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.