Biden heads to Florida to hit Trump on abortion rights
President Joe Biden is traveling to Florida on Tuesday to deliver remarks highlighting efforts by Democrats to safeguard abortion access and casting former President Donald Trump as a threat to reproductive rights.
The trip to Tampa is intended to "forcefully advocate for reproductive freedom and call out Donald Trump’s abortion bans, as he’s been doing since Roe was overturned,” Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler told reporters in a call previewing the president's travel plans.
The Biden campaign has been emphasizing what it sees as a potential path to victory in a red state it considers "winnable," despite Trump's victories there in 2016 and 2020.
“The idea that Donald Trump has the state in the bag could not be further from the truth,” Tyler said. “He owns not only the state of abortion rights across the country, but he owns the restriction that we’re seeing play out in Florida.”
NBC News has reported that Biden’s remarks in Florida also will touch on the Arizona Supreme Court ruling this month that a near-total ban on abortion that dates to 1864 is enforceable.
Biden is visiting Florida days before a six-week abortion ban that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year takes effect following an April 1 state Supreme Court ruling.
Biden's campaign has sought to tie Trump to the state’s post-Roe law and indicated that a proposed amendment on the ballot in November that would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution could help its chances of flipping the state.
In an NBC News 2022 midterm exit poll, 56% of Florida voters said abortion should be legal. Among the voters polled, 24% said abortion mattered most in deciding how they voted.
Trump won Florida in 2020, with 51.2% of the vote to Biden's 47.9%.
Trump, who lives in Florida but will be in New York on Tuesday for his hush money trial, has voiced support for various positions on abortion over the years, though he regularly talks on the campaign trail about how he appointed conservative justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. After having floated the possibility of a federal abortion ban, he recently said that abortion laws should be decided by states but also that the Arizona Supreme Court went too far in its ruling.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, abortion has appeared on the ballot in several states and consistently delivered wins for abortion-rights groups. It’s expected to remain a key issue in November, but it’s not yet clear whether it will galvanize voters with the same force as it did in the midterm elections.
