Abortion bans are political losers for Republicans, which puts the man who made all this abortion-banning possible by stacking the Supreme Court with religious zealots—former President Donald Trump—in an awkward political position. And his video announcement today that he believes whatever states decide about abortion "must be the law of the land" is not likely to be the political salve that he thinks it might be.

At first glance, Trump's needle-threading on this issue looks astute. Dobbs has clearly been the GOP's Achilles heel for the past two years, and Trump most certainly does not want the election to be about reproductive rights. Suburban swing voters who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Biden because of Dobbs can now take another look at Trump and Republicans and conclude that perhaps they have moderated their stance enough to look past it.

But publicly supporting abortion rights in the more than 20 states where the procedure remains legal could cost Trump with his most committed voters—white evangelical Christians. Eighty-four percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2020, along with 57 percent of white Catholics, according to a post-election analysis by Pew. Of self-identified white evangelicals who voted in 2020, two-thirds said that they attended religious services regularly, meaning that the group that gave Trump his biggest margin in the election is comprised of those who are most committed to their faith's principles. And another Pew project........

© Newsweek