Dark insinuations that one candidate might have been recruited as a spy by Chinese leaders as a younger man. Attacks accusing another would-be senator of profiting off a Chinese fentanyl manufacturer. And ads alleging another candidate sold Chinese-made SUVs in his car dealership several years ago.

Democrats and Republicans are aggressively tying their opponents to China in the final months of the 2024 campaign, hoping that invoking the nation that many Americans blame for mishandling the covid-19 pandemic, the deadly opioid crisis and U.S. economic woes will boost their own chances at the ballot box.

“China is not exactly wildly popular among Americans these days,” said GOP political consultant Whit Ayres. “There’s a widespread view that they are guilty of intellectual theft and that they don’t play by the rules.”

China-bashing has long been a staple of U.S. politics. Former president Donald Trump made cracking down on the world’s second-largest economy with tariffs a core piece of his 2016 campaign, for example, and politicians of both parties have appealed to anger about outsourcing of jobs in past cycles, especially in Rust Belt states with ailing manufacturing industries.

But this year, as tensions between the two nations mount, the issue is particularly intense, with candidates locked in lengthy back-and-forth battles over which of them is more connected to China.

There have been 171 campaign ads for congressional or presidential candidates mentioning China so far this cycle, according to the AdImpact database of political advertisements. And there are some signs that Democrats are beginning to push the issue more than in the past, when hawkish Republicans generally owned China-related attacks. In the 2020 cycle, 82 percent of China-related ads for Senate candidates were bought by Republicans or GOP-backed groups. Over the same time period in this cycle, a majority of China-related ads are paid for by Democrats, with only 36 percent of them coming from Republicans.

The ads play off voters’ genuine anxiety about the role of a rising and more aggressive China on the world stage. Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China has rapidly expanded its military might and presence around the globe, increasingly antagonizing U.S. allies such as Taiwan and the Philippines.

And Chinese state-backed enterprises are alleged to have stolen American intellectual property; while the government is accused of violating environmental and international trade laws; flooded domestic markets with cheap products; and have sought to outpace the United States in the development of cutting edge technologies and the exploitation of critical minerals.

The attacks are also sometimes conspiratorial in nature, evoking Cold War-era fears of deep cover spies.

Republicans are leveling unfounded attacks that Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, may have been “groomed” by China. He traveled to China dozens of times over the past few decades, first as a young English teacher there and later as a member of Congress, where he served on a commission that focused on the country’s human rights issues.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and vice-presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have insinuated without basis that he’s a Chinese plant.

“Now I know, and we all know, that Kamala Harris wanted to outsource our factories and jobs to China, but I didn’t expect her to outsource the selection of her running-mate to China too,” Vance said at an August rally in North Carolina.

Comer said in a Fox News interview, without evidence, that it’s “possible” China would be “grooming an up and coming rising star in the political process to try to have a foothold in our government.” Comer wrote a letter to the FBI seeking information about Walz’s connections to Chinese officials, citing the years when Walz organized annual student trips to the nation.

Walz’s team pushed back on the allegations, and pointed out he has been critical of Chinese human rights abuses during his time in Congress and beyond.

“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has stood up to the [Chinese Communist Party], fought for human rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first,” Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann said in a statement. “Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators and sending American jobs to China.”

Harris has not laid out her views in detail on the U.S.-China relationship, but briefly mentioned in her speech to the Democratic National Convention that she wants to ensure “America — not China — wins the competition for the 21st century.”

The negative ads and attacks on China pervading the campaign trail raise the possibility that future Congresses will take an even more oppositional posture to the nation, in part to cater to voters’ increasing skepticism.

China’s unpopularity with Americans began growing around 2017 and only worsened after the covid pandemic, which originated in Wuhan. About 80 percent of Americans said they had an unfavorable view of the nation in a Gallup poll taken earlier this year. Republicans are more hostile toward China than Democrats are, with almost 60 percent of them describing China as an “enemy” of the United States, compared to 30 percent of Democrats, according to a Pew poll.

Since 2019, Congress has taken a more sharply negative tone toward the rising superpower, and introduced six times as many bills on the subject in 2021 compared to 2013, according to an analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In recent years, Congress has set aside billions more in spending to defeat China’s military, curtailed China’s access to semiconductors and bolstered efforts to create an anti-China global coalition. Countering China is one of the few remaining bipartisan areas of agreement on Capitol Hill.

“The American people have started to kind of wake up to the reality that China is not just a benign trading partner or a large market for our exports, but the Chinese Communist Party actually represents a national security threat,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), a member of a special House committee created last year to focus on the threats posed by China.

But some worry about the slippery slope between targeting nefarious practices through policy and rhetoric, and casting broader blame upon Chinese people, including Chinese immigrants. The FBI reported a spike in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans after the pandemic.

“I think that that is something that we have to be very careful about,” said Rep. Norma J. Torres (D-Calif.), who sits on the House subcommittee that appropriates U.S. foreign policy spending, “For some of my colleagues, it all starts and ends with China. And this is the dangerous part … It creates a lot of potential for violence in our communities again.”

The China-related battles are especially heated in the Midwestern Senate races where vulnerable Democratic incumbents are fighting to hold onto their seats — and their slim majority of the chamber. Blasting their Republican opponents on China is a way to try to disqualify them in the minds of Republican-leaning voters, who polls show are especially skeptical of the nation.

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey (D) has been running a battery of TV ads bashing his opponent, Dave McCormick, for his investments in China while he was CEO of the hedge fund Bridgewater, tying them to the state’s deadly opioid epidemic. In one Casey ad, Trump is heard criticizing McCormick for working “with a company that managed money for communist China,” an attack Trump made when McCormick was running against Trump’s preferred candidate in the 2022 Senate race primary. The ad also accuses McCormick of investing in “China’s biggest maker of fentanyl.”

In another, a narrator describes the staggering death rate from fentanyl, which U.S. officials say is primarily made from chemical precursors that originate in China. “While law enforcement and grieving families see a killer, Dave McCormick saw a way to get even richer,” says the ad, and accused McCormick of “profiting off people’s pain.”

McCormick released his own ad saying his company never invested in producers of illegal fentanyl in China. The company invested in a Chinese pharmaceutical company that makes legal fentanyl, called Humanwell, for legitimate medical purposes.

In turn, McCormick’s campaign characterized Casey as “weak on China,” pointing out his votes for the Inflation Reduction Act, which it described as “enrich[ing] China’s EV industry” in another ad. That piece of legislation included billions of dollars in tax credits to bolster the adoption of electric vehicles, or EVs, with the aim of reducing the nation’s carbon emissions. Many of those EVs are made with Chinese-produced materials, though the Biden administration recently ruled that vehicles with Chinese-made batteries will no longer be eligible for the tax credit.

The hotly contested race for Senate in Michigan, a key battleground that could help determine control of the chamber, is another where candidates from both parties have argued the other has unacceptable ties to China.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic Senate nominee, has blasted her rival, Senate GOP nominee and former Rep. Mike Rogers, in one ad for “helping Chinese companies get access to the U.S.” as a logo for Huawei, the Chinese tech firm, appears on the screen. The claim is misleading, PolitiFact concluded, given that Rogers worked for such U.S. technology companies as AT&T and Nokia — but there is no evidence he helped them with deals involving the Chinese technology conglomerate.

“Profit from China or protect America. That’s the choice,” Slotkin said in another ad.

The Republicans’ Senate campaign arm is calling her “Shanghai Slotkin” in return, highlighting her work with a Chinese-based company called Gotion that’s building an electric vehicle battery factory near Big Rapids. And this week, Rogers held a press call with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a China hawk, to vouch for his tough-on-China bona fides.

“I’ve known Mike now for 15 years,” Pompeo said of Rogers. “We both had come to understand the Chinese Communist Party as the central threat to the American way of life long before it was cool to do so.”

A similar dynamic is playing out in another important Senate race in Ohio. There, Bernie Moreno, who’s running against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), has described China as a threat to U.S. workers and vowed to crack down on them.

But Brown and his allies are running ads exploiting anxieties in the state about China’s rising auto industry and the outsourcing of U.S. auto jobs there. In one ad, a former autoworker criticizes Moreno, a former car dealer, for selling China-made SUVs.

“The Chinese cars that Bernie Moreno sold are the same cars that led to our plant being shut down,” the worker says.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in the fight of his political life to hold onto his seat in his red state, ran the first ad of his race highlighting his work trying to crack down on the sale of Montana farmland to China. His opponent, Tim Sheehy, dismissed him as weak on China, saying in his own ad that “on Tester’s watch, China has stolen our jobs and Chinese ownership of Montana farm land has soared.”

Abby Hauslohner contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s campaign aimed to turn the controversy over his actions last week at Arlington National Cemetery into an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris this weekend, after she said the former president “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt.”

Late Saturday, the Trump campaign posted numerous videos in which family members of some of the 13 U.S. troops killed during a suicide bombing in the 2021 evacuation of Afghanistan accused President Joe Biden and Harris of killing their children by placing them in harm’s way. The bombing — which also killed about 170 Afghans — marked a low point for the Biden administration and has continued to haunt it politically as some of the families have aligned with Trump.

“Don’t forget, Kamala, you were the last one in the room. You and Joe Biden made the final decision on how to pull out of Afghanistan. You created the chaos and mayhem for the military to accomplish our goals,” said Darin Hoover, the father of Staff Sgt. Darin “Taylor” Hoover, in a video that Trump posted on X. Hoover defended the actions of Trump’s campaign team, and accused Harris of politicizing the commemoration.

The sparring stems from an incident on Aug. 26, when Trump and his staff defied requests from cemetery officials to avoid taking photos or videos among the gravestones, with the aim of adhering to a federal law that forbids campaign activities at military cemeteries. A female cemetery worker was “abruptly pushed aside” by male Trump aides as she sought to enforce the guidelines, cemetery officials said.

The campaign went on to post graveside photos and videos of the visit in the days afterward that included criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The debate over the incident has continued as Harris and Trump vie for advantage on military issues — arguing over who would be the better commander in chief and who would best care for the needs of veterans. Trump has been searching for a salient attack on Harris since the race was upended in July after Biden decided not to seek reelection, thrusting Harris to the stop of the ticket. She has raised more than half a billion dollars in donations since Biden stepped aside, spoken to enthused crowds in packed arenas and, perhaps most importantly, closed the polling gap with Trump.

Trump has tried a variety of methods to try to slow her rise — casting her as dangerously liberal, suggesting she started identifying as Black for political expediency and saying she was ducking the news media before her first sit-down television interview last week. In the wake of the Arlington visit, Trump is now circling back to highlight one of the foreign-policy low points of the Biden administration.

As Trump blamed Harris for the tragic exit, his allies amplified the message and defended his Arlington National Cemetery visit. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) released a statement saying the “real scandal” was the slaying of American troops in Afghanistan, alleging that both Harris and Biden had “condemned” them to death. Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said Harris “has blood on her hands.”

Republicans have long criticized the Biden administration for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, including during the Republican National Convention in July wit. an appearance onstage by six families who lost loved ones in the bombing. But the attacks have refocused on Harris more recently, and have received a boost from family members.

“We, the families of the brave service members who were tragically killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, are appalled by Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent attempts to politicize President Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery,” families said in a statement released Sunday by Trump’s campaign.

A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment Sunday. Harris aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive moment in the campaign, said this is the latest in a line of unsuccessful attacks Trump has used against Harris and cast doubt on whether this one would gain traction.

A Harris campaign aide said neither Harris nor Biden had been invited to the Arlington Cemetery commemoration.

Two of the families invited Trump to Arlington to mark the third anniversary of their children’s deaths. Defense officials were wary of the event politicizing the cemetery but did not stand in the way, instead repeatedly communicating guidelines that would allow the Trump campaign to film during a wreath-laying ceremony but not in Section 60, the final resting place for many recent military fatalities.

In a statement last week, Army officials defended the cemetery employee who got into a brief altercation with two employees of the Trump campaign during the visit. The employee, the Army said, acted with professionalism and was “abruptly pushed aside” after attempting to enforce the guidelines that had been communicated to the campaign.

Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita called the woman a “despicable individual,” and campaign spokesman Steven Cheung alleged without evidence that the woman had suffered a “mental health episode.” Defense officials denied that was not the case and said she had been “unfairly attacked” by the campaign.

Jim McCollum, whose son, Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, was killed in the explosion, said in a phone interview Sunday that he and the other families decided to record the new videos supporting Trump and attacking Harris “out of a sense of loyalty.”

They do not think Trump did anything wrong at the cemetery, McCollum said, in part because the cameras that followed the former president to Section 60 did so after the families decided they wanted to be present and not use their phones to take photos.

“He has done so much for us,” McCollum said of Trump. “When somebody does something so decent and so nice for you on so many different occasions, it’s only right that you’re going to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got your back.’”

McCollum noted that Harris said in April 2021, shortly after Biden decided to order a full military withdrawal, that she was “the last person in the room” before he approved the decision. He acknowledged that as vice president, she may not have “had sway” in what course of action Biden selected.

“But she said it. She claims it. Now you own it,” McCollum said, adding that the Harris campaign is either “lying to us now” by minimizing her role in Biden’s choices, or Harris was putting herself “on a pedestal” then by touting her role in Biden’s decision.

McCollum said that he declined to meet with Biden at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware when the remains of his son arrived three years ago. Other members of his family did, he said, and came away frustrated by how little Biden seemed to know about his son and how quickly he pivoted to talking about his own son, Beau, who served in Iraq and died of cancer.

In the wake of the Kabul airport bombing, the families’ ire was directed at Biden, not Harris. And it is unclear if voters will hold Harris responsible for a decision that Biden ultimately made as commander in chief.

Military officials involved in the Biden administration’s deliberations on Afghanistan said that Harris participated in meetings and asked thoughtful questions, but revealed little about what she was thinking. They also questioned whether she had influence on a subject on which Biden was so deeply entrenched that he did not follow advice from senior Pentagon officials.

Military officials recommended keeping a force of about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to bolster the U.S.-backed government and continue counterterrorism operations, but Biden elected for a full withdrawal instead, saying that he would not send another generation of U.S. troops into harm’s way.

The families of the 13 service members killed in Kabul will again be thrust into the spotlight next week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced that Congress will honor the 13 American service members killed in the attack by presenting their families with the Congressional Gold Medal on Sept. 10.

“Congress has a duty to ensure these sacrifices are never forgotten, and it is my distinct honor to announce that Congress will bestow the families of these 13 heroes with the Congressional Gold Medal — the highest award Congress can present to any individual or group,” Johnson said in a statement released last week.

The ceremony, and remarks by a bevy of Republican lawmakers, will take place at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda the same day as the presidential debate between Harris and Trump.

McCollum said he hopes to keep politics out of that ceremony.

“You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to like any of the 13 [sets of] parents,” he said. “But respect the 13 kids. That’s why we’re there.”

U.S. officials said President Joe Biden’s months-long push for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal faced renewed urgency on Sunday after Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

The United States has been talking to Egypt and Qatar about the contours of a final “take it or leave it” deal that it plans to present to the parties in the coming weeks — one that if the two sides fail to accept could mark the end of the American-led negotiations, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private and sensitive deliberations. Biden officials said it was not immediately clear whether the discovery of the six hostages would make it more or less likely that Israel and Hamas could come to an agreement in the coming weeks.

“You can’t keep negotiating this. This process has to be called at some point,” said the senior official, who said the United States, Egypt and Qatar had been working on the final proposal before the six hostages were found dead in a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah. “Does it derail the deal? No. If anything, it should add additional urgency in this closing phase, which we were already in.”

The Israel Defense Forces said the six hostages were killed by their captors “shortly before” they were discovered. The senior administration official said the United States holds a similar assessment, believing that all six hostages were shot in the head and executed not long before their bodies were discovered.

Biden and his top aides have spent several months relentlessly trying to bring Israel and Hamas to an agreement that would see the release of the remaining living hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a temporary cease-fire in Gaza that they hoped would lay the groundwork for a permanent end to the war. CIA Director Bill Burns, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk are among those who have flown to the region numerous times and worked with Qatari and Egyptian negotiators to try to find an agreement.

Inside Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing fury and increased pressure from the hostage families, who are demanding that he address the nation. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took part in nationwide protests Sunday night, and Israel’s largest labor union called for a general strike on Monday — threatening to shut down the country until Netanyahu agreed to a deal with Hamas to return the remaining captives. Hostage families have for months accused Netanyahu of prioritizing his political survival and victory against Hamas over a deal that would bring their loved ones home.

The Israeli embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Dennis Ross, a former American envoy to Israel, said Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yehiya Sinwar, is unlikely to change his position because no one is able to exert pressure on him, but that it remains to be seen whether pressure inside Israel could force Netanyahu to more seriously engage in negotiations.

“For now, [Sinwar] will wait to see whether the general strike in Israel leads to a softening of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s conditions,” Ross said in an interview. “The strike, the likely massive protest, is in support of the hostage families and their view that Netanyahu’s strategy both in the negotiations and increasing IDF increase pressure on Hamas has failed.”

Hamas, in a statement, blamed Israeli bombings for the deaths, adding that “if President [Joe] Biden is concerned about their lives, he must stop supporting this enemy with money and weapons and pressure the occupation to end its aggression immediately.”

The Israel-Gaza war has created deep divisions among Democrats and across the United States since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when militants killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

Last week, U.S. officials were negotiating some of the final details of a “bridging proposal” they put forward between Israel and Hamas to try to hash out remaining differences.

The discussions last week focused primarily on which hostages would be exchanged for specific Palestinian prisoners held inside Israel, some of whom were detained without trial, according to one of the senior officials.

The first phase of hostages includes women, the elderly and the ill and wounded — a group that included 23-year-old Goldberg-Polin, the American-Israeli whose parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month. Goldberg-Polin’s left arm was blown off by a grenade during the Oct. 7 attacks. Two Israeli women, Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi, whose bodies were also recovered by the IDF on Saturday, were also on the list of those who would have been released in the first phase, the senior official said.

Those negotiations have taken on added complexity now that the six hostages are confirmed to be dead, the two senior administration officials said. The painstaking deliberations over which hostages will be released in exchange for specific Palestinian prisoners must now be renegotiated. Some Middle East experts said that the fewer living hostages there are, the less pressure there will be on Netanyahu to come to a deal — U.S. officials fear the number of living hostages may number only in the dozens.

The senior administration official said Hamas’s decision to execute the hostages with negotiations under ways “calls into question” Hamas’s seriousness in the talks. Hamas has proven obstinate at various points in the talks, even as Israeli officials have made concessions, the official said.

“Rhetoric aside, Netanyahu has never prioritized freeing the hostages. For now, he will be under a lot more domestic pressure to accept a cease-fire deal that saves the remaining hostages,” said Frank Lowenstein, a former State Department official who helped lead Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2014. “And if he waits this out, over time fewer living hostages could mean fewer Palestinian prisoners to release and what he sees as a more favorable negotiating position.”

Both Netanyahu and Hamas — particularly the group’s leader, Sinwar — have at various points been stubborn in reaching a deal. Netanyahu has come under intense criticism by the Israeli security establishment, domestic political opponents and the hostage families for delaying the conclusion of a deal by insisting in recent months on new demands, such as an indefinite Israeli military presence along the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors, two strategic corridors that mark the border area between Egypt and Gaza and a four-mile-long road just south of Gaza City that runs from east to west, respectively.

“U.S. officials are going to be burning up the phones over the next 48 hours to see if a deal can still be reached,” said a second senior U.S. official.

In the hours after this weekend’s discovery, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris decided against publicly pressuring Netanyahu into a deal, choosing instead to unreservedly condemn Hamas for taking the lives of the hostages, even as Israelis harshly criticize Netanyahu. In statements released late Saturday, both Biden and Harris squarely blamed Hamas and did not mention Netanyahu.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza, criticized Netanyahu saying the Israeli prime minister has “decided to bury them in the rubble of his politics. … His hands are covered in the blood of the hostages who are being murdered in captivity.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has emerged as one of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics, has also downplayed the benefits of continuing the war and bargaining for better deal terms versus securing the release of the hostages.

American Jewish groups have grappled with their private fury at Netanyahu but have so far been unwilling to challenge him publicly even as they see him sabotaging myriad U.S. efforts at a deal, according to a person familiar with internal discussions among several major organizations. The person noted the tone of Biden’s statement on Saturday.

Prominent Democrats and Republicans used the news of the killing of the six hostages to bolster arguments they have been making for months. Republicans argued that the discovery of the bodies highlighted why Israel must be allowed to continue its widely criticized military campaign to destroy Hamas, an effort that has decimated Gaza, with some even calling on the United States to consider bombing oil fields in Iran in what would be considered an act of war.

The Biden administration and Israel “should hold Iran accountable for the fate of remaining hostages and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, seized on the news to criticize Biden and Harris for failing to come to a deal. Trump has issued conflicting statements about how he would handle the war, arguing that it would not have happened under his leadership without specifying how he would have prevented it.

“The Hostage Crisis in Israel is only taking place because Comrade Kamala Harris is weak and ineffective, and has no idea what she’s doing,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Biden failed, and now he spends his day on the beach, plotting and scheming how to take out his once Political Opponent, ME … THE OCTOBER 7th ISRAELI CRISIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT!”

Democrats, meanwhile, said the news heightened the urgency to reach a deal, end the war and surge desperately needed humanitarian aid into the enclave.

“A ceasefire must be reached immediately that allows all remaining hostages to be released, humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, and an elusive and neglected long-term vision for peace and stability to become a reality,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement.

When Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in their hometown of Chicago last month, their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, had been held hostage in Gaza for 320 days.

They ended their speech by talking directly to their son, hoping he could somehow hear them: We love you, stay strong, survive.

As they spoke, Hersh was alive. But there was almost no more time left.

On Sunday, the couple announced that their nearly 11-month campaign to save their son had come to a heartbreaking end.

Hersh’s body and those of five other hostages were discovered by the Israeli military in a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza. They had been shot at close range multiple times on Thursday or Friday, Israeli authorities said after a forensic examination.

Hersh was one of five American hostages still believed to be alive in Gaza. After the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, his parents emerged as eloquent and relentless advocates for bringing the hostages home, telling the story of their son’s capture as they traveled from Washington to Doha, Qatar, to Geneva.

Hersh, a 23-year-old born in California and raised in Jerusalem, became one of the most high-profile faces of the plight of the hostages in large part because of his parents’ tireless campaigning.

The disclosure that he and the five others found in Rafah had managed to stay alive until only days ago sparked fury in Israel, where family members have accused the government of deadly delays in reaching a deal that would stop the fighting and release the hostages.

Each day that passes without a negotiated solution “increases the risk that no hostages will come home alive,” said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui is another American held captive in Gaza.

Like the Goldberg-Polins, Dekel-Chen has spent the past 11 months pressing senior U.S. officials in the White House and Congress for help reaching a deal that would bring their family members home.

In the United States, where Hersh’s family had lived and made yearly visits after leaving for Israel, synagogues and Jewish groups sent out anguished messages describing their sorrow upon learning that Hersh and five other hostages had been killed.

On Sunday, President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Goldberg-Polins to offer their condolences. Both men have met and spoken with the family repeatedly since last year. “I am devastated and outraged,” Biden said in a statement. Hersh’s parents have been “courageous, wise, and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable.”

Their ordeal began early in the morning of Oct. 7, when Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Hersh, a trained medic with a laid-back temperament who loved to travel, had left home the night before carrying a backpack and a sleeping bag.

At the time, he was working odd jobs to save money for his next big trip: a year-long journey through Asia starting in December. On Oct. 6, he and his best friend were off to celebrate Hersh’s birthday at a trance music festival in southern Israel. It turned into a scene of carnage.

The next morning, his mother, Rachel, checked her phone. At 8:11 a.m., Hersh had sent two messages via WhatsApp. “I love you,” the first read. The next one said: “I’m sorry.”

In the blur of days that followed, his family’s home in Jerusalem turned into a situation room, full of friends calling hospitals and trying to understand what happened. They learned from eyewitnesses — and later, a grisly video — that Hersh’s left forearm was blown off when militants attacked a shelter where he and dozens of others sought safety. In the video, he can be seen climbing into a truck that took him to Gaza.

Rachel, a guidance counselor, and Jon, an entrepreneur, devoted themselves to securing their son’s release. In a speech last year at the United Nations, Rachel said the weeks after the attack were like being transported to a different planet — “our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears.”

She talked about resisting the temptation to demonize people. “Hatred of the other … is seductive, sensuous and most importantly, it’s easy,” she said. But it is “not actually helpful, nor is it constructive.”

The parents appeared on the cover of Time magazine. They met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a crucial intermediary in talks with Hamas. They traveled to Switzerland, speaking to the International Red Cross and business executives at the annual Davos conference. And they returned again and again to Washington, meeting with senior Biden administration officials, who told them they were doing everything they could to bring Hersh home.

Then, in April, after six months of not knowing if their son was alive or dead, Hamas released a video of Hersh. His left arm was a stump. His face looked pale and puffy. But he was alive. His parents told CNN that they sobbed with relief when they heard his voice.

Hersh, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was one of dozens of hostages still thought to be alive in Gaza. More than 250 were taken captive on Oct. 7. In November, 105 were released during a one-week pause in fighting in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Four other Americans are also among those held hostage by Hamas: Sagui Dekel-Chen, Keith Siegel, Omer Neutra and Edan Alexander. The bodies of three Americans killed on Oct. 7 are still in Gaza.

In recent weeks, the American hostage families, including the Goldberg-Polins, have mounted a frantic effort to salvage a deal, meeting with Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in July. The most recent round of talks resumed in late August.

At the DNC in Chicago, the couple weren’t sure what kind of reception they would receive from the delegates, said Liz Hirsh Naftali, whose grandniece Abigail Edan, 4, was taken hostage on Oct. 7 and later freed. Rachel briefly broke down as the crowd began to chant, “Bring them home!”

The Goldberg-Polins called for a deal that would bring the hostages home as well as an end to “the suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza.” More than 40,000 people have been killed in the territory since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“We all feel the urgency,” Naftali said. “The U.S. government feels the urgency. The hostage families do. … We need the Israeli prime minister and we need [Hamas leader Yehiya] Sinwar to feel the urgency.”

The Goldberg-Polins “have fought every day for 11 months,” Naftali said. “Our hearts break for them … . It didn’t have to end this way.”

The grief at Hersh’s death extended from Israel to the United States, touching cities such as Richmond, where the family lived when he was small, and places he and his two sisters used to visit. Hersh “radiated kindness and sweetness and always had a smile on his face,” wrote the leaders of a Jewish retreat in Georgia where he often spent the Passover holiday with his family as a child.

At Congregation Or Torah outside Chicago, where Hersh’s paternal grandmother, Leah Polin, is a member, there was shock and sorrow. “If any hostage was going to be saved, we thought it was going to be Hersh,” Rabbi Zvi Engel said.

Hersh’s grandmother was on her way to Israel for her grandson’s funeral, Engel said. On Monday, Hersh will be buried, and his family will begin the Jewish mourning ritual of sitting shiva. In the funeral notice, his family called him a “child of light, love and peace.”

Ben Brasch, Michael Birnbaum and Abbie Cheeseman in Washington and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the third-party presidential candidate who suspended his campaign and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump, is suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections to get his name taken off the state’s November ballot.

Kennedy, who fought legal battles to remain on the North Carolina ballot, said last month that he would remove his name from battleground state ballots so as not to swing the election in Vice President Kamala Harris’s favor. But last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected Kennedy’s request to be taken off the ballot, saying it would “not be practical” to reprint ballots in time for the start of absentee voting on Sept. 6.

Kennedy’s lawsuit, filed Friday in Wake County Superior Court, alleged that the elections board was violating North Carolina law in denying his request. He accused the board of applying a “subjective ‘practicality’ standard” in the decision and added that he had followed the proper protocols in his request to remove his name. Kennedy requested an immediate judgment in the case, citing the November election date and upcoming ballot deadlines.

Kennedy’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday evening. A spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections directed The Washington Post to the state attorney general’s office, which said it was reviewing the complaint.

On Aug. 23, Kennedy said despite suspending his campaign, he would keep his name on ballots in solidly red and blue states, but would remove it in critical states.

“Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues — censorship, war and chronic disease,” he said.

On the campaign trail this year, Kennedy — the nephew of former president John F. Kennedy and the son of former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy — positioned himself to voters as a viable third-party option opposed to both Trump and President Joe Biden.

During his remarks to suspend his campaign, just over one month after Biden’s exit and endorsement of Harris, Kennedy urged supporters to vote for him in states where he planned to keep himself on the ballot. He added that he had already started the process of removing his name from the ballots of 10 battleground states, where he did not want to swing the election toward Harris. Polling has shown that a majority of Kennedy’s independent supporters lean Republican.

But Kennedy still remains on three battleground ballots: Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. In Michigan and Wisconsin, a nominated and qualified candidate cannot be removed from the ballot unless they die.

In North Carolina, Kennedy landed on the ballot in mid-July after the state elections board officially recognized the “We The People” party, which he created for greater ballot access. The North Carolina Democratic Party then sued to block Kennedy’s name on the general election ballot, accusing him of using the We The People party as a vehicle to avoid the ballot requirements for independent candidates. Ultimately, a judge ruled in Kennedy’s favor.

That ruling was a victory for Kennedy until he suspended his campaign and began submitting requests to withdraw his name.

Arizona, which will begin mailing its absentee ballots to voters on Sept. 21, granted Kennedy’s request and Florida, which had an Aug. 24 deadline for minor parties to submit their nominees, granted Kennedy’s requests. Nevada and Pennsylvania, where Kennedy faced legal battles against his candidacy, also took him off the general election ballot.

But on Thursday, the North Carolina elections board denied his request in a 3-2 vote along party lines.

The board said in a news release following the vote that 1,730,000 ballots had already been printed with Kennedy’s name. The board plans to send those ballots to voters, including residents in the military and living overseas, starting Sept. 6. Printing new ballots would “leave most North Carolina counties without ballots until mid-September at the earliest and lead to significant additional costs,” the board said.

North Carolina state law does not stipulate a deadline for presidential nominees to request removal from the ballot, the board said in its release. But a separate state provision allows the elections board to “determine whether it is practical to reprint ballots” after removal requests are received, according to the release.

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.