The 19th Amendment Is in the Crosshairs
Look Out- It's On The Way
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
— 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified August 18, 1920.
The 19th Amendment is not untouchable.
A coordinated movement of political operatives, religious extremists, and cultural influencers is working — out loud and in the open — to strip women of the right to vote.
It’s the same playbook used to roll back reproductive rights , the same authoritarian logic that has erased women’s freedoms around the world.
And it’s happening here, now, with names, faces, and timelines.
Act 1:
In October 2024, Project 2025 insider and former Trump staffer John McEntee said plainly in an interview, “The 19th might have to go.” He spelled out M-A-L-E to emphasize he meant male-only voting.
This wasn’t an offhand remark from a fringe commentator.
McEntee served as Trump’s Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, where he had sweeping control over political appointments and removals.
After Trump’s first term, he became a lead architect of Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 900-page blueprint to:
Centralize presidential power
Purge the civil service
Remake federal agencies along “family values” lines
His statement wasn’t isolated.
It dovetails with Project 2025’s broader push to dismantle women’s rights in:
Policy
Law
Cultural norms
Whether it was meant as a trial balloon or a blunt declaration, it signaled that eliminating women’s suffrage was no longer a taboo topic in mainstream right-wing politics.
Within months, that signal was amplified at the highest levels of government. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — the most powerful uniformed civilian in the U.S. military chain of command — publicly shared a video of pastors calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, giving the idea reach and legitimacy that a single operative never could.
They’re Saying It Out Loud
In August 2025, Hegseth reposted a CNN video featuring pastors from the Christian nationalist Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), declaring that women should not be allowed to vote. (Embedded at the start of this article.)
Pastor Jared Longshore flatly stated, “I would support repealing the 19th Amendment” .
Doug Wilson, CREC’s most prominent leader, mused that women are “the kind of people that people come out of” , and a congregant affirmed she “submits” to her husband.
A Pentagon spokesperson has confirmed Hegseth’s close connection to Doug Wilson, noting that he attends services where Wilson himself preaches .
This is direct participation in a movement that openly advocates ending women’s suffrage.
Cultural Propaganda:
The “Trad Wife” Pipeline
The political assault on the 19th Amendment is reinforced by a cultural rebrand of 1950s-style domesticity, dressed up as “female empowerment.”
The so-called “trad wife” movement romanticizes a hyper-domestic, submissive role for women, portraying it as morally superior and “anti-modern feminism” — a worldview pushed by right-wing influencers, Christian nationalist groups, and lifestyle brands that know how to package patriarchy as Pinterest-perfect content. As The Guardian reports, these influencers often present “a filtered, idealized life of domestic servitude” and frame it as the solution to modern dissatisfaction, while promoting obedience to male authority as part of God’s order .
The movement has been carefully aestheticized. Rolling Stone describes new trad wife influencers as “selling right-wing extremism with a smile” — blending soft-focus kitchen scenes and gingham dresses with content that echoes white nationalist talking points about women’s “natural roles” . This packaging makes hardline anti-feminism palatable to audiences who might reject it in its raw, political form.
I saw it firsthand. I accidentally walked into what I thought was a generic “girl empowerment” event — the branding was big, bright, and screaming JoJo is Back with Us. That’s JoJo Siwa — once a symbol of glitter-bombed individuality — now recast as a poster child for trad wife values that would probably make Gloria Steinem pull her hair out.
Influencer-driven campaigns like these reach girls long before they’re politically engaged, priming them to see “submission” as aspirational. By the time these girls hit voting age, they’ve been steeped in a worldview where giving up rights feels like “choosing a better life.”
The Amendment They Want to Gut
The 19th Amendment’s guarantee of voting rights for women is clear — and yet, it’s under direct, coordinated attack.
We’ve already watched it happen to women’s bodily autonomy with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Now the same machinery is aimed at the ballot box.
This isn’t just about “weakening” the 19th.
Influential voices in government and the religious right are openly calling for taking away women’s right to vote altogether.
The theology behind it comes straight out of authoritarian patriarchal movements like the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and Doug Wilson’s Christ Church — which teach that the man is the head of the household and the only one who should cast the vote “for the family.”
That belief has been echoed not just from pulpits, but by sitting political figures. Senator J.D. Vance has nodded to “household voting” as an ideal . Pete Hegseth attends services where Wilson himself preaches, while publicly amplifying pastors who declare the 19th Amendment should be repealed .
And this is not a uniquely American danger — it’s the same authoritarian script that’s played out across the globe.
It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan: first, restrict girls’ education, then remove women from public life entirely.
It’s what Boko Haram echoed in Nigeria, summed up in their name: “Western education is forbidden”.
It’s what nearly killed Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head at 15 for daring to go to school.
These are the same forces at work here, dressed in red, white, and blue instead of black and white banners.
Project 2025: The Playbook
Released in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 (Mandate for Leadership 2025) is a nearly 900-page blueprint for consolidating executive power and remaking federal governance . It lays out a path to:
Centralize authority under the president
Purge career civil servants for political loyalists
Reshape agencies to advance “family values” — code for white, Christian, patriarchal priorities
By Day 1 of Trump’s second presidency, two-thirds of his executive orders mirrored Project 2025’s proposals , many targeting women’s rights in healthcare, education, and workplace protections.
Project Esther: The Companion Offensive
Launched in October 2024 by the Heritage Foundation, Project Esther is billed as a “National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism”.
But in practice, it has operated as a political weapon — used to suppress pro-Palestinian advocacy, censor dissent, and strip legitimacy from activist movements that don’t align with the administration’s ideology .
What’s often left out of the headlines is how Project Esther intersects with the rollback of women’s rights.
Women — especially young women, women of color, and women in academia — have historically led anti-war movements, organized campus protests, and mobilized grassroots political change.
From the suffragists opposing World War I to the women’s contingent of the Civil Rights Movement to the anti-Vietnam War protests, women have been the logistical backbone of major social shifts.
By targeting the very spaces where women have political influence — student groups, campus organizing hubs, protest networks — Project Esther doesn’t just silence one policy position. It strategically disarms a historically effective pipeline for women’s political leadership.
The framing is deliberate.
Under Project Esther, women student leaders and faculty activists are disproportionately subject to investigation, monitoring, and even visa denials if they are foreign nationals.
Federal grant recipients risk losing funding for perceived “non-compliance” with this new ideological standard, creating a chilling effect that pushes women out of leadership roles in advocacy groups and forces them to self-censor.
It’s not an accident that Project Esther emerged alongside Project 2025’s domestic restructuring plan. Together, they form a one-two punch:
Project 2025 reshapes the federal government to be explicitly patriarchal in policy.
Project Esther suppresses the grassroots and academic organizing where women have traditionally built political power.
Stripping women’s influence from the bottom up while locking them out from the top down is how you erase their political agency without ever formally “repealing” the 19th Amendment.
The Creep
The sequence is clear:
Float the idea — McEntee publicly suggests repeal .
Normalize the rhetoric — Hegseth broadcasts pastors saying it outright .
Reframe dissent — Activism reframed as unpatriotic or extremist (Project Esther) .
Market submission — Trad wife branding makes anti-feminism look aspirational .
Change the rules — Voter roll purges, gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws.
Hollow out the right — No repeal needed; access collapses through targeted suppression.
The Call.
The push to dismantle the 19th Amendment is not hypothetical.
It’s being preached from pulpits, strategized in think tanks, and sold on Instagram.
The goal is simple: remove women from public life, both politically and culturally, and consolidate power into the hands of a patriarchal elite.
If we want to keep the right to vote — and the ability to choose our own representatives — we have to fight for it now, while we still can:
Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment
Strengthen federal voting rights protections
Teach girls early that empowerment means more choice, not less
They’re not whispering about this anymore.
They’re saying it in the open, smiling for the cameras, and counting on us to dismiss it as fringe noise.
History — here and abroad — tells us exactly where that leads.
And we’re already on the path.
Bibliography
People Magazine. “Trump Official Turned Project 2025 Leader Draws Backlash for Joking He Wants Male-Only Voting.” 2024.
Vanity Fair. “Project 2025 Is Here.” 2023.
The Guardian. “Pete Hegseth Posts Video of Pastors Calling for Repeal of 19th Amendment.” 2025.
Vanity Fair. “Pete Hegseth Reposts Controversial Pastor Comments About Women and Voting.” 2025.
The Guardian. “Pentagon Confirms Hegseth’s Attendance at Doug Wilson’s Church.” 2025.
The Guardian. “‘Tradwives’ Tell Women to Embrace Subservience. Their Hashtag Is Growing.” April 2023.
Rolling Stone. “The New ‘Tradwife’ Influencers Are Selling Right-Wing Extremism with a Smile.” 2023.
Institute in Basic Life Principles. “Family Roles Teaching Materials.”
Public Statements by Sen. J.D. Vance on Household Voting.
Human Rights Watch. “Afghanistan: Taliban Policies Deprive Women and Girls of Basic Rights.”
BBC News. “Who Are Boko Haram?” 2016.
Malala Yousafzai. I Am Malala. 2013.
Project 2025 Observer. “Tracking Implementation of Project 2025.” 2025.
Jewish Voice for Peace. “What’s Project Esther?” 2024.
Brennan Center for Justice. “The Fight to Protect Voting Rights After Shelby County v. Holder.”
UN Women. “Global Trends in Women’s Rights Rollbacks.”
Them.us. “‘Protect Us’: Young People Urge Biden to Add Women and LGBTQ+ People to the Constitution.”