Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tina Nguyen.

You can’t talk about American politics without mentioning the religious right, and you can’t talk about the religious right without mentioning Ralph Reed. This week, as Donald Trump navigates the convulsive politics of the post-Roe world that his Supreme Court unleashed, I spoke to the preeminent Christian advocate about Trump’s pull with evangelicals, how he’s contending with the Israel issue, and the long-term plans for the pro-life movement after November.

But first, here’s Abby Livingston on the latest Capitol Hill chatter surrounding Tuesday’s primaries…

• Tony’s turnaround: Gonzales was perhaps the best-prepared incumbent this cycle, having honed his campaigning and fundraising chops back when this was a competitive seat, before 2021 redistricting. Gonzales ran like his career depended on it, and rightly so: The state’s Republican apparatus was mostly aligned against him. Over the last few years, he has infuriated the right, particularly for being the lone Texas House Republican to vote for a 2022 gun control bill in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, which happened in his district.

  One of the most striking items in the Herrera opposition research file was an online video in which he joked about the Holocaust. The clip led to an AIPAC-aligned ad buy against him and raised eyebrows among some House Democratic operatives, who indicated to me they were considering competing for the seat if Herrera had won. It’s also notable that Donald Trump stayed out of this race, even though he’d endorsed Gonzales in the past.

  The race underscores that the House G.O.P. civil war is not happening in a vacuum: Democratic operatives are quietly watching the Republican mayhem and looking for opportunities to expand their limited options for pickups in the fall. But given Gonzales’s win, it’s likely Democrats will move on from this particular thought experiment.

• Cuellar vs. Furman: Speaking of pickup opportunities, we now know who Democrat Henry Cuellar’s Republican challenger will be in Texas’s 28th district: Jay Furman. Cuellar, of course, is currently under indictment for corruption, and there could be an opportunity here for Republicans. Furman mostly self-funded a shoestring campaign and last reported about $2,000 in cash on hand, but his F.E.C. reports show a measure of political sophistication.

  Sure, Cuellar has a strong local brand and has been a political workhorse in the region for almost 40 years. And much of the corruption drama was already thoroughly litigated when the F.B.I. raided his house ahead of his tough 2022 primary, and he outperformed expectations in that general election as well. On the other hand, Cuellar’s got piles of money going out the door toward legal fees.

  For now, no major Republican outside groups have purchased TV time in the Laredo or San Antonio media markets. If the G.O.P. doesn’t make a serious play here in the fall, it would seem logical that recruiting a top-shelf candidate in Laredo will be a top priority for the N.R.C.C. next year.

The fulcrum of that effort, of course, will be the issue of abortion in the post-Roe landscape. After voters showed up in huge numbers in favor of ballot initiatives in Missouri, Ohio, and Kentucky to protect the right to abortion, Democrats are betting that this works in their favor come November—not just to guarantee abortion access state-by-state, but to topple a few Republicans while they’re at it, including Donald Trump (whose own position on abortion remains murky).

But if there’s anything I’ve learned about the conservative movement, it’s that they think in decades, not election cycles. And even though abortion has become a mobilizing issue for Democrats, Reed told me that he believes the pro-choice backlash is a “sugar high” that will eventually crash. “There’s a limit to the number of states that have [initiatives and referendums]” in their constitutions, he said. “And then it’ll be our turn.” Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Ralph Reed: On the 40th anniversary of Roe, Time magazine had that famous cover where they said the feminists won a historic victory with Roe v. Wade. The sub headline was “... and they’ve been losing ever since”—which was true. From the time of Roe until Dobbs, the feminists in the pro-abortion lobby did nothing but lose. And we began our long march through the institutions, through the courts, through Congress, through the presidency, and through state legislatures, and systematically restricted abortion and protected innocent human life. My greatest concern is that 40 years from now, somebody’s going to write a headline like that about us: that Dobbs was the greatest victory in the history of our movement—and then after that, all we did was lose. And so the question is, what do we do about that?

I think the answer is that we respond in the post-Dobbs environment exactly the way we did in the post-Roe environment, in the sense that it’s all about state legislative action. The Democrats are the real extremists here—and Joe Biden is the real extremist—because they’re for abortion on demand. You can debate when [life begins], but for all practical purposes, [they claim that it’s] at any stage of pregnancy, and they want to pay for it with tax dollars—which means repealing the Hyde Amendment, which Joe Biden supported for 42 years. If you do the polling on this, by the way, the majority of the American people are fine with restrictions, at the absolute latest, after the first trimester.

I guess it was in Hillary’s interview with The New York Times that created so much buzz, in which she said, “Our formula was always safe, legal, and rare.” Remember, Roe was based on a trimester system, and the argument was that after the first trimester, it was going to be possible to restrict, and therefore it would be very rare. And it would be legal, and therefore safe. And she said that her campaign advisors told her, “You can’t say ‘rare’ anymore.” That’s when the party transitioned to on-demand, making it paid for under Medicaid. It’s treated as if it’s a positive good.

Elective abortions paid for under Medicaid, which the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, has estimated to have led to as many as 300,000 additional abortions a year—if you do the polling on this, our position is a winning position. It’s where the majority of the American people are. They don’t want unlimited abortion, and they don’t want to pay for [it with] tax dollars. The problem is that in a campaign environment, that’s doing us very little good, because they’re able to run these ads saying, “So and so is for a federal ban on abortion.” And after that, you’re explaining, and when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

We just have to plow through this current environment. President Trump, who will be the nominee, is going to emphasize state legislative action. We should emphasize state legislative action. And neither the pro-choice nor the pro-abortion side is going to be able to pass any sweeping federal legislation anyway.

The pro-abortion movement is enjoying a short-term sugar high with these initiative and referendum victories, but eventually those will come to an end. Because there’s a limit to the number of states that have initiative and referendum [systems]. And then it’ll be our turn. We’ll go state by state and do what we did before Dobbs.

That sugar high will drive Democrats and pro-choice Republicans out to vote in this election cycle, though. What are G.O.P. candidates saying to you about how they plan to navigate this environment?

First of all, this has been a highly organic process, worked out between candidates, campaign strategists, the party, the pro-life and pro-family movement, all working symbiotically and in a highly organic fashion to arrive at what to do. What you’re seeing is candidates saying either, “I don’t support a federal bill,” or if they don’t say that, they certainly say, “A federal bill isn’t going to move anytime soon.” Steve Daines said that, and he’s the chair of the Senatorial Committee. Mike Johnson has said that.

The second thing that they say is, “I support my state. I support my state’s legislation.” That’s what Rick Scott has said in Florida. He said, “I support the Florida legislation, but there’s not going to be any federal legislation.” And if you look at the polling, that’s where most voters are in terms of these initiatives. For candidates, I think you just say what Rubio, Rick Scott, Kari Lake, and others have said: This is abortion on demand, unlimited, at any stage of pregnancy. The good news is that in Florida they need 60 percent. I’m not saying they can’t get 60 percent, but I can tell you it’s going to be hard.

You don’t think Trump loses trust among evangelicals by declining to back a national ban?

He is going to be given significantly more slack from the evangelical and pro-life voters because of everything that he did to deliver on the life issue as president. I have to be honest with you, I don’t know that anybody other than Trump would get that running room. He gets that forgiveness because he delivered and kept his promises on the courts, on defunding Planned Parenthood. He spoke to the March for Life. Would any other candidate be given that level of deference? I doubt it.

But I think even there, he and his campaign need to proceed with caution. If they try to water down the pro-life plank of the platform at the convention, I think there will be significant pushback, because that’s sort of the institutional position of the party as opposed to his personal position. And the pro-life and pro-family movement has a proprietary interest in that platform plank because they were the ones who got it on the platform to begin with. I don't have any reason to believe, by the way, that that will happen. But I’m saying I think if that were to happen, it would be highly problematic for the Trump campaign.

I haven’t talked to every one of them individually. I do know that a number of those individuals are strongly pro-Israel, so that’s a case that they’re going to have to make to the voters in their district. But it doesn’t change the fact that they voted against aid to Israel. That is a fact. It will go on our scorecards, it will go on our voter guides, and we will report that to evangelical voters.

I think what they were upset about is the fact, as they saw it, the House Republicans were hotboxed and outmaneuvered in allowing the aid packages to come to the floor individually so they all could pass. Prior to that, the only aid package that came to the floor that had passed was the Israel aid package. We had already passed it twice before that vote. So I think that’s what they were upset about. It was in the context of that vote.

The counterargument, and it would certainly be my counterargument, is that even under prior speakers, who operated under the so-called Hastert Rule—which was that nothing came to the floor unless a majority of Republican members of Congress supported it—all three of those aid packages, individually or together, would have gotten a vote. So I understand why they were upset. But the reality is, there was nothing violative of either the Hastert Rule or Johnson’s commitments as speaker.

Do you see evangelicals becoming less willing to help Israel if Netanyahu continues to prosecute the war in Gaza?

I think they’ll continue to support the current government. I was in Israel in February, and a lot of other evangelical and faith leaders are going over there now. They’re all going to find out what I found out, which is the people of Israel are united behind the war aims articulated by the prime minister, namely that they’re going to defeat Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, and bring about a new leadership and a new culture so that Palestinian children are not being taught in schools in Gaza to hate Jews and kill Jews. Those are the war aims. They’re publicly stated. And the Israeli people are united in that.

Well, first of all, that is true, the decline in church attendance among the overall population. But it’s not as true for the electorate. As a share of the vote, evangelicals are at the highest level that’s ever been recorded. So as long as they increase their participation, I’m not concerned about them losing influence at all. The African American community, as I believe it, has either just been surpassed, or will be surpassed in the next year or two, as the largest minority group in the United States. They’re going to be passed by the Hispanics. I don’t think that means that their influence is going away. Arguably, their influence under Biden is the highest it’s ever been. So it isn’t just your numbers in the electorate. It’s your infrastructure. It’s your ability to turn the vote out. It’s your ability to influence elected officials.

And the other thing that I like to remind people is that, unlike gender, ethnicity, and age, evangelicals are the only constituency in the electorate that grows based on a spiritual conversion. And you can never look at the size of the evangelical voters in raw numbers, or as a share of the electorate, and engage in straight-line reasoning, or extrapolate current trends into the future, because you just don’t know when you're going to have another spiritual awakening.

I'm not saying this as an advocate or a partisan. Robert W. Fogle, who is a brilliant historian, argues the period roughly from 1975 to 2000 constitutes a fourth Great Awakening [a historical term for American religious revival periods] that it was largely driven by religious broadcasting and by the growth of religious broadcasters on television. A number of people who were exposed to the Gospel got involved in the religious right because of television audiences that they became a part of, or actually experienced a spiritual conversion. That’s not that long ago.

There’s no question that Trump is an unusual champion for the religious right. Have there been changes in evangelical voting behavior that surprised you?

I don’t know if I would say it surprised me, but I didn’t anticipate Trump’s full-throated support for many of the public policy priorities of evangelical voters. The life issue, Israel, the courts, religious freedom. It was not a surprise to me because I knew him. I got to know Donald Trump in the 2010-2011 period, we became friends—“collaborators” would probably overstate it—but I stayed in touch with him and he stayed in touch with me. I got to talk to him about these issues. So I was not surprised. But many were.

We’re seeing in our polling, and we’re seeing in exit polls, levels of evangelical support for Republican candidates that I frankly never thought was possible. I think it is entirely possible that Donald Trump will get a higher share of the evangelical vote than Joe Biden will get of the Black vote.

Really?

He got 84 percent according to the Pew Research organization, in 2020, and that matches our post-election poll. I think it could go higher. When [Georgia] Governor Brian Kemp ran for reelection in 2022, he got 91 percent of the vote of self-identified evangelicals. That’s the highest ever recorded in any exit poll since exit polling began, for the evangelical vote, for any statewide candidate.

Given Biden’s radicalism on abortion, on gender, and the way he’s undermined Israel while they’re fighting a war, I think it’s possible that Trump is going to get a level of support that we’ve never seen a presidential candidate get from evangelical voters.