Donald Trump told officials Monday that he supports a new Republican Party platform, one that reflects the presumptive nominee’s new position on abortion rights and slims down policy specifics across all areas of government.
The platform, as described to The New York Times by people briefed on it, cements Trump’s ideological takeover of the GOP. The platform is even more nationalistic, more protectionist and less socially conservative than the 2016 Republican platform that was duplicated for the 2020 election.
Trump, who has had the draft for several days, called into a meeting of party officials Monday and said he supports it. The document overwhelmingly was approved during a vote by the platform committee Monday, passing 84-18, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The abortion section has been softened. There is no longer a reference to “traditional marriage” as between “one man and one woman.” And there is no longer an emphasis on reducing the national debt, only a brief line about “slashing wasteful government spending.”
The rest of the document reflects Trump’s priorities as outlined on his campaign website: a hard-line immigration policy, including mass deportations; a protectionist trade policy with new tariffs on most imports; and sections on using federal power to remove policies in academia, the military and throughout the U.S. government put in place by what it describes as radical Democrats.
Trump and his top aides have alienated some activists by shutting them out of the development of the platform. The former president was especially focused on softening the language on abortion — the issue he views as his biggest vulnerability in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The 2024 draft platform, as described to the Times, is called “America First: A Return to Common Sense,” and softens that abortion language and shifts the issue from one of conscience to a matter best handled by the states. “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process and that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights,” the draft platform reads.