Good evening and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.
I'm Franklin Foer.
Jeffrey Goldberg is away.
Following Alabama's ban of in vitro fertilization and Florida's restriction of abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled in favor of reviving a Civil War-era law that prohibits nearly all abortions.
Republicans are running to distance themselves from the surprise decision while Democrats seize the opportunity to make gains in the battleground state.
The ruling came just a day after former President Trump said he opposes a national abortion ban following months of mixed signals.
How will Republican candidates navigate the post-Roe landscape now confronting them?
Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Lisa Desjardins is a congressional correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza is a chief Washington correspondent at Politico and co-author's playbook, and Domenico Montanaro is a senior editor, is political editor and correspondent at NPR.
Ryan, months of dithering, delaying this announcement about Trump's position on the abortion ban, could you take us inside the process that led to him coming out with this statement this week?
Ryan Lizza, Chief Washington Correspondent, Politico: Yes.
I mean, look, this is the first time in some ways since 2016 where he hasn't really gone with the pro-life view, right?
I mean, there are two issues that Trump really never crossed a red line when it came to the activists in the Republican Party, guns and abortion.
Now, the pro-life activists got more out of Trump's term than almost any other constituency in the Republican Party.
And in the run-up to that announcement Monday, he was being advised by two different sets of people, one who wanted to be much closer to where the activists are and one who said, this is going to cost you the election, even if these same activists are going to put out statements criticizing you, which did happen.
But, functionally, as the week went on, he's basically -- I mean, you could argue he's basically pro-choice at this point by the end of the week with what he's saying about Arizona.
At the very least, he is not able to hold this position of the states do their thing.
Because as soon as a state, especially a swing state like Arizona, does something extreme, he has to criticize that, which he did this week.
So, I think it's one of those classic Trump world dramas where there's this big debate.
He comes out with a statement.
But they haven't necessarily thought it through and been able to keep him consistent on this.
Franklin Foer: Susan, you wrote a column in The New Yorker this week where you described the theatrics of the video that he produced on Monday.
I want to roll a little bit of tape from it and then have you play both the role of theater critic and psychoanalyst in response to it.
Donald Trump (R), Former U.S. President, 2024 Presidential Candidate: My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land.
Susan Glasser, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: Yes, we're laughing because, of course, that was a classic bit of Donald Trump gaslighting.
Nobody is honest with you if they say that they know what Donald Trump actually thinks about abortion.
This is a guy who said that he was very pro-choice.
He was for it before he was against it.
When he was president, in fact, he said he would sign a national abortion ban.
He arguably turned over his presidency more than any other to the anti-abortion forces in his party.
And, of course, since the Supreme Court, with a Trump-appointed majority, threw out Roe versus Wade, Donald Trump, again and again and again, has claimed credit for it because what do we know about Donald Trump, you know, bragging is his happy place.
And even in that video, in a portion we didn't hear, he says, I'm proudly the one who threw out Roe versus Wade.
So, I think that, politically speaking, it's not that he's pro-choice.
It's that he's pro-anything that will get him out of this mess, politically speaking.
And they have set up an untenable position for him politically right now, Frank, because he says on the one hand he's for states' rights, except, as Ryan pointed out, when the states do something that he thinks is going to be a problem for him, as happened in Arizona this week.
He said, well, don't worry after the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated this 1864 law.
He said, well, maybe the governor and the state legislature will fix it.
It didn't happen.
The Republicans and the state legislature are not letting Donald Trump out of the box that he made.
Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor, NPR: Well, listen to what he said there, right?
He said, everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint where it was.
Well, I mean, it wasn't, right?
I mean, this is not where the majority of the country wanted it.
That's why Republicans have lost special election after special election when it comes to abortion rights because the majority of people wanted Roe to stay in place.
And the chaos that has ensued with women not having access to reproductive rights in millions of women across the south in particular, this chaotic sort of patchwork of abortion laws across the country, that's made it really, really difficult.
It's made it very untenable for Republicans.
And, frankly, there's not really going to be a line that Donald Trump can really take that is going to roll back the fact that it were his three justices to the Supreme Court who made it possible to overturn Roe.
And he's bragging about it, as Susan mentioned, that he's saying sometimes it's like you're not sure if Donald Trump realizes he's passed the primary because he's still trying to say to Republicans, hey, I gave you what you wanted here, right?
You're happy.
Good.
But also if you're a swing voter, vote for me.
It doesn't really work that way.
It's not working that well.
Lisa Desjardins, Congressional Correspondent, PBS NewsHour: Yes.
I think the politics here are what mattered.
And I also have to go back to when you said you could argue Trump is a pro-choice president.
I was like, wait, what?
Ryan Lizza: Pro-choice candidate right now, just position-wise, this week, by essentially -- Lisa Desjardins: I don't know about that argument, because I think he is still someone who wants to open all the doors, to keep all the doors to restricting abortion open.
He's saying that.
But this is just a political move by him.
To me, his statement said almost nothing, very effectively.
What I got from that politically, though, was this is a candidate who is not worried about his base.
He's not worried about all of those hard right evangelicals.
He feels like he has them.
He has to move and get the left.
That's what this is about.
Franklin Foer: Can I just ask questions to anybody at the table, just given the political conundrum that he's facing, think that there was a more elegant or a different solution for him to take in order to navigate the different shoals that he's navigating?
Susan Glasser: Look, Donald Trump is losing if he's talking about abortion, and that's the bottom line.
He's not going to be able to talk himself out of this, and, in fact, he's taken credit too many times for dismantling Roe.
There's nothing that Trump is going to do.
And I think it's even more than messaging to his base or something.
I think it's just core to his personality.
This is a historic thing, right?
People tried for decades to get rid of Roe, and I'm the guy who did it, and, in fact, that's often how he talks about this.
What I found very interesting was that you immediately had the Biden campaign and the immediate aftermath of Trump's video.
They put up a new advertisement that I found particularly powerful, and it's of a Texas couple that wanted to have a baby.
The woman experienced a miscarriage.
And because Roe had been thrown out, she was denied necessary medical care in Texas, sent home, she developed an infection.
She got sepsis.
She nearly died.
She probably can't have a kid now.
This ad is intimate.
It's powerful.
There's nothing about politics until the very end.
And the tagline is just Trump did this.
I think those three words are going to haunt Trump's presidential campaign this year.
Domenico Montanaro: No matter what he does, right?
No matter what words that he uses, no matter what he says, that's the reality of where things are.
And he said in that video, hey, time for Republicans now.
Now we did it.
You can move on to inflation and immigration.
There's a big section of the country that is not moving on.
The Biden campaign has three ads in rotation right now on this particular issue.
They're making democracy and abortion rights central to their campaign, and that's where they want to keep it.
Ryan Lizza: You could have stuck with the state's rights argument, but offered a minimum set of standards, which is what the pro-life community wanted him to do.
And the second thing to say is, this is not going away.
There is a group of conservative judges and a group of elected statewide officials around the country who are committed to pushing back against abortion rights.
And this is going to pop up again and again, because there's a whole universe of federal judges committed to this issue and a whole universe of state elected officials.
As we saw in Arizona, as Susan pointed out, the head of the House and Senate in Arizona, they were behind this whole thing.
Those are the people that Trump is saying, oh, you guys fix this with the Democratic governor.
That is not going to happen.
Susan Glasser: I would also point out that, you know, this idea that states' rights, somebody told Donald Trump that it was a good idea to just say states' rights, you know, not really a way out at all of the problem, especially because there's not only the anti-abortion movement that's pressing for a national ban, but his opponents and for Democrats.
If this is a human right for women to have access to health care, to have access to their reproductive rights, your rights shouldn't depend on what state you're living.
If it's a right, it's a right, and it shouldn't matter that in Texas you have no access to something that you have in California.
Franklin Foer: Let me say, yes, I was going to ask on Capitol Hill when you talked to Republicans, do they have a sense that the barn door has been opened with the Dobbs decision and that these sorts of tensions are going to haunt them?
Lisa Desjardins: Absolutely.
They know that this is the issue, as everyone is saying, that they really have to try and overcome in November.
And that's particularly a problem in the House, I think, at this moment.
Donald Trump sort of has this effect on the Republican Party, where he can galvanize attention on the party.
He can also himself at least once ascend to the White House.
He can give them a chance at the White House.
But he causes problems for almost everyone else who is attached to him.
They sort of get the baggage that he is able to shake off that he causes.
So, there is incredible nervousness about this.
And the IVF decision, they certainly have not resolved that, though Alabama tried to by sort of kind of saying that it's okay in a law that doesn't actually deal with the personhood issue.
These are complicated dilemmas for the party that they cannot resolve by November.
And they're trying to come up with other issues, immigration, like you said, that they want to talk about instead.
Franklin Foer: Yes.
I wonder what they would make of those Republicans or these activists would make of Kari Lake and the way in which she's dealt with this.
I want to play some footage of Kari Lake, who was once stridently pro-life, talking about her position now.
Kari Lake, Arizona Republican Senate Candidate: This is such a personal and private issue.
I chose life, but I'm not every woman.
I want to make sure that every woman who finds herself pregnant has more choices so that she can make that choice that I made.
Franklin Foer: I mean -- Ryan Lizza: That's the Democratic position on abortion.
That is a pro-choice statement, essentially, right?
She's used the word -- Lisa Desjardins: It's potent, though.
No, it's potent.
Ryan Lizza: She's uses the word, choice.
Now, maybe she's trying to be ambiguous.
Lisa Desjardins: It's probably more choices means more than nothing, which is what Arizona has right now, more choices might mean 6 weeks or 15 weeks or 20 weeks.
It's coded.
It's not actually pro-choice, yes.
Franklin Foer: Domenico, I want to -- we've been talking broadly about the political implications.
I want you to get granular.
Look, how does this really actually affect the contours of the race in terms of the states, in terms of voting blocs?
I mean, Democrats are searching for some sort of silver bullet.
I mean, is, is this it or is that just wishful thinking?
Domenico Montanaro: I think they know that it certainly is helpful, can be helpful.
I mean, right now, the Biden campaign knows that he is suffering from low approval ratings.
He needs women to be fired up.
He needs women in -- especially those swing areas to be.
But what we're seeing in our polling, in the NPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist polling, is that we're seeing with Biden, he's down with independents, Latinos, especially younger voters.
He's using some of this messaging in trying to appeal to Latino voters.
But what we're also seeing is big shifts with college-educated white voters, which is kind of buoying him in this.
And abortion rights happens to be one of those issues that, you know, when it comes to abortion rights, January 6th, Trump's language, why we've seen these shifts continue.
And they're pretty bullish about, say, the southwest, because you have fewer blue collar, white working class voters in those places.
The Upper Midwest, certainly you have more blue collar white workers.
The Biden campaign feels pretty good about a place like Michigan because they feel like they have enough pro-union stances there and that they can get some of these groups back on board.
But if they continue to be able to gain with white college educated voters, especially on an issue like abortion, then they feel like that they don't need to win back quite as many of, say, those younger voters in Michigan who might have abandoned them because of the Gaza issue or some other voters who they might be struggling with.
Franklin Foer: So, in terms of states where it's going to make a difference, Arizona, I think, obviously, but -- Domenico Montanaro: Well, there's essentially two pieces of what they're looking at.
So, everybody knows.
It's the industrial Midwest, the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt in particular, Arizona and Nevada, with a slight half step back on Georgia and North Carolina.
But that's where all the resources, essentially billions of dollars in ads, are going to be going to those seven states.
Franklin Foer: Susan, we've talked a little bit -- we've talked a lot about the politics of this.
Domenico has alluded to some of the human implications of it.
But before we change topics, could you just talk about the human implications of the decision in Arizona?
Susan Glasser: Yes.
I think it's really important, right?
It's almost like this sort of paradox, right, that, you know, remember that people immediately greeted this decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to reinstate an 1864 law, before Arizona was even a state.
We're talking about a time, by the way, when the legal age of consent in Arizona was ten years old, okay?
That's the kind of restrictive law that's going to affect thousands and thousands of women and girls in Arizona.
That's reflected in many states across the country.
I saw the Biden campaign estimates that already one in three women in America has lost access to reproductive health care as a result of the Supreme Court's decision.
And so there's this almost ghoulish phenomenon, right?
Like we're like, well, it's a great issue for the Democrats or, you know, that it's really good news.
But, of course, in a real sense, these laws are actually going into effect.
The Florida Supreme Court just recently put a very restrictive new law in effect in Florida.
And remember that in many of the states in the south, it was already banned after the Dobbs decision.
And so Florida was where many women in the south were going to get reproductive health care.
And now many of them are not going to be able to.
So, it's a weird situation where we're talking about the political advantage that might come to abortion rate supporters at a time when millions of women are actually losing their rights.
