WASHINGTON — In a far-ranging, free-wheeling 90-minute acceptance speech for the Republican nomination to the presidency, former President Trump hit the populist highlights: Americans will have faster access to new medicines, real answers for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and better Medicare in his second term, he claimed.
But aside from a passing comment about womens’ sports, Trump stayed away from a growing effort by GOP lawmakers to limit transgender peoples’ rights and bar gender-affirming care. He also did not mention abortion, reflecting his campaign’s effort to distance Trump from increasingly unpopular bans that have alienated voters in key states.
Limiting abortion access and transgender health care are two key policy priorities that made it into a relatively sparse 16-page platform from the Republican National Committee this month. While the party is effectively shifting away from a hard-line push for a federal abortion ban it has leaned into making transgender people, roughly 1% of the U.S. population, central to GOP voters’ ire.
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