The political arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun regulation group founded by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, plans to spend $45 million over the coming months to elect favored candidates in eight of the states that could determine control of the White House, House, Senate and local offices.

The effort will include a new student organizing drive, with plans to hire 30 new organizers for volunteer recruitment drives at 32 college and university campuses in Arizona, California, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The group’s leaders said the effort will focus on younger voters, voters of color and suburban women, with new field offices in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

“With MAGA Republicans pushing an extreme ‘guns everywhere’ agenda, this election is a life-or-death moment — so Everytown is going all-out to mobilize the majority of Americans who want to live free from the fear of gun violence,” Everytown for Gun Safety president John Feinblatt said in a statement. “From sending Vice President Harris to the Oval Office to helping our own volunteers win office, we’ll elect gun sense champions up and down the ballot.”

The group — along with its grass-roots networks, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action — endorsed Harris for president last week.

About 80 percent of the $45 million will go to television and digital advertising, according to a person familiar with the spending who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The full list of candidates that the money will support will be determined over the coming weeks. Some of the money is expected to support local candidates Everytown has recruited through its “Demand a Seat” program, which encourages activists and survivors of gun violence to run for public office.

Bloomberg, one of the biggest donors to Democratic politics, gave $19 million this year to Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Harris, and nearly $1 million to the coordinated Democratic presidential campaign, which at the time was supporting President Biden before he left the presidential race. Bloomberg remains a donor to Everytown, but the group also raises money from its grass-roots efforts.

Everytown announced a $60 million spending plan before the 2020 election aimed at defeating then-President Donald Trump and electing more Democrats who support gun regulations.

The race to define Vice President Harris is on. The likely Democratic nominee for president dropped a new biographical ad at about the same moment Donald Trump’s campaign released an attack ad framing her as “dangerously liberal.” Here’s an assessment of the claims made in each ad.

Trump ad: ‘I don’t understand’

This 30-second ad is heavily focused on Harris’s role in the administration to address the “root causes” of migration from three Central American countries, using a label bestowed by Republicans (“border czar”), which The Washington Post reported in 2021 that she shunned. “Republicans try to crown Harris the ‘border czar.’ She rejects the title,” the headline said. But numerous TV commentators adopted the phrase and applied it to Harris, as this video compilation shows, giving the Trump campaign an opportunity to make the label stick.

“This is America’s border czar — and she’s failed us.”

This voice-over is accompanied by video of Harris dancing in a colorful shirt. It attributes the label of border czar to a 2022 article in the conservative National Review, which called her “border czar” in the headline.

But Harris was not in charge of immigration issues, and she certainly wasn’t a czar.

In 2021, President Biden assigned Harris to take charge of the “root causes” strategy — essentially a diplomatic effort with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to stem migration from those countries. The efforts appeared to have some impact — border arrests from those countries dropped from 700,000 in the 2021 fiscal year to fewer than 500,000 in 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. The downward trend has continued in 2024. For instance, nearly 77,000 migrants from those countries crossed the border in June 2021 — and the figure dropped to 24,000 in June of this year.

But the problem shifted. Migrants surged from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti — countries that were not part of the “root causes” strategy. In June, more than 106,000 people from countries other than the three Central American countries were arrested at the border — though that is down from a peak of 239,000 in December. On June 4, Biden issued an emergency order to curb asylum access, and White House officials say illegal crossings have dropped 50 percent since then.

“Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.”

The text of the ad says “over ten million illegal border crossings” — which is technically accurate — but the voice-over is false.

CBP recorded about 10 million “encounters” from February 2021, after Biden took office, through June. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.

CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million — about half the figure the voice-over claims remained in the United States.

“A quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl.”

The text of the ad says this happened on “Harris’s watch.”

Under Biden, according to CBP statistics, overall drug seizures have dropped, especially for marijuana, but until this year increased substantially for fentanyl — the drug most responsible for overdose deaths. Both the decrease in marijuana seizures and the increase in fentanyl seizures reflect trends that started while Trump was president.

Moreover, fentanyl deaths increased nearly 50 percent under Trump, rising to 95,000 from 64,000 in a 12-month period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl deaths continued to increase under Biden but have dropped in the past 12 months, so the increase under Biden is 7 percent, for a total of about 102,000 deaths.

Most drugs come into the United States across the southern border with Mexico. But even a wall does not limit this illegal trade, as much of it travels through legal borders or in tunnels unaffected by visible physical barriers. Even if a wall could curb drug trafficking, it would have a minimal impact on the death toll from drug abuse. As president, Trump often touted how much seizures of drugs at the southern border had increased on his watch. This is an imperfect metric. It could mean that law enforcement is doing a better job. But more seizures also might indicate that the drug flow has increased, and that law enforcement is missing even more.

The amount of fentanyl seized at the border increased under both Biden and Trump, though so far the amount jumped by a larger percentage under Trump, CBP statistics show. In Trump’s four fiscal years, the number of pounds increased 586 percent, compared with 462 percent in the first three fiscal years under Biden.

“Brutal migrant crimes, and ISIS now here.”

Violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. The violent crime rate is believed to be near its lowest level in 50 years. So the Trump campaign is forced to cite anecdotal stories of migrants killing people.

The reference to the Islamic State is sourced to a CNN report on the arrest of eight Tajik nationals “believed to have connections to ISIS.” Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic terrorist group, is led primarily by Tajiks. The individuals were allowed into the country but they were tracked down and arrested after intelligence officials connected them to the Islamic State. They are now in federal custody and will be deported.

“Do you have any plans to visit the border?”

The ad then selectively clips from an interview Harris had in June 2021 with NBC’s Lester Holt during a visit to Guatemala. He twice asks her if she plans to visit the border and she answers that she will go to the border, but expresses frustration at his question.

• Harris: “I’m here in Guatemala today. At some point, we are going to the border; we’ve been to the border …”
• Holt interjects: “You haven’t been to the border.”
• She answers: “And I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point that you are making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border. … I care about what’s happened at the border. I’m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration.”

The ad clips out all her comments about planning to visit the border, her concerns about the border and her focus that day on Guatemala. It just shows viewers this highly edited exchange:

• Holt: “Do you have any plans to visit the border? … You haven’t been to the border.”
• Harris: “And I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point that you are making.”

The implication is that she’s dismissive of the idea. The NBC interview took place on June 8, 2021. Harris visited the border on June 25, 2021.

“Kamala Harris. Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”

The ad ends with this tagline.

Harris ad: ‘Fearless’

This is a positive biographical 60-second ad that seeks to portray Harris as tough and decisive — the opposite message of the Trump ad. It begins with the voice-over saying: “The one thing Kamala Harris has always been: fearless.”

“As a prosecutor, she put murderers and abusers behind bars.”

This is pretty self-evident — this is what prosecutors do. Harris was district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, and the line is intended to show she cares about crime and is not “dangerously liberal.”

“As California’s attorney general, she went after the big banks and won $20 billion for homeowners.”

As recently recounted by Fortune, during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 Harris walked away from a nationwide settlement that would have netted California no more than $4 billion in compensation for homeowners — what she called “crumbs on the table” — and cut a deal with three major banks that won state residents $20 billion. The agreement was intended to help people stay in their homes through lower mortgage payments. In a surprise, however, more than half chose the settlement’s option to sell their homes for less than what they owned the bank, according to a 2013 report by the program’s monitor, then-professor and now-Rep. Katie Porter (D).

Harris received some criticism for not seeking to charge bankers with crimes — which she acknowledged. “I too, like most Americans, am frustrated. Clearly crimes occurred and people should go to jail,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. “But we went where the evidence took us.”

“And as vice president, she took on the big drug companies to cap the cost of insulin for seniors.”

Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, an omnibus bill that included a provision to cap the cost of insulin offered through Medicare at $35 a month. It also required the federal government to negotiate to lower the prices of some drugs — a policy shift that infuriated pharmaceutical companies.

Drew Hammill, who was deputy chief of staff to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), told The Fact Checker that Harris “was a key player in securing the necessary votes to pass the IRA. The vice president helped will the legislation into existence and was an important advocate in securing the insulin provisions.” When Harris first ran for president in 2020, she pledged she would “stop pharmaceutical companies from price-gouging patients by setting a fair price for what they can charge for prescription drugs.”

“This campaign is about who we fight for. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act.”

The ad then shifts to excerpts from Harris’s first campaign rally, in a Milwaukee suburb, where she tried to frame the election as a choice between the future and the past.

The key factual claims are that Trump wants to “give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act.”

Trump has not detailed specific tax plans, except for eliminating taxes on tips, but privately he has expressed interest in cutting corporate tax rates further if he is reelected, according to a Washington Post report. (His 2017 tax bill significantly cut corporate tax rates.) Congressional Republicans have also expressed interest in corporate tax cuts to increase U.S. competitiveness, according to another Post report. Trump also has dangled tax breaks to wealthy donors in exchange for campaign contributions, the report said.

As for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Trump was frustrated in his first term that he could not terminate the law. In 2023, he suggested he would again make an effort, posting on social media: “I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” But in 2024, Trump has mostly remained silent on his plans for the law — which remains popular and a rallying point for Democrats.

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PHOENIX — A top Republican election official in Arizona’s most populous county known for his vigorous defense of elections lost his primary election Tuesday to a state lawmaker who called elections in the county “a laughingstock.”

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who faced death threats and endless harassment for doing his job, lost his reelection bid to state Rep. Justin Heap, an attorney aligned with the state legislature’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus. Heap has voted for legislation that grew out of false election theories and was endorsed by Kari Lake, the Senate candidate with a large following who routinely spreads misinformation about elections and has been highly critical of Richer.

As Heap campaigned for the job, he pledged to try to improve confidence in elections and engage with the public in a respectful manner.

“It has become clear that ensuring the right of every citizen to have confidence in their vote, regardless of party, has become the civil rights issue of our time,” Heap said during a June debate. “Unfortunately, our current county recorder has taken a different path, a path that disrespects and demeans the voters. A path that attacks anyone who criticizes his office and laughs off even the suggestion that there might be anything wrong with our election system.”

Richer congratulated Heap on his win Wednesday morning, writing on X: “Elections have winners and, sadly, losers. And in this one, it looks like I’m going to end up on the losing side of the column. But that’s the name of the game. Accept it. Move on.”

In the November general election, Heap will face Democrat Tim Stringham, a U.S. Army and Navy veteran and political newcomer who is campaigning on a promise to “safeguard our elections” and “ensure that each eligible citizen gets to vote in a safe, secure and convenient way and that each vote will be counted fairly and transparently.”

If Heap wins in November, he could dramatically reshape how elections are run in the county, a fiercely contested battleground where former president Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election four years ago inspired profound mistrust among many Republicans about elections and government institutions. That movement sparked a rush of new involvement and activated pro-Trump voters determined to oust local officials who defend election results they don’t like, including Richer and members of the county governing board. Richer will continue to help run the upcoming presidential election, then leave office next year.

When Trump narrowly lost to President Biden in Arizona in 2020, he and his supporters quickly hyper-focused on Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and more than half of the swing state’s voters. Through emissaries, phone calls and text message, they sought to halt vote-counting and then tried to undermine the results. Republicans on the county board of supervisors who signed off on the results faced death threats and were called treasonous. A mob of protesters showed up at the home of one supervisor. Soon after, Richer took office.

Of the three remaining Republicans who were on the board in 2020, two decided not to run for reelection and a third lost his primary on Tuesday. The Republicans running for those seats have said they would work to make elections more transparent. One of those Republicans, Trump-endorsed Rep. Debbie Lesko, voted against accepting the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. Another has advocated for getting rid of precinct-based voting and emergency ballot drop boxes.

Republican county attorney Rachel Mitchell, who has told members of her own party that Biden won the 2020 vote and that the 2022 elections in the state were accurate and legitimate, easily won her race against a further-right candidate. And a GOP supervisor, who joined the board after the 2020 election and was called a “traitor” for defending the validity of electoral outcomes, won his reelection. The general election race for county recorder is expected to be competitive, political analysts say.

Richer and the Republican supervisors shared election responsibilities and generally shared a similar vision on how voting should be run, how votes should be counted and how election employees should be defended. New leaders could take the county in a radically different direction.

Richer was endorsed by several traditional Republicans, including former governors Doug Ducey and Jan Brewer.

“For being the ‘establishment candidate,’ having the county party, the state party, Turning Point USA, Lake-world, Trump-world all against me — that’s hard to run against,” Richer said in an interview shortly before results began posting.

Richer, an attorney, assumed the once-sleepy job of helping run elections and recording documents in 2021, after he beat the Democratic incumbent in the 2020 election. He stepped into the job as Trump, his allies and supporters tried to overturn the former president’s 10,457-vote defeat and then turned against county and state Republicans who refused. Richer had nothing to do with the administration of that presidential election but took heat for it, anyway.

In that environment, Richer began sharing his view from inside of the recorder’s office in downtown Phoenix in the hopes of making it easier to understand complex voting rules and procedures.

Like an FAQ come to life, Richer threw himself into trying to make elections less mysterious, blasting out social media posts that fact-checked people who amplified misinformation — treating everyday constituents and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, all the same. Richer gave tours of the county’s vote-county operation, taking the curious into the bowels of the process and explaining how he kept voter rolls updated.

His approach drew praise from national election officials but ire from further-right Republicans who viewed him as dismissive of their concerns. Richer found himself in the eye of attacks after the 2022 midterm general election, when printer malfunctions at dozens of voting sites caused confusion and inconvenienced some voters. Lake, who lost her campaign for governor that year by about 17,000 votes, falsely claimed that Richer deliberately rigged the election to prevent her from winning. Death threats and harassment followed.

In a rare move, Richer sued Lake for defamation in June 2023, saying he saw a direct link between her rhetoric and threats against him. Lake has declined to defend herself against the lawsuit and asked a judge to begin the process of assessing damages.

Christine Jones, a Republican attorney and former GOP candidate who closely follows the state’s elections, said two things weighed against Richer with primary voters.

“His tone: He’s a little sarcastic and a little snarky and some of that is defensive because he was attacked and had death threats,” she said. “The second thing: He sued Kari Lake for defamation, which had the effect of pitting more than half of Republican primary voters against him.”

As he ran for reelection, Richer campaigned at events hosted by grass-roots Republicans — the type of forums his GOP colleagues at the county stopped attending after they gave way to shouting by those who wanted confrontations. Richer himself was sometimes heckled or booed. In March, a vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee told a crowd that she would “lynch” Richer if he walked in the room. She later described her comment as a joke.

In the final stretch of the campaign, Richer handed his GOP rivals a gift, telling reporters that he would vote for Biden, not Trump, in November. His comments came before Biden’s June 27 shaky debate performance and eventual withdrawal from the race.

“DID YOU KNOW that the current fake-Republican County Recorder, Stephen Richer, has admitted he’s voting for Joe Biden,” Heap wrote on X on June 28. He continued, “Say NO to Stephen Richer & Joe Biden’s epic failures.”

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani may avoid having to testify under oath about his finances after he reached a last-minute agreement with his creditors to pay an estimated $350,000 in administrative fees tied to his bankruptcy case, paving the way for its dismissal.

Lawyers for Giuliani and several creditors, including two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation claim against the former mayor, announced in a letter sent Wednesday morning to the judge overseeing Giuliani’s bankruptcy case that they had “conferred and reached agreement” to settle fees and move forward with dismissal.

A proposed order attached to the letter stated that Giuliani agreed to transfer $100,000 to an escrow account controlled by his attorneys and satisfy the remainder of the fees with proceeds from the sale of one of his two properties — his New York apartment or his condo in Palm Beach, Fla.

The proposal says a lien will be placed on both properties “as security” to make sure Giuliani pays fees owed to Global Risk Data, an accounting firm retained by the creditors to investigate his finances, but it also says the firm cannot seek to foreclose on or take other action related to either property for six months after the judge approves the agreement.

Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the former Georgia election workers whom Giuliani falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election, have previously sought to gain control of those properties and are expected to file suit seeking that real estate and Giuliani’s other assets once the bankruptcy case is formally dismissed. The proposed order says if they receive proceeds from the sale of either property, they will pay what is owed to GRD.

A spokesman for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement must first be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane in the Southern District of New York, who last week threatened to reverse his decision to dismiss Giuliani’s bankruptcy case after Giuliani claimed he did not “have the ability to pay” the administrative fees — which must be resolved before the case can be closed.

Lane, who has been critical of Giuliani’s lack of financial transparency throughout the proceedings, was skeptical of the former mayor’s claim that he doesn’t have the money, citing Giuliani’s ownership of two apartments that are of “considerable value.”

“What little we know about the Debtor’s financial situation makes his stance here more troubling,” Lane wrote. “Even assuming that the Debtor does not have the funds on hand to immediately pay these bankruptcy expenses, he certainly has considerable assets upon which he can draw to pay such expenses.”

Lane threatened to hold an evidentiary hearing and require Giuliani to give sworn testimony about the state of his finances. But he gave the former mayor and his creditors until noon Wednesday to submit a letter with their suggestions of how to move forward. The proposed joint agreement was filed about three hours before that deadline.

The developments come nearly three weeks after Lane threw out Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, paving the way for numerous creditors, including Freeman and Moss, to pursue and potentially seize his assets.

But within days of that order, a dispute emerged over fees incurred by GRD, an investigative accounting firm made up of former CIA and FBI officials hired by the creditors to probe Giuliani’s finances. The firm was retained after Giuliani repeatedly failed to fully disclose his cash and assets, including information about his businesses and other holdings that is required in bankruptcy proceedings — a lack of transparency the judge called “troubling.”

Rachel Strickland, an attorney for Freeman and Moss, pressed Lane to order Giuliani to turn over all the cash in his bank account and control of his New York apartment to satisfy court fees — a request the judge called “premature.” But in a July 17 hearing, Strickland urged the judge to take action quickly, accusing Giuliani of financial “shenanigans” and continuing to spend freely without authorization from the court.

Strickland said records from the only bank account Giuliani disclosed to creditors showed that he had burned through more than half of the $60,000 in the account after Lane agreed to dismiss the bankruptcy case — including $39,000 in fees related to his Florida condo and New York apartment. Giuliani also spent money on travel and other expenses related to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, she claimed.

Giuliani’s attorneys later clarified that his travel to the convention was paid for by a media company linked to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a fellow election denier and Trump associate who recently hired Giuliani.

Wednesday’s agreement comes seven months after Giuliani sought bankruptcy protection after he was ordered to immediately pay millions in damages to Freeman and Moss for the false claims he made about them in the aftermath of the 2020 election when he was serving as former president Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

In court documents, Giuliani has listed roughly $153 million in debts to at least 20 people and businesses, including Freeman and Moss. A list of top creditors filed in February said Giuliani owes more than $3.7 million in unpaid legal fees to three law firms — though he is disputing some of those bills — and more than $1 million in state and federal taxes.

The former federal prosecutor has claimed about $11 million in assets — including an estimated $5.6 million New York apartment and his Palm Beach condo, which is valued at $3.5 million. While Giuliani has put his New York property on the market, he had resisted selling his Florida home, with one of his lawyers claiming the sale could render the 80-year-old former mayor “homeless.”

The proposed agreement filed Wednesday suggested the Florida condo could soon be listed for sale.

A financial disclosure report filed in June said Giuliani had less than $100,000 in the bank at the end of May and was funding his living expenses through a rapidly diminishing retirement account. But creditors have repeatedly complained that Giuliani has not filed a complete picture of his net worth and have accused him of hiding money and assets.

Giuliani had repeatedly shifted legal strategies in recent weeks amid complaints from the judge and his creditors that he was not being fully transparent about his finances.

In December, he sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows an individual to reorganize and file a plan to pay off debts. But on July 1, Giuliani asked the judge to reclassify his case under Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would hand control of his personal and business finances to an outside trustee to liquidate. The request prompted immediate objections from the election workers and other creditors, who accused Giuliani of more delay tactics.

On July 10, an hour before a hearing on the matter, Giuliani abruptly switched position yet again, asking Lane to dismiss the bankruptcy case altogether. While some of the creditors pressed the judge to appoint a trustee, Freeman and Moss supported the dismissal and Lane ultimately agreed — saying there was no evidence that Giuliani’s “uncooperative conduct will change.” Lane granted that motion on July 12 — but has not yet finalized it.

A dismissal would allow Freeman and Moss and other creditors to immediately pursue legal remedies to collect money owed to them by Giuliani.

It also allows other pending lawsuits against the former mayor that had been frozen by the bankruptcy proceeding to resume, including defamation suits by the voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic and a sexual harassment and wage theft claim by former Giuliani associate Noelle Dunphy. All are part of a committee of “unsecured creditors” that had sought relief in the bankruptcy case.

Giuliani has publicly suggested that he will seek to appeal the defamation judgment in the election worker case — which he was prohibited from doing while seeking bankruptcy protection, since litigation against him had been stayed. But the judge in that case has said Giuliani must put up a $148 million bond to pursue the appeal and pause collection efforts by Freeman and Moss, and it was not clear Giuliani had the funds to do that.

Donald Trump and Vice President Harris are both set to court Black voters on Wednesday as Democrats hope their new candidate can re-energize their most reliable constituency and prevent the GOP from making gains.

Republicans have been keen to improve their performance with Black voters and especially Black men, encouraged by polls that showed softening support for President Biden. But they could face a stiffer challenge now that Biden has bowed out of the 2024 race, paving the way for Harris — who is Black and Indian American — to lead the Democratic ticket.

Trump’s itinerary on Wednesday reflects his continued hopes to chip away at Democrats’ traditional dominance with Black Americans. But it also underscores the resistance he is facing. He plans to sit for a Q&A midday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago — an arrangement that immediately drew backlash from some members and that one former White House correspondent called a “slap in the face.”

Trump is also holding a rally Wednesday night in Harrisburg, Pa.

Harris, meanwhile, is expected to speak in Houston on Wednesday evening to a gathering of the sorority Sigma Gamma Rho — the latest in her extensive outreach to members of historically Black sororities and fraternities that make up the “Divine Nine.” Harris spoke to her own sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, in July and addressed another group, Zeta Phi Beta, last week.

Democratic operatives say Harris’s candidacy already shows signs of motivating Black voters — whose flagging enthusiasm for Biden had left a hole in the Democratic base. One CNN survey found that Black voters who previously split 70 percent for Biden and 23 percent for Trump backed Harris by a wider margin of 78 percent to Trump’s 15 percent. Other polling shows less of a shift.

Republicans are betting that a so-called “Harris Honeymoon” will fade and are pumping tens of millions into ads attacking Harris.

Trump’s campaign said that in Chicago he will discuss “the most pressing issues facing the Black community” in a conversation moderated by Harris Faulkner from Fox News, Kadia Goba from Semafor and Rachel Scott from ABC News.

The former president has angered Black Americans in recent years with some racist and inflammatory comments and his promotion of false attacks. “What the hell do you have to lose?” he said when he ran in 2016, portraying Black communities as riddled with crime and poverty. Trump has also promoted a false conspiracy theory questioning the citizenship of Harris and has repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s first name, a move some critics have derided as demeaning.

Trump raised his political profile falsely claiming America’s first Black president was born in Africa; lamented immigration from “shithole counties”; and in 2019 told four congresswomen who are racial minorities to “go back” to the places they came from. Three of the lawmakers were born in the United States.

Trump’s team has made a point to hold Black outreach events, even as his rally crowds skew heavily White. In recent months Trump has campaigned at a Black church in Detroit and rallied in the South Bronx, where he touted his economic record and said his policies would protect voters of color from crime. A pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., has run some ads targeted to Black voters that hit the Biden administration on high inflation, undocumented immigration and transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports.

Trump has also suggested that Black voters like him more because of his criminal cases. “I’m being indicted for you, the Black population,” Trump said this February at a gala for the Black Conservative Federation.

Democrats, meanwhile, have promoted record-low Black unemployment during the Biden administration — and tried to communicate how their policies are helping Black voters who have often expressed cynicism about both parties. They have also accused Republicans of broadly trying to take the country backward.

“Across our nation, we are witnessing a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights,” Harris told members of Zeta Phi Beta last week. She listed — among other concerns — “the freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate” and “the freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and full history.”

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

The White House on Wednesday deflected questions about reports that an Israeli operation was responsible for killing Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran overnight, but called the dramatic development unhelpful to efforts to secure a cease-fire in Gaza.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the death of Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of the newly elected Iranian president. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel had dealt “crushing blows” to both Hezbollah — in a Beirut airstrike Tuesday that killed a senior official of that group — and to Hamas.

During a news briefing at the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he could not “confirm or verify” claims by Iran and Hamas that Israel was to blame for Haniyeh’s slaying. He also declined to speculate on what effect the two men’s deaths would have on ongoing Gaza cease-fire and hostage-release talks, although he acknowledged that “these reports over the last 24 to 48 hours certainly don’t help. I’m not going to be Pollyannish about it.”

The latest round of cease-fire talks, in Rome, were suspended earlier this week after Israel presented new demands. Haniyeh, as the political leader for Hamas, was the group’s chief negotiator for the release of hostages and a cease-fire and was seen as a moderating force on Hamas military leader Yehiya Sinwar.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, traveling in the Far East, said early Wednesday that the killing of Haniyeh was “something we were not aware of or involved in.” To some extent, the U.S. response has been restrained by Israel’s unwillingness to publicly confirm or deny its involvement.

But the Biden administration is also acutely conscious of the possibility for escalation of the broader Middle East conflict and the likelihood that Iran will respond to what it has charged was an Israeli attack.

“We’re obviously concerned about escalation,” Kirby said, although “we don’t believe that it is inevitable.”

Just days ago, senior administration officials had declared concerns about escalation to be “exaggerated.”

A senior Arab official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue, said that no Iranian response was expected at least until after Haniyeh’s funeral, which is scheduled for Friday in Doha, and the three days of mourning that will run through Sunday.

“You’ve seen the comments” by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Kirby said. Khamenei said in a statement reported Wednesday by state-run media that Israel had “paved the way for a harsh punishment to be imposed on it.”

“I’ll certainly not speculate about whether and to what degree Iran does anything. What I can tell you is we have and will maintain a level of readiness to preserve our national security interest in the region,” Kirby said.

“We don’t want to see an escalation, and everything we’ve been doing since the 7th of October,” when the Gaza war began with Hamas’s invasion of Israel, “we’ve been trying to manage those risks,” he said. “Those risks go up and down every day. They are certainly up right now.”

For Vice President Harris’s supporters, Donald Trump’s lashing criticisms of her racial identity on Wednesday came with blinding speed but little surprise: A week after entering the race, the first Black and Indian American woman to top a party’s presidential ticket is contending with Trump’s assertion that she leaned into being Black for political expediency.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists. He added later that Harris “was Indian all the way” but then “became a Black person.”

On Wednesday night, Harris addressed Trump’s statements during remarks at the annual gathering of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, calling Trump’s words “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,” she said. “A leader who doesn’t respond with hostility and anger when presented with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”

The vice president’s aides and supporters, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy during a delicate moment, stressed that her response — both on Wednesday and in coming days — does not have to be dramatic and forceful to be effective.

Trump’s own language could alienate him from moderate voters wary that a second Trump term would be riddled with chaos and animus, they said, and Trump’s words attacking Harris and the Black journalists who were interviewing him could further motivate Democratic voters who see Harris’s sudden entry into the race as a moment of historic racial progress.

“I don’t think she has to say anything, to be honest,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative and a Harris confidant. “Sometimes you don’t have to. What’s the saying — you never fight with a pig, because you both get muddy and the pig likes it. So there’s really no need for her to respond to it. We can see the history of her candidacy. She needs to continue to tell Americans what she can do for them. Let him unravel.”

The episode is a reminder, if any was needed, of the extraordinary nature of the current moment, when the first woman of color is running for president on a major-party ticket in a country whose history includes no women and one person of color serving as president.

Trump’s comments came during a stretch when Harris was attending several events likely to resonate with Black women, including her comments Wednesday night. Harris’ appearance at the Sigma Gamma Rho gathering was the latest effort in her extensive outreach to members of historically Black sororities and fraternities.

Harris spoke to her own sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, in July and addressed another group, Zeta Phi Beta, last week. A day earlier, she spoke to a raucous crowd of 10,000 people in Atlanta, many of them Black women enthused by her entry into the race.

On Thursday, Harris is scheduled to speak at the funeral of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), who was seen by her admirers as a forceful voice for Black Americans and women of color.

Trump’s comments Wednesday did not come in a vacuum; he has been stepping up his attacks on Harris’s identity. On Tuesday, he suggested that Harris would be unable to stand up to foreign leaders because of her appearance, though he pointedly declined to elaborate.

“She’ll be like a play toy,” Trump told Fox News. “They look at her and they say, ‘We can’t believe we got so lucky.’ They’re going to walk all over her.” He added, “And I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.”

Some voters may expect Harris to respond with a full-throated response to Trump’s attacks, as then-candidate John F. Kennedy did in 1960 when political adversaries raised questions about his Catholic faith.

In her first bid for the presidency, Harris assailed Joe Biden, then one of her primary rivals, during a presidential debate, saying his efforts to find common ground with segregationist senators and opposition to busing students in the 1970s was hurtful to her and people like her.

Many of her supporters cheered the comments. But some critics, including many Black voters in the Democratic primary, saw the move as overly calculated, complete with ready-made T-shirts meant to capitalize on the moment within hours of the debate. Biden ultimately won the Democratic primary with massive support from Black voters, while Harris was out of the race before a single ballot was cast.

Now, some of Harris’s associates and allies say engaging with Trump’s comments at length would risk turning the contest into a debate on race and sending each side’s backers to their respective corners. Letting Trump’s remarks stand on their own, in contrast, could prompt many voters to recoil, they said, while Harris can focus on issues voters care about, such as the economy and abortion rights.

Harris’s mother is from India, and her father was born in Jamaica. Harris has embraced both identities for decades. She attended historically Black Howard University and has been a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha since the mid-1980s. She has routinely talked about being a barrier-breaking first in many of the jobs she has held.

Harris became the Democrats’ likely nominee after President Biden on July 21 bowed to pressure to step aside following a rocky performance in a presidential debate against Trump. Democrats hoped Harris’s entry into the race would galvanize minority and younger voters not enthused about the oldest president in history seeking a second term. Biden is 81 years old, and Harris is 59.

In the reshaped race, both Harris and Trump have tried garner support from Black voters. Harris has spoken to Black sororities and held rallies in cities with large Black populations; Trump took questions from Black journalists and told the NABJ audience he was “the best president for the Black population” since Abraham Lincoln. He later accused the three Black female journalists serving as moderators of being unprofessional and biased against him.

Trump’s campaign responded to the episode with a statement that did not directly address his comments.

“President Trump remains defiant in the face of media bias and will continue working to make life better for all Americans regardless of how poorly he’s treated by supporters of Kamala Harris, and in fact President Trump hopes to win them over in the future with his vision of returning success to our Country,” the statement said.

In its own statement after Trump’s remarks, a Harris campaign spokesperson also did not directly address Trump’s attack against her, instead saying Trump had showcased “the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president.”

“Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency — while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in,” the statement from campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said. “Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.”

The campaign also said Trump’s comments were “a taste of the chaos and division” that would mark a second Trump term.

Trump’s political ascent has been steeped in grievance, and Harris supporters have long thought he would seek to make identity a central part of a race between him and Harris.

Trump’s entry into presidential politics came after he falsely asserted that former president Barack Obama had not been born in the United States. He dismissed his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton as “unhinged” and “unbalanced.” And he has been mispronouncing Harris’s first name for years.

Donna Brazile, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and Vice President Al Gore’s campaign manager when he ran for president, said Trump has shown himself to be a master at leaning into race and gender tropes to assail women and minority candidates.

“One way to try to weaken them or to try to marginalize them is to question their own identity or question their own background or their qualifications,” Brazile said. “What Trump did today was take a page from the same playbook where he has been one of the primary authors in the last couple of years.

“I would hope that all the leaders in society and in other communities would speak up and not put all of this burden of race and gender on the shoulders of a presidential candidate,” she added.

“You know, nobody died that day, you do know that? But people died in Seattle. Nobody died, but people died in Minneapolis. You know, people died in Minneapolis, and nothing happens. And nobody ever talks and nothing happens to those people. But you went after the J6 people with a vengeance.”

— Donald Trump, in a conversation at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, July 31

In his half-hour sit-down with three journalists at NABJ, the former president and Republican presidential nominee unleashed his usual litany of falsehoods, ranging from a phony story about the ex-governor of Virginia executing a baby after birth to an absurd claim that he “saved” historically Black colleges and universities. To a Black audience, he yet again bragged he did more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln — earning the instant rejoinder (which he ignored) from ABC News’s Rachel Scott: “Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?”

Rather than repeat ourselves, we have provided links to previous fact checks at the end of this report.

Instead we will focus on a fresh claim he made. When asked about pardoning people convicted of violence during the Jan. 6 attacks — he said he would — he resorted to whataboutism. He asserted that people died in Seattle and Minneapolis during the social justice protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020 — and nothing happened to those people.

The Facts

As part of his argument, Trump falsely claimed that “nobody died.” A Senate report said that “seven individuals, including three law enforcement officers, ultimately lost their lives” in connection with the attack, four of them “that day.” Four were Trump supporters — one shot by a U.S. Capitol police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window that led to the Speaker’s Lobby, two of heart attacks and one from amphetamine intoxication. Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, collapsed at his desk after the attack and died a day later. The District’s chief medical examiner concluded that Sicknick had suffered two strokes nearly eight hours after being sprayed with a chemical irritant. Two other officers died by suicide within days of the attack.

Trump also claimed that just a few days ago there was a “horrible attack on the Capitol” by pro-Palestinian protesters — and “they fought with them much more openly than I saw on January 6th.” That’s not true. “Though most demonstrators walked and chanted peacefully, there were some clashes with law enforcement, and D.C. police and Capitol Police said they arrested 15 people in total. The U.S. Park Police arrested eight people,” The Washington Post reported. Trump spoke at length about the tragedy of “incredible monuments, bells, lions, all these magnificent limestone and granite with red paint.” The vandalism took place not at the Capitol but near Union Station — appearing on the Christopher Columbus memorial fountain and Freedom Bell, a reproduction of the Liberty Bell — and National Park Service officials said they would be cleaned within three days, despite Trump’s saying of the defacement: “You’ll see it in a hundred years from now.”

An American flag was also burned, earning condemnation from Trump’s rival for the presidency, Vice President Harris.

Here’s what happened in Seattle and Minneapolis. The information on deaths during the protests came from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit. The organization found that the overwhelming majority of the 9,000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations were peaceful, but that 11 people were killed while participating in the protests and an additional 14 died in incidents linked to them.

Seattle

Two people were killed, according to ACLED. Summer Taylor, a Black Lives Matter activist, died when a car rammed into the protests. Another person, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., was shot in an incident that ACLED said was tied to the broader unrest. (Another fatal shooting of a teen was not connected, ACLED concluded.)

Dawit Kelete, 30, who drove into the protest on July 4, 2020, killing Taylor and seriously injuring another person, was sentenced to 78 months in jail. The judge said that while there was no evidence he hit the protesters intentionally, his conduct was “extremely reckless.”

Mays died in the early morning hours of June 29, 2020, while driving a stolen Jeep in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, which protesters occupied for three weeks after police abandoned the area. Mays lived in San Diego, but traveled to Seattle to be part of history, his family said. The incident led the city to shut down the protest zone.

No one has been charged in Mays’s death. Mays’s father has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city for allowing “lawlessness to reign.”

Minneapolis

One person was killed, according to ACLED. The Max It Pawn Shop was set on fire during protests on May 28, 2020, and then two months later, police discovered a charred body in the wreckage. Surveillance video footage showed Montez Terriel Lee, 26, pouring an accelerant around the pawnshop and lighting it on fire. Lee was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.

Trump reissues his greatest hits of previously debunked claims

These are among the false claims Trump made at the Chicago event, in the order in which he made them, with links to earlier fact checks of them.

• He “saved” historically Black colleges and universities
• Best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln
• An invasion of “15, 16, 17 million” people
• Harris was the “border czar”
• Many migrants are from mental institutions
• The crime rate of other countries is going down
• The worst inflation in 100 years
• Trump was protected by the Presidential Records Act
• Biden was ruled “incompetent” in his presidential records case
• Democrats allow the killing of babies after being born
• “Everyone” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned
• Drilling will reduce inflation
• Grocery bills are up 60 percent
• U.S. has more oil than any other country.

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Former president Donald Trump falsely accused Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) of being a “proud member of Hamas” at a rally Wednesday night, lodging another insult directed at a prominent Jewish American.

“Chuck Schumer refused to shake the Israeli prime minister’s hand,” Trump told his supporters in Harrisburg, Pa. “Chuck Schumer has become a Palestinian. Can you believe it? He’s become a proud member of Hamas.”

In response, Schumer said in a statement: “The lower [Trump] drops in polls, the more unhinged he becomes.”

At the rally, Trump was referring to actions by the Senate majority leader — who is currently the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States — when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a joint address to Congress last week amid the war in Gaza that has killed at least 39,445 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

While Schumer attended the speech, he nodded rather than shook Netanyahu’s hand. “Well, look, you know, I went to this speech, because the relationship between Israel and America is ironclad, and I wanted to show that. But, at the same time, as everyone knows, I have serious disagreements with the way [Netanyahu] has conducted these policies,” Schumer told CBS News on Sunday.

Trump made the remarks as he criticized Vice President Harris — the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and his new campaign rival — for declining to preside over Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress. Harris did not attend the speech, citing scheduling conflicts — but she did meet with Netanyahu in the days afterward and called for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in the ongoing conflict there.

Trump’s comments come one day after he said on a radio show that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people,” even though her husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish. Trump also appeared to agree with the radio host who described Emhoff as a “crappy Jew.” Emhoff is a leading voice in the White House’s efforts to combat antisemitism.

In Schumer’s case, Trump falsely attacked the New York Democrat for being a member of a group the United States lists as a terrorist organization. Trump has repeatedly claimed the Democratic Party “hates Israel” and has previously said that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his remarks about Schumer.

Schumer is staunchly pro-Israel and one of the country’s biggest supporters in the Senate, but he called earlier this year for new elections in Israel amid frustrations about how Netanyahu is conducting the war in Gaza, enraging the Israeli leader.

Earlier on Wednesday, Schumer delivered a Senate floor speech addressing Trump’s comments about Emhoff.

“Calling Jews fools and suggesting they are bad or disloyal because of their political beliefs is not just some juvenile insult,” Schumer said. “It’s an old antisemitic trope that goes back centuries, one of dual-loyalty. It’s been used for a very long time to drive Jews out of their homes, to paint them as untrustworthy, to deny their basic dignity.”

Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.