Defense Secretary Pete HegsethNathan Howard/AP
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a fan of a Christian nationalist pastor who believes women should no longer be allowed to vote.
On Thursday, Hegseth, who oversees the US military, reposted a CNN video on the social media site X about Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. The video notes that Wilson views women as subservient to men and says that in his ideal Christian society, they would not be able to cast ballots.
Hegseth, according to the clip, is one of Wilson’s parishioners. He “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday when asked about the secretary’s repost.
Another pastor interviewed in the video said he would support repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. A third said he would like for voting to be conducted as “households,” with the man casting the ballot. In the video, Hegseth is shown attending a service at a church affiliated with Wilson.
The defense secretary’s views on women’s political rights have made news in the past. In January, ahead of his confirmation hearing, Hegseth’s ex-sister-in-law filed an affidavit alleging that Hegseth said “women should not have the right to vote” and “should not work.” (The affidavit also alleged Hegseth once “got very drunk” and “repeatedly shouted ‘No means yes!’” An attorney for Hegseth denied the allegations, according to NBC.) During the confirmation hearing, Hegseth was asked about comments he’d made in 2024 stating that women should not be allowed to serve in military combat roles; he walked that stance back and said he would not ban them from fighting if confirmed. (In the CNN video, Pastor Wilson, a veteran, shares that he does not believe women should hold certain leadership positions in the military.)
The defense secretary, of course, is not the only Trump supporter to have suggested that important work like voting is better left to men. In 2024, John McEntee, a senior adviser for Project 2025 and Trump’s former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, shared a video of himself joking that “the 19th might have to go.” “So I guess they misunderstood when we said we wanted mail-only voting. We meant male—M-A-L-E,” he says before smiling. In 2022, CNN reported that a Michigan candidate for the US House who was backed by Trump made comments in the 2000s praising a group that argued women’s suffrage turned the United States into “a totalitarian state.” (A spokesperson for the candidate, John Gibbs, said he did not actually hold those beliefs and had been merely trying “to provoke the left.”)
These “jokes” and casual comments could have serious consequences. In April, the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship with documents like a birth certificate or a US passport. Critics worry the change, if passed by the Senate, would block many married women from voting—because tens of millions of women don’t have birth certificates that match the surnames they adopted from their spouses, and more than half of Americans don’t have a passport. “This voter suppression bill will disenfranchise millions of voters, especially married women,” warned Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota in a social media post in April.
Where does Trump stand on all this? He hasn’t commented on Hegseth’s recent social media activity yet, but he backs the SAVE Act. And when he celebrated the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 2020, he couldn’t help but sneak in a few patronizing comments, referring to one of the women next to him as “honey” and inviting another to share her views on voting rights—only to qualify the invitation: “Do you have an opinion on it?” he asked Cleta Mitchell, an attorney and former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. “And if it’s not my opinion,” he joked before she could fully respond, “please don’t say it.”