‘Flip-Flop’ or Evolution: Trump and Harris and Their Reversals on Issues

As former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in their debate Tuesday night, one likely area of contention will be their mutual accusations of flip-flopping — a charge that politicians have long deployed to portray their opponents as lacking principle.

It is true that both have changed some of their policy positions, as politicians often do — whether for political expediency or because their thinking has evolved with new information. But while Ms. Harris has moderated a number of progressive stances she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, Mr. Trump has reversed himself entirely, gone back and forth or avoided taking clear stands on a host of important issues.

Here is a look at some areas where they have shifted noticeably.

Long before he ran for president, Mr. Trump described himself as “very pro-choice.” That stance changed when he decided to seek the 2016 Republican nomination. He needed evangelical voters, so he recast himself as a staunch opponent of abortion and promised to — and did — appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

That he was a newcomer to the movement was clear in his call in 2016 for women who have abortions to be punished, a position anti-abortion activists tend to reject, saying it is providers who should be punished. When he realized that he had gone beyond the movement’s line, he backtracked.

Since the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe, with abortion rights now more of a motivator for supporters than opponents, Mr. Trump has tried to reinvent himself again.

He now says he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban, though as president he endorsed a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He also suggested that he might vote for a ballot measure in Florida