Politics

The abortion debate is turning into Trump’s greatest dilemma

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

The abortion debate is turning into Trump’s greatest dilemma

By suggesting — however temporarily — that he was open to a Florida ballot measure that would guarantee the right to an abortion until the time of fetal viability, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again played his mostly white evangelical base for suckers. Those white evangelicals helped put him in power in 2016 to accomplish their longstanding goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. Now, those same voters have staked their hopes for a total ban on abortion on Trump winning the 2024 presidential election. But there Trump was last week, telling an NBC News reporter that he thinks Florida’s current law, which bans abortions after six weeks, is too restrictive. But then his evangelical base quickly brought him to heel.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again played his white evangelical base for suckers.

“I think six weeks is too short,” Trump said Thursday. “There has to be more time and so I want more weeks. I am going to be voting that there will be more than six weeks.” To be clear, Florida voters won’t have the option of choosing how many weeks a pregnancy can progress before an abortion is illegal. They’ll, again, only be voting on whether or not there’s a right to abortion as long as the fetus isn’t viable.

Trump’s answer that Florida’s abortion law is too restrictive angered his most loyal base. But that’s not all. At a campaign stop in Michigan, Trump not only said that he supports IVF — which some diehard abortion opponents oppose — but that he also wants the government to pay the cost of such treatments if insurance companies do not.

The outcry was immediate. Lila Rosean anti-abortion activist, said in a social media post, “If you don’t stand for pro-life principles, you don’t get pro-life votes.”

Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote on X, “Former President Trump now appears determined to undermine his prolife supporters. His criticism of Florida abortion restrictions & his call for government funding of IVF & his recent statement about ‘reproductive rights’ seem almost calculated to alienate pro-life voters.”

Mohler said the election “is shaping up as a catastrophe for the pro-life movement” and that Trump “had better count the cost of abandoning pro-life voters — quickly.”

And Trump quickly backed down. Of course, he said Friday, he supports the six-week abortion ban in Florida.

But that can’t erase the fact that he interjected unease and distrust into his faithful supporters. What’s surprising is that such voters ever had faith and trust in Trump on this issue. He has been all over the place on the topic of abortion for a long time. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 1999 that he was “very pro-choice.” When other Republicans brought up that remark in a 2015 debate, he said he’d “evolved.” In February 2016 he praised Planned Parenthoodbut said he’d defund them because they provided abortion care. At a March 2016 BLN town hall, he said “there has to be some form of punishment” for women seeking abortions.

Though he’s often taken credit for defeating Roe v. Wadewhen Republicans did poorly in the 2022 midterm elections, he wrote on Truth Social, “It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.” In March, he suggested he’d support a 15-week national abortion ban.

Now he has a dilemma. He knows that the draconian policies of his evangelical base are not popular, which prompted him to sayunconvincingly, that the “Trump administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” But he needs those white evangelical voters to stick by his side. Trump’s frenetic shifting on the issue isn’t about a lack of knowledge. It is about desperation.

Trump’s frenetic shifting on the issue isn’t about a lack of knowledge. It is about desperation.

Trump has never been good for women, but the combination of JD Vance harping on childless “cat ladies” and their tag-team attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has made them and the GOP look like the party of professional women haters.

Trump’s flip-flopping is a sign of his flop sweat. Running against Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, leaves Trump as the old man with his young even more misogynist sidekick yearning for the days when the little woman was at home, barefoot and pregnant. His campaign can’t strike egalitarian message in part because of who Trump and Vance are, but also because they’re beholden to hard-line Republican evangelical supporters who are very much invested in banning abortion and restricting IVF.

The demise of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent IVF battles have been devastating for women, and the speeches and commercials featuring women who have been rendered infertile or suffered grievous injury because of these draconian laws stand in condemnation of the intentional cruelty of these laws condemning women to painsuffering, infertility and even death. These testimonies stand in direct contrast to the ways in which Republicans either try to obfuscate what the abortion bans do, or to downplay their effect on women’s access to reproductive care.

The 10 states where abortion rights will be on the ballot in November are a minefield for the Republican Party up and down the ballot. And everything Trump says about the topic leads to another explosion.

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

22 hours ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

Politics

Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

Published

3 days ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.