Roxy & Katelyn are coming in hot with a deep dive into how the MAGA movement may be losing women.
The Justice Department’s seemingly reticent release of the Epstein files has led some prominent figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene to disavow her ties to President Donald Trump, as many women’s cries for justice for survivors grow louder. The MAHA (“Make America Healthy Again”) base, led by influencers like Alex Clark, feel betrayed by the administration for letting more toxins such as Roundup to be produced on American soil.
And Trump’s women supporters find themselves part of a wide-reaching coalition that includes men like pastor Douglas Wilson, who has wondered aloud whether women should have the right to vote at all.
It’s a wild political and cultural moment, one Katelyn and Roxy are eager to tackle this season.
This transcript was generated using AI tools and may contain minor transcription errors.
KATELYN BEATY: Roxy, we’re back. It’s 2026. And first thing I’m wondering, have you and John dug out of the snow?
ROXANNE STONE: No, the answer is no. There are still piles of dirty, gross, gray, lot of patches of yellow snow lining every sidewalk. It’s disgusting. But it was really pretty when it first snowed. And I do love a snowstorm in New York.
BEATY: It only happened a couple of times when I lived there, but it is a fun place to have a snow day. People just seem childlike and giddy, like, oh my gosh, we’re all experiencing this together. I would not describe most New Yorkers as childlike and giddy, but they become that way.
STONE: It’s wild. I feel like I have more conversations with New Yorkers during a snowstorm than any other time. You’re just out walking and people are walking in the middle of the street, cause why not? And people have sleds and everybody’s like, whoa, look at the snow. Can you believe it? Talking about the weather is really great. It’s not just like pointless small talk. It’s actually this thing that brings us all together. Everybody experiences the weather. No matter how rich you are, no matter how old or young you are.
BEATY: It’s an equalizer.
STONE: It’s an equalizer.
BEATY: Yes. We’re all experiencing it together. You are speaking the heart language of this Midwesterner. Every conversation with my parents starts with, what’s the weather like where you are? Love to chat about the weather, especially on a day like today when it’s about 60 degrees in December.
STONE: That’s not being neighborly.
BEATY: I was rubbing it in. Sorry. From Religion News Service, this is Saved by the City! A podcast from two Christian women tracking all the hot,
STONE: and cold,
BEATY: and cold trends in the strange world of religion and politics. I’m Katelyn Beaty.
STONE: And I’m Roxy Stone.
BEATY: I believe my word of the year for 2025 was disorienting. And it was. Although you came to it at the end of the year. I have moved to Pittsburgh in the middle of winter, which also does not help, I think, with a move and getting used to a new city, deep in the throes of wedding planning, trying to find all the like new doctor, new dentist, new gym, new like closest Trader Joe’s. It’s all the life things. Yes. What about you? What if you could pick one word for 2026?
STONE: Am I supposed to be positive here? Cause I don’t know.
BEATY: No, you do not have to. That is toxic positivity, and I am not gonna put that on you.
STONE: So far, 2026 has felt very heavy. Even just a continuation of some of what I talked about — my word in 2025, which was like a full full, like lacking in margin. I still feel that way. What is not heavy is my hair. You might have noticed I lopped like 13 inches off.
BEATY: Biggest hair news thus far. I love it. I think it looks great. What inspired the big chop?
STONE: I don’t know, actually. I’ve just been kind of thinking about it for a while. And chickened out like the last two haircuts, you know? But it just kind of has stuck with me that I wanted to. And I just found myself constantly putting my hair up. Like I just never thought it looked good. It wasn’t curling right. It was feeling unhealthy and all of that. And so I was just like, let’s do it. So we did.
BEATY: I’m sure you’re saving so much time and energy.
STONE: And shampoo and conditioner.
BEATY: Yes. I’m glad your hair is short and bouncy. This episode, I don’t know if it’s gonna be short or bouncy, but it is gonna be interesting, just like 2026. We’re gonna start off — as you said, 2026 has already been a heavy news cycle. It’s been a busy news cycle. There’s been a lot to keep up with. I’m gonna start off with just a really quick who-said-what mini news quiz for you.
STONE: Oh no.
BEATY: Don’t worry, you’re gonna do great.
STONE: The problem is if I don’t do great —
BEATY: Who’s gonna trust me? This has no bearing on your future at the religion news organization that hosts and sponsors this podcast. Okay. Starting off. “Winning isn’t all that, and neither is losing. It’s just something that happens.” This came from a gold medal winner at this year’s Winter Olympics, which just wrapped in Milan. Do you know who that was?
STONE: Okay, it was either the figure skater with the great hair — what’s her name? Alyssa Liu? Am I getting it? I think that’s who it was. It might have also been the ski star, Eileen Gu. Is that her name? I really keep forgetting names.
BEATY: It’s Alyssa Liu, you got it. Starting off strong. Starting off right. Okay. Next quote. “They’re real. But I haven’t seen them and they’re not being kept in Area 51. There’s no underground facility.” Now, all that made the headlines from that quote is “they’re real.” Who said it? And what was he talking about?
STONE: I don’t know. I mean, I’m assuming he’s talking about aliens.
BEATY: Yes.
STONE: Partial credit. Donald Trump.
BEATY: Barack Obama.
STONE: Oh shoot.
BEATY: He did a podcast interview where he was asked about aliens and whether aliens are real, and he said they’re real but he hadn’t seen them. He had to go on and clarify in such a, you know, intelligent way. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there, but the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low. He’s basically saying aliens are real, but we’re probably not going to ever encounter them because of the vastness of space.
STONE: Until we figure out how to do that A Wrinkle in Time thing.
BEATY: Exactly. Okay, next quote. This is a challenging one because I feel like a lot of people in our orbit would say something like this. Quote: “If your version of the gospel requires you to take rights away from your neighbor, you aren’t following the gospel, you’re following a campaign manager.”
STONE: Oh —
BEATY: I’ll give you a hint. We really wanted this person to come on the podcast last season. And it felt like we were close, and then we stopped receiving responses.
STONE: Stephen Colbert?
BEATY: Close. That’s who he was talking to. James Talarico.
STONE: Okay.
BEATY: Yes. That is from his interview with Stephen Colbert. Which was not aired.
STONE: Not aired. Wild. That’s like the fifth time I’ve said “wild” so far on this podcast. Well, the word for 2026, apparently.
BEATY: Alright, last quote. “I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people. What MAGA is really serving in this administration is their big donors.”
STONE: I think that is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
BEATY: Yes. You got three and a half. See, you did great. Now three and a half out of four is a 75% in school, which is a C.
STONE: Wow.
BEATY: Which is, I know, crushing.
STONE: Four questions isn’t enough to really determine somebody’s overall knowledge of the news.
BEATY: I knew this might trigger you. Okay. It seems significant to me that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene would break from Trump over the Epstein files. And just from a more anecdotal perspective, I don’t scroll Twitter anymore — I’m officially off. But when I’m on Facebook and sometimes on Instagram — I’m on Facebook, I don’t know why.
STONE: Marketplace is a big —
BEATY: Yes, Marketplace. I did get on Marketplace a few days ago and I was like, I forgot how Facebook works.
STONE: It’s boomer territory for sure. Anyway.
BEATY: Anecdotally, I see women who, let’s just say, I think are probably more politically conservative than I am, talking about the Epstein files and the lack of justice for victims at this time, and kind of a disappointment with Trump and a demand to release all the files — which was something that he had promised to do, or many women in his base had wanted him to do. It kind of makes me wonder, is the MAGA movement losing women? Are women kind of realizing that this world does not take their concerns and priorities seriously?
STONE: That is a good question. But my brain is not working, because I’m like, is it Marjorie Green Taylor or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
BEATY: It’s the most famous Marjorie in public life these days.
STONE: Yeah.
BEATY: I did not have on my bingo card for this year that Marjorie Taylor Greene would kind of disavow her ties to the MAGA movement, given just how vociferous she has been in her support of Trump over the last several years. Or that she would say something that I would agree with, such as another quote from this year. She said, “The American people deserve to know the truth, no matter whose friends are on that list. Transparency isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a moral one.” Little bonus question: what list is she talking about?
STONE: I know it’s not Santa’s list. The Epstein files. The naughty list, to put it mildly. Oh my gosh. I did not think those were gonna be worse than predicted. And I think they were, decidedly so.
BEATY: Say more.
STONE: Well, I guess I naively thought that the conspiracies were overblown.
BEATY: That they were in fact like conspiracies.
STONE: Yes. And that there wasn’t really this like evil cabal running our world. And I don’t know that I would still go quite that far, but it’s pretty gross. The moral rot ran deep, and you definitely see that there is not a lot of accountability happening in our most elite circles. And this idea that it was like partisan — I feel like that very much got put to rest. Like, nope, this is happening at a level that’s above partisanship, where everybody’s just like, we rule the world, we can do whatever we want.
BEATY: Yes.
STONE: We are seeing some accountability.
BEATY: For former Prince Andrew.
STONE: And a bunch of other people have had to resign — like Larry Summers and the Goldman Sachs lead counsel, who was Obama’s lead counsel. Yeah. I mean I think we’re going to — we’re already seeing resignations, we’re already seeing some legal accountability. But yeah. Anyway, I don’t think we’re done. I think there’s gonna be a lot more heads.
BEATY: Yeah, it really underscores just how wealth and power — the power and access it gives you — is a greater determiner in what you’re able to do than partisan ties. And I’m very comfortable saying that I think some people want there to be some kind of public showdown about whether Trump or former President Bill Clinton is worse. And I’m like, they both seem like dirtbags. The people that Epstein was connected to were people of both the left and the right, or people who are somewhat apolitical, except that they just have gobs of money and institutional power. We’re only beginning, you know. Investigators, journalists, people on the internet are only beginning to dig through those files and see who is implicated. So we’re going to be hearing about this for a long time. I kind of wondered, like, is this going to really do anything? Because it’s been simmering for so long. If you’re really an avowed loyalist to Trump, I don’t know that any information in the files is going to change your mind. It does seem though like this has become a breaking point issue for some conservative women in the movement. Not just Marjorie Taylor Greene, but other GOP women in Congress — Nancy Mace of North Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado. They’ve kind of been at the forefront of breaking from Trump and have really tried to align themselves with some of Epstein’s victims and tried to grant them access to the White House.
STONE: Those were some hardcore Trump women. They were MAGA slash MAGA.
BEATY: Yeah, it’s one thing for Democratic leaders in Congress to kind of align themselves with Epstein’s victims, because you might say, like, oh, that’s motivated in part by — they just want to take Trump down. But these three women at least, and some of their followers and supporters, it seems like are breaking from Trump and see this as a moral issue at the end of the day.
STONE: Yeah, and I mean I think their argument has been, if you’ve got nothing to hide, release the files. Which they did, through the Congressional Committee on the Epstein files. This is all also bizarre to me because it is like the stuff that conspiracies are made of — this one man who’s like an evil genius somehow, and is terribly evil, also a pedophile, also stealing all this money. And then there’s all these powerful people who are just somehow involved, and the tendrils of it never seem to stop. It just doesn’t seem like real life. It seems like a bad Hollywood movie or a conspiracy theory. But anyway — 3.5 million pages released. And now just this past week, NPR and Times investigators found a so-far uncorroborated claim from a woman who said Trump and Epstein had abused her in the 1980s when she was a minor. And that was not something that the DOJ had released — the DOJ had these summaries of her account.
BEATY: The summary of her account that named Trump was not released.
STONE: Right. There’s some speculation that they were improperly tagged, so for some reason weren’t tagged to be released.
BEATY: Right. There’s more to come. Yes. So I don’t know if this is gonna take down Trump. I’m happy saying for the record, there have been many points at which I thought, yep, this is surely the moment. Surely this is the thing that will happen that really shifts the base. And I’ve just been surprised by so many things that his base has continued to align with. But this feels different, because so many of his base — especially maybe women who are concerned about victims, who may themselves kind of identify as victims of abuse in different contexts — they helped support him and bring him back to the White House because they thought he would kind of be a champion of the vulnerable or of victims. And thus far, that promise has not been realized.
STONE: I don’t think this is probably gonna take down Trump. There would need to be a smoking gun, and I don’t think that there is. I do think it’s gonna continue to take down a lot of people. I don’t know that we’re done seeing heads roll. And I think it further disillusions a lot of people and feeds conspiracy theories that are continuing to simmer. So even if it doesn’t take down Trump, I think it might impact the next administration or the next presidential election. Conspiracy theories in particular have become such a huge factor of American life, and I feel like this kind of thing will really continue to feed that. I think there’ll be a lasting impact to this whole thing. But I used to believe more that like 50% of our population — and by that I mean women — had more power. So when we had something that we were upset about, it would matter. And I feel like I have been proven wrong about that a few times over the last decade. Or that even women don’t take some of these issues of women’s vulnerability seriously. So I don’t know.
BEATY: Let’s talk about MAHA Moms — Make America Healthy Again — aligning specifically with RFK Jr., Trump’s health secretary. I feel like there’s so much more that we could say about MAHA Moms. So how are they factoring into the fracturing of the Trump movement into different factions and the disillusionment?
STONE: There’s this quote from Alex Clark. She’s a health and wellness influencer with Turning Point USA. She’s got a podcast and a big presence in the MAHA movement, and she’s anti-vax, and a lot of her disillusionment with the health industrial complex came out of the pandemic. She said recently that women feel like they were lied to, that the MAHA movement specifically being led by RFK Jr. is a sham. She said, “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms? How can we win their trust back? I’m unsure if we can.” And this came out of an argument a few weeks ago where the MAHA movement felt really betrayed. It was some kind of toxin —
BEATY: You’re not following the news on the toxin glyphosate, Roxy? That’s what it was. I had it on the tip of my tongue.
STONE: It’s a pesticide, right? It’s part of a pesticide.
BEATY: Yes. Glyphosate is Roundup. It’s a weed killer. Trump allowed for an increase in the domestic production of this. They were upset. Another health influencer in this world, Vani Hari, who actually was a Democrat — she worked to elect President Barack Obama, according to the New York Times. She says Secretary Kennedy has done everything he said he’s going to do. He has upheld his commitment to the American people. Now, whether his boss is doing that is another story. Yeah. And I’m just thinking about — I listened to all of four minutes of the State of the Union before I was like, nope, I can’t do it. It was 199 minutes, I think. So on the shorter side for Trump.
STONE: The longest State of the Union in recorded history.
BEATY: Well, you know, we have a president who thinks that the bigger things are, the better they are. But as I understand it, reading summaries and commentary after the State of the Union, there was a glaring omission in his comments related to the Epstein files. There was not anything related to health or specific healthy initiatives that would have appeased the MAHA base. It just feels like his priorities are really elsewhere, and there’s only so much that someone like RFK can do.
STONE: I think this is a problem of compiling a lot of very different groups of people into your base. There are some huge disparities in terms of belief systems, ideologies, theologies that make up the MAGA movement. And that is a powerful coalition for getting someone elected, but they all have competing demands now. And they all expect those demands to be met. Evangelicals and Catholics are also really disappointed with Trump because, yes, they got abortion overturned, but now they can’t seem to get all these other things that they want — in terms of like the abortion pills or legislation that would impact the way that states can handle abortion. It doesn’t seem like that’s enough of his priority anymore. And so you’ve got that coalition angry at him in certain ways. I’m not saying they’re not gonna vote for him, but there’s frustration over him not delivering the one thing that everybody wanted who voted for him.
BEATY: Yes, lots of coalitions. We have yet to talk about one that could really be pushing women out of the Trump base. We’ll get to them after the break.
STONE: Religion News Service is an independent, award-winning source of global reporting on religion, spirituality, culture, and ethics.
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STONE: Sixth use of “wild” this episode.
BEATY: Well, these are the times we’re in.
STONE: We’re off to the races on season 11. We already have some great conversations to bring you on everything from AI to new spirituality to passing on the Bible to your children without the baggage. And also, are we really in a revival? These are the questions we’ll be answering on this season of Saved by the City and more.
BEATY: We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for guests and topics for this season. So drop us a review wherever you listen, or shoot us an email at
STONE: Okay, this sort of isn’t fair because I think we featured it on an episode last season, but that is Doug Wilson.
BEATY: And for the maybe five listeners who don’t know who Doug Wilson is, remind us.
STONE: Doug Wilson is the pastor of Christ Kirk in Moscow, Idaho. Sort of a rising star in political circles, even though he’s been around for a really long time. Pete Hegseth, our secretary of — well, war — goes to a church affiliated with that denomination. Wilson has spoken at some major conservative conferences in the last few years, and his movement, some people would call it traditional, other people would call it patriarchal. It’s a very gender-rigid construct of Christianity and family values. And there is within his movement, as you might have gathered from that particular quote, some thoughts around women having the right to vote, whether they really should, whether that was a good idea. I mean, they’re just asking questions, you know?
BEATY: Yes. Wilson has actually long been a proponent of what he calls household voting — where instead of each individual having a right to vote, he is saying that men as natural leaders of the household should be voting for their entire families, including their wives. You know, this is just an area where women just need to trust men, because clearly we’ve been able to trust men with the vote regarding our well-being for a long time.
STONE: Yes. Right. Exactly. I mean, if it’s a truly biblical household and the woman is submitting to the man, they would have the same vote anyway. So why do you need two of them?
BEATY: Right. She would not really have a political opinion that differs in essence from her husband. She certainly wouldn’t vote differently from her husband.
STONE: Now, is that true? The polls actually mostly support that. Mostly. But —
BEATY: I thought there was a big gender divide at the polls.
STONE: There is beginning to be a bigger gender divide. Married women are more conservative generally than unmarried women. That is true and I think has remained mostly true. I’m not saying they are as a whole always conservative, but compared to their unmarried counterparts. But there is a real widening gender gap — in younger women and men, and especially single women and single men, they are becoming politically very divided.
BEATY: And they are less likely to want to date each other because of this widening political and ideological gap. We should do an episode about mixed-politics relationships.
STONE: We’ve talked about it before. I mean, I remember we were even like, no, I don’t think we would do that.
BEATY: I mean, of course it all depends. Like, the devil is in the details — where are we divided? But we are gonna talk a lot about that growing gender divide at the polls throughout this season, so stay tuned. It kind of makes me wonder — for MAGA women who are in this big diverse coalition that includes some men who are even asking aloud whether women should have the right to vote. Plus you add on concerns from the MAHA Moms that they’re being ignored. Plus you have concerns about the Epstein files and this reticence to release them and the potential implication of the person that they have trusted to bring forth justice. Where do these women go?
STONE: Well, and we haven’t even talked about all of the ICE deportations and the very public displays of that in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and the growing concern and frustration and public disapproval of those kinds of ICE tactics. And that is many women driving that — in the sense that this is not how we treat other human beings. So I think that’s also cracking the base in certain ways, or at least impacting maybe more apathetic sides of the base.
BEATY: It’s like, if you’re asking mothers of children to get on board with ICE tactics that deliberately divide families — go after already vulnerable families who are here with refugee status or legal immigration status, or just doing it with almost a posture of, the cruelty is the point — yeah, I think that’s a big part of it. That’s really off-putting to a lot of women who have a heartbeat. A lot of Americans who have a heartbeat. But I do wonder how women in particular have responded to those images. Allie Beth Stuckey, one of our friends, was apparently looking at her Instagram feed about a month ago and seeing all these women decrying the practices of ICE in Minneapolis, and was concerned that they had bad theological education because they were having a compassionate response to these raids. Like, no, that’s not the problem.
STONE: Yeah, she said she was having to do a lot of work in her DMs to convince women.
BEATY: At some point, if you’re having to do this much quote-unquote theological work to correct people, maybe you’re the one that’s out of step, you know?
STONE: It’s worth asking yourself.
BEATY: It is. In a rare moment of self-reflection, it might be worth asking.
STONE: So you see a leftward drift among women, especially women unattached to men. And you’re seeing these cracks in these more women-driven coalitions like MAHA. And so I also think we can recognize a bit of a push to try to gain women’s votes.
BEATY: Mm-hmm.
STONE: Turning Point USA has a lot of outreach to women, especially younger women — that’s become, I think, increasingly a focus. There’s a women’s TPUSA conference this summer. You obviously have Erica Kirk at the helm of that. Allie Beth Stuckey. It feels like there’s a bit of a war for women right now — trying to get women to stay with MAGA or come back to MAGA. And probably for Democrats too, this is potentially a group of people who can be wooed over to the other side.
BEATY: Or if they’re on the fence and they haven’t really developed a strong political belief system or identity, but culturally kind of like what — for example — this women’s leadership Turning Point USA conference looks like. It’s like, these are my type of people. I’m maybe more open to what they have to say about immigration policy or, you know, trans identity. That seems to be something they’re relevant on.
STONE: It’s a big one. Yeah.
BEATY: Well, would we ever have Allie Beth on? I just have some questions.
STONE: I know, yeah. And I think if we were maybe brave —
BEATY: She’s really good at coming up with the memeable, quotable takedown answer.
STONE: I think she’s less afraid of conflict than I might be.
BEATY: Well, speak for yourself.
STONE: Yeah, I know. You guys can really get into it.
BEATY: We’ll come back to the war for women many times throughout the season.
STONE: Season 11.
BEATY: It’s gonna be wild.
STONE: Saved by the City is a Religion News Service production. The producer is Jonathan Woodward and the consulting editor is Paul O’Donnell.
BEATY: Chaz Russo put together our look and Martin Fowler wrote our theme music.
STONE: We are Roxy Stone and Katelyn Beaty. Thanks for listening.
BEATY: Thanks for listening.
STONE: Okay. The war for women — I wonder if that’s a real thing.
Original Source:
https://religionnews.com/2026/03/12/epstein-maha-and-the-war-for-women/