Donald Trump’s plan for a 16-week, national abortion ban wasn’t supposed to be public. Democrats are ready to pounce

LATE LAST WEEK, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump privately told his allies he backs a 16-week national abortion ban with some exceptions. Inside the Trump campaign, the news was immediately met with deep annoyance, anger, and a scramble for damage control, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone.

Prior to the report, the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner had repeatedly stressed to advisers that he wants to avoid announcing specific abortion policy positions, at least during this stage of the election cycle, sources close to him say. This is, of course, largely because he understands the dismantling of Roe v. Wade — which he engineered — has become a grave political liability for Republicans.

Members of Trump’s senior staff were maddened by the leak to the Times, venting to one another that whoever blabbed to the media about this wasn’t being helpful, the two sources recount. They weren’t the only ones upset by it: The report also served to inflame some of the anti-abortion movement’s most uncompromising figures, who lashed out at Trump for being insufficiently “pro-life.” Some Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill winced at the news too; they, like Trump, hoped to spend the first half of 2024 talking about abortion as little as possible, according to one GOP lawmaker who bemoaned the recent string of conservatives’ election losses that have largely been attributed to “the Dobbs effect.” Democrats, on the other hand, were thrilled.