Trump's Abortion Statement Fails to Thread the Needle
An attempt to make things better that probably made them worse
The pro life movement exists for one reason: to protect unborn lives. That begins with the essential step of overturning Roe, but it doesn't end there — it extends to support for unwed mothers, promoting adoption, challenging the culture of death and more. With Roe gone, pro lifers understood that it wasn’t an end but a new beginning. It would return the fight to the states, a fight we want to have, because even if places like New York City have horrible beastly policies where more black babies are aborted than born, we can protect unborn lives in places like Texas and Florida today, and fight to protect babies everywhere in the future.
President Trump’s statement was a mistake because he didn’t sound like that fighter. We all know Trump is at his best when he's on offense — then he’s king of the jungle. When he gets forced to play defense, he ties himself in knots trying to thread a needle. Here, I think he let his inner circle consultants guide him toward language that left pro-lifers disappointed without satisfying other voters or inoculating him against any of Joe Biden’s lies. And he said the soft part loud: that he’s just saying what he’s saying because he thinks it’s necessary to win.
After taking a fifteen week federal ban off the table, I truly believe there are only a handful of voters likelier to vote for him today than yesterday. That’s the most basic measure of whether you did the smart thing politically. Most Democrats (who get loudest when they’re arguing for birthing people’s permanent right to make babies not exist and for Hamas’s permanent right to exist) will just point to other pro-lifer politicians in the GOP to increase fractures. And for the black and Hispanic men who are flocking to Trump in every poll, and who are the reason for his current narrow lead in this election, abortion is just not an issue that’s top of mind. If you didn’t really gain anyone and you just depressed some of your allies, why make the statement at all?
Every Republican president from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump ran on a Republican platform that endorsed a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. The candidates would endorse exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, but they didn’t get into debates about weeks. Was that an impossible goal? Practically, of course it was. So many things are in politics. But it was a goal stated because it sent a message, a principled message, that the Republican nominee would take a strong stand for unborn lives ... not just saying the equivalent of “this is what they tell me I need to say in order to win”.
We all know pro-abortion Democrats will be excited and active to vote for Joe Biden — the White House is working to ensure that every day, along with their media allies. Donald Trump needs an excited, activated pro-life base in 2024, as they were in his past victories — not one that votes for him despite the fact they feel like he’s running scared from the challenge of protecting unborn life.
I have more on this at The Spectator, which you can hear on my podcast today.
NHS Report on Child Gender Treatment
A long-awaited weigh in on puberty blockers and more.
Children who believe they are transgender may actually have mental health issues, a landmark report is set to find this week.
It is expected to advise that children are not rushed onto a path to change gender, and that they receive counselling which addresses the mental health issues they may have rather than being put on drugs.
Dr Hillary Cass, a paediatrician, will on Wednesday unveil her long-awaited review into how transgender children are supported and the medical treatment they receive.
It comes amid concern that children are being allowed to change gender in school without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and after the routine prescription of puberty blockers was banned by NHS England.
The Telegraph understands that the report will find that children who think they are trans disproportionately have mental health issues such as a difficult family situation or having suffered from abuse. They are also more likely to be neurodiverse.
It is expected to suggest that these children need counselling to tackle these issues holistically, rather than them automatically being put on a path to change gender.
The report is expected to warn that it is wrong to assume it is in the best interest of children who think they are trans to change gender, and urge extreme caution over the use of drugs such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to facilitate this, even once someone is over 18 years old.
The review is also said to express concern about a significant rise in the number of young girls wanting to become boys, and say this group needs more support.
On Monday, Downing Street said the Government would act on the basis of the report to ensure children and adolescents are kept safe.
Xi and Putin, Best Buds 4Evah
Why driving a wedge between Russia and China is a fantasy.
Despite Beijing’s initially cautious approach, most available data points to a much more robust relationship between China and Russia developing in the two years since the invasion. In 2022, bilateral trade grew by 36 percent to $190 billion. In 2023, it grew to $240 billion, surpassing the $200 billion mark in November, a goal that Xi and Putin initially intended to reach in 2025. China has imported energy commodities worth $129 billion—mostly oil, pipeline gas, liquefied natural gas, and coal—that account for 73 percent of Russian exports to China, as well as metals, agricultural products, and wood. At the same time, China has exported to Russia goods worth $111 billion, dominated by industrial equipment (around 23 percent of exports), cars (20 percent), and consumer electronics (15 percent).
Western export controls and the increased focus of Western capitals on the enforcement of sanctions have meant that Russia has no other long-term option than to shift to importing Chinese-manufactured industrial and consumer goods. As a result, sales of Chinese industrial equipment jumped by 54 percent in 2023 compared with the previous year, and sales of Chinese cars nearly quadrupled, making Russia the largest overseas market for Chinese automobiles with combustion engines. Hidden in these figures are Chinese-made items that directly boost the Russian military machine, including growing exports of chips, optics, drones, and sophisticated manufacturing tools.
China and Russia have grown notably closer in the critical area of security and military cooperation. Even amid Russia’s war of aggression, China’s People’s Liberation Army has increased the number of joint activities it performs with the Russian military. In September 2022, despite significant problems on the frontlines in Ukraine, Russia conducted a strategic exercise in its Far East to which China sent 2,000 troops. A few months later, in December, the Chinese and Russian navies held their annual exercise, this time in the East China Sea. In 2023, Beijing and Moscow held three rounds of naval exercises, and in 2022 and 2023, they conducted four joint patrols in Asia with nuclear-armed bombers. These activities still clearly lack the breadth and depth of the joint drills between the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia, but the Chinese and Russian militaries are undoubtedly deepening their interoperability.
That closeness is reflected in diplomacy as well. Since the war in Ukraine, in-person meetings between Russian and Chinese elites have increased markedly. The Kremlin and Zhongnanhai have worked together before, but personal bonds were rare, with the exception of that between Putin and Xi. Now the two presidents have made a point of encouraging their top officials to work together and to get to know each other. Since Xi’s state visit to Russia in March 2023, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and senior members of his team have traveled to China twice, in addition to Putin’s own trip to Beijing in October. Throughout 2023, many senior Russian officials and CEOs of the largest state-owned and private companies shuttled to and from China. Senior Chinese leaders—especially those from the military and security sectors—have also made trips to Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is currently in Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. It is notable that this traffic is mostly one-sided—senior Russian officials and business leaders are going to China much more frequently than their Chinese counterparts go the other way, a clear indication of Russia’s desperate need for China. The one exception is the military-security domain, where the visits of high-ranking officials have tended to be symmetrical and reciprocal.
Feature
Items of Interest
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2024
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Tech
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Health
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Religion
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Ephemera
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Quote
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
— G.K. Chesterton