Older Women, Including Conservative Latinas, Are Saying “Not on My Watch” to Trump and Could Decide the Midterms

When William Congreve wrote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” at the end of the 18th century, I don’t think he realized that “scorned” would take on so many meanings throughout history. In the United States of America, three centuries later, the phrase still has the same power, but in a completely different context.

This year, women, specifically older women, could save the country. As Jennifer Weiss-Wolf explained in her article for Ms. Magazine, it is precisely women in midlife who have been most vocal and active in the political movement against the Trump administration.

And this movement is precisely what could change everything in November.

Older women had already begun to change their political views.

Before this nightmare became our new reality, women over 50, who have a high voter turnout rate, began to support Kamala Harris en masse. AARP polling in 2024 showed that women over 50 had moved more than any other group of voters, including younger women and men in the same age bracket, in Harris’s favor.

Today, there are 47 million women voters ages 50 and over, nearly 31% of all registered voters. In the 2024 election, more than a quarter (28%) of all voters were women age 50 and older, and nearly three in four (73%) of these women voters turned out. Moreover, they make up the largest bloc of swing voters.

The administration’s direct attack on women’s rights has made these women say, “Not on my watch.”

If 2025 has taught us anything, it is that Donald Trump is not in charge of the US government. It is the Heritage Foundation, the radical far-right think tank, that is setting the legislative agenda. One only needs to take a look at their new proposal, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” to see what they plan to do with women’s rights.

And considering that, in just one year, the government has implemented 50% of the Foundation’s Project 2025, we have no doubt that they are going for it. They want to control our bodies, our right to education, to work, to independence—rights that women over 50 not only fought for, but also remember perfectly well what life without them looked like.

Hence, the emergence of “organized gangs of wine moms,” angry suburban moms in the streets, and increasingly vocal.

And if you still doubt the power of these women, just look at last year’s key gubernatorial wins.

Women over 50 helped candidates like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia achieve their victories.

That also achieved an all-time high for women governors. This was while the Heritage Foundation machine was desperately seeking the vote of young men, and boy, did that backfire. After all, New Jersey and Virginia “are often a barometer of the national political mood.”

Oh, and the Heritage Foundation gave young men’s attention spans more credit than they deserved.

Even as the president flaunts his remaining testosterone with the men’s national hockey team, a new report from the centrist think tank Third Way predicts that many of the “swingy, moderate, low-propensity young men” who support Donald Trump will sit out the midterms this year.

Women of color will also decide the election.

Mothers of color are also fed up. Four months ago, during the “No Kings” protest in Dallas, Kat Vargas shared with attendees her confrontation with Ted Cruz at the Houston airport. “I called him out on his bullshit,” she told the crowd. “He called me a radical leftist. But I’m not a radical leftist,” she added. “I am a suburban mom who is tired of his shit.”

And like Vargas, there are millions.

According to the latest figures, 60% of American women say they disapprove of Trump’s performance in office. And this is in all areas: health, economy, security, education… not just immigration. According to these figures, both college-educated White women and Black women appear poised to repudiate Trump in big numbers.

For their part, Latinas, some of whom moved toward Trump in 2024, have done an about-face. According to figures from the Pew Research Center, 73% of Latinas registered to vote “very strongly disapprove” of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president. Of these, the majority are between 18 and 49 years old. But the most significant shift has been the increase in responses from Latinas over 50.

So, what is the conclusion? Nothing very different from the usual, although this time it is decisive: it is up to us women, once again, to clean up the mess that men have made.