At a meeting held in the tea room of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion/hotel where it was decided on November 11, 2024, that Pete Hegseth would be the next U.S. secretary of defense, the then president-elect offered two arguments he considered decisive. “Nobody has performed better on camera than that guy” was one. “He’s always treated me very well,” was the other.

Loyalty and telegenic appeal are two virtues the Republican president prizes. And at that meeting — the details of which await the reader of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, written by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times and revealing the inner workings of the current White House — Trump praised Hegseth’s campaign in defense of three veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan accused of war crimes. For the future president, those efforts proved why his administration needed a candidate at the Pentagon who was “willing to stick up for the tough guys.”

Last Wednesday, that man — a former Fox News morning host and a military veteran — went a step further in his plan to reshape the U.S. military around his vision of masculinity by announcing he will require soldiers over 30 to undergo annual testosterone testing; testing will be optional for those younger than that.

Concern about low levels of the male hormone among military personnel predates Hegseth and has been addressed by Congress from a medical standpoint: low testosterone can be a symptom of stress, and can cause loss of muscle mass and sexual desire, obesity, or erectile dysfunction, or be associated with more serious conditions such as diabetes, osteoporosis, or depression. The difference this time is that the secretary of defense made the announcement with the highest possible profile, in a solemn social media video that seemed scripted by the writers of Saturday Night Live, the comedy show in which his character, played by Colin Jost, is as recurring as it is successful.

With his self-confidence and fraternity-member manner, Hegseth often gives the impression that he does not mind being fodder for parody. He was mocked when, to demonstrate his committed adherence to Christian nationalism — the belief that the United States’ destiny is inexorably linked to the teachings of the Bible — he recited at a Pentagon religious service a passage he believed came from the Old Testament but that was actually a fictional monologue spoken by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. Or when he used press briefings on the progress of the offensive in Iran to speak voluptuously about the “pure destruction” he sought to unleash on the enemy and about the “violence” of war, which he called, in this case, “holy.”

A “feminized” military

His obsession with masculinity goes back further. In his 2024 memoir, The War on Warriors, he warns of the dangers of a “feminized” military; he refers to “Pentagon pussies” as the principal enemy because they prevent soldiers from acting with the full “lethality” at their disposal, and lays out the theory that would underpin his diversity-hostile program at the head of the Department of Defense (which he likes to call the Department of War, though he lacks the necessary congressional approval to do so).

“In their zeal to fight racism, generals provoke racial conflict,” Hegseth writes in the book. “By pushing gender equality, they weaken unit readiness. By trying to eradicate ‘extremism,’ they expel patriotic rank-and-file soldiers (like myself). By sheltering trans soldiers, commanders are forced to walk on eggshells instead of forming warriors. Killers.”

In the 15 months since he took office, he has had ample time to apply those ideas. After surviving a Senate confirmation that nearly collapsed amid accusations of sexual assault that he denies and coworker testimony about his fondness for alcohol, Hegseth has purged a significant number of senior officers and hindered military careers, especially those of women and Black men.

Last week, his week of testosterone, a new episode in that systematic campaign went largely unnoticed amid news that the secretary of defense blocked five officers — all women or people of nonwhite race — from being promoted to admiral. The decision means that, for the first time in over a decade, no woman will be promoted to admiral in the United States.

Although his animus also extends to certain men who do not fit his vision of what a soldier should be. The secretary has outlawed bellies, long hair, and facial hair, and declared war on trans service members. The latter has led many to point out the irony that the optional testosterone-replacement treatments he offers to troops found to have low levels closely resemble gender-affirming treatments used by trans men in the military.

A convert to Christianity, Hegseth is not only the secretary of defense who has done the most to politicize the institution; he has also infused it with an extreme evangelism. He has the Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest and “Deus Vult,” the crusaders’ battle cry in their holy wars against Muslims, tattooed on his right biceps. He has also instituted the practice of monthly prayer breakfasts at the Pentagon headquarters. And he has brought his pastor, a man named Doug Wilson — who argues that women should not have the right to vote and that suffrage should be decided at the family level (patriarchal, of course) — out of the margins.

With all those outbursts, and given the clearly limited success of the U.S. war in Iran, the question in Washington has often been when Trump would decide to remove him from the Cabinet, since after a year of relative calm in the White House the first purges have already begun (mainly targeting women: from Pam Bondi, attorney general, to Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard).

But Hegseth appears to still enjoy the boss’s favor, someone for whom what sufficed the day he chose him for the post seems to still be sufficient. For the president of the United States, an irresistible combination of loyalty, telegenic appeal and, now more than ever, testosterone.

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Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, will spend the remainder of his life behind bars. A federal court in Brooklyn announced this on Monday, July 20. Judge Brian Cogan confirmed a life sentence for one of the most bloodthirsty drug traffickers in history, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, who last year pleaded guilty to trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine over a period of decades. The sentence also requires Zambada to pay $15 billion in restitution for the damage he caused.

With this sentence, Zambada is in the same position as his former partner in crime, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is also imprisoned in the United States and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019. They are two of the most prominent Mexican drug traffickers of recent decades who led the Sinaloa Cartel in the country’s northwest.

El Mayo appeared before the court on Monday to hear a sentence he already knew would be imposed under the guilty plea deal he reached last year. He admitted to conspiracy to commit crimes and to running a criminal enterprise, charges that carry a mandatory life sentence. In return, he received a guarantee from the U.S. Department of Justice that it would not seek the death penalty.

Zambada was arrested in July 2024 along with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons, after their plane landed on a small airstrip in the state of New Mexico. Subsequently, Guzmán López pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges.

Frank Pérez, Zambada’s lawyer, said in a court filing submitted on July 6 that his client was fully aware he would receive a life sentence when he decided to accept responsibility for his crimes. Pérez asked Judge Cogan to recommend that the Federal Bureau of Prisons place El Mayo in a facility where he could receive appropriate medical care.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said the prisons suggested by Pérez might not have the infrastructure to manage the security risks Zambada poses, including the possibility that he could continue running cartel activities from behind bars. “Those security concerns will persist in the foreseeable future, as people loyal to the defendant continue to control the cartel,” the prosecutors wrote in a filing submitted on July 13.

El Mayo’s sentence threatens to strain relations between the governments of the United States and Mexico. President Claudia Sheinbaum has not hidden her displeasure over El Mayo’s arrest, an operation on Mexican soil in which the role played by various U.S. security agencies is not clear. Although U.S. authorities initially denied their involvement, it has gradually become clear that they did take part. A New Mexico museum recently displayed the plane the FBI brought across the border as part of the operation, which has opened another dispute between the two neighbors.

“The organization I headed encouraged corruption in my country by paying police officers, military commanders, and politicians who allowed us to operate freely,” Zambada said during last year’s hearing in which he admitted his guilt.

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To reach the hidden soundstages where Fallout is filmed, you have to leave Los Angeles (which is hardly a small city) far enough behind that you start to see open countryside. So much so that the studios call themselves The Ranch, with a faint Old West flavor and a sense of grandeur. They have both in spades: their vast grounds make the famed Stage 8 one of the largest shooting stages in the industry, at nearly 5,200 square meters. Fallout deserves no less: you need room to find shelter and comfort in its vaults, the bunkers where part of the action takes place.

Since Fallout premiered almost two and a half years ago, expectations have been high. The video game it’s based on was already a huge global hit, and the series was too: its first season made it the fifth most-watched series on streaming platforms in the United States. That’s why they went all out for the second season, and will continue to do so for the third, which is expected to premiere next year. Everything is being, and will be, filmed on this vast location that creates a world you can touch and feel, entirely realistic — or as realistic as a post-apocalyptic dystopia populated by androids and outlaws can be.

In the basements, as you’d expect, beneath Stage 8 north of Los Angeles, lies the world of Fallout, and there also are its stars: Ella Purnell (Lucy), Aaron Moten (Maximus) and Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, although on this June day he looked happier and smiled more than his character does. He spoke informally with EL PAÍS — invited on the tour by Prime Video — to praise Madrid, his favorite city, which he had just returned from and will visit again soon, he said, and to praise the work of the creators of this world: artisanal, hands-on and meticulous. He was talking from a corridor in one of the vaults, between an office and a dormitory, alongside Jonathan Nolan, the show’s executive producer, and Howard Cummings, a veteran production designer with some 50 titles to his name.

What those behind the Emmy-winning series explain is that fans always want to compare it to the video game, but they also want to know where the story is headed. “But our writers are very clever, because we’re not doing the actual game story,” Nolan says (yes, he is the brother of Christopher Nolan — acclaimed director of Oppenheimer and The Odyssey — with whom he regularly collaborates). Fans are the biggest supporters but also the toughest critics: if something doesn’t fit, they won’t hesitate to say so plainly. “I verify things, I don’t want to do something that doesn’t fit within their world, but they also give me great freedom to mix and match and do what I want,” Cummings adds.

One example: screws. A seemingly small detail. “I remember the first review that came out, it was like, they did the triangular bolts that are in the hallway,” recalls the production designer and the person responsible for the vault’s flawless look. “And I looked at them and thought, these are weird. But I just said, ‘it’s so weird, let’s just do it.’ So I found out later, they did that because when you’re building the game, it uses more memory to use a five-sided bolt than a double or a four-sided one. So they wanted a triangular bolt. I didn’t know that, I just did it. So there’s really fun things that I learned,” he admits.

During the visit, a few meters past the offices and the school classrooms, a deathclaw, a hideous monster over two meters tall, appears: in the Fallout universe it belongs to a species that’s a mix of highly capable soldiers and chameleons and other animals. Fast and deadly, viewers might assume they were created with visual effects — post-production — but they are there physically, with sharp claws, scales, and pointed teeth, taking photos with journalists. They are what are called animatronics, a kind of hyperreal puppet.

Obviously, they receive additions in post-production, where their movements are scanned and visual effects are added, the team explains. But for the most part they are controlled by technicians operating their arms and lower parts, like a giant puppet. “Basically, you can see that there’s a performer in the suit, those two puppeteers, and then another one kind of controlling the facial expressions that Carrie and her team at Legacy put together, [for] this amazing deathclaw, as well as the power armor suits, which are fully practical,” explains Casey O’Neill, stunt coordinator. Because, yes, there are many of them in the series. “We have stunt performers in those too, that do all the stuff, whether it be wire work, falling down, all the things you’ve seen in the episodes so far on season one and two. And then it’s just bringing those two things together: The realities of what this is capable of doing and then choreographing how that all works and what looks the most dynamic, obviously taken off the page, based on Gen’s [Geneva Robertson-Dworet, creator, also present on the visit] creative writing. Bringing the script to life and bringing action to the screen is the goal.

In a school classroom, young actress Ella Purnell and costume designer Dayna Pink told this newspaper they have only two or three months to create the garments for all the characters and that, above all, what matters to their team is “hoping to keep the spirit in everything that we do,” Pink says. Sometimes, for example, the challenge isn’t making many costumes but a single one: for the second season, there was only one dress for Purnell. “The pressure, you know what I mean?” she laughed. “It has to say everything is so important, this dress meant so much.” So she chose a classic cut, high-necked, one that evoked the era, and a striking yellow tone with careful embroidery. “Yellow won for several reasons. You know, it looked the best, but also I love that it’s sunshine; to me that was sort of perfect and then it had to also make her feel a certain way when she put it on. And that’s part of our job, when we’re putting an actor into an outfit, and then you zip someone into something, they stand a little differently, you put shoes on, they walk a little different.”

In fact, for this dress — although several options were tested — the team opted for boots. “It had to be the boots,” Purnell says. “But for me the dress really symbolizes just how much Lucy has changed; it slightly reminds me of her wedding in the first episode of season one. What great adventures she’s had.” The costume creator agrees and feels her work is fully integrated with storytelling.

In the end, as they explain, it’s about building “a collaborative, creative process that we all get to come together and create the sequence together,” sums up O’Neill, the head of stunt doubles. “We’ve been working together for so many years, that’s one of the other things that’s super gratifying,” he adds. For the actors, stepping into that world, sitting in those chairs, wearing those costumes, fighting those beasts — having it all be real — helps. Or putting on a robotic suit, like the T60, another classic of the series that’s not easy to handle, but is real. As Aaron Moten, who plays Maximus and has worn it, laughingly says, “people sort of move out of your way when you’re walking by in it.” “It does a lot for your imagination without having to work too hard for it,” he reflects. “I think it was like maybe three weeks before I was ever on set with a deathclaw; they brought me in look at it and even just being able to know that this is what I get to play with it’s so much better than a person on stilts with dots on their face.”