The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not a fan of Donald Trump. Like, famously, the pair did not get along. And well before she died, Trump was already salivating at the prospect of filling her Supreme Court seat, reserving it for the, ahem, notoriously anti-choice pick of Amy Coney Barrett. It was a cruel irony that RBG died months before Trump was ejected from the White House, and Republicans rushed through Barrett’s nomination. All of which would ultimately culminate in the Supreme Court’s overturning the right to reproductive freedom, ushering in a new American era of increased infant deaths and a spike in maternal mortality rates.
So it’s pretty weird that a conservative political action committee named after the Notorious RBG would support Trump, and even more bizarrely claims that RBG and Trump were of “one mind” on abortion rights.
What in the shit did I just watch? Are they really doing this just for clout? There seems no other colorable justification. But who, exactly, is fooled by this?
The PAC’s website goes even further:
“Why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree with Donald Trump’s position on abortion? Because RBG believed that the federal government shouldn’t dictate our abortion laws. Donald Trump also does not support a federal ban on abortion. On this issue, great minds think alike.”
Madiba Dennie at Balls and Strikes details the thin veneer of a justification given by the PAC:
On its website, the RBG PAC justifies its claims about Trump and RBG’s common ground with screenshots of two headlines—a 2020 New York Times piece titled “Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn’t Fond of Roe v. Wade” and a 2013 NBC article titled “Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says Roe v. Wade Went Too Far.” But these headlines are conveniently divorced from all relevant context. Ginsburg recognized that the Constitution protects the right to abortion. Her “disagreement” was not about substance, but about strategy: Roe, Ginsburg said in 1984, “presented an incomplete justification for its action” because its reasoning centered the physician rather than the patient, thus failing to fully recognize that “a woman’s autonomous charge of her full life’s course” hangs in the balance.
For Ginsburg, abortion was a matter of equal protection and freedom from sex-based discrimination. By relying instead on privacy, she believed, Roe’s protections were weaker than they should have been.
The PAC also conveniently misconstrues Trump’s position on reproductive freedom. While he’s said the words that he doesn’t support a “federal abortion ban,” his campaign has used other words that amount to the same thing. And it ignores the Project 2025 plan to use the Comstock Act of 1973 to severely limit access to abortion care in this country.
And RBG’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, is pretty pissed about it, saying, “The RBG PAC has no connection to the Ginsburg family and is an affront to my late grandmother’s legacy.” Continuing, “The use of her name and image to support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling.” Spera noted her grandmother “was a champion for the equality of women and specifically tied the right to abortion to women’s freedom and ability to participate in society,” and contrasted RBG’s position on reproductive freedom with the former president’s, “Donald Trump gloats about his part in overturning Roe. He is a direct threat to reproductive liberty and equality.”
And that’s not the only person deeply disturbed over the PAC’s cynical cooption of RBG, as reported by Jezebel:
Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), called RBG PAC “a calculated, shameless, last-minute attempt to lie to voters about Trump’s stance on abortion—one of the most salient issues of this election.” The organization’s president, Mini Timmaraju, said RBG PAC is “incredibly insulting and underscores how concerned the GOP is about their record on abortion. And they should be.”
The RBG PAC was created two weeks ago — filing its FEC paperwork at the deadline for this election cycle. The group has almost $20 million in secret donor funds to spend before election day, so be prepared to be blitzed by this shady as shit message. But know that in every way that counts it’s an absolute lie.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].