Election Updates: Trump says he would not sign a federal abortion ban if elected.
Donald Trump in a social media video falsely claimed that conservatives seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade had always wanted to leave the issue of abortion to the states. In reality, many Republicans have sought a national abortion ban, including President Ronald Reagan, who pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationally.
Donald Trump, in a video on his social media site, appeared to dismiss the idea of a 15-week federal abortion ban, even though last month he suggested he was open to it as a compromise between anti-abortion activists and those seeking more modest limits. He also criticized activists who have taken issue with his recent statement on abortion for continuing to push for a federal ban and taking the number of weeks “upward, upward, upward.”
Amid a series of last-minute bids by Donald Trump to delay his criminal trial set for Monday in New York, he released a series of short videos on his social media site addressing immigration, abortion and his legal troubles. Trump complained in some of the videos that he should be absolutely immune from criminal charges. “A president of the United States has to have immunity,” he said in one video.
President Biden responded on social media to the news that inflation remains persistently high, an economic headwind that has been a drag on his approval numbers. “Today’s data shows inflation has fallen over 60% from its peak, but we have more to do to lower costs,” he said.
A Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday found Donald Trump leading President Biden by 2 points in North Carolina, where Democrats seek to make gains this year. That lead rose to 3 points when including third-party candidates, but still fell within the margin of error. The poll also found the state’s Democratic candidate for governor, Josh Stein, leading his Republican challenger, Mark Robinson, by 8 points.
President Biden prepared a clever riposte to abortion opponents’ promoting a Civil War-era law to ban the procedure in Arizona. But he muffed the line. Asked at a news conference what he would say to people in Arizona, Biden said: “Elect me. I’m in the 20th century.” He quickly caught himself. “Twenty-first century. Not back then. They weren’t even a state.”
The former White House chief of staff Ron Klain criticized President Biden’s re-election strategy on Tuesday, saying that Biden was focusing too much on infrastructure projects and not enough on the economy, according to Politico. “I think the president is out there too much talking about bridges,” Klain said, in a rare public break for an administration that generally remains lockstep in its messaging.
Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson will hold a joint news conference on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. They are expected to discuss “election integrity,” the term Republicans have often used to cast doubt about elections as they train poll watchers and recruit election workers.
Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat facing a tough re-election fight in deep red Montana, is up with a new advertisement about the border that highlights his work with Republicans and distances himself from President Biden. “He fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico,” the ad says.
Donald Trump told reporters in Atlanta that he would not sign a national abortion ban if it were passed by Congress. Later, he said that the question of whether doctors should be punished for providing abortions in places where it is illegal should be left to states. “Those are the things that the states are going to make a determination about,” he said.
Cornel West, the long-shot independent presidential candidate, has selected his running mate: Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University in Los Angeles. West announced his choice Wednesday on “The Tavis Smiley Show.” Abdullah said she was proud to be on the first all-Black ticket featuring a Muslim candidate.
Former President Donald J. Trump again criticized Jewish Americans who back Democrats. At a news conference in Georgia, Trump criticized President Biden’s israel policy and said that “any Jewish person that votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined.” Minutes later, he predicted that Election Day would be “Christian Visibility Day” as Christians turned out in droves to support him.
Donald J. Trump, answering questions from reporters after his plane landed in Georgia, said that the Arizona abortion ruling went too far, adding that it would probably be “straightened out.” He also said he expected Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which he has voiced opposition to, would likely change.
Ms. Palma outlined in the video that first drew attention to her a hypothetical scenario in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would win enough electoral votes to prevent either President Biden or former president Donald J. Trump from winning 270 electoral votes, pushing the decision to Congress in what is known as a contingent election — an outcome that she said would result in Mr. Trump’s victory.
Rita Palma, a consultant for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign seen in a video calling President Biden the “mutual enemy” of Trump and Kennedy backers, appears to have endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. CNN reported — and The New York Times confirmed — that she posted on X that she attended two “Stop the Steal” rallies after the election, including the one on Jan. 6, 2021, that ended in a riot.
VoteVets, a liberal veterans’ group, put out an ad Tuesday assailing Tim Sheehy, the Montana Republican Senate candidate, over reports that a gunshot wound in his arm was accidentally self-inflected, not from combat in Afghanistan as he said. Mr. Sheehy says he lied to a ranger at Glacier National Park that he shot himself to avoid scrutiny about it possibly coming from friendly fire.
On Univision on Tuesday night, President Biden again criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s right-wing prime minister, for his handling of the war in Gaza. “I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden said, adding that the strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers was “outrageous.” He continued, “So I — what I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a cease-fire.”
In an appeal to moderate voters, President Biden, in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night on Univision, painted the modern Republican Party as increasingly extreme. “Look, this is not your father’s Republican Party, as that old saying goes. This is a different breed of cat. This is — Trump runs that party. He maintains a sort of a death grip on it,” Biden said.
Reporting from New York
Days after saying that abortion policies should be left to the states, former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday criticized an Arizona court ruling for upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions and said he would not sign a national abortion ban if he were elected president.
Speaking to reporters on an airport tarmac in Atlanta, Mr. Trump said he expected that the Arizona law would be “straightened out.” Hours later, Republicans in the State Legislature, which they control, blocked an effort by Democrats to repeal the ban.
Mr. Trump also said he expected that a six-week abortion ban in Florida that he has criticized was “probably, maybe going to change.”
Yet even as he suggested his disapproval with the circumstances in both states, Mr. Trump defended the position he took in a video statement on Monday, when he said that states should weigh in on abortion through legislation.
“It’s the will of the people. This is what I’ve been saying,” Mr. Trump said in Atlanta, where he had traveled for a fund-raiser. “It’s a perfect system.”
Mr. Trump’s comments, coming after his Monday statement, continued months of mixed signals on abortion, an issue that his campaign has worried could hurt him at the polls in November.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — a decision made possible by Mr. Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the bench — Democrats have made attacks against Mr. Trump on the issue central to their efforts to mobilize voters in November.
During campaign speeches and interviews, Mr. Trump often takes credit for appointing the justices and for, in effect, returning the issue of abortion to the states. But the Biden campaign and the Democrats have repeatedly laid the blame for strict state abortion laws on Mr. Trump, including the Florida ban, which the former president has called a “terrible mistake.”
Their efforts to tie him to stringent restrictions accelerated after his comments on Monday and after the Arizona court ruling on Tuesday, which said “all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal,” in accordance with a 160-year-old law.
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement after Mr. Trump’s comments on Wednesday that Mr. Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe.”
Democrats have also used the ambiguity left by Mr. Trump’s state-focused position to suggest that he would be open to signing a federal abortion ban if he won in November, which anti-abortion groups have pushed for.
When he was in the White House, his administration backed a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and penalized anyone who performed the procedure.
But with Roe overturned and Republicans seeming to suffer political consequences in the fallout, Mr. Trump has been trying to stake out a position that would animate his conservative base without turning off moderate voters.
Last month, he suggested he would be open to backing a 15-week federal ban with exceptions for rape, incest and life-threatening emergencies. But that idea was absent from his statement on Monday.
Mr. Trump, a Florida resident, has not yet said how he might vote this November on a ballot measure there that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution. Of Arizona, he said the law was “going to definitely change,” adding, “Everybody wants that to happen. And you’re getting the will of the people. It’s been pretty amazing.”
He avoided expounding on his personal views later on Wednesday at a campaign stop at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta. When asked by a reporter whether he believed doctors should be punished for providing abortions, Mr. Trump said that question should be left to the states.
“Those are the things that the states are going to make a determination about,” he said.
Former President Donald J. Trump once again criticized Jews who back Democratic candidates on Wednesday, saying that “any Jewish person that votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined.”
His comments, made to reporters in Atlanta as he was attacking President Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, marked the third time in the last month that Mr. Trump has cast aspersions on Democrat-supporting Jewish voters, a group that in the past he has accused of disloyalty.
Mr. Trump has received blowback over such remarks for years, with critics saying that they revive an antisemitic trope that Jews have a “dual loyalty” and are more loyal to Israel or their religious beliefs than to their own countries.
A Biden campaign spokesman, James Singer, condemned Mr. Trump’s comments as divisive. “Jewish Americans do not need to be ‘spoken to’ or threatened by Donald Trump,” Mr. Singer said, adding, “This is what Trump does, using division and hate as political weapons while seeking power for himself.”
Mr. Trump has for years been trying to peel American Jews, a substantial majority of whom are liberal, away from the Democratic Party. Those efforts have intensified since the start of the war in Gaza, which exposed divisions among Democrats over how the Biden administration has handled it.
But in seeking recently to win Jewish voters’ support, Mr. Trump has repeatedly castigated American Jews who do not support his candidacy as insufficiently loyal to Israel. On Monday, during an interview on the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice, Mr. Trump said that “any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel, and frankly, should be spoken to.”
And last month, Mr. Trump told Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide who now hosts a conservative talk-radio program, that any Jewish person who backed Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel.”
Since Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Mr. Biden has maintained support for Israel despite increasingly vocal opposition from critics within his own party who say he has not done enough to address civilian deaths in Gaza.
But as the humanitarian crisis within Gaza has extended past six months, Mr. Biden has increasingly taken a more critical stance toward Israel. Last week, after the killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, Mr. Biden threatened to condition future support for Israel on how the country addresses his concerns about its military conduct.
Mr. Trump has had comparatively less to say about the war. Days after the attack, he criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli intelligence services for being unprepared. After receiving swift criticism, Mr. Trump quickly pivoted to express support for the country’s right to defend itself.
But Mr. Trump drew criticism from staunch Israel supporters on the right after an interview last month in which he said that Israel was losing public support, in part because images of the destruction in Gaza were ruining the country’s global reputation.
“Israel has to be very careful, because you’re losing a lot of the world,” Mr. Trump said in the interview with Israel Hayom, a conservative Israeli news outlet. “You’re losing a lot of support. You have to finish up. You have to get the job done.”
And last week, Mr. Trump told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, that Israel was “losing the P.R. war” because it was releasing images of its military campaign online.
As president, Mr. Trump consistently favored Israel against the Palestinians. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and brokered accords between Israel and four Arab states.
On Wednesday, he tried to portray himself once more as Israel’s most aggressive supporter. He told reporters that Mr. Biden, who has faced protests from within his party for continuing to provide military aid to Israel, has “totally abandoned” the country.
“Biden has totally lost control of the Israel situation,” Mr. Trump said.
Even as he seemed to make a direct appeal to American Jews, for at least the third time this month Mr. Trump framed the upcoming election as a referendum on Christian values, saying that Election Day would also be “Christian Visibility Day,” when Christians would turn out in droves to vote for him.
The appellation was a nod to a conservative firestorm that erupted last month after Mr. Biden formally acknowledged Transgender Day of Visibility, which is observed annually on March 31 and this year coincided with Easter.
But Mr. Trump’s response to the controversy was in line with his efforts to frame his third presidential campaign as a crusade to defend Christian values from the left, even as he never showed interest in religion before entering politics.
Last month, he endorsed a $60 Bible that comes with printed copies of some of the nation’s founding documents. “Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country,” he said in a video promoting the new Bible, adding, “We must make America pray again.”
Cornel West, a long-shot independent presidential candidate, named Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter activist, as his running mate on Wednesday, cementing a novel ticket featuring two Black Ph.D.s whom he positioned as offering a stronger commitment to racial justice than both major parties.
Ms. Abdullah, 51, is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University in Los Angeles.
Mr. West, who has taught at several Ivy League universities and helped pioneer the field of African American studies, announced his selection during “The Tavis Smiley Show,” a livestreamed talk show.
Ms. Abdullah, who has never run for office before, said she was proud to be part of an all-Black ticket and would continue her role as an activist with Black Lives Matter.
“I will never step back from that,” she said, though she pointed out that the group does not endorse political candidates. “But the agenda, the Black Lives Matter agenda of ending state-sanctioned violence, right, of building a world where our children and our people can live and walk freely comes with me into this race.”
Mr. West shrugged off criticism that his left-wing candidacy, which is polling in the low single digits, could siphon off crucial votes from President Biden in his rematch against former President Donald J. Trump. He asserted that he and Ms. Abdullah, who is Muslim, presented voters with a better alternative.
“Trump is leading the country toward a second Civil War,” Mr. West said on the show. “Biden is leading the world toward World War III. That’s the choice you have if you only are tied to the duopoly.”
Mr. Biden’s campaign referred a request for comment on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee, which cast doubts about Mr. West’s viability.
“Despite Cornel West announcing a running mate, our view remains the same: Only two candidates have a path to 270 electoral votes, President Biden and Donald Trump,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesman for the D.N.C., said in an email. “The stakes are high and we know this is going to be a close election — that’s why a vote for any third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Mr. West said on the livestream that he and Ms. Abdullah would use the campaign to draw attention to their fight for justice.
“We want to abolish police murder, abolish police brutality,” he said. “We want to abolish poverty. We want to abolish homelessness. We want to abolish this greed that we’ve seen organized on Wall Street and Pentagon and Silicon Valley.”
Kari Lake, the leading Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, was quick to denounce the state Supreme Court’s ruling upholding an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions in the state. The law is “out of step with Arizonans,” she said in a statement. She called on state lawmakers to “come up” with a “solution that Arizonans can support.”
But Ms. Lake, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump and a 2020 election denier, had voiced enthusiastic support for the law less than two years ago, when she was in the midst of a scorched-earth campaign for the Republican nomination for governor. Asked then what she thought of the ban, she said she was thrilled it existed and called it a “great law.”
Asked for comment, the Lake campaign pointed to a post from Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Ms. Lake, who insisted on Tuesday that Ms. Lake was not referring to the territorial-era law in the interview. But in that 2022 appearance, Ms. Lake cited the 1864 law’s number in the Arizona state code.
“I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books. I believe it’s ARS 13-3603,” she said in a 2022 interview on “The Conservative Circus With James T. Harris.” She made other remarks in support of the 1864 law during that campaign as well.
Ms. Lake’s retreat from the fervent anti-abortion rhetoric of her early 2022 campaign reflects the sharp changes in the politics of abortion in the nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. Her shift also signals grave concern from Republicans, both in Arizona and across the country, that the issue will leave them electorally vulnerable in the fall — particularly in crucial battleground states like Arizona.
Republicans have been searching for a position that will shield them from the electoral blowback they have seen since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
But the revival of the 1864 law in Arizona amounts to something of a nightmare scenario for Republicans in the state. The Civil War-era law, which had lain dormant for decades, was enacted shortly after Arizona was organized as a remote frontier territory of less than 10,000 residents — and almost half a century before Arizona became a state and, months later, adopted women’s suffrage.
Starting in the 2022 midterms and in governors’ races, special elections and ballot measures, the abortion issue has helped Democrats notch victories across the country. And the Democratic Party is eager to push the issue to the front of this year’s races.
The White House said on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris — who has focused on abortion rights on the campaign trail — would travel to Tucson, Ariz., on Friday to campaign on the issue. Last month, Ms. Harris met with abortion providers and staff members at a clinic in St. Paul, Minn., a striking political move that underscored Democrats’ new assertiveness on the issue.
Democrats, who had already seized on Mr. Trump’s new abortion stance on Monday, unleashed a salvo of fresh attacks after the Arizona ruling. They pointed to his latest statement that whatever states decide “must be the law of the land, and in this case, the law of the state,” as well as to his repeated boasting that he was responsible for ending Roe v. Wade.
The Democrats also trained their focus on Ms. Lake, posting other remarks from 2022, during which she expressed strict anti-abortion stances.
Ms. Lake, who is expected to win her primary, is likely to face Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, in the fall, in a contest to determine the successor of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who is not seeking re-election. Mr. Gallego’s campaign recently said it had raised $7.5 million in the first quarter.
A Pulitzer Prize winner resigned from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on Tuesday, protesting what he said was the group’s snub of former Representative Liz Cheney for its highest honor out of fears that Donald J. Trump would retaliate if he returned to the presidency.
David Hume Kennerly, an acclaimed photographer for his coverage of the Vietnam War, who was also the chief White House photographer for Mr. Ford, criticized the foundation for its decision to bypass Ms. Cheney for the Gerald R. Ford Medal of Distinguished Public Service.
In his resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times and first reported by Politico, Mr. Kennerly wrote that Ms. Cheney, one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics in the Republican Party, should have been a consensus pick for the honor for her role in the government’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “America is fortunate to have Liz Cheney still out there on the front lines of freedom vigorously defending our Constitution and democratic way of life,” he wrote.
Mr. Kennerly, who worked for United Press International and had been a board member since the early 2000s, nominated Ms. Cheney for the medal last year and said that he had urged the foundation’s executive committee to reconsider her this year. He noted that Ms. Cheney was a board member of the foundation.
“A key reason Liz’s nomination was turned down was your agita about what might happen if the former president is re-elected,” Mr. Kennerly wrote. “Some of you raised the specter of being attacked by the Internal Revenue Service and losing the foundation’s tax-exempt status as retribution for selecting Liz for the award.”
Gleaves Whitney, the executive director of the Ford Presidential Foundation, gave a different reason in a statement about why Ms. Cheney was passed over by the organization: that her name was being bandied about for a potential third-party candidacy for president.
“At the time the award was being discussed, it was being publicly reported that Cheney was under active consideration for a presidential run by No Labels,” Mr. Whitney said, referring to a centrist political group. “Exercising its fiduciary responsibility, the executive committee concluded that giving the Ford medal to Cheney in the 2024 election cycle might be construed as a political statement and thus expose the foundation to the legal risk of losing its nonprofit status with the I.R.S.”
No Labels last week abandoned its plans to run a presidential ticket in the 2024 election after its recruitment of high-profile candidates fizzled.
No Labels’ chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, said in a statement on Wednesday that the group had briefed Ms. Cheney on its 2024 ballot access strategy but that she declined to be involved out of concern it could help the electoral prospects of Mr. Trump. He added that No Labels did not make an offer to Ms. Cheney to appear on its ticket.
Ms. Cheney did not immediately respond to requests for comment left with a spokesman on Wednesday.
The top Republican on the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, Ms. Cheney has regularly been vilified by Mr. Trump and his supporters. Her criticism and defiance of the former president led to her ouster during the Republican primary in 2022 in her House district in Wyoming, which she represented for six years in Congress.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was a White House chief of staff for Mr. Ford and is listed on the foundation’s website as a trustee.
Mr. Kennerly accused those who rejected Ms. Cheney for the honor of pandering to Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and said that Mr. Ford, the medal’s namesake, would not have acquiesced.
“Those of you who rejected Liz join many ‘good Republicans’ now aiding and abetting our 45th president by ignoring the genuine menace he presents to our country,” Mr. Kennerly wrote, adding, “Gerald Ford wouldn’t have been intimidated by phantom consequences.”
Alabama has warned the Democratic Party that President Biden could be left off the state’s ballot this fall because Mr. Biden will not have been officially nominated in time to meet a certification deadline.
Alabama is now the second state with a Republican government to warn Democrats that Mr. Biden could be left off the ballot because of the late date of the party’s nominating convention. Ohio issued a similar warning on Friday.
Wes Allen, the Republican secretary of state in Alabama, said in a letter to the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday that a party fielding a presidential candidate in the state must provide a certificate of nomination “no later than the 82nd day next preceding” Election Day, which for 2024 would be Aug. 15.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin Aug. 19. The Republican convention, which will be held in July, is well within the deadline for ballot certification.
“If this office has not received a valid certificate of nomination from the Democratic Party following its convention by the statutory deadline,” Mr. Allen continued, “I will be unable to certify the names of the Democratic Party’s candidates for president and vice president for ballot preparation for the 2024 general election.”
Mr. Allen addressed the letter to the Rev. Dr. Randy Kelley, the leader of the Alabama Democratic Party, as well as Jaime Harrison, who leads the national party.
A spokesman for President Biden’s campaign insisted that Mr. Biden would be on the ballot in all 50 states, and pointed to states that have previously provided provisional ballot access certification before a candidate’s official nominating convention.
A new super PAC supporting former President Donald J. Trump has $27 million in cash on hand, two days after the group held its first event with Mr. Trump ahead of the November election, according to an official with the group.
The super PAC, Right for America, raised $13.05 million during the first fund-raising quarter of the year, the official said. An additional $12 million was raised in connection with the event, and $2 million more was raised this month.
“We are thrilled by the support we have gotten in the few weeks we have been around,” said Lee Rizzuto, Right for America’s treasurer. “We look forward to doing our part in making sure Donald Trump is returned to the White House.”
The biggest donor to the group is Isaac Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment chief executive who has been involved since the group formed weeks ago. Mr. Perlmutter and his wife, Laura, donated $10 million, a person familiar with the amount said.
Right for America held its first event on Tuesday night, with a dinner of roughly 25 people at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla. The group is planning another fund-raising dinner soon, but is not expected to start spending until closer to the general election in November.
Among those who attended the dinner was Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., who helped bring some of the people to the gathering, according to a person familiar with the event.
The group is led by Sergio Gor, a longtime Trump associate who has published Mr. Trump’s two post-White House books. It is the second super PAC supporting Mr. Trump after Make America Great Again Inc., which has been the main outside group backing the former president since he declared his third candidacy for president in November 2022.
Mr. Perlmutter, an old friend of Mr. Trump and a member of Mar-a-Lago, had been interested in going through a different entity to support the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.