At DNC, Harris didn’t hold back on abortion

Aug 23, 2024

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Driving The Day

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Democratic National Convention.

Vice President Kamala Harris took aim at former President Donald Trump's abortion stance. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

HARRIS ZEROES IN ON ABORTION — Presidential candidate Kamala Harris pulled no punches when it came to abortion in her speech accepting the Democratic nomination Thursday.

She hammered former President Donald Trump for appointing the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and said that, if elected, he would restrict access to birth control, ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban — even without Congress. She tied him to the controversial Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its extensive conservative policy blueprint from which Trump has tried to distance himself.

“They are out of their minds,” Harris said.

Harris’ focus on the issue signals she’ll lean heavily into abortion and reproductive rights in her campaign. Her speech was a marked shift from President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic who has been more reluctant to discuss abortion. Instead, he leaned more heavily into one of his administration’s landmark health care policy: giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices.

Democrats have a substantial polling edge over Republicans on abortion, and Harris has taken a no-holds-barred approach to the issue. Harris and surrogates frequently painted her as a fighter for the future.

Her messaging centered on women being unable to make decisions about abortion under Trump, including women suffering from health issues and children surviving sexual assault who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term. She also pointed to doctors in several states who fear the legal consequences of prescribing abortion medication or performing the procedure.

Harris didn’t touch much on other health care issues in a relatively brief acceptance speech.

She gestured that she’d protect Medicare and framed health care as a cost issue in an apparent bid to counter Republicans’ messaging on cost-of-living issues.

The Trump campaign’s response was telling.

His campaign’s rapid-response messaging focused on casting Harris as far left and tied her to rising costs and “Bidenomics” and issues at the southern border — issues on which Republicans poll better than Democrats.

The Trump campaign said Harris was “lying” about his abortion position, saying he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban. Trump has said he’d leave abortion to the states in an effort to moderate the GOP’s stance on abortion.

In a Truth Social post, Trump called accusations that he'd restrict access to birth control or in vitro fertilization "A LIE."

The Trump campaign also shared clips from the 2020 presidential primary in which Harris endorsed Medicare for All, a position that’s no longer on her agenda.

Harris hit Trump for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, pulling out one of her signature lines: “We are not going back.”

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Abortion

Anti-abortion activists hold signs outside the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that an abortion-rights measure cannot appear on the ballot in November. | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

A WIN FOR ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS — GOP officials and conservative activists have worked for two years to keep abortion-rights initiatives from reaching ballots and scored their first win Thursday, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.

Arkansas’ Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of the state’s attorney general, who had accused the abortion-rights initiative’s supporters of failing to submit necessary paperwork. Though abortion-rights ballot measures have passed overwhelmingly in red, blue and purple states since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Arkansas’ initiative was always a longshot.

Dissenting justices accused Arkansas officials of unjustly changing the rules to prevent the petition from succeeding.

“This requirement was made up out of whole cloth,” they wrote. “Regnat Populus — The People Rule — is the motto of Arkansas. Today’s decision strips every Arkansan of this power.”

The details: The group Arkansans for Limited Government submitted more than 100,000 signatures earlier this month for a measure that would allow abortion for any reason up to 20 weeks. Most signatures were collected by volunteers, but paid canvassers collected some. State rules require groups gathering signatures to submit a statement listing all paid canvassers.

Arkansans for Limited Government disputed the claims they didn’t follow the rules and said that even if there were mistakes, they should have been allowed a “cure” period to gather more signatures.

In Congress

RISE IN PROJECTED OBAMACARE SPENDING — The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that estimated Affordable Care Act subsidies and related spending have doubled since they were first calculated in 2020 because of higher enrollment.

The CBO initially projected that premium tax credits and spending tied to them would be $600 billion between 2021 and 2030. This year, the CBO estimated that spending would be $1.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034.

In response to a question for the record from Senate Budget Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the CBO said the change is partially due to the different projection timelines but “primarily” because of legislation in 2021 and 2022 expanding the premium tax credit through 2025.

“For the years after the effects of those expanded tax credits dissipate, greater expected enrollment is partly due to other factors such as changes in CBO’s economic and demographic forecasts, including the immigration surge that began in 2021,” the CBO wrote, adding that Biden administration regulatory actions have also increased enrollment projections.

Zooming out: Cost will be key as Democrats push to make the premium tax credit subsidies permanent after they expire. Republicans have resisted the push, calling the policy inflationary and unsustainably expensive.

Coronavirus

FDA GIVES THUMBS UP TO NEW COVID SHOTS — The FDA approved and authorized updated mRNA Covid vaccines that target a specific strain of the virus as fall respiratory illness season nears, POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner reports.

The details: The agency approved Pfizer-BioNTech's and Moderna’s updated shots for people 12 and older and emergency use authorization for both companies’ versions for kids 6 months through 11 years.

The FDA asked the manufacturers in June to incorporate the KP.2 strain into their formulas, if possible — an update to previous advice to focus on the JN.1 variant due to a shift in the most dominant strain circulating in the U.S. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines both target KP.2.

Related subvariants known as KP.3 and KP.3.1.1 are now the most prevalent strains and estimated to account for more than half of U.S. cases, according to CDC data.

What’s next: CDC Director Mandy Cohen formally recommended the updated Covid shots for individuals 6 months and older in June. Once pharmacies and health care providers have vaccines, they can immediately be given to patients.

Pfizer said its updated vaccine will immediately ship to pharmacies, hospitals and clinics nationwide, with availability expected “in the coming days.” Moderna also said its product will be available in the next few days.

Artificial Intelligence

ANOTHER BLOW FOR AI BILL — A California effort to regulate large-scale artificial intelligence models was dealt another blow Thursday.

Add leading AI firm OpenAI to the opponents of the AI safety bill after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came out against it earlier this week, POLITICO’s Jeremy B. White reports.

The legislation from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, would mandate AI developers to undergo safety testing before deployment to avert AI from causing catastrophic harm, such as aiding in the creation of a biological weapon.

OpenAI, the ChatGPT creator, wrote in a letter obtained by POLITICO that it backed federal legislation instead of state laws, undermining the argument from Wiener and other California Democrats that the state must act because Congress has not.

Congress doesn’t appear close to moving on AI regulation, especially with House GOP leadership coming out against it earlier this year.

WHAT WE'RE READING

POLITICO’s Arek Sarkissian reports on a financial dispute between doctors and the state’s largest Medicaid operator.

STAT reports that after digital therapeutics firm Pear Therapeutics filed for bankruptcy and shut down, its apps are again available to patients.

Reuters reports on a new Alzheimer's drug that the U.K.’s health service deemed too expensive.

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