Amanda Becker, The 19th

There was one group of voters that Donald Trump couldn’t seem to get off his mind last weekend: women.

In overnight social media posts and at a rally in a battleground state, the Republican presidential nominee said that if elected, he would “protect” and “take care of” women and they will “no longer be thinking about abortion.”

In between, he called MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle a “dumb as a rock bimbo” after she criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” and said Oprah Winfrey, who has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris in the White House race, wasn’t the “real Oprah” after the television personality interviewed the vice president at a campaign event....

A Republican Party that has for decades alienated single women seems to have found its champion in JD Vance. A potentially bigger problem? Donald Trump’s pick of Vance as his running mate could cement the chasm between the GOP and unmarried women while also driving away married women, and even some married men, who lean Republican.

Since Trump put the Ohio senator on his presidential ticket, Vance’s past statements about “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable,” his opposition to no-fault divorce, his hostility to reproductive rights and his agreement with the belief that the “whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to raise their grandchildren are getting renewed attention.

Vance’s resurfaced comments draw on long-standing tropes about unmarried women and women without children. They have sparked mockery, but also ire. Experts say Vance’s rhetoric and policy proposals could exacerbate a gender gap that started to develop between the two major parties in the 1980s. And it’s a gap that already had the potential to become a gulf in the first White House contest after the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization....

Originally published by The 19th

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump has put a new spotlight on the U.S. Secret Service and its director, Kimberly Cheatle, with prominent conservatives also raising questions about the fitness of women serving in the agency tasked with protecting current, former and would-be presidents.

Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, announced late Saturday that he had asked the Secret Service for a briefing and would call Cheatle to testify before the panel later this month....

This story was originally published by The 19th, a nonprofit news organization.

Democratic efforts to protect contraception access — and Republican opposition — were thrust into the 2024 spotlight last week when Donald Trump told a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate that his GOP White House campaign was “looking at” restrictions on contraception, and that he ultimately expected “some states are going to have very different policies than others.”

Trump was correct — states are taking very different approaches to contraception access, depending on which party is in control. On the federal level, there is also a partisan divide, but Republicans in Congress lack the votes to restrict access, and Democrats lack the votes to protect it. ...

This article was originally published by The 19th. Sign up for The 19th's daily newsletter.

The Republicans vying to be governor of West Virginia are trying to outdo one another on how much they aim to restrict LGBTQ+ rights, with transgender individuals specifically in their bull’s-eye.

Ahead of the state’s May 14 primary elections, the two candidates leading the GOP field are Patrick Morrisey, the current attorney general, and Moore Capito, who resigned from the West Virginia House of Delegates at the end of last year to focus on his bid to be the state’s top executive. ...