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Republicans, usually happy to fall in line with the de facto leader of their party, started to publicly disagree with him. “I respectfully disagree with President Trump’s statement that abortion is a states’ rights issue,” tweeted Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had introduced legislation for a national abortion ban. “Dobbs does not require that conclusion legally and the pro-life movement has always been about the wellbeing of the unborn child – not geography.” (Villa de Petrzelka, 4/8)

Former President Trump on Monday pushed back against Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other conservatives who were critical of his statement on abortion earlier in the day, in which Trump declined to take a position on federal legislation limiting the procedure. In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that Graham was “doing a great disservice to the Republican Party, and to our Country” and argued others who publicly favor stricter abortion laws were committing political malpractice. “Terminating Roe v. Wade was, according to all Legal Scholars, a Great Event, but sometimes with Great Events come difficulties,” Trump wrote. (Samuels, 4/8)

Four years ago, the vast majority of the Senate GOP voted for a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with Donald Trump in office. On Monday, the former president effectively finished off congressional Republicans’ movement for national abortion restrictions. After Trump’s much-teased announcement that it is “up to the states to do the right thing” on abortion, which also urged Republicans to take his position in order to win this November, few GOP senators expressed interest in breaking explicitly with him. That includes the Republicans who still supported federal limits after Roe v. Wade got overturned. (Everett, Diaz and Perano, 4/8)

President Biden argued that Trump was all talk in his statement Monday. "With all his empty words on fertility treatments, Trump doesn't tell you the MAGA Republicans he controls in Congress have put forward bills that could ban fertility treatments and that the speaker of the House he empowered is one of the strongest supporters for a national abortion ban in the nation," Biden wrote. (Hagstrom, 4/8)

Donald Trump’s video statement on abortion Monday — saying the legalities around the procedure should be up to the states — came after months of his publicly and privately discussing the possibility of a federal abortion ban. Trump’s positions on abortion have been a roller coaster for decades. At one point in 2015, during his run for president, he took “five positions on abortion in three days,” according to The Washington Post and as NBC News detailed at the time. (Korecki, 4/8)