and Noem left. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) wrote on social media that Trump "will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men."
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pushed back, saying the president "judges individuals on merit and qualifications, not immutable characteristics."
Four women now remain in cabinet-level posts, a far cry from Trump's boast last year that he had more women in his cabinet than any Republican president in history, The Times noted.