MAGA’s crusade to yank women’s vote is no joke and it’s storming the mainstream: analysis

The push to strip women of the right to vote has “morphed from a joke into a serious proposal” and is making its way into the Republican mainstream, with a pastor tied to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its loudest voices, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte warned Monday.

Marcotte wrote that Douglas Wilson, a prominent Christian nationalist whose Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches counts Hegseth as a member, has grown “increasingly loud” in calling for “household voting,” a system in which only heads of households, presumed to be male, would cast ballots.

The column comes just eight days before the Nov. 3 midterms and revives a controversy that first erupted in August 2025, when Hegseth reposted a CNN segment featuring Wilson and another pastor who endorsed household voting, with the husband casting the family’s ballot. Hegseth captioned the share, “All of Christ for All of Life,” and NPR reported that he “reposted and praised” the interview.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told NPR at the time that Hegseth “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

Wilson supports repealing the 19th Amendment, and women are banned from leadership positions in his church and not allowed to vote in congregational decisions, according to CNN. In February, Wilson delivered a sermon at a monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon that he said Hegseth invited him to give, CNN reported.

In an April interview with British commentator Konstantin Kisin, Wilson laid out his view, according to Salon.

“Women have to appeal to men for the rights,” Wilson said. “Anytime men want to take rights away from women, they can, like that. And there’s not a damn thing women can do about it.”

Marcotte argued that Wilson’s comments reveal the real aim of the anti-suffrage push, which she wrote is “to scare women off seeking full equality, or even trying to claw back rights they do have.”

She traced the idea to 2016, when #RepealThe19th began as “a trolling hashtag.” MAGA social media users, she wrote, have long been “aggrieved” that women vote for Democrats at higher rates than men. In 2024, 53% of women backed Kamala Harris, while Trump won 55% of men. The hashtag faded, but the idea “has morphed from a joke into a serious proposal,” moving from fringe Christian right circles “into the mainstream of the Republican Party,” Marcotte wrote.

She pointed to Texas pastors Dale Partridge and Joel Webbon, who she said have “explicitly denounced the 19th Amendment,” and to Kai Schwemmer, political director of College Republicans of America, who she wrote called for the end of women’s suffrage earlier this year.

Marcotte called it “most alarming” that Turning Point USA is “now routinely platforming opponents of women’s suffrage.” The group booked Christian nationalist pastor and podcaster Joshua Haymes, who she wrote argues that women voting undermines the family, for its new “Pick Up The Mic” tour. Haymes appeared at Middle Tennessee State University on Oct. 19, where he drew a large, heated crowd. A student group later demanded that the university disband its TPUSA chapter and ban Haymes from campus. The chapter responded that it “will not apologize, conform or regret hosting Mr. Haymes.”

Marcotte acknowledged that repealing the 19th Amendment is “extremely unlikely,” since it would require a new constitutional amendment approved by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by 38 states. But she argued the pundits and pastors pushing the idea shouldn’t be dismissed, writing that “the larger goal here is to normalize the idea that women’s citizenship isn’t legitimate.”

Sarah Stankorb, author of “Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion,” told Salon the shift is not an accident.

“Conversation over whether women should vote used to be limited to some of the most extreme and patriarchal churches,” she said, calling it “no coincidence” that fringe Christian right ideas “keep popping up in public discourse.”