If the polls are correct, Republicans are set for a shellacking in the Nov. 3 midterms, losing the House and quite possibly the Senate, and likely some prominent governorships across the country. If that happens, there’s a good chance that online chatter about repealing the 19th Amendment will heat up once again.

For a decade now, MAGA social media users have been aggrieved at the way women vote for Democrats at higher rates then men, such as in 2024, when 53% of women voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, who received 55% of the male vote. Their solution to this imbalance began in 2016 as a trolling hashtag on what was then called Twitter: #RepealThe19th, a reference to the constitutional amendment, ratified in 1920, that extended suffrage to all women in theory, but mostly white women in practice. The hashtag has faded since then, but not because of a lack of interest. The idea has morphed from a joke into a serious proposal that is making its way from fringe Christian right circles into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Douglas Wilson, a prominent Christian nationalist who lead the church Pete Hegseth belongs to, has grown increasingly loud in his calls to replace individual voting with “household voting,” where only heads of households, who are presumably male, would be able to vote. The defense secretary has praised Wilson for a CNN interview he gave in which he outlined his vision of a Christian theocracy that disenfranchises women. Other prominent pastors with large online followings, such as Dale Partridge and Joel Webbon, both in Texas, have explicitly denounced the 19th Amendment. 

Ending women’s suffrage is a hot topic among the right’s youngest leaders. Earlier this year, Kai Schwemmer, the political director of College Republicans of America and one of the many young leaders angling to be the new Charlie Kirk, called for the end of women’s suffrage. On his Daily Wire podcast, conservative commentator Michael Knowles hosted a panel of young women and spent an hour justifying the arguments for repealing the amendment. White nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who has a large audience of young men, routinely calls for the end of women’s voting rights. 

Most alarmingly, Turning Point USA, which is among the most well-funded and popular conservative organizations in the country, is now routinely platforming opponents of women’s suffrage. Along with Schwemmer, the organization recently booked the Christian nationalist pastor and podcaster Joshua Haymes, who argues that women voting undermines the family, for their new “Pick Up The Mic” tour.  Commentator Andrew Wilson, who frequently goes viral by arguing that women should lose the vote, has also been representing TPUSA in podcast interviews. Alex Clarke, the host of TPUSA’s most popular women’s show, has platformed guests who oppose women’s suffrage, including one who argued it was a “net negative” for society. Savanna Stone, a popular MAGA influencer who opposes women’s suffrage, spoke at this year’s TPUSA Women’s Leadership Summit, a name whose irony gets worse by the year. Multiple attendees of the conference told the CBC that they would be happy to lose their right to vote. 

“Conversation over whether women should vote used to be limited to some of the most extreme and patriarchal churches,” said Sarah Stankorb, a journalist, expert in women and religion, and author of “Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion.” She told Salon that it’s “no coincidence” that ideas once on the fringes of the Christian right “keep popping up in public discourse.”

Stankorb noted that Christian nationalists are taking “partisan polarization” to a place where “denying the basic rights of half the population not only comes off as a debatable point, but one with theological backing.” 

“All at once, patriarchal men share think-pieces on walking back the 19th, while perched casually in leather chairs, normalizing the conversation as if it’s simply academic, reasonable even,” she said. Stankorb is worried that the constant social media repetition means the shock has “dulled over time,” putting the once unthinkable “in the realm of ‘normal.'”

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To be certain, it’s extremely unlikely that Christian nationalists will be able to repeal the 19th Amendment, which would require passing and ratifying a new amendment. There is precedent for this; after the 18th Amendment, which banned the sale of alcohol, was ratified, it took another amendment, the 21st, to overturn Prohibition. The process would require a joint resolution approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate or a constitutional convention, followed by approval of three-fourths, or 38 out of 50, states

As extreme as the GOP has gotten, it’s hard to imagine that the party — which has 11 sitting female Senators — would go that far, or be able to win big enough majorities in Congress, if they even considered it. After all, it took a century of feminist organizing to get male leaders to even let women vote, and it would be a lot harder to take the right away since over half the electorate is female. 

In all likelihood, most of the MAGA pundits and pastors who are pushing to end women’s suffrage know full well it will never happen. But their musings shouldn’t be dismissed as nothing more than attention-seeking behavior. The larger goal here is to normalize the idea that women’s citizenship isn’t legitimate and to instill the idea that women should feel lucky to be “allowed” even the few rights they have. In fact, this notion is similar to the way that leaders like Vice President JD Vance insist people of color should be “grateful” for having rights at all, words which carry the implication that the way to prove their gratitude is by not demanding full equality. 

Wilson made the underlying threat explicit in April. “Women have to appeal to men for the rights,” he told Konstantin Kisin, a right-wing British political commentator. “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.” Wilson continued to argue that there will no end to male dominance, because if women push their luck too far, it will be the end of male “benevolence” in letting women have any rights at all. His diatribe shows the goal of the anti-suffrage argument: to scare women off seeking full equality, or even trying to claw back rights they do have.

While the 19th Amendment is unlikely to be repealed, it’s important to note that other rights that were long assumed to be safe have been stripped from women in the MAGA era. The right to abortion, which was for decades widely assumed to be untouchable, was overturned by a far-right Supreme Court in 2022. Because of women’s outrage — and suffrage — many red states restored abortion rights through ballot measures, which angered the right and amplified calls to take away women’s votes.

The assumption that the justice system will protect women and children from sexual violence has also been under assault in recent years with actions that range from the Trump administration blocking the release of the Epstein files to the attacks on the Cornell student whose only “crime” was reporting an alleged gang rape. Then there is the recent ad run by Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, which features the estranged mother of Dr. Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent. In 1978, after Acton reported that she had been raped by her stepfather, her mother sided with her husband, and the pair fled the state following his arrest and before he could stand trial.

All these incursions on women’s rights are easier to sell to a public that has normalized the idea that women aren’t full citizens — that their ability to vote is a privilege that can be snatched away, and suffrage is only a right for men. The voting rights issue is used as a rhetorical cudgel against women, designed to delegitimize their opinions by suggesting they aren’t even real citizens. It’s about scaring women into thinking that if they “abuse” their vote by demanding full equality, they will be left with no rights at all. 

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Pete Hegseth is odd. This isn’t just a personal opinion, though there’s no doubt that he gets widely mocked for his carefully cultivated public persona, which is a mix of megachurch preacher, gym rat and Robert Duvall’s napalm-huffing character in “Apocalypse Now.” The fact that the defense secretary is different is simply a statistical reality.

It’s not just that he’s a white evangelical Christian, a group that, according to PRRI, makes up only 13% of the population. Hegseth’s church, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, is extreme even for the right, with a leader who argues against women’s suffrage and teaches that slavery was the height of “mutual intimacy and harmony” between the races. Even within MAGA, those remain fringe positions, despite great efforts by some Christian nationalists to reignite “debate” on such long-resolved issues. 

All this means it’s hard not to laugh when Hegseth pontificates about his hatred of “weirdos.” Although he has a war to fight in Iran, somehow he finds time to focus his attention on what he clearly sees as the greater battle: remaking the military according to the demands of his very white, very male, very right-wing vision.

“No fatties, no t******s, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” Hegseth said during a Sept. 30 speech at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. He didn’t explicitly say “no women,” but his kicker — “with testosterone testing on top” — made the implication plain. The “no beardos” demand may seem strange, but as Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times explained, it’s coded racism. Hegseth ended medical exemptions that allowed beards for people, mostly Black men, with certain skin conditions. This may explain why he has no problem when white men have beards, as seen on his church leader, Doug Wilson, or the many celebrities the defense secretary likes to take photos with. (Hegseth himself sported a beard in 2018.) 

“Wimps,” “radicals” and “weirdos” are more ambiguous pejoratives, but Hegseth’s recent actions suggest his definitions are expansive enough to cover the vast majority of Americans. He’s been on a firing spree, demanding a 20% cut of the Pentagon’s top brass in an apparent effort to expunge those he deems “woke.” The move comes after nearly two years of blocking promotions for and pushing out Black and female military leaders. Hegseth also rewrote the list of religions recognized by the Pentagon, narrowing from over 200 faith categorizations to a mere 31 — 22 of which are Christian. He claims this is to simplify the bureaucracy, but his motives are likely more disturbing: to stigmatize non-Christians and restrict the definition of “Christian.” The Air Force is already forcing service members to register their religious beliefs under the truncated list, drawing criticism from atheists and others whose belief systems are not included as options. 

Last week, Hegseth upped the ante by announcing the formation of the Office of Religious Affairs “to strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters.” Despite boilerplate claims that this action will not “compel religious participation” or “diminish the free exercise rights” of service members, both the policies and pomp surrounding the announcement made it clear that the goal is to promote Hegseth’s version of Christianity — and shame anyone who does not adhere to it. The office will be run by the defense secretary himself and, in ominous language, promises to fund “research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness,” which sounds like a data-gathering operation to ensure troops meet Hegseth’s esoteric views on proper religious practice. 

“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God,” Hegseth said in his announcement, using language from the Book of Ephesians that will be sure to resonate with Christian evangelicals. 

Taken together, this purge helps clarify what Hegseth means when he’s talking about “weirdos” and “wimps,” as well as other slurs like “t******s.” He’s hostile to women, the LGBTQ+ community, people of color and anyone who doesn’t adhere to his vision of conservative Christianity — although it’s worth noting that with his message of peace and love, Jesus Christ himself would not be accepted by Hegseth as a Christian.

The secretary may have gone to Princeton University, but he hasn’t yet grasped the concept of irony. The people he deems “weirdos” far outnumber those in his narrow category, presumably of non-weirdos, many times over. 

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Hegseth has tried to justify his position and rhetoric by arguing that a proper military should only contain “the real 1%” of supposedly superior people. But as Eliot Cohen of The Atlantic notes, this claim is ignorant of history. You need large numbers to win wars, which inherently means that armies can’t be elitist institutions.

Hegseth has a real math problem on his hands. His “real 1%” of alleged non-weirdos is just not enough people to staff a modern military, especially in times of war. His solution appears to be to hit the road, trying to recruit more mini-Hegseths to enlist. On Sept. 19 he embarked on the Send Me Tour in an effort to reach out to people in white evangelical-heavy parts of the country with a Bible-heavy pitch about how Jesus wants them to fight for their country. Both the tour’s name and the secretary’s stump speech rely heavily on Isaiah 6:8; Hegseth equates God’s call to the prophet to be faithful with his own plea for evangelicals to join the military.

In a response video, Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat from Georgia who is also an ordained minister with multiple theology degrees, didn’t mince his words. “Pete Hegseth is busy twisting the scriptures yet again . . . When Isaiah answers that call, it is not a call to go into battle.” Instead, Warnock said, “Isaiah challenges corruption” and “those who would crush the poor.”

Those objectives, of course, are not remotely Hegseth’s. His creation of a hierarchy that places white, straight men at the top and relegates everyone else into an underclass of “weirdos” and “wimps” ignores the Bible’s historical context — and actual meaning. Anyone who doubts that can simply examine his behavior in office and his monomaniacal focus on sorting America’s service members into a worthy-unworthy dichotomy, based solely on how much they adhere to his own self-serving ideals of what a soldier should look like.

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