The US right has a grand plan to remove the vote from women

When I first saw online rumblings that women’s right to vote was being called into question in the US, I assumed the manosphere was having a slow day and that it was an outrageous fringe idea to be laughed off. After all, the 19th Amendment, assuring women’s suffrage, was ratified in 1920.

It certainly wasn’t straightforward for all: Native American women weren’t even classed as citizens until 1924 and the Jim Crow laws blocked Black women from voting until the 1960s, and there is still voter suppression to this day.

However, even the most fiercely anti-feminist forces haven’t openly questioned women having the vote in my lifetime, because no one can remember a time when it wasn’t normal. That particular Overton window was closed and bolted. But recently, someone has been picking the lock.

I host The Guilty Feminist podcast, and at a live show in London a few years ago, an admittedly uncharacteristic audience member collared me in the theatre lobby and told me very earnestly that she thought women shouldn’t have the vote – because we were “too emotional”. That was my first alarm bell.

Since then, the manosphere – the online anti-women lobby – has become inflamed in ways I could not have imagined and Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court ruling ensuring the right to an abortion at a federal level, has been overturned. The times they are a-changing.

In response, I am producing a series of episodes entitled “The Road to Gilead”, referencing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel (and hit TV adaptation) The Handmaid’s Tale. Gilead is a fictitious version of the United States where men are in charge and women are subjugated as obedient wives, enslaved baby factories, sex workers and indentured servants. It sounds horrifying, but it seems more possible this year than last and far more plausible than it did 10 years ago.

Project 2025, published in 2023 by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, is an initiative setting out plans for the right to consolidate executive power. Its policy document, “Mandate for Leadership”, urges the replacement of federal workers with those loyal to “the next conservative president”, and calls for control to be taken of key government agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, in a partisan way.

It also sets out plans to dismantle the Department of Education, and recommends the arrest and mass deportation of immigrants, including the use of armed forces for domestic law enforcement. It recommends cutting the federal Medicare and Medicaid health programmes; removing legal protections against anti-LGBTQ discrimination; and ending DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programmes.

It proposes enacting laws supported by the ultra-conservative Christian right, such as criminalising the mailing of abortion and birth control medications.

While Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, you may have noticed that much of this is being actioned now.

Part of this new political climate includes the visibility of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which counts more than 160 congregations across North America, Europe, Asia and South America. Their most recent outpost was planted strategically in Washington DC under the leadership of pastor Doug Wilson. While they are not directly connected to Project 2025, many of their aims align neatly with it.

Wilson claims the church moved to the federal capital not so he can meet power brokers – but “so they can meet God”. On primetime television, CREC spokespeople have argued for overturning the 19th Amendment of the US constituion and restoring voting rights “back to the household”. They claim suffrage for women has eroded family values, and that the man, as head, should decide the family vote – after consulting with his wife. They claim they have no problem with a woman having the vote, as long as she’s the head of the household.

A few years ago, this whole discussion would have been seen as ludicrous and relegated to threads on niche Reddit forums. Now CNN is reporting on Christian nationalist pastors and their wives. Why? Because it’s being taken seriously by very powerful people within the United States government.

Pete Hegseth, Donald’s Trump’s Secretary of War (formerly Defence), shared a CNN report on X in which CREC members declared that the 19th Amendment should be overturned in favour of “household suffrage”. Hegseth went further and endorsed the video with the motto, “All of Christ for all of life,” which is CREC’s official slogan.

CNN confirmed that Hegseth and his family attended the inaugural service at Wilson’s new DC church. The 19th, a non-profit news website covering gender and politics, reported that chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave them a statement saying: “The Secretary [Hegseth] is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation [sic] of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which was founded by Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

No one is suggesting that women will lose the vote this year or next. But that’s not how this kind of campaign works. They will not stridently demand action, but rather slowly shift the cultural Overton window, until ideas which once seemed foreign and bizarre seem familiar and reasonable. The first step is cultural normalisation: putting the idea in circulation – in living rooms, social-media threads, and church pews – so that it becomes thinkable.

Arwa Mahdawi has pointed out in The Guardian that tech billionaire and major Republican donor Peter Thiel, and tech almost-trillionaire and former government adviser Elon Musk, have both flirted obliquely with the idea of women’s suffrage being a mistake. She adds: “Musk, Thiel and Hegseth are some of the most powerful people in the world: when they hint that they are interested in getting rid of women’s suffrage, we should take them very seriously indeed.” I agree with her.

If the “household vote” concept gains traction – and if future state legislatures or courts begin to define suffrage in terms of family units rather than individuals – women’s political agency could be undermined not by a single landmark decision, but by a series of incremental laws and interpretations. And once that idea gains currency in the United States, and is talked about in English-language media, it seems inevitable that the same door will crack open, allowing activists to continue the same subtle tactics in this country.

Political players need to shift ideas within the Overton window from unthinkable, to radical, to acceptable, to sensible, to popular, before they can be made policy. Last year, women losing the vote was unthinkable. This year it’s radical. In some online outposts and in-person rallies and church services, it is becoming acceptable. Because the internet is our global debating chamber and the USA and UK are so culturally and politically connected, my prediction is it will be debated here on GB News quite soon.

I am hoping the wider media do not push it from radical to acceptable by allowing it to be debated “for balance” in prime time, mainstream positions. We must keep it unthinkable at best and radical at worst.

To date, campaigners in America are not overtly proposing a repeal of the 19th Amendment. A constitutional amendment is a high bar, and the legal and procedural obstacles remain steep. But history shows that what looks impossible can happen. When discussing the demise of Roe v Wade, legal experts told me its repeal was “absolutely impossible” only two years before it fell. That Overton window was flung wide open and an icy draught blew in.

All of this has emboldened the forces of Christian nationalism in the UK. I interviewed two investigative reporters for an upcoming episode of The Guilty Feminist Podcast/Road to Gilead series. Jane Bradley and Elizabeth Dias recently broke a story for The New York Times about the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal advocacy group who were instrumental in overturning Roe v Wade.

Bradley says: “The ADF’s British arm has positioned itself as a power broker between Maga Republicans and Britain’s rising populist movement – specifically and most influentially with Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party.” Since then the White House has released a new vision for Europe that seems to concur with those findings.

In fact, The Telegraph reported this week that “the President of the European Council has warned Trump not to meddle in Europe’s politics after the White House threatened to use populist parties to cultivate ‘resistance’ to Brussels,” adding, “the parties are not named but are likely to include Eurosceptic, right-wing parties such as Reform UK.”

At the same time, Reform has recently appointed ultra-conservative Christian theologian Professor James Orr (who is anti-abortion in even the most extreme scenarios) as a senior advisor to Farage. Orr is influential in the Maga movement and JD Vance has described him as his “British Sherpa”. It is also important to note that Farage has recently described allowing abortions up to 24 weeks as “utterly ludicrous”.

We might not be debating the household vote here – yet. But many of the same voices who champion traditional gender roles, oppose bodily autonomy, or favour “family values” over individual rights already have platforms.

On the road to Gilead, the first signpost isn’t a landmark ruling. It’s a quiet conversation in a church basement. It’s a campaign shared on social media. It’s ideas dropped in YouTube videos with millions of hits. It’s a moment when someone says: “Maybe women shouldn’t vote,” and it doesn’t get laughed off. If you believe democracy means that each of us has a voice – the right to vote, choose, speak, dissent – now is the time to guard it.

Deborah Frances-White is a comedian, author, screenwriter. and host of podcast The Guilty Feminist. A Road to Gilead open-space discussion and action day will be held on 17 January in London. Email [email protected] to enquire about places.