Trump campaign blocks pair of anti-abortion activists from RNC platform committee

Two hardline anti-abortion delegates to next week’s GOP platform committee have been stripped of their positions, according to several members of the Republican National Committee, underscoring a broader fear among evangelicals and other social conservatives that the party is poised to moderate its stance on abortion at the direction of former President Donald Trump.

The Trump campaign’s efforts to block the two South Carolina delegates from the platform committee and replace them with loyalists is described in several affidavits as “interference from paid RNC staff … to circumvent the will of the delegation.”

The shakeup, which has not been previously reported, comes as anti-abortion groups petition Trump, his campaign advisers and members of the RNC not to make significant changes to the party’s platform on abortion.

While running for the platform committee, the two South Carolina delegates, longtime party activist LaDonna Ryggs and former state party chair Chad Connelly, made clear they would not vote to “water down” the party’s positions on abortion, marriage or Israel, according to a person with knowledge of the comments and granted anonymity to speak freely.

A Trump campaign official disputed that Connelly and Ryggs were ever on the platform committee and maintained that two other people were the ones properly elected to the body by South Carolina’s convention delegates, suggesting that the “state party” had tried to circumvent the RNC.

And Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign and RNC, said in a statement that the platform committee “has yet to convene to discuss what language should be in the final document.” Trump officials have privately maintained, meanwhile, that no specific language on abortion has been determined ahead of the scheduled platform meetings next week in Milwaukee.

The party platform has long condemned the procedure and supported both state and federal restrictions on abortion, including a 20-week national ban. Anti-abortion groups fear the RNC’s platform committee is about to make Trump’s leave-abortion-to-the-states position — which they have reluctantly accepted — the official position of the Republican Party. Doing so, they say, would undo decades of progress by their movement to restrict access to the procedure at all levels of government, and they warn that it could cost Trump the election in the process.

“I would strongly urge the leadership of the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign to proceed with great caution on the platform and avoid doing anything that would discourage or in any way deflate the enthusiasm of pro-life and evangelical voters,” said Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “Right now, sitting here today, they are prepared to crawl across broken glass, to do everything in their power to see President Trump re-elected. I don’t want to see anything happen that would change that current dynamic.”

Delegates in four other states told POLITICO they, too, had been blocked by operatives with the Trump campaign from securing seats on the platform committee.

According to the affidavits prepared for the RNC’s committee on contests, obtained by POLITICO, the Trump campaign and RNC staffers held a separate vote to elect a different slate of platform committee delegates. The documents allege that at least two GOP staffers who were formerly employed by the Trump campaign “[pressured] them to vote against” Ryggs and Connelly and tried to “circumvent” the official vote.

Two slates of convention committee members were ultimately elected — one slate from the meeting organized by the Trump staffers, and another, including Connelly and Ryggs, at the party’s official meeting that was presided over by South Carolina GOP Chair Drew McKissick. Ryggs and Connelly have appealed the RNC’s decision to accept the other slate of convention committee members, though no hearing has been set.

Ryggs — who said in her affidavit that she has been such a loyal supporter of Trump that she and her husband had a gun pulled on them while knocking on doors for the campaign in 2020 — served on the RNC’s platform committee three times previously, including in 2016 when she celebrated the party moving its positions on social issues to the right. Connelly, who runs a faith-based conservative group, was the RNC’s national director of faith engagement under previous chair Reince Priebus.

While many prominent anti-abortion leaders have weighed in with proposed language and called for the RNC to open platform meetings to activists and press, some in the movement have publicly and privately said their suggestions seem to be falling flat with Trump and at RNC headquarters.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a member of the platform committee, accused RNC Chair Michael Whatley of “stalling tactics” in a letter on Monday about efforts to ensure the meetings are open. Closing the meetings, Perkins wrote in the letter obtained by POLITICO, “heightens speculation that the GOP platform will be watered down to a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking points.”

A Trump campaign official said the meeting would be closed to members of the press, though guest passes would be available.

Members of the platform committee, largely elected by convention delegates in their states, are set to gather in Milwaukee starting Sunday to iron out the party’s updated platform after foregoing changes in 2020.

“I’m going to be fighting hard for the president’s agenda and making the platform America First and consistent with the president’s campaign agenda and what his promises are,” said conservative radio host John Fredericks, a delegate from Pennsylvania and member of the platform committee.

Fredericks said he is serving as a whip for the Trump campaign, and it’s his opinion that the new party platform will reflect Trump’s own 2024 campaign positions — including that states should determine abortion law, a position the former president repeated during Thursday’s debate. Trump has also said he supports exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and threats to the mother’s life.

Jesse Law, chair of the Clark County Republican Party and a platform committee delegate from Nevada, added that he sees delegates “all getting into line.”

“Best I can say is that this is going to be President Trump’s platform,” Law said. “That’s how I see it.”

Oscar Brock, an RNC member from Tennessee who is not on the platform committee, said that based on Trump’s own positions, he expects the updated platform to become “more socially moderate,” not just on abortion, but on marriage equality, too.

Polling shows Trump has the support of an overwhelming support of evangelical Christians, and there’s no evidence that droves of social conservatives would stay home if Republicans endorse a more moderate platform on abortion.

Still, a rebuff from the Trump campaign threatens to divide a party that has largely managed to remain united behind the former president as Democrats grapple over internal divisions over whether Biden is even fit to run.

“The problem isn’t just dampening enthusiasm. It’s also the fact that there’ll be a fight over it. There will be a platform fight, and it’ll be the week before the convention when you don’t want a fight, you want unity. And it’ll be for everyone to see in Milwaukee,” said a Republican strategist who consults with anti-abortion groups, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If I were on the inside of a campaign I would be saying, ‘I don’t want to give everybody this story.’”

In recent days, prominent evangelical and anti-abortion leaders have launched campaigns , hosted webinars and talked about the issue on podcasts in an effort to rally their supporters to pressure the Trump campaign and members of the platform committee. Perkins, at the Family Research Council, has been talking about the issue nearly daily on his podcast, while Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins hosted an “emergency webcast” Monday night on the topic to rally young anti-abortion activists around the cause. Others are lobbying members of the platform committee directly and voicing their concerns.

Broadly, anti-abortion leaders would like to see the party platform on abortion — which includes specific details like affirming that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life” and opposing the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion — to remain as strong as it is. Some are making the case to Trump and his campaign that even if they want to simplify the platform, it need not reflect the president’s views exactly.

“The platform doesn’t necessarily ever reflect 100 percent the view of the party. That’s the case we’ve been making to the Trump campaign and as we’ve been speaking with those who’ve been discussing this,” Hawkins said in an interview. “We’ve been in conversations with the campaign for more than a month now about the platform and how it should reflect the views of the entire movement.”

Lori Hinz, an RNC member from North Dakota who is serving on this year’s platform committee, said she is concerned about the plan to overhaul the platform altogether, and would prefer the RNC and Trump campaign create a separate, shorter, “Contract With America”-style document to go alongside the platform.

“My view, honestly, is that we did a pretty fantastic platform in 2016, and I hope to preserve that,” Hinz said.

Arizona state Rep. Alex Kolodin, another platform committee delegate, said the balance between state and federal restrictions on abortion is “complicated.” In April, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state’s near-total abortion ban was enforceable, a law Democrats in the legislature, with help from a handful of Republicans, quickly moved to repeal; voters will weigh in on a constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion until fetal viability in November.

“The conservative grassroots and the pro-life movement very much want to ensure that we keep or even fortify our very robust language in defense of life,” Kolodin said. “The Republican Party platform, since the party was founded, has always strongly emphasized the equal dignity of every human person and the need to defend them from having their life taken away without due process of law. That’s integral to who we are as a party.”

Some members of Congress are also using their political capital to help anti-abortion groups make their pitch to the platform committee. Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) said recently that he had contacted one of his state’s platform committee members to share his concerns about the platform, while Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) joined Hawkins on the webcast, which was centered around criticism of a state-only approach to abortion policy.

“The federal government has activated to increase the numbers of abortion in America, and so when I hear anyone say this is not a federal issue, it certainly is a federal issue because this administration has found ways to be able to advance abortion,” Lankford said during the webcast. “I’m keenly aware we don’t have the 60 votes in the Senate, but the worst thing we can do is not talk about it at all and somehow make people presume this is no longer a value … The way you win the argument is to keep talking about it, not to talk about it less.”

Anti-abortion groups and their allies in Congress and statehouses say that maintaining a federal role for abortion in the party’s platform is not only the right policy, but also electorally crucial. Reed, a longtime Trump ally whose organization plans to spend $62 million registering and turning out evangelical voters, said that any “equivocation or retreat” by the Republican Party on the issue of abortion will “deflate voters of faith.”

“Self-identified evangelical voters are roughly half of the entire Republican vote. And in some states, like Georgia, they’re about 60 percent of the entire Republican vote,” Reed said. “When you’re talking about a presidential election that could well be decided by thousands of votes spread out over three or four states, anything that discourages the enthusiasm or turnout of base or faith-based voters will not be helpful.”