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Abortion bans are unpopular. So unpopular that Republican extremists seem to have to invent conspiracy theories to trick Americans into voting for them.

Thats the major takeaway from recent political battles in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In all three states, abortion-related ballot initiatives and elections were framed by right-wing groups as the only thing standing between parents and trans ideology in the classroom.

In Ohio, political ads intoned that malicious entities from out of state were arriving to encourage sex changes for kids. In Wisconsin, Republicans distributed a video that claimed a child was transitioned into a boy by school officials without parental consent. And in Michigan, millions of dollars went into ads that warned minors as young as 10 or 11 could be sterilized without their parents even knowing.

All would be resolved, the ads assured, if voters just sided with conservatives at the ballot box. But in reality, parental rights were not on the ballot in any of these states. Instead, all three votes had enormous implications for access to abortion.

This is the new playbook. Using the specter of child corruption and social contagion, Republicans are attempting to manipulate parents, scapegoat trans and queer people, and erode multiple axes of bodily autonomy, all in one fell swoop. It does not appear to be a particularly effective tactic, as the recent right-wing efforts failed in each of the three states that tried it. But initiatives like Promise to Americas Children, a coalition of far-right groups that has advanced anti-trans legislation in states across the country, are putting money behind these fearmongering tactics. These groups believe that by agitating conservatives and uniting voters against a trans boogeyman, they can get people to ignore their own support for (or indifference to) abortion rights and eagerly line up to give those rights away.

This month, Ohioans went to the polls to vote on a ballot measure, known as Issue 1, that was specifically designed by the Republican Party to bulldoze a proposed amendment to the state constitution that residents will vote on this fall. That proposed amendment, if passed in November, will enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Ohio Republicans knew they were at a disadvantage on this issue. Abortion rights are broadly popular in Ohio, as they are in most of the country. In a recent USA TODAY Network/Suffolk Universitypoll of likely Ohio voters, 58 indicated support for the abortion rights amendment while only 32 percent opposed it, with 10 percent undecided. The ranks of the supportive included 85 percent of independent women and a full third of surveyed Republicans.

So conservatives knew they wouldnt be able to thwart the proposed amendment on the merits of their anti-abortion arguments alone. Instead, they scheduled an emergency vote on a ballot initiativein the dead of Augustthat would have made it much easier to defeat the abortion rights amendment on procedural grounds. If Issue 1 had passed this month, it would have required 60 percent of voters to approve any amendment to the state constitution, rather than a simple majority.

It didnt work. Ohioans streamed to the pollsturnout was 38 percent, higher even than any regular primary election since 2016and voters rejected Issue 1 by a resounding margin of 14 points.

In the aftermath, state Republicans lamented that they hadnt enough time to get their message outdespite the fact that they were the ones who tried to rush the vote on Issue 1, and despite the millions of dollars that had gone into trying to make voters fear for their children.

In an ad that circulated before the August vote, funded by a right-wing group called Protect Women Ohio, a parent tucks a young girl into bed. You promised youd keep the bad guys away. Protect her, the voice-over says. Nows your chance. Malicious entities from out of state are arriving in sheeps clothing to encourage sex changes for kids and sneak trans ideology into schoolrooms, it continues. Protect your rights as a parent by voting yes on August 8th.

What do sex changes for kids have to do with a ballot measure about the amendment-making process? Nothing at all. In trying to cloak an unpopular agenda in anti-trans messaging, GOP operatives were hoping to mislead voters and incite them to panicregardless of the fact that Issue 1 would not have protected parental rights at all.

The Ohio special election was not the GOPs first stab at this switcheroo tactic. In the lead-up to a Wisconsin Supreme Court election held in April, Republicans distributed a video that claimed to tell the story of an innocent 12-year-old child who was transitioned into a boy by school officials without parental consent. (In fact, the child had not medically transitioned but requested to use a boys name and he/him pronouns. After the school respected those wishes, the parents sued.)

The outcome of the election will determine if parents still have rights, said the video, which was funded by the American Principles Project, which is part of the coalition of far-right groups pushing anti-trans legislation in multiple states. Dont leave your children in the hands of Janet Protasiewicz, it continued, referring to the liberal candidate on the ballot.

During the campaign, Wisconsin voters got texts from anti-Protasiewicz campaigners, many with links to the American Principles Project ads. Some texts said that the candidate and her woke allies want to TRANS our children without notifying parents. Other texts referred to the trans madness that would overtake Wisconsins children if conservative judicial candidate Daniel Kelly didnt win the race.

In actuality, the election was widely seen as a referendum on abortion rights: It was set to determine the ideological balance of the state court, which was previously right-leaning, in advance of a case that would either uphold or strike down an 1849 abortion ban that had become newly enforceable in Wisconsin after Roe v. Wade was overturned. With money pouring in from across the countryto support both Protasiewicz and Kellythis Wisconsin election became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history.

Protasiewicz had never weighed in on the case of the 12-year-old mentioned in the attack ad, and her opposition never presented proof of her supposed opinions on health care for trans kids. But Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project, has said that campaigns to ban gender-affirming treatments for trans people are a political winner. Trans rights are enormous issues for swing voters and moderates and can pull centrists toward conservative candidates, Schilling told the New York Times.

So even in a judicial election with little connection to trans issues, when youre an anti-trans hammer, the race looks like a nail.

Republicans pulled the same trick last year in Michigan, where a right-wing PAC spent millions of dollars on anti-trans ads aimed at defeating an abortion rights amendment on the ballot in November. The amendment, which ended up passing, affirms that every person has the right to make their own decisions related to pregnancy, including prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care. Conservatives spent the months before the election trying to convince voters that the inclusion of the term sterilization was a sneaky admission, by Democrats, that they would be legalizing secret gender-affirming surgeries for children.

One ad that ran in the state focused on puberty blockers, depicting a syringe dripping with fluid. If the abortion rights amendment passed, the voice-over said, minors as young as 10 or 11 will be able to receive this prescription without the consent of their parents or their parents even knowing. The implication was that puberty blockers were somehow part of the amendment and that they would be used to sterilize children. (Puberty blockers do not cause sterilization.)

A constitutional right to sterilization surely includes a right to be sterilized to align ones sex and gender identity, wrote a spokesperson for Citizens to Support MI Women & Children, the PAC that funded the ads, in an email to the Detroit Free Press. The majority of voters do not support a 12-year-old girls right to sterilization without her parents notice or consent.

Legal analysts who responded in the Detroit Free Press said the abortion rights amendment in Michigan was not written to legalize clandestine procedures for children, nor could it be reasonably interpreted as such by a judge. But again, that wasnt the point. Abortion access, though despised by Republican extremists, is quite popular; the right had no chance of blocking the amendment without inventing a conspiracy theory to go with it.

Conservatives are now promoting this same sort of misleading, disingenuous reading of an abortion-related text in Ohio, where just a simple majority of voters may pass the abortion rights amendment in November.

Protect Women Ohio, the main coalition fighting the amendment, maintains that the language the amendment usesevery individual has a right to make and carry out ones own reproductive decisions without burdensome state interferencewill mark the end of the Ohio law requiring a guardians consent for a minors abortion. In its ads, the group also says the amendment would allow a child to undergo sex change surgery without her parents knowledge or involvement.

The reproductive rights amendment, a woman says in one Protect Women Ohio ad, is not just about abortion like they say it is.

Again, nonpartisan legal analysts have refuted this interpretation. But anti-abortion activists arent concerned about the truth of the matter; theyre invested in the long-term maintenance of transphobic anxiety in the electorate as a means to achieve their other political goals. In trans people, they have found the perfect punching bag: members of a tiny minority with little political power who can be made out to represent a fundamental threat to the traditional gender order.

Pursuing an agenda that leans far further right than what constituents want is nothing new for conservative leaders. Due to a combination of aggressive gerrymandering and strong right-wing activism in Ohio, for example, the state has long been a vanguard of anti-abortion policy in spite of its relatively balanced political makeup and broad support for abortion rights. But lately, on abortion, Republicans have been watching their wins come undone by ballot measures and state constitutional amendmentsin other words, by mechanisms that put the power back in the hands of voters.

Its democracy in action. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, every time abortion rights have been put to a popular voteanywhere in the countryvoters have rejected the anti-abortion ballot measures and approved the ones that codify or expand abortion rights. Its no surprise that GOP operatives are trying to divert the focus to literally any other issue where they perceive themselves to have the upper hand, though it is horrifying to see that they believe virulent transphobia is a winning enough position that it may convince voters to sign away their access to legal abortion. The only silver lining, in Ohio as in Wisconsin as in Michigan, is that the bait-and-switch doesnt seem to be working.

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Abortion: The Republican plan to trick Americans into voting against it. - Slate

A majority of Ohio voters support the right to an abortion. The Ohio Legislature gerrymandered into a seemingly perpetual Republican majority does not. In many states, this would be the end of the story, but in Ohio, voters have the power to act directly on the state Constitution at the ballot box. With a simple majority, they can protect abortion rights from a legislature that has no interest in honoring the views of most Ohioans on this particular issue.

Eager to pursue their unpopular agenda and uninterested in trying to persuade Ohio voters of the wisdom of their views Republican lawmakers tried to change the rules. Last week, in what its Republican sponsors hoped would be a low-turnout election, Ohioans voted on a ballot initiative that would have raised the threshold for change to the state Constitution from a simple majority to a supermajority. They defeated the measure, clearing the path for a November vote on the future of abortion rights in the state.

In his opinion for the court in Dobbs, Justice Samuel Alito cast the decision to overturn Roe and Casey as a victory for democracy. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the peoples elected representatives, he wrote. Reproductive rights, he continued, quoting Justice Antonin Scalias 1992 dissent in Casey, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.

Citizens can persuade one another, and they can vote. But our political system is not designed to turn the aggregate preferences of a majority into direct political power. (If that were true, neither Alito nor his Republican colleagues, save for Clarence Thomas, would be on the Supreme Court.) More important, Alitos vision of voting and representation works only if that legislative majority, whomever it represents, is interested in fair play.

But as the Ohio example illustrates, the assault on bodily autonomy often includes, even rests on, an assault on other rights and privileges. In Idaho, to give another example, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which passed before Dobbs was decided, would punish state employees with the termination of employment, require restitution of public funds and possible prison time for counseling in favor of an abortion or referring someone to an abortion clinic. Other legislatures, such as those in Texas and South Carolina, have pushed similar restrictions on speech in pursuit of near-total abortion bans in their states.

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Opinion | Republicans Wont Stop at Banning Abortion - The New York Times

1. Factbox: When is the first Republican primary debate? Who will be there?  Reuters
2. What to know about the 1st Republican presidential primary debate  ABC News
3. How Many Republicans Have Qualified for the Debate? It's Still Unclear.  The New York Times

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Factbox: When is the first Republican primary debate? Who will be there? - Reuters

West Wing aides have noted that public support goes up for Ukraine funding any time there is a major moment in the conflict. They plan to take advantage of a pair of upcoming international appearances by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to keep the pressure on Republicans. Zelenskyy is expected to attend next months G-20 summit meeting in India before returning to the United States to deliver a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

The White House will also ramp up public pressure by hammering home the need to defend democracies around the globe as well as the fiscal necessity to thwart Russia or any future nation with war ambitions by pointing out the negative economic impact of the war.

The defense assistance that both parties have come together around has been critical to Ukraines ability to beat back Russias illegal invasion and to strengthening our alliances in the world, said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.

The president has been very clear that this strategy deters wars of choice and the economic disruption they cause and that we will continue to support Ukraine and our own basic principles as a country, he said.

But the funding battle is poised to lead to another standoff between the president and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, one that could shape Bidens legacy and Ukraines success in the war.

Biden has placed the defense of Ukraine against Russias invasion at the center of his foreign policy, rallying the democracies of the world to help one of their own. The U.S. has spearheaded the effort, corralling NATO and other allies to send billions in military and economic aid. But the jubilation is giving way to fear as Ukraines wartime success stalls.

Kyivs counteroffensive, purposefully slow to preserve troops and weapons as they wade through minefields and operate without air cover, has helped its forces advance foot-by-foot along the 600-mile front with dug-in Russian forces. But that slow pace has led senior U.S. officials to admit they dont know how to judge the progress.

The tactics clearly dont make good politics. Polls suggest Americans are growing weary of supporting Ukraines battlefield stalemate, and Republicans are seizing on what they see as an opportunity.

The funding path should be easier in the Senate than the House since Ukraine has been championed by several Republicans, most notably Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell views support for Ukraine as a piece of his legacy and the West Wing believes he will keep his side largely in line and, importantly, set a tone for the House talks. But a worsening of the 81-year-old senators recent health challenges could upend the calculations.

Still, the Senate will want to put their fingerprints on any spending bill especially after the way the Senate got jammed by the House on the debt ceiling agreement. When the White House sent its funding request last week, the top Republican and Democratic appropriators indicated they would write their own legislation.

For now, McCarthy looms as the White Houses most significant obstacle. He has at times been in the thrall of his partys far right, which has called for slashing money being sent to the war zone.

Former President Donald Trump, the prohibitive favorite to become the GOP presidential nominee, has questioned the need to back Ukraine and repeated a desire to broker a peace deal with Russia quickly. Officials on both sides of the Atlantic assess that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to wait out the upcoming U.S. election, believing that his fortunes in the war could change if a Republican commands from the Oval Office.

For now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy looms as the White Houses most significant obstacle. He has at times been in the thrall of his partys far right, which has called for slashing money being sent to the war zone. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Even pro-Ukraine Republicans are hedging against supporting a new deal for Ukraine. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the House Freedom Caucus sole Kyiv-friendly member, said this week that Ukraine cant win the war and, therefore, the U.S. should reconsider further stocking its defenses.

Its not just far-right members, said a House Republican aide granted anonymity to speak freely. [Mainstream Republicans are] sympathetic to the cause but were throwing money at a conflict that can last for years.

McCarthys office did not return multiple requests for comment.

Financial support for Ukraine, for the most part, still enjoys bipartisan backing. But there is long-running skepticism among House Republicans about continuing to fund the war in Ukraine, and its unclear if McCarthy wants to defy them to strike another spending deal with Biden. White House aides and Democratic congressional negotiators expect that the speaker, in order to appease the hard right, will push to make some cuts and could threaten at any point to blow up the package.

Republicans may also ask, according to those close to the process, for some sort of inspector to monitor Ukraine funding to ward off corruption.

But Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a staunch Ukraine supporter and McCarthy ally, said he would only support a Ukraine package that ensures advanced weapons like the long-range Army Tactical Missile System make it to the battlefield. Without that assurance, he sees no point in further depleting U.S. stocks and spending more money to keep Ukraine at a fighting stalemate with Russia.

Why keep giving Ukraine weapons that dont help them win the war? the House Armed Services Committee member said in an interview. I dont want to give more for a gridlock.

Far-right Republicans are likely to weaponize the domestic-foreign imbalance in the White Houses spending request: $40 billion total, including $24 billion in Ukraine. The emergency supplemental request will bump up against what is expected to be a continuing resolution to keep the government funded for a short, yet-to-be-determined amount of time another measure unpopular with conservatives.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer argues that consensus is possible.

This is not just Democrats. This is not just Joe Biden. The vast majority of the Republican caucus in the Senate and the Republican leader saying we need this supplemental, and we need it for we need it for Ukraine, Schumer said. And I am hopeful that the House will do that.

Congress has already approved $113 billion in aid for Ukraine including around $70 billion for security assistance; more than 90 percent of it has already been spent or assigned. The new request includes $13.1 billion for military aid to Ukraine and replenishment of Pentagon weapons supplies that have been used for the war effort. An additional $8.5 billion would go for economic, humanitarian and other assistance to Kyiv and other nations affected by the war, while $2.3 billion would be used in an effort to leverage more aid from other donors through the World Bank.

But the chorus of Washington voices who think enough is enough has grown louder.

The United States current level of support for Ukraine is unsustainable militarily, financially and increasingly politically, said Dan Caldwell, vice president for the Center for Renewing America, who with his colleagues is lobbying House Republicans to oppose the Ukraine spending request.

Proponents argue the need for new funds is urgent. The money Congress initially approved is now down to the single digits at an estimated $6 billion. Its enough to further provide Ukraine with munitions for Patriot air-defense systems, 155 mm artillery rounds, Javelin anti-tank missiles and spare parts to fix broken-down equipment. U.S. officials say its not sufficient, even as the Pentagon finds more dollars in the proverbial couch, to sustain Ukraine for the long haul.

Its important that we put the national interest here first and that [McCarthy] not continue to be led around by the nose by his farthest right and most extreme members, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). I am confident that at the end of the day well get something through. I think theres going to be a lot of I think therell be some bumps along the way.

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House Republicans are standing between Biden and his war to save Ukraine - POLITICO

The latest indictment of former President Trump, in Georgia, differs from the other three cases he faces in one key respect.

The case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) shines a light on the role Republican officials played in pushing back on Trump’s false claims of election fraud and thwarting his plans to overturn the result.

This alone greatly complicates Trump’s preferred narrative, whereby he is the put-upon victim of President Biden and Democrats as he seeks to regain the White House. The former president labeled the indictments against him “election interference” in three social media posts Friday.

Such claims sit uneasily with the resistance he encountered in Georgia from Republican figures like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

As Trump again stokes fictions about fraud in the aftermath of the indictment, Kemp has again become an important opponent.

The Georgia governor has left virtually no doubt that he is skeptical about the former president’s 2024 candidacy, which is animated in large part by grievances about the 2020 defeat.

On Friday, Kemp told a conservative gathering in Atlanta, “It should be such an easy path for us [the Republican Party] to win the White House back but … We have to be focused on the future, not something that happened three years ago.”

Earlier in the week, Trump took to Truth Social to promote a press conference that he contended would provide “irrefutable” evidence of the “Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”

Kemp promptly shot back on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law,” he wrote.

Kemp added, “The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”

Trump later canceled his proposed press conference, contending that his lawyers would “prefer putting this … in formal Legal Filings.”

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The Memo: Georgia indictment reminds voters of the Republicans who stood up to Trump - The Hill