As Trump contorts on abortion, will his potential running mates bend with him?

For Donald Trump’s potential running mates, the former president’s latest evolution around abortion presents a new challenge as they compete for his attention.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Donald Trump was “exactly right” to want states in charge of abortion access in America. Unaddressed in her social media post Monday, though, was the former president’s support for exceptions for rape and incest in anti-abortion laws – the kind left out of the ban she has defended in her own state. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tim Scott balked at a reporter asking about Trump declining to endorse a federal abortion ban – a policy that the South Carolina Republican called a “moral obligation” for his party while he campaigned last year to be its presidential nominee. For Noem, Scott and others in consideration to become Trump’s running mate, the former president’s latest contortions around abortion present a new challenge as they compete for his attention. Many of those in the mix have spent their political careers as unyielding opponents of the procedure and unflinching allies of the anti-abortion movement. Now, those records stand at odds with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Trump angered several anti-abortion leaders this week by refusing to back a federal abortion ban while embracing exceptions that Republicans throughout the country have for years opposed as morally questionable. His support for the post-Roe v. Wade status quo – where states like Texas are free to outlaw almost all abortions and others like California can legalize the procedure in all instances before viability – is a position Trump arrived at out of political expediency as Democrats ready millions of advertising dollars to remind voters who is responsible for the loss of federal abortion protections. But for a party that has long defined life as beginning at conception, Trump’s latest evolution on abortion will test those aspiring to run with him. The reality is a stark reversal from the last time Trump landed on Mike Pence for his running mate eight years ago in hopes the Indiana governor’s staunch opposition to abortion could assuage fears from the Christian right about the thrice-married Manhattan socialite who once declared himself “very pro-choice.” Now, Trump sees abortion as a potentially damaging issue for Republicans to navigate as he seeks a return to the White House.