Trump urges GOP to go on offensive with abortion as he maps out 2024 playbook

Former President Donald Trump offered what he believes to be a winning strategy for the 2024 election, urging lawmakers to lean into tough topics such as abortion that Republicans have typically shied away from in previous cycles. 

Trump met with lawmakers in a closed-door meeting on Thursday to discuss summer plans on the campaign trail and a 2025 agenda in the case that he is reelected to the White House and Republicans manage to hold on to their slim majority in the House. Part of that strategy is to hammer Democrats on abortion and to frame the opposite party as being too “radical,” one lawmaker told the Washington Examiner. 

Democrats have historically dominated the conversation surrounding abortion, often framing Republicans as restricting personal freedoms. That message has been used to motivate voter turnout, most recently evidenced in the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats managed to fend off a predicted “red wave” by targeting Republicans over the reversal of Roe v. Wade.