Hello and happy Thursday. There are 18 days until the election and we are in the stretch that is both stressful and boring (hopefully, anyway).

We are unlikely to hear new messages from either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris at this point — barring some scandal brewing in the background. But it’s even getting late for that.

More likely, we are about to spend three weeks being deluged with the same messages — economy, inflation, abortion, immigration — while we all stare at our mail-in ballot like raw chicken we forgot to put in the fridge, thinking we really ought to do something about it soon.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening out there! The big story this week is likely to be white women and their relationship with Trump. You may recall their support was instrumental in 2020.

But now we’ve had Stormy and E. Jean and Roe. And some white women voters are starting to think maybe Trump isn’t their protector. Go figure.

But some still think he is. I know, it gives me a headache, too.

CNN data reporter Harry Enten did an analysis this week that found Trump is losing support among white women, a demographic Republicans have reliably won in past elections. While Trump won that demographic by 7 points in the last election, he is now up by only 1.

Enten said that’s significant because white women are 36% of likely voters by his measure — making them a key to victory for either candidate.

So today we’re looking at two issues — abortion and immigration — and how they are forcing white women to choose their fear.

A group seeking asylum walks toward Border Patrol agents after crossing from Mexico hours earlier.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

White women and immigration

Listening to Trump degrade immigrants as rapists and lunatics, you may think he is just racist. And while that certainly appears to be true, there’s also a strategy under all that vitriol.

He’s stirring up fear — specifically fear in white female voters that their families are in danger. Trump’s immigration message all along has been targeted on this point, claiming undocumented Black and brown people crossing the border are predominantly dangerous men out to attack women, children and communities. And maybe even dogs and cats.

Studies have shown that undocumented people commit fewer crimes than citizens, but of course, there have been terrible cases where they have. In June, two undocumented men were charged with killing a 12-year-old Houston girl. A year ago, an undocumented man allegedly killed Rachel Morin, a Maryland mom who was out for a run. And in Georgia, there was Laken Riley, a name Trump often invokes. She was a 22-year-old nursing student allegedly killed by an undocumented man while jogging on the University of Georgia campus.

Those deaths are terrible tragedies that join the sorrow of more than 4,200 women killed in the United States each year, the majority by U.S. citizens, and the more than 463,000 women sexually assaulted each year in the United States. That’s an assault about every 68 seconds by a man, also usually a U.S. citizen — at least once by Trump himself.

Of course, Trump is not running on protecting women from American-born men. But his endless highlighting of “migrant crime,” as he calls it, has had its desired effect — some female voters genuinely believe violent immigrants pose a disproportional threat that Kamala Harris isn’t just ignoring, but encouraging.

A new Quinnipiac University poll out this week found that in Georgia, 51% of women thought Trump would do a better job on immigration than Harris. Not a huge majority, but he still wins it.

That reality was on display during Trump’s Georgia town hall Wednesday morning, when one anxious mother asked Trump not just what he would do about illegal immigration, but how fast he could protect her family.

She said her son attends the University of Georgia in Athens, where Riley was killed, and he was on campus, afraid, that day. She asked Trump, “How quickly in a sanctuary city like they’re calling Athens, Georgia, how quickly can you remove those threats to our society so that our children can go out on a run, as they rightfully should be able to do, in a park, in the daytime, by themselves?”

Of course, the answer is as soon as we as a culture stop tolerating rape and violence against women by men of any color or national origin.

But Trump’s answer was not that. Trump suggested he would outlaw sanctuary cities through an executive order, or use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows a president to deport immigrants from an enemy nation.

But importantly, the question itself shows where some white female voters are coming from — wanting protection from a threat Trump has taught them to fear, and genuinely scared immigrants will harm them.

An abortion-rights rally at the Indiana Statehouse in June 2022 following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

(AJ Mast / Associated Press)

White women and abortion

But then there is abortion, an issue that has galvanized female voters since 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

The women in the town hall, all Republicans handpicked by Fox News, seemed content with Trump’s answer to a question on the issue that “everyone” wanted reproductive rights to lose federal protections and be left in the hands of state legislatures — ones including Georgia, which has enacted a six-week ban, before most women know they are pregnant.

But I am not so sure women outside of that town hall feel quite the same. That Quinnipiac University poll found that among female voters in Georgia, 55% thought Harris would do a better job on abortion issues.

Before Trump’s event, the family of Amber Thurman did a press call with Harris. Thurman was a 22-year-old mother who in 2022 was forced to travel out of state for a medication abortion. When she returned to Georgia, she experienced complications. But a hospital refused to treat her for more than 20 hours, leaving her to die eventually from sepsis. Thurman’s death was entirely avoidable with routine medical care.

The host of the town hall, Fox host Harris Faulkner, told Trump about the Thurman’s press call — and he made a joke about it.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Trump said, adding, “We’ll get better ratings, I promise.”

Better ratings than a grieving family. That’ll win the votes. Abortion remains one of Trump’s most vulnerable points. And if some women are afraid of immigrants, many are also terrorized by the idea that they or a woman they love will die seeking reproductive care.

Because in case it wasn’t obvious, this “back to the states” line is disingenuous and dangerous.

Here’s a bit of important but in-the-weeds news reported by Jessica Valenti on her substack: The Republican-led states of Kansas, Missouri and Idaho this week amended their complaint in an ongoing case about the abortion drug mifepristone.

They are going after states including California that allow the drug to be sent via mail to abortion-ban states (this invokes the Comstock Act, which I’ve written about before), and also trying to outlaw it entirely for minors. The case is being heard by a Texas judge who borders on being an antiabortion activist.

Mary Ziegler, UC Davis law professor and an expert on reproductive rights, posted this on X about the filing: “This is a big deal, especially given that Comstock enforcement will depend on who is in the White House.”

What she means by that is that Trump doesn’t need to ban abortion — he just needs to enforce the existing Comstock Act, would would effectively backdoor-ban all medical abortions by making it nearly impossible to ship the pills to clinics or patients. So the battle for reproductive rights rarely ends at state borders, and most female voters — including Republican ladies — know that.

At the town hall, Trump tried to address this vote-sucking reality, promising that he favors abortion-ban exceptions for rape, incest and saving a woman’s life.

He also tried to alleviate fears that state bans could impact IVF access (spoiler alert — IVF destroys embryos, so yes, bans will affect it). He called himself the “father of IVF” and in an especially weird moment, called Alabama Sen. Katie Britt “just a fantastically attractive person” who had explained to him what IVF was. Britt, you may recall, tried to introduce a law that would allow women to collect child support for their “unborn” children.

So for white women, especially the moderate ones who are somehow still undecided (or maybe just keeping their ballots private) there’s a pull between the fear of illegal immigration and the fear of losing reproductive rights.

What scares those white ladies the most may decide the election.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Trump Escalates Threats to Political Opponents He Deems the ‘Enemy’
The L.A. Times special I: Column: The ‘Latino vote’ is a myth. My road trip through the Southwest tells a more complex story
The L.A. Times special II: Elon Musk hoped Trump would ‘sail into the sunset.’ Now he works frenetically to elect him

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Florida is voting on an amendment to its Constitution that would enshrine the right to an abortion after that state earlier passed a ban. The fight has become so contentious that a government official tried to force television stations to remove an ad in favor of the amendment. The FCC stepped in, but lawsuits are ongoing, and Gov. Ron DeSantis is using state funds to fight for a no vote on it.

Here’s the ad:

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