Democracy Dies in Darkness

Tempers flare as Trump team revises abortion plank for Republican platform

The former president wants the platform to endorse leaving the issue to the states rather than a federal ban in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise.

Dozens of antiabortion activists outside the Supreme Court are met by thousands of abortion rights activists during the 2021 Women’s March in Washington. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
6 min

Top advisers to Donald Trump have begun to discuss draft language for the 2024 Republican platform that antiabortion leaders expect will abandon the party’s decades-long call to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend personhood protections to the unborn, according to multiple people involved with the discussions.

The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition. Others have started to discuss an effort to issue a “minority report” to the platform at the convention, according to the people involved, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Michael Scherer is a national political reporter at The Washington Post. He was previously the Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, where he also served as the White House correspondent. Before joining Time, he was the Washington correspondent for Salon.com.Twitter
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.Twitter
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