| | | | |  | | By Calder McHugh | |  Former President Donald Trump attends a campaign event on April 2, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | SOUND AND FURY — It was a long time coming, but former President Donald Trump finally outlined his position on abortion today in a four-and-a-half-minute video: he is against a national ban. He may have cauterized his political wound at the moment. He may have found what seems to be a politically palatable middle ground. But a close read of his remarks, delivered today, reveals he’s resolved virtually nothing. The position he’s staked out isn’t entirely different from the contradictory things he’s said before. Laying out a serious policy statement was never the intention. After teasing a speech on abortion that would help him “WIN ELECTIONS” on Truth Social on Sunday evening, Trump began his disquisition with four paragraphs that are largely about in vitro fertilization, the least divisive part of the reproductive debate. The former president didn’t even mention abortion until about a quarter of the way through his speech. When it finally does come up, he gives away the unseriousness of the enterprise by opening with a statement that both sides can agree is untrue — that all legal scholars demanded an end to Roe v. Wade, the landmark case recognizing the right to abortion. “Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade,” he begins. “They wanted it ended.” It was his attempted segue into laying out a position that might neutralize him from the coming onslaught from the Biden campaign — a serious vulnerability that he has yet to figure out how to address. Trump knows just how much the end of Roe hurt his party’s chances in the 2022 midterms, and even if abortion is an issue he’d prefer to sidestep, that’s an impossibility now that he’s responsible for the Supreme Court responsible for overturning Roe. In his remarks, Trump offered hints as to how he will attempt to defuse the time bomb. “It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month. The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth. And that’s exactly what it is,” Trump continues. “The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth is unacceptable. And almost everyone agrees with that.” To stake a realistic middle ground requires measured language and something approximating an argument that can appeal to the center. But that’s not what Trump’s remarks offered. The wild claims — no one supports executing babies after birth — and jarring descriptions aren’t designed for any purpose other than dog whistling to anti-abortion allies who are disappointed and frustrated by his failure to endorse a national ban. They have good cause to be disappointed in his call for the states to decide. As recently as late March Trump signaled support for a national, 15-week ban. And in every place the right to abortion has been on the ballot, even in red states, voters have chosen to protect abortion access. If nothing else, Trump was unafraid to admit the cold political calculus in his speech. “Always go by your heart,” he says at the end. “But we must win. We have to win.” In other words, he believes that support for a nationwide abortion ban would cost him politically, so he’s jettisoned it. It was an attempt to extricate himself from a debate he doesn’t want to have. But for all the attention surrounding his announcement today, he didn’t say much to move the needle. He may have wanted to tamp down the issue, but he only fanned the flames. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, the newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world, including WEF in Davos, Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to UNGA in NYC and many more. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW. | | | | | | | | | — Biden pitches sweeping student debt relief in Wisconsin: President Joe Biden vowed today to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans this fall, bringing an election-year pitch that he’s fighting to help struggling borrowers to a battleground state that’s crucial to his reelection. Biden chose the backdrop of a community college in Madison, Wisconsin, a state he narrowly won in 2020, to announce new details about the scope of his next student debt relief plan, which is designed to revive the loan forgiveness goals that were thwarted by the Supreme Court. — Trump to appeal gag order in unlikely effort to postpone Manhattan criminal trial: In a last-ditch bid to further delay his upcoming Manhattan criminal trial, former President Donald Trump indicated today he would appeal a gag order recently imposed by the judge overseeing the case. The court filings around the effort were not immediately made public, but a person familiar with the matter said Trump is appealing the gag order imposed by Justice Juan Merchan and asking an appeals court to postpone the trial, set to begin April 15, until the issue is resolved. — Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide: Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes international officials could find that Israel’s assault on Gaza legally constitutes a genocide, she said during an event at a local mosque last week. “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts. Warren’s office confirmed the senator’s remarks to POLITICO.
| | | | ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’ — Mike Pence slammed his former boss’ abortion stance today by calling it a “slap in the face” to “millions of pro-life Americans” who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. “The American people elect presidents, senators and congressmen, and a majority of Americans long to see minimum national protections for the unborn in federal law,” Pence said in a post on X. “But today, too many Republican politicians are all too ready to wash their hands of the battle for life.” READY, SET, GO — Joe Biden’s advisers didn’t know if Donald Trump would ever offer up a formal policy on abortion. But when the moment finally arrived, they were ready. Trump’s announcement today that he supports leaving the debate about abortion restrictions to the states sparked a torrent of political attacks, with Biden and his allies accusing their GOP rival of ushering in “cruelty and chaos” in the post-Roe v. Wade era. The offensive marked a new phase in the Biden team’s bid to make reproductive rights the defining issue of the presidential race. In addition to accusing Trump of paving the way for Roe’s elimination, Democrats today sought to tie him directly to the harshest state abortion laws — and their real-life consequences. THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY — A local activist working with the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign to get him on the ballot in New York wants Republicans to unite behind Kennedy and defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. “The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter, our mutual enemy is Biden,” said Rita Palma, who said in a political presentation to a local Hudson Valley group that she was hired by the Kennedy campaign as New York state director about three weeks ago and twice voted for former President Donald Trump. Palma, who is a local anti-vaccine mandate activist, believes convincing Republicans to tactically vote for Kennedy, who is running as an independent, is “a good strategy” and could force a contingent election in November. RING THE BELL — President Biden loves Philadelphia. And he loves campaigning there, too. No part of the country has seen more visits from Mr. Biden so far this year, or throughout his presidency, writes the New York Times. Four years ago, the city — and its increasingly Democratic suburbs — cast one-third of the total votes in Pennsylvania, the nation’s most populous battleground state. Winning the region by large margins is essential for Mr. Biden’s hopes in November. Today, Vice President Kamala Harris will stop in Philadelphia to promote the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student debt, her third trip there since last summer. Now, some Democrats are saying that it is time for Mr. Biden and his campaign to widen their reach across the Keystone State, which he narrowly won by about 80,000 votes last time around.
| | |  Georgian pro-democracy groups activists protest a repressive "foreign influence" draft law outside the parliament in Tbilisi. | Vano Shlamov/AFP via Getty Images | ON THE STREETS — Demonstrators have again taken to the streets of Georgian capital Tbilisi to demand the government drop controversial plans to brand civil society groups “foreign agents.” It’s the second major standoff over perceived crackdowns on freedom of speech in the space of a year, after a public outcry and international condemnation forced the government to shelve an earlier version of the proposed law in March of 2023. Groups of protesters began a picket outside the parliament building in Tbilisi this afternoon in opposition to the proposals, waving placards equating their government to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Others waved EU flags and sounded klaxons, while footage posted online appears to show riot police deployed in the capital. Earlier the same afternoon, Georgian lawmakers had introduced the contentious “foreign agent” bill in a parliamentary session, which would tighten rules around civil society funding. The bill passed its first stage and will now be put before a parliamentary committee over the coming weeks. OFFENSIVE THREATENED — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalated his pledge to take Israel’s offensive in Palestine to Rafah, declaring in a video statement today, “It will happen. There is a date,” without elaborating. He spoke as Israeli negotiators were in Cairo discussing international efforts to broker a cease-fire deal with Hamas. The United States has repeatedly urged Netanyahu not to attack Rafah, which President Joe Biden said would be a “red line.”
| | | | Access New York bill updates and Congressional activity in areas that matter to you, and use our exclusive insights to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more. | | | | | | | | | | $6.6 billion The size of a grant the Biden administration announced today, designed to commit the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the world’s top chipmaker — to mass-produce its next generation of microchips in Arizona. The company pledged to put up more than $65 billion as it constructs a third leading-edge chip factory in Phoenix. | | | | A STEADY HAND — As leaders around the world face plummeting approval ratings and dismal prospects of re-election, in Ecuador, the center-right president Daniel Noboa enjoys an 80 percent approval rating. It’s a particularly surprising feat in the country, where there’s been almost constant electoral turnover since it became a democracy. But amidst a rising crime wave, culminating politically with the killing of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in 2023, Ecuadorians are now rallying behind their leader. Read about why from Pablo Ospina Peralta in The Baffler, translated by Adrian Nathan West.
| | |  On this date in 2005: Members of the crowd hold banners calling for 'Santo Subito' - 'Sainthood now'' for Pope John Paul II during his funeral mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. | Luca Bruno/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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