Fiction: The Fe coup

The gavel went down on the last bill of the Congress. Republicans had won.

The speaker gaveled the Congress out for the last time. The president signed the bill into law.

Dejected, the Democrats headed to the airport to go home, some for the last time.

Jubilant, the Republicans headed to the bar for a celebratory drink. When the news was passed around that someone had slipped in some language saying that only males could vote or run for federal office, it turned into a big party, though the female (ex-)representatives were conspicuous by their absence.

Home from the Capitol, she wondered whether and when she would lose her job. She'd only added a couple of letters to the bill, whereas the Republicans had added a long sentence. But she reckoned her chances of being punished were much higher than theirs. Still, it was worth it.

Later, when the official text of the bill was posted online, many took a look - some to gloat, some to see if there was any way around it. By now the news had reached the Democrats too.

And every single one of them was shocked.

Instead of saying that only males could vote or run for federal office, the law said that only females could.

Desperately the Republicans sought a way around it, but they had written their version too well.

The next congress would consist only of females, and Republican men would have no say in which women would be elected.

And if they wanted a female House and Senate to ever reverse the law, they had better change their attitude towards women convincingly.

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This story is fiction and could never happen, but at least one ex-top Trump White House official wants voting to be male only, as it was in some states in the early days of the USA, and I doubt if he is the only one. They certainly want to control women's bodies with their abortion bans.