Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. It drew together former Whigs, Free Soilers, and former Know Nothings, primarily in the Northern and Border states.
GOP stands for Grand Old Party, a nickname that originated in 1875 in the Congressional Record, which referred to the party as this gallant old party in recognition of its defense of the Union during the Civil War. The term was modified to grand old party in the Cincinnati Commercial the following year, and the abbreviation GOP was first used in 1884.
The elephant symbol traces to a political cartoon by Thomas Nast published in Harper's Weekly on the 7th of November 1874. The cartoon drew on the Aesop fable about an ass in a lion's skin and was published during debate over a possible third presidential term for Ulysses S. Grant.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton with narrow victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states that had been part of the Democratic blue wall for decades. His victory was attributed to strong support among working-class white voters who felt dismissed by the political establishment, and he reached them by departing from Republican free-market orthodoxy in favor of a nationalist message.
Trumpism refers to the leadership style and political agenda of Donald Trump, which has shifted the Republican Party toward right-wing populism, neo-nationalism, and illiberalism. Since 2016, the party's establishment conservative faction has lost nearly all of its influence, and a 2020 V-Dem Institute study concluded the party had become more ideologically extreme than France's National Rally.
The Republican Party has reversed its position on abortion over roughly fifty years. In 1972, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Republicans viewed abortion as a private matter between a woman and her doctor, and leading Republicans including Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush held pro-choice positions into the early 1980s. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, a majority of Republican-controlled states passed near-total bans on abortion.