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‘Unimaginable Is Difficult to Imagine’: Lincoln Project Explains New Dystopian Abortion Ad
A CNN panel discussion turned into a debate over the realities of abortion in GOP-led red states now and across the country if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wins the November election and if he implements Project 2025 polices. Lincoln Project strategist Stuart Stevens smacked down CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings who attempted to mock the ad and its producers.
The Lincoln Project’s new ad, “State Line,” depicts a father in a dystopian America in the not-too-distant future under a Project 2025 abortion ban driving his daughter out of a red state to obtain medical services. A police officer pulls them over and starts to interrogate the daughter, having very personal and specific information about her pregnancy, her sister’s whereabouts, and the GPS coordinates of their destination “in one of those abortion states.”
“What are you, about eight weeks pregnant?” the officer says. “I see you’ve been spotting recently. You had any cramps, or nausea?”
“You been taking your prenatal vitamins?” he also asks.
As the interrogation heats up, the teenager says, “We have the right to travel.”
The police officer shakes his head and says, “Not anymore.”
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The ad concedes with text that reads: “With Project 2025, a nationwide ban on abortion with out exception is enforced by anyone with a badge.”
Project 2025 and its evil architects envision an America where women will be monitored, prosecuted, and jailed for exercising their own bodily autonomy. We are not going back! pic.twitter.com/CeKvBSgQg1
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 27, 2024
CNN host Abby Phillips opened the discussion as two of the panelists were suppressing their laughter.
CNN’s Scott Jennings, a Karl Rove protege who has worked for President George W. Bush’s campaigns and in the Bush White House, began the commentary by mocking the ad and its producers.
“Well, I’m glad to see we have very serious people putting out very serious advertising,” snarked Jennings, who has also worked for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
He then turned his attention to The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens, asking: “You make this?”
“I didn’t make it but I’m with The Lincoln Project and I think it’s going to be a very effective ad,” Stevens replied.
As Jennings began to respond, Stevens calmly continued talking, saying: “You know, the problem with the unimaginable is, it’s difficult to imagine.”
“And what you have here are these laws that are being passed – this actually has happened,” Stevens told Jennings, who appeared to be bobbing up and down. “I mean, they did criminalize someone going out of state in Ohio.”
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“When you get these states that ban abortion, you know, they are going to track all of this,” Stevens added, apparently referencing the police officer’s comments to the teenager in the ad. “When you make something criminal – you’re a woman, and you’re using an app to track periods that could become evidence against you in a trial. That is the world here. And one thing about it is we only banned abortions in states like Mississippi for poor people, because everybody I grew up with in Mississippi who had money and something, went to get an abortion, they would get an abortion. And that is still going to happen, and it is absolutely more impactful on those [in a] lower economic status.”
“And this is what has happened. And the idea that you just sort of say, ‘well, you know, it’s just policy,’ something that people thought was a constitutional right for almost two generations has been taken away. And I think it is about liberty, and it is about the heavy hand of government.”
Panelist Katie Frost, a former communications director for Alabama’s Roy Moore’s failed Senate bid, said the ad to her felt like “fan fiction.”
She also claimed that abortion is “the only issue that [Vice President Kamala] Harris and the Democrats think they can run on. Every single other issue, they’re absolutely going to get destroyed on.”
Harris is currently beating Trump by 3.5 percentage points according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average.
“This is excellent,” observed award-winning producer, author, and filmmaker Melissa Jo Peltier, commenting on the Lincoln Project ad. “The idea that women would not be able to travel freely throughout the country…that their personal health would be monitored…it’s beyond creepy. It’s barbaric. What comes next? Menstrual huts?”
Watch the Lincoln Project’s new ad above, the entire CNN panel discussion below, or both at this link.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
