Biden turns up the heat on Dobbs anniversary

On the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the Biden campaign is getting aggressive on abortion. While President Joe Biden is mostly locked away at Camp David preparing for Thursday’s first presidential debate against Donald Trump, he released a video blaming Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, “putting women’s lives in danger.” 

“Decades of progress shattered just because the last guy got four years in the White House,” Biden said. “We know what will happen if he gets another four. For MAGA Republicans, Roe is just the beginning. They’re going to try to ban the right to choose nationwide. They’re coming for IVF and birth control next.”

The video message is part of a larger strategy by the Democrats to move its abortion messaging away from elective procedures done for purposes of birth control. Instead, they are focusing on a handful of cases related to miscarriages and otherwise wanted children to reframe abortion as a woman’s health issue. Vice President Kamala Harris participated in a series of campaign events to this effect in Maryland and Arizona on Monday. At the Maryland event, Harris was introduced by Kate Cox, a Texas woman who had to travel out of the state to abort her unborn child who tested positive for a fetal anomaly. Other high-profile cases championed by Democrats have featured women who claim they were denied care for miscarriages by doctors worried they’d be prosecuted under pro-life laws. 

“Today, our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump,” Harris said during her stop in Maryland. “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”

There are no abortion laws that prohibit miscarriage — medically known as a “spontaneous abortion” — care, and Texas’s law contains a separate statute permitting expulsion of deceased children from the womb and abortion care related to medical emergencies involving the health of the mother. Nonetheless, focusing on undoubtedly tragic cases and framing them as resulting from abortion bans helps Democrats avoid criticisms that they are extreme on the issue. Republicans have pushed Democrats to identify what restrictions, if any, they support on abortion; they have neglected to answer that question, instead trotting out women who had difficult or nonviable pregnancies.

Abortion remains one of the few issues at top of mind for voters where Biden is trusted more than Trump. Americans polled consistently say that they support some restrictions on abortion but do not want the procedure banned outright. To that end, Senate Democrats are planning on ad blitz on websites targeted to women — mostly cooking, lifestyle and fashion blogs — to attack Republican opponents and their pro-life records. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

SCOTUS AFFIRMING CARE The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans puberty blockers, hormone therapies and sex-change procedures for minors who suffer from gender dysphoria. The Biden administration sued the state’s attorney general over the law, arguing it is unconstitutional because it prohibits so-called gender-affirming care in “explicitly sex-based terms.”

LUNATIC CRINGE Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earned online mockery for her appearance at a rally in the Bronx for her embattled Democratic colleague Jamaal Bowman. AOC jumped around on stage for the small crowd to a Cardi B song featuring the lyrics, “Hoes better lower they tone when they spittin’ / Bitches is washed, soap on the dishes.”

NOEM MAN’S LAND South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said in a Meet the Press interview on Sunday that she has not received any vetting paperwork to be President Donald Trump’s vice president. Reports indicate that Governor Doug Burgum and Senators Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Tim Scott have received vetting requests. 

An unlikely Trump ally? 

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo spoke last week in defense of Donald Trump — sort of.

Regarding the 45th president’s so-called “hush-money” trial, Cuomo said during a Real Time with Bill Maher panel Friday:

If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn’t running for president… I’m the former AG of in New York, [and] I’m telling you that case would’ve never been brought.

That’s what is offensive to people, and it should be because if there’s anything left, it’s belief in the justice system.

“The former governor seemingly agreed that an issue exists within the justice system,” reports the Hill. “He warned the Manhattan district attorney’s office against using the system to play politics.”

Cuomo went on to tell Maher:

And you want to talk about a threat to democracy: when you have this country believing you’re playing politics with the justice system and you’re trying to put people in jail or convict them for political reasons, then we have a real problem.

Cuomo, of course, had has own issues with New York’s top cops. Attorney General Letitia James investigated the governor’s office for sexual harassment, leading to Cuomo’s resignation in 2021. 

Many Trump faithful are also convinced of the justice system’s flaws, as the Trump campaign experienced a remarkable fundraising surge in the days following his conviction that the Boston Globe posits “could reshape [the presidential] contest.” The Hill also reported on polling showing Trump’s support has remained steady following his conviction. 

–Teresa Mull

Biden official runs from old tweets 

Recently appointed White House communications official Tyler Cherry’s old tweets resurfaced upon news of his promotion, revealing radical opinions that appear rather inconsistent with Biden administration policy.

In 2014 and 2015, he strongly criticized police forces, advocated for the abolishment of ICE and publicized his anti-Israel beliefs on Twitter/X. After the 2014 Gaza War, he tweeted, “Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine — no shame and fuck your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine.”  

He tweeted in response to the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, “Praying for #Baltimore, but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases.” He added that people should “recall… the modern-day police system” is a “direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs.” 

Cherry defended himself on X, saying, “Past social media posts from when I was younger do not reflect my current views. Period. I support this administration’s agenda and will continue my communications work focused on our climate and environmental policies.” He also appeared to wipe his X account of all other posts. According to LinkedIn, Cherry was finishing up his college degree at UCLA, where he studied political science and gender studies, when he sent most of the offending tweets. 

Cherry previously spent three years working under secretary of the interior Deb Haaland, who said that Republicans see our country as a “dark place” where “there’s no hope at all.” 

Cherry did not elaborate how exactly his views have changed in the past decade. For example, does he now consider himself pro-Israel? Or are his tweets merely further evidence of growing ideological divisions among the Democratic Party? At the very least, maybe the Biden administration should take background checks more seriously when hiring officials. 

–Elisenne Stoller