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CNN’s Jake Tapper called out President Joe Biden’s ever-changing position on the issue of abortion.
In an interview that aired Sunday with Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu, Tapper questioned whether Biden’s shifting stance on abortion over his political career will be harmful to his campaign.
Tapper characterized Biden’s position on abortion as “all over the map” and asked whether it undermines support from him from pro-choice advocates.
“Do you think his own long, complicated history on this issue — do you think it muddies his message, and undermines the contrast with Donald Trump?” Tapper asked.
Landrieu at first criticized how Trump has handled the abortion issue, but then explained how Biden’s pro-choice stance is stronger than ever.
“Since his presidency, he has been very strong in his support of a very simple notion: that he trusts women to make decisions about their reproductive health,” Landrieu said.
To Tapper’s point, Biden’s position on abortion has been inconsistent throughout his career.
In 1974, then freshman Senator Biden said that he didn’t like the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion.
“I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” the Washingtonian reported in 1974.
In 2006, Biden called himself “the odd man out” in the Democratic Paty on the abortion issue, according to CNN.
“I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it’s always a tragedy, and I think that it should be rare and safe, and I think we should be focusing on how to limit the number of abortions.’ Biden said.
Just this year, Biden said that he’s “never been supportive of, you know, ‘It’s my body, I can do what I want with it,” the New Yorker reported.
Yet, since his inauguration in 2021, Biden has been anything but a sideline spectator on the issue.
In July 2022, just a few weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Biden signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion services.
CNN reported that the “executive order attempts to safeguard access to medication abortion and emergency contraception, protect patient privacy, launch public education efforts as well as bolster the security of and the legal options available to those seeking and providing abortion services.”
In June 2023, Biden denounced abortion restrictions in Republican-governed states, arguing that the states were depriving women of “basic health care,” according to the New York Times.
“In his 50+ years in politics … Biden has been all over the map on abortion,” says CNN’s Jake Tapper.
— “In ’74, he said Roe v. Wade went too far, and that a woman should not have ‘the sole right to say what should happen to her body.'”
— “In 2006, he said, ‘I do not view… pic.twitter.com/uad5XSziwI
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 5, 2024
Just this year, in his State of the Union address, Biden said, “if you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again,” Huffpost reported.
It seems like Biden’s position on abortion corresponds to that of his base. Instead of having an independent opinion based on what he believes, he’s believing what he thinks will get him elected.
Tapper is right to bring up Biden’s tepidity on the issue. There is perhaps no issue that Biden has flipped back and forth over in his career more than abortion.
What Biden represents is an opinion that is often held on the left, particularly among left-leaning legal scholars: the idea that codified laws are living, constantly evolving instruments.
It’s in stark contrast to the position taken by the mainstream right, who take an originalist perspective on laws. They argue, according to the National Constitution Center, that laws should be interpreted with the understanding of those who wrote them, not those who are reading them.
The idea of the left is that the U.S. Constitution should change over time to accommodate how society’s view on key issues changes. This all happens without any sort of formal amendment process, and is instead implemented by enlightened members of the judiciary.
As many people are aware, the Constitution makes no mention of abortion in its text. Rather, the theory of the “living constitution” was utilized by the Supreme Court to permit them to bring the Constitution into the modern age.
David Strauss, a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, defined a living constitution as “one that evolves, changes over time, and adapts to new circumstances, without being formally amended.”
This idea that the Constitution can change over time and adapt to new circumstances has been the foundation of Supreme Court decisions that have written rights into the Constitution based on what the Court wants it to say.
This philosophy is concerning, to say the least.
For the left and “living constitutionalists,” no constitutional right is safe. To them, the government is the arbiter of what rights should and should not be guaranteed.
To them, the law is subject to their will. If a provision of the law is disharmonious with their will, they will simply change it.
The core issue with that philosophy is, at the end of the day, the letter of the law means nothing more than what judges think it ought to mean, irrespective of what it says.
That’s why overturning Roe v. Wade was the correct jurisprudential decision, even if it was not popular. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees anyone the right to have an abortion.
The Constitution was founded on the principle that there are some rights so sacred, so worth protecting, that citizens can only be deprived of them when afforded due process.
And no right is greater than that of the right to life. Unlike the left, many on the right believe that rights come from God, not government, and that they cannot be changed just because some judges feel like they should.
That’s why conservatives have so consistently opposed abortion. Sure, you can deprive someone of life with due process. But how can you give a baby in the womb due process?
The left and right can, and do, disagree on many issues. From immigration and taxes to welfare and energy, all of these debates have their place.
But when it comes to abortion, and the deprivation of the right to life, this is something that we really should all be able to agree on. After all, if we don’t protect the right to life of innocent children, what is worth protecting?
Does any other issue matter if we can kill our most vulnerable citizens?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: CNN Host Calls Out Joe Biden for ‘Being All Over the Map” on Abortion appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The International Monetary Fund last week ripped the Biden administration’s out of control spending, calling it “out of line with what is needed for long-term fiscal stability.”
According to the New York Post, the IMF, an international organization aimed at fighting financial crises across the globe, warned that ever-growing national debt in the U.S. poses a long-term risk to the global economy.
“Something will have to give,” the IMF cautioned in foreword of the World Economic Forecast published on Tuesday.
“The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth,” the IMF said. “But it reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.”
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has shown no intention of slowing down its spending.
Last month, the administration proposed a massive, $7.3 trillion budget for fiscal year 2025, the New York Post reported.
The Office of Management and Budget reported that the national debt would surge to $45.1 trillion by 2034 under the budget plan, according to the Post.
The IMF’s warning comes as the U.S. national debt is approaching $35 trillion, with the total rising by about $1 trillion every 100 days.
The cost the national debt is imposing on a yearly basis has also risen, as the U.S.’s debt interest payments topped $1 trillion in October, according to Business Insider.
What’s more, U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures debt as a proportion of GDP, is climbing to concerning heights. According to a report by the World Population Review, the U.S. has the ninth-highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world at 129 percent. According to the site, a debt-to-GDP ratio of 77 percent or lower encourages domestic economic growth.
In classic Biden fashion, the White House is blaming the problem on former President Donald Trump.
“The Trump tax cuts added $2 trillion to the debt with unpaid giveaways skewed to the wealthy and big corporations, and now Congressional Republicans are proposing another $5.5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the rich, while raising taxes on millions of middle-class families,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa told the Post.
And Biden’s solution to the problem? More taxes.
Biden’s budget plan proposed includes hiking the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, while raising the minimum corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 21 percent, according to the Post.
He also proposed a minimum 25 percent tax on billionaires, “defined as those with a net worth of $100 million or greater,” according to the Post.
This comes as Biden is trying to force through $7.4 billion in student-loan debt cancellation.
Biden is attempting to use a different legal justification than the cancellation plan he tried to push forward last year, which was struck down by the Supreme Court as an overstep of his authority under Article II of the Constitution.
The new round of student debt cancellation is estimated to cost taxpayers $84 billion over the next 10 years.
Biden’s actions have done anything but put the U.S. on a trajectory for economic prosperity. As the IMF noted, while we have experienced growth, the careless spending will serve to deter the nation’s long-term future.
And Americans agree that the economic situation is dire. Only 28 percent of Americans currently view our economic conditions as excellent or good, according to a Pew poll from January. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise, with inflation being 3.5 percent from March 2023 to March 2024, a higher rate than was anticipated.
What the Biden administration needs to do is decrease its spending and pull money out the economy, so that inflation can be curtailed.
But instead of decreasing government spending, Biden is hell-bent on making American taxpayers bear the burden of his progressive policies.
Inevitably, raising wealth and corporate taxes will be detrimental to growth. Increasing tax rates will cause corporations to invest elsewhere and strike a blow to the American economy.
In this instance, the government needs to do less, not more. We need to decrease government spending, not increase it.
And while his comments were aimed for a different time, Ronald Reagan’s assessment of the issues plaguing the U.S. in his 1981 inaugural address are the same issues we face today. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
And, as the IMF put it, something will have to give.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post ‘Something Will Have to Give’: IMF Issues Dire Warning to Biden Administration appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Biden is facing an uphill battle for a second term in the White House.
But this latest news is probably going to send his campaign into a panic.
A report by the Daily Caller shows that Democratic voter registrations have dropped in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — three hotly contested states in the 2020 election.
While Democrats still hold a voter registration advantage over Republicans in all three states, the gaps have shrunk significantly.
According to Pennsylvania state election data and reported by the Daily Caller, Democrats have lost 336,269 registered voters in the state since Nov. 3, 2020. Democrats still hold a nearly 400,000 voter registration advantage over Republicans, though this a sharp decline from the 685,818 lead Democrats held going into the last presidential election.
In North Carolina, Democrats saw a decrease of 212,084 voters from December 2020 to April 2024. Democrats now only outnumber Republicans by 170,943 voters, a decrease of over 200,000 voters since 2020.
The numbers in Nevada were less staggering, with Democrats losing only 27,757 voters since December 2020. The Democratic majority in registrations over Republicans has shrunk from 96,875 in 2020, to 55,116 today.
All in all, Democrats have lost 576,110 voters in the three states combined.
According to CNN, Fewer than 200,000 combined votes decided the winner in these states in 2020. Biden won Pennsylvania by a little under 81,660 votes, and Nevada by 33,596. Former president Trump won the Tar Heel state by 74,483 votes.
Biden will need a massive turnout in each of three states if he wants any shot at victory.
The latest RealClearPolitics polling averages show Trump holding a 4.0-point lead in North Carolina, and a 3.2-point lead in Nevada. Biden is currently edging out Trump in Pennsylvania by 0.1 points.
However, while these figures are surely not what the Biden campaign wants to hear, Republican strategist Scott Jennings is cautioning people to “not over read” the data, according to the Daily Caller.
“But certainly Biden has a real problem on his hands among many segments and you can clearly see that in these results,” Jennings added. “The trick, of course, is that once people are registered, then you have to turn them out.”
A recent analysis performed by the Pew Research Center showed that the nation is basically split when it comes to overall voter registration, with 49 percent of voters registered as Democrats compared to 48 percent who are registered as Republicans.
While Jennings is right to caution Republican optimism, recent history has shown that swings in voter registrations can be very beneficial for Republicans.
Take Florida, for example. According to the Florida Division of Elections, from 2018 to 2022, Democrats only lost 47,727 registered voters. They also lost the voter registration advantage they held over Republicans.
Despite the modest gains, Republicans swept the floor in the 2022 gubernatorial election, with incumbent governor Ron DeSantis defeating Democratic challenger Charlie Crist by 1,507,897 votes, or 19.4 percent.
The shift really had to do with the man on the ballot. DeSantis’ actions during the pandemic and refusal to cower in the face of wokeness turned him into one of the most popular governors in the country.
If Trump wants to capitalize on these shifts away from the Democrats, he needs to make this election about the other man on the ballot.
While Trump does not have the surging popularity DeSantis had in 2022, he is running against a widely unpopular incumbent. According to RealClearPolitics, Biden’s latest approval rating average currently sits at 40.6 percent.
Gallup reported in February that Biden’s approval rating for his third year in office was a mere 39.8 percent, the second lowest approval for a president’s third year in the Gallup polling era. Only Jimmy Carter’s 37.4 percent was worse than Biden’s.
Carter went on to be destroyed in the 1980 general election by Ronald Reagan, suffering one of the worst defeats in presidential election history.
If Trump wants to replicate the outcome of the 1980 election, he has to make the focus of the campaign about Biden’s presidency.
Every speech, every event, every rally needs to be about how Biden has failed to deliver on anything he promised in 2020, and emphasize that Americans are worse off under Biden than they were under Trump.
And it’s not a difficult argument to make: Americans are paying more across the board for goods and services, housing and gas now than they were under Trump. Biden has made life more difficult for Americans, not better.
If Trump can stick to these points, he should have no problem winning over these ex-Democrats in November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post In 2020 Biden Won 2 Key States by 115K, Now He’s Lost Over 364K Voters in Same States appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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