Trump supporters Deana Hurd (left) and Sharon Hurd traveled to Washington from Tennessee to attend the inauguration, Jan. 20, 2017. (Photo: Yahya Ahmed - VOA Kurdish service)
Over the years, right-wing firebrand author Ann Coulter argued, on various occasions, that the United States needs to "reconsider women's suffrage." And during Trump's second presidency, however, an increasing number of Christian nationalists and MAGA influencers are flat-out calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which, in 1920, gave women nationwide the right to vote.
Dale Patridge, a far-right evangelical Christian nationalist pastor, said, "I think we should repeal the 19th Amendment because I love America." Manosphere influencer Andrew Tate called for the U.S. to "stop letting women vote," and anti-feminist Hanna Pearl Davis repeatedly calls for women to lose their voting rights. Another opponent of women's suffrage is Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson, an ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In a column published on December 4, The Guardian's Moira Donegan warns that the movement to repeal the 19th Amendment is quite real among Christian nationalists and MAGA Republicans.
"More and more," the progressive observes, "influential voices in the MAGA movement and the far-right Republican Party are calling to strip women of the franchise. It's not that this is strictly a new development. Opposition to women's voting rights has long been a fringe, but persistent, feature of the American right. It's been a favorite hobby horse of extremist preachers; it trended among Trump supporters on social media in the lead-up to the 2016 election, when polls showed that Trump would win if only men voted."
Since 1920, Donegan notes, "opposition to women's right to vote" has "simmered at the extreme edges of political opinion." But increasingly, she emphasizes, MAGA figures are saying the quiet part out loud in 2025.
"Joel Webbon, a pastor and YouTube personality, has been at the forefront of this brand of misogynist Christian reaction….. The opponents of women's suffrage have, for now, no way of enacting their ambition: there is no path to repealing the 19th Amendment," Donegan warns. "But they are part of a growing movement to blame women's advancement — and their increased access, participation and visibility in education, the workforce, politics and public life — for a slew of social problems, from political polarization to economic stagnation to a vague sense of spiritual anomie…. This range of sexisms that have attained mainstream credibility in politics and the press rest on one assumption: that women's citizenship is partial and conditional compared with men's, that we have less of a claim on rights, dignity and public participation than our brothers do."
Donegan adds, "That this assumption is even held is an insult to women's dignity; that it is now so blithely accepted is a sign of how far women’s status has already sunk."
Moira Donegan's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.