Originals

FACT CHECK: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel makes false claim about Trump ‘national abortion ban’

Repeats falsehood that Trump will enact Project 2025 proposals, including nationwide abortion ban

In a Tuesday tweet, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel falsely claimed that former President Donald Trump intends, if he wins the 2024 election, to enact a nationwide abortion ban.

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“If Trump gets another term,” Nessel wrote, “he will enact his Project 2025 national abortion ban.”

Nessel’s claim is entirely inaccurate. The former President has clearly stated that he opposes a nationwide ban, and believes that abortion is an issue that must be decided at the state level.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said of abortion rights in April. “Now, it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”

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Trump’s stance was so conciliatory with the larger pro-choice culture that it even caused some notable pro-life conservatives to distance themselves from him.

Last month, Trump’s VP candidate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, went so far as to suggest that Trump, if he were elected, would likely veto any attempted national abortion ban.

“Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict on this issue,” Vance said in an interview.

Nessel wrote that Trump intends to “enact his Project 2025 national abortion ban,” alluding to a bogeyman publication of the center-right Heritage Foundation think tank project that has become central to the corporate media’s anti-Trump narrative, despite Trump’s disavowal of it.

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” the Trump campaign said in a statement last month.

As reported by The Midwesterner last week, Democrats have been making abortion rights a central plank of this election season.

America’s largest newspaper chain is partnering with the ACLU of Michigan to promote election misinformation in the 2024 election, despite an obvious conflict of interest.

The Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal have promoted sponsored content from the ACLU of Michigan on X that alleges “abortion rights are in jeopardy in Michigan this November.”

The “sponsored” posts are “paid for by Gannett,” the largest newspaper company in the U.S. that owns both Michigan newspapers and 19 others. With over 100 daily newspapers and nearly 1,000 weekly newspapers, the news empire regularly covers abortion litigation from the ACLU across 44 states, one U.S. territory, and six countries.

It is unclear whether Nessel’s claims rise to the level of “election misinformation” as laid out by Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

Benson’s Bureau of Elections issued a flyer last month about “election misinformation” that contends “counteracting harmful misinformation by knowing the truth is critical to not only ensuring our elections are a secure and accurate reflection of the will of the people, but to the survival of our democratic process.”

A flyer from the bureau contends “counteracting harmful misinformation by knowing the truth is critical to not only ensuring our elections are a secure and accurate reflection of the will of the people, but to the survival of our democratic process.”

The flyer, which calls on Michiganders report neighbors for misleading information to the bureau, argues residents have a responsibility to encourage an “honest dialogue” and encourages them to vet political claims during the 2024 presidential election with Benson’s department, local clerks, or three sites that provide “trusted, verified nonpartisan information.”

The sites include left-leaning Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact.