ILL-CONCEIVED: A decade-old tangle between Vice President Kamala Harris and anti-abortion activists is still playing out in the courts — but it hasn't broken through politically the way the right has hoped. Anti-abortion groups' efforts to use the case as a cudgel against Harris' presidential campaign have largely fallen flat, underscoring how dramatically the politics around abortion has changed since the overturning of Roe two years ago. The activist, David Daleiden , is set to face trial in December over secret recordings of his conversations with abortion providers, which he claimed showed they were illegally selling aborted fetal tissue. The allegations, which then-Attorney General Harris investigated in 2016, set off a firestorm nationwide, prompting calls from Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood and launching more than a dozen state and congressional probes. Those probes found no evidence that Planned Parenthood or other organizations were selling fetal tissue, and independent analyses found the tapes to be highly altered. Harris was running for Senate at the time, and her decision to raid Daleiden’s Orange County home prompted outcry from anti-abortion groups who alleged First Amendment violations. She also faced criticism on the left for not moving sooner. Daleiden was later charged with 15 felony counts by Harris’ successor, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and was accused of recording people without their consent. There were also multiple civil suits filed on both sides, including one in which Daleiden accuses Harris of violating his civil rights. The criminal case against Daleiden and his organization over their alleged violation of privacy laws has dragged on for over seven years and is now in the Superior Court in San Francisco. “It's the first time that that law has ever been deployed by the attorney general's office against an undercover reporter or an undercover activist,” Daleiden told Playbook in an interview. “In California, there have been many others who do the same kind of work that I do, but not a single one of them has ever been troubled by the attorney general's office under that law.” With Harris now at the top of the ticket, anti-abortion groups have been trying to seize on the case to score points where they couldn’t with President Joe Biden. It gives them a chance to air other grievances about Harris, who as California’s attorney general scrutinized anti-abortion pregnancy centers and who was the first sitting vice president to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic. But the Trump campaign hasn’t taken them up on that, reflecting the former president’s reluctance to go too far right on abortion for fear of alienating parts of his base. Neither presidential campaign responded to requests for comment. For her part, Harris has broadened the campaign issue of reproductive rights to include IVF, birth control and access to medication, topics that many Republicans would rather avoid entirely, Democratic strategist Robin Swanson said. “They're losing on the issue of reproductive freedom generally,” Swanson said. “They can’t talk about this [case] without talking about the issue more broadly.” IT’S WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. This is California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check on California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to lholden@politico.com.
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