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Trump Endorses Anti-Abortion Monitoring Of Pregnancy By States

Trump Endorses Anti-Abortion Monitoring Of Pregnancy By States

With little more than six months until Election Day, Donald Trump is preparing for an “authoritarian” presidency, and a massive, multi-million dollar operation called Project 2025, organized by The Heritage Foundation and headed by a former top Trump White House official, is proposing what it would like to be his agenda. In its 920-page policy manual the word “abortion” appears nearly 200 times.

Trump appears to hold a more narrow grasp of the issue of abortion, and is holding on to the framing he recently settled on, which he hoped would end debate on the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. One day before the Arizona Supreme Court ruled an 1864 law banning abortion was still legal and enforceable, Trump declared states have total control over abortion and can do whatever they like.

Despite the results of that framing, Trump is sticking with that policy.

In a set of interviews with TIME‘s Eric Cortellessa, published Tuesday, the four-times indicted ex-president said he would not stop states from monitoring all pregnancies within their borders and prosecuting anyone who violates any abortion ban, if he were to again become president. He also refused to weigh in on a nationwide abortion ban or on medication abortion.

Recently, Trump backed away from endorsing a nationwide abortion ban, but in the past he has said there should be “punishment” for women who have abortions. The group effectively creating what could become his polices, The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, fully support a ban on abortion.

The scope of the TIME interviews was extensive.

“What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world,” Cortellessa writes in his article.

“To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.”

TIME’s Cortellessa also notes that Trump “is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

On abortion, Trump has repeatedly bragged he personally ended Roe v. Wade, which was a nearly 50-year old landmark Supreme Court ruling that found women have a constitutional right to abortion, and by extension, bodily autonomy.

But Trump has also “sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. ‘I think they might do that,’ he says.”

“When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, ‘It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.’ President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation,” Cortellessa adds.

Trump in his TIME interview continued to hold on to the convenient claim as president he would have absolutely nothing to do with abortion.

But “Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to ‘the moment of fertilization.’ I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. ‘I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,’ Trump says, ‘because we now have it back in the states.'”

That’s inaccurate, if a national abortion ban, or any legislation on women’s reproductive rights, comes to his desk. And they will, if there’s a Republican majority in the House and Senate.

Brooke Goren, Deputy Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) writes, “In the same interview, Trump:

– Repeatedly refuses to say he wouldn’t sign a national ban
– Left the door open to signing legislation that could ban IVF
– Stood by his allies, who are making plans to unilaterally ban medication abortion nationwide if he’s elected.”

Cortellessa ends his piece with this thought: “Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. ‘I think a lot of people like it.'”

The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol, once a hard-core conservative Republican, now a Democrat as of 2020, served up this take on TIME’s Trump interview and overview of a second Trump reign.

“Some of us: A second term really would be far more dangerous than his first, it would be real authoritarianism–with more than a touch of fascism.

Trump apologists: No way, calm down.

Trump: Yup, authoritarianism all the way!”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Elise Stefanik

Expose Of Stefanik's Privileged Life Blows Up Her 'Humble Origins' Myth

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has often painted herself as someone who came from a humble working-class background but pulled herself up by the bootstraps.

Stefanik, who Donald Trump is reportedly considering as a possible running mate in the 2024 presidential race, acknowledges that she attended Harvard University. But she paints her Ivy League education as an example of beating and overcoming the odds — not an example of privilege.

In an article published on April 14, however, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Jake Lahut stress that Stefanik has had a much more comfortable life than she claims.

"If Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from," Bredderman and Lahut explain, "she seems to have forgotten — to the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaign — how her family's wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26. Instead of acknowledging those advantages, Stefanik has repeatedly downplayed her wealth, including in a statement to The Daily Beast."

Bredderman and Lahut add that Stefanik's "humble origin story falls away under a little pressure."

"From the start, she has maintained that she saw her parents 'risk everything' to establish Premium Plywood Products when she was a child," the reporters note. "But even the story she has told of the company's founding is incomplete. While every business venture involves risk, the Stefaniks didn't shoulder it alone: less than two months after incorporating Premium Plywood Products in late 1991, public records show they secured a Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan worth $335,000 — roughly $755,000 in today's money."

According to Bredderman and Lahut, Stefanik's "private education at Albany Academy for Girls offered a crash course in the ways of the New York capital’s moneyed elite."

"The children of political tycoons, from former President Theodore Roosevelt to former Gov. Mario Cuomo, have sent their children to its all-male counterpart across the street, The Albany Academy, where students pay the same tuition — $25,600 for the most recent academic year," Bredderman and Lahut report. "After graduating from Harvard in 2006, Stefanik decamped to D.C. to serve in then-President George W. Bush's administration — a role one of her Ivy League mentors helped her land. She would work her way up into the White House Chief of Staff's Office."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Joe Biden

In Late March, Both Fundraising And Polling Are Improving For Biden

Last week,The Economist's presidential polling average set in motion a reevaluation of the general election when President Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump for the first time since September 2023.

To be clear, Biden isn't suddenly the odds-on favorite to win in November, but the fundamentals of the Biden-Trump contest do appear to be shifting in a slightly more favorable direction for Biden.

In the 18 Biden-Trump head-to-head matchups conducted by reputable pollsters (1.8 stars or higher-plus in 538’s pollster ratings) since the March 7 State of the Union address, Trump led in nine surveys, Biden led in seven, and they were even in two. This is a modest improvement from the 18 comparable surveys leading up to Biden's speech. In those surveys, Trump led in 10, Biden in six, and two found the candidates evenly matched.

Better yet, the average of these polls shows Biden improving overall, from 1.1 percentage points underwater before the State of the Union, to 0.8 points underwater afterward—which may seem like a negligible shift but is meaningful where averages are concerned. (Note: None of the polls used here account for how third-party candidates affect the outcome.)

Included in the post-SOTU polling was this month’s Daily Kos/Civiqs survey, which found Biden leading Trump by a single percentage point, 45 percent to 44 percent—a slight uptick from January, when the two were even.

But truth be told, the horse-race polling is among the least of Biden's gains in the contest. The Biden campaign's fundraising in February combined with that of the Democratic National Committee eclipsed the totals of Trump and the RNC.

Filings posted last week showed that the Biden campaign raised $21.3 million in February, while the DNC raised another $16.6 million; the Trump campaign reported raising $10.9 million, while the Republican National Committee raised a similar $10.7 million.

But the more pronounced disparity came in cash reserves available to Biden and the Democrats. Biden and the DNC closed out February with a combined $97.6 million cash on hand—more than doubling the $44.9 million banked by Trump and the RNC.

Democrats’ associated committees boast a cash advantage over Republicans as well:

  • Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has $14 million more money banked than the National Republican Campaign Committee ($59.2 million to $45.2 million).
  • Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a $7 million cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Senatorial Committee ($31.9 million to $24.8 million).

Other underlying fundamentals are also moving in a positive direction for Biden and Democrats. While Republicans led Democrats in 538's generic congressional ballot aggregate throughout most of January, February, and much of March, Democrats have now pulled even with Republicans, at roughly 44.5 percent each.

In Civiqs’ tracking polls, the public opinion of Biden's efforts to create jobs are better than they have ever been, with 42 percent agreeing that he’s doing enough and 48 percent disagreeing.

And while voters' views on the condition of the economy remain well underwater, they are trending in the right direction since falling in the first half of 2022, during the throes of inflation. At net -24 points “good,” the numbers now are on par with how voters viewed the economy in late September 2021.

And voters' estimation of their family finances are the best they've been in roughly two years, since early March 2022.

Current public opinion about the economy and personal finances are double-digits better than they were during the final month of the 2022 midterms, when Democrats turned back the vaunted red wave that historical norms foretold. In fact, voters’ view of the economy is 22 points better now than it was on Election Day 2022.

The data points aren't unrelated. Now that voters are getting more clarity on the choices this cycle, Democratic donors are demonstrating greater enthusiasm for their ticket than are Republican donors. And that cash advantage is giving Democrats more room to advertise and assemble a ground game.

While voters will be settling into their choices later this year, partisans on both sides are already starting to “come home” to their party—which is particularly important to see on the Democratic side since the media had fixated on soft support for Biden as an early narrative.

Civiqs polling from January and March is a perfect example, with Biden bumping his support among Democratic voters by a couple points, from 88 percent to 90 percent. Trump likewise boosted his GOP support from 90 percent to 92 percent.

But what is most fascinating is the shift among independents, who favored Trump by 11 points in January. But this month, Biden cut Trump's lead among independent voters to just a handful of points, 37percent to 42 percent.

Biden's State of the Union remains a rallying point, giving Democratic voters something to cheer and offering a point of reassurance for some disaffected Republicans voters who defected from Trump to Biden in 2020. This week's Focus Group podcast, hosted by Sarah Longwell, featured the reactions of several Trump-to-Biden voters following the State of the Union.

I thought he was energized, chuckling, and that’s one of my biggest complaints about him. You know, not the age so much. It’s just, you know, he’s not, like, an enthusiastic, energized guy. ... You know, he made a couple of jabs at, like, Lindsey Graham, which comes off good in this, like, day and age. ... Sometimes you could tell he was going off script, which is good. He was, you know, flowing improv, which is good. He’s showing he’s competent.

It was the most that I’ve seen him be able to go off script that I can remember—but this, to me, felt like he was going off script. He was showing that he can do it, and he can do it well, which was a pretty good thing. And, I mean, to me, that answers some of the questions that people were having, or have made about him in the last couple of months.

He suffers from having a stutter. So a lot of times he stumbles over words, and it can be a little uncomfortable to listen to him. But I thought he sounded really sharp. He was very strong. He did go off script, but he was handling the hecklers really well.

If there's a takeaway here, it's that letting Joe be Joe—even amid some stumbles—is a better strategy than shielding him from the press and voters. Biden did himself and Democrats a world of good with his feisty State of the Union speech. And the Biden campaign appears to have switched into high gear in the weeks since, visiting every 2024 swing state in less than three weeks and putting the president on full display in a multitude of settings.

The other takeaway is that Republicans are continuing to disintegrate, with Trump's money woes eating away at their ability to compete by the day.

November is still many months away, but Democrats have reason to like the way things are trending as they work to build momentum heading into the August convention.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

State Of The Union Boosted Public View Of Biden

President Joe Biden's very good State of the Union showing wasn't just a hit among Democrats. Despite criticism that Biden's address was specifically aimed at rallying Democratic voters, the speech not only tested well with viewers beyond the base, it also significantly improved Biden's standing among those viewers.

As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner pointed out, a CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of respondents viewed the speech positively, with 62 percent saying his policies would move the country in the right direction—a 17-percentage-point bump from before the speech.

Navigator Research posted similar findings from its live-reaction dial group of 33 Phoenix-area soft partisans and independents: 76% had positive reactions, with 64 percent saying Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction.

Biden's favorability rating among the dial group jumped 37 points from before and after the speech, ending at 58 percent favorable to 42 percent unfavorable.

The change in Biden's job approval rating—a tougher sell—was far smaller but still improved six points, to 33 percent approve versus 67 percent disapprove. There's still plenty of work to do in that arena.

According Navigator testing among the 33 speech-watchers, Biden's biggest improvements from pre- to post-speech came in these five areas:

1. Stands up to corporations: net change of +83 points

2. Is a strong leader: net change of +63 points

3. Is up for the job of president: net change of +60 points

4. Represents the U.S. well abroad: net change of +46 points

5. Brings people together: net change of +40 points

Early numbers from Nielsen suggested Biden's State of the Union address attracted nearly 28 million viewers—a slight uptick from last year, despite appearing on fewer networks then. But the final Nielsen numbers were even better: 32.3 million viewers tuned in, a significant 18 percent increase over 2023.

Among those viewers, Biden did himself a world of good not just from a policy standpoint but also from the perspective of: Is this guy up for the job, and are his priorities in the right place?

The Biden campaign has a lot more work to do, but the overwhelmingly positive responses to the president's speech suggest his message is also one that he and his team can sell on the campaign trail.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.