MAGA is 'showing increasing interest in bringing Republican women to heel': columnist

The war on women has new momentum now that MAGA is back in power, and it could ultimately lead to American women losing the right to vote, argued a senior writer at Salon.

Amanda Marcotte wrote in Wednesday's piece that Donald Trump's success in repealing Roe — the landmark 1973 decision that gave women automony over their own bodies — has emboldened right-wing factions looking to strip women of even more rights.

Marcotte posited that "many on the right feel they no longer need to hide the naked sexism fueling their movement or put up with the annoyance of women in even token leadership positions," now that Trump is once again in charge.

"Forty-five percent of female voters backed Trump in 2024, despite his overt misogyny," Marcotte wrote. "Most, no doubt, believed that complicity would protect them and that the attacks would be centered on other women. But while the GOP certainly wants to strip liberal and feminist women of their rights, male MAGA leaders are showing increasing interest in bringing Republican women to heel, both culturally and through the force of law."

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Trump, who now calls himself a Christian, has fallen under the influence of evangelical leaders who bend his ear on "morality issues" that could now progress to the 19th Amendment, Marcotte wrote.

One prominent leader, Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon and his band of right-wing "TheoBros" have been "clamoring more loudly in recent months about their wish to strip women, especially their own wives, of the right to vote," Marcotte wrote, because they consider women to be akin to children who require a man's protection.

The signs may be subtle, but they are there, argued Marcotte.

"House Republicans passed a bill (now stalled in the Senate) this session to require citizens to have a passport or birth certificate matching their name to vote," she writes. "This would be a back-door ban on voting for any woman who took her husband's last name and doesn't have a passport, an estimated 69 million women."

Marcotte concluded, "Republican women are fools if they think that treatment will only be reserved for Democratic women. On the contrary, because Republican women tend to be in closer proximity to Republican men, they're far more likely to be on the receiving end of anger over talkback or other perceived insubordination."

Read the Salon article here.