DES MOINES, Iowa — The Trump-era culture wars are just beginning.
The division that President Donald Trump has tapped into — and helped fuel — on issues ranging from immigration to football players kneeling during the national anthem may be a warmup for what’s to come this summer as Republicans seek to fill a crucial seat on the Supreme Court.
Perhaps no hot-button issue will take center stage like abortion. Justice Anthony Kennedy often provided the pivotal vote on cases concerning abortion rights and his retirement opens the door for Trump to select someone more likely to vote with conservatives. That prospect is unfolding during a dramatic election year heralded for the number of women running for office.
Some of them, such as Democratic Senate candidate Jacky Rosen of Nevada, are framing the stakes in blunt terms in a bid to compel women to vote in November.
“We have a lot to be concerned about. Women’s rights, the right to choose, LGBT rights, voting rights, civil rights,” Rosen, challenging vulnerable Republican Sen. Dean Heller, said in an interview. “A woman’s right to choose is current law. Women have that right. They don’t want it taken away. It is pivotal.”
National Democratic groups such as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were slow to reopen cultural battles, wary that such a move could compromise incumbents from GOP-leaning states who will come under tremendous pressure to back Trump’s eventual nominee to succeed Kennedy. But abortion-rights groups embraced Rosen’s approach to seize on the vacancy to harness the voting power of women who oppose Trump.
Leading abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America was preparing to launch a nationwide voter-outreach program, chiefly with door-to-door canvassing targeting voters who, according to the organization’s data, are motivated by the threat to abortion rights.
“You might have had a history of the other side using courts as an issue in the past,” said NARAL President Ilyse Hogue. “But where the energy is on this is on our side. And voters are fired up.”
In Washington, a central question for Republican leaders is whether to vote on a Supreme Court nominee before or after the midterm elections. Doing so before November would allow the GOP to resolve the issue while they have a narrow majority in the Senate and claim victory on an issue that has motivated the party for decades. Holding a vote after the elections would give both parties the opportunity to gin up maximum voter enthusiasm going into the midterms.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the chamber “will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy’s successor this fall.”
Abortion is one of several fronts in the culture war battles that lie ahead. Heated debates over immigration, gun rights and voting laws are also likely on the horizon.