Where JD Vance is Winning Hearts and Minds

Today’s notice: Plugging holes. Trump-Vance tries to shore things up with the anti-abortion movement, Harris tries to shore things up with the online youth and Congress tries to dig itself out of the CR hole.

JD Vance, the Anti-Abortion Whisperer

In the electorally bumpy wake of Dobbs, Republicans’ abortion rights conversation has really become a debate about political expediency vs. ideological purity. Andat the top of the ticket with Donald Trump and JD Vance, it’s something of a good cop, bad cop routine for conservative base voters.

It’s Trump on Truth Social repeating the language of “reproductive rights” to general election voters and Vance at a Faith and Freedom event telling leaders from the religious right, “You are always going to have a seat at the table in the Republican Party of this president and of his leadership.”

NOTUS’ Oriana González reports from inside a conservative movement that is, more and more, pointing to Vance as the truth of what Trump-Vance 2024 thinks about abortion rights. Vance is “politically unafraid, you know? He has core values. He knows what he believes. He knows why he believes that. He can defend it. He can express it. He leans into it, and he’s not intimidated or afraid,” Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told her.

Cynthia Lummis told Oriana it’s “self-evident” that Republicans are the anti-abortion party. But: “Trump could say that with absolute conviction, and if that would assuage [anti-abortion advocates’] concerns,” then he should “repeat it frequently and resoundingly.”

There’s no sign of that happening, meaning Vance has to convince a very powerful and well-organized part of the GOP that he’s able to make promises and keep them while assuring these conservatives activists that Trump’s words are simply that. This can be awkward, especially after moments like Trump’s “I didn’t discuss it with JD” line at the debate about a national abortion ban veto. As the GOTV game gets underway and Republicans turn to their activist base to pull out the vote, the pressure on Vance to thread this needle only increases.

Read the story here.

Inside JD Vance’s Debate Prep

Rep. Tom Emmer was picked to play Tim Walz over at Team Vance’s debate prep HQ. Monica Crowley is the pretend moderator “expected to simulate some of the fact-checks that ABC moderators threw at Trump earlier this month during his debate.”

In the room as Vance preps: Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller and JD’s wife, Usha Vance, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports.

Vance is taking debate prep seriously — the phrase “murder board sessions” was thrown around by one person directly involved. What to watch for from Vance: He wants to paint Walz as a fake moderate and go after him for his military record.

Read more here.

Front Page

• Kamala Harris Has Young Voter Energy. But Does She Have the Young Voters?: It’s unclear if the wave of youth voter enthusiasm is translating to actual votes.
• Mike Johnson Caves on Government Funding: The Speaker is giving the right flank a procedural win, despite putting forward a bill most House Republicans will oppose.
• Matt Gaetz Gets Hit With a Florida Bar Complaint: A Florida activist accused Gaetz of violating Bar rules following allegations that he attended a sex party with a teenager.

No Love From D’Esposito This Monday

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito made an appearance at House votes Monday night, just hours after The New York Times reported that the Long Island Republican had his lover on his district office’s payroll, where he also employed his longtime fiancée’s daughter. But that didn’t mean he was ready to talk about it.

We found him in the Cannon House Office Building tunnel, but when we asked about the Times’ report, his spokesperson just handed us their card and told us to call his office.

—Riley Rogerson

The Coconut Memes Are Facing Competition

Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, said the students she spoke with at a recent college voter activation event noted an uptick in anti-Kamala Harris memes on social media. She called the anti-Harris efforts on social media “sophisticated” and emphasized that there’s a direct tie between “negative information” and skepticism toward Harris.

“If you’re getting constantly negative information, and all of your information is coming from social media, or certainly designed, structured to make you question the person you might want to support,” she said. “You question whether or not you should participate.”

Harris needs to be on pretty solid footing with young voters to win. Data from Tufts University shows that young voter engagement has increased over the last decade, but the challenge with young voters is always getting them out on Election Day. And Harris still has a lot of ground to gain with young men.

—Tinashe Chingarande

Not Us

We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here are some other great hits by … not us.

• CNN uncovered that Melania Trump was paid an eye-popping $237,500 to appear at an April Log Cabin Republicans event.
• ICYMI during last week’s Day of Scandals, Axios revealed how and why Markwayne Mullin and Sean O’Brien patched things up after nearly coming to blows last year.
• Floodlight spotlights “ghost candidates” running in Florida specifically as a spoiler in tight races with shady financing from the utility sector.

Be Social

Sen. Ron Wyden approves of this rotisserie chicken purse.

This checks out … in spring, Wyden told Riley that he’s had a chicken in every Fred Meyer in Oregon, meaning over 50 chickens. “Have chicken and some vegetables on your way from one town meeting to another,” he said in April. “That’s my secret sauce.”

Tell Us Your Thoughts

Who should play JD Vance during Tim Walz’s debate prep?

Send your thoughts to newsletters@notus.org.

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