“McCormick’s promised the richest people in America a massive tax break. To pay for it, he’s made clear he’ll slash your Medicare and Social Security and cut Medicaid for nursing home care.”

— Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), speaking to the camera in a new ad, released Oct. 10

The Senate race between Casey, the incumbent, and former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick is one of the closest in the nation and could determine control of the chamber. In this ad, Casey walks out of a bank vault as he complains that McCormick’s “billionaire buddies” have spent $150 million attacking him.

Then he does something unusual — he directly attacks McCormick as having “made clear he’ll slash your Medicare and Social Security and cut Medicaid for nursing home care.” Usually, negative ads use voice-overs or text to make incendiary claims, as a way to shield the candidate from possible fact checks.

When Casey utters this line, the ad shows images of elderly people, and the small text citation reads “Americans for Tax Fairness, March 3, 2023.” Our antenna went up. The Fact Checker has covered budget and tax policy in Washington for more than three decades and had never heard of this group. Moreover, McCormick officially announced he was running for the Senate on Sept. 21, 2023 — so how would a report from six months earlier be relevant?

It turns out this accusation was made up.

The Facts

Americans for Tax Fairness, on its website, describes itself as a “diverse campaign of more than 420 national, state and local endorsing organizations united in support of a fair tax system that works for all Americans.” The staff have links to labor and other liberal organizations. But the tip-off that this is no ordinary think tank or research organization is that it says it is a project of the New Venture Fund — which is a liberal dark money group, meaning it disguises the source of its contributions. New Venture’s most recent tax filing indicates it has more than $1 billion in assets.

The group has an affiliate, Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund, funded by an entity connected to New Venture called Sixteen Thirty Fund. Because it’s listed under a different section of the tax code, the action fund can do more overt political activity. But the fruits of the main organization still can end up being cited in campaign ads such as this one.

Americans for Tax Fairness issues reports with some detailed analysis, but that citation in the ad was to a March 2023 “fact sheet” titled “Renewing The Trump Tax Cuts Benefits The Rich & Threatens Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid & More.”

The across-the-board tax cut that Congress approved in 2017 will expire at the end of 2025, which will pose a challenge for the next president and Congress. Former president Donald Trump wants to renew the tax cut and has proposed other tax breaks. Vice President Kamala Harris proposes to keep the tax cuts in place for people making less than $400,000 but end them for wealthier Americans — and also boost taxes on the super-rich. As we’ve noted before, under the 2017 law, most taxpayers received a tax cut, but the wealthy got a larger share because they pay more in taxes.

Casey’s staff directed us to a line of the fact sheet to justify the accusation that McCormick has “made clear” he would cut entitlement programs to pay for extending the tax cuts: “Renewing the costly Trump tax cuts will explode the deficit, thereby threatening funding for Social Security, health care (including Medicare and Medicaid), education, nutrition programs, child care and other public services vital to working families.” The fact sheet said that “this explosion in debt would be used by Republicans as an excuse to significantly cut Social Security, health care (including Medicare and Medicaid)” and other programs.

But this is a prediction — not a factual statement. Both Trump and Harris’s plans are projected to increase the federal budget deficit, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump’s deficits ($7.5 trillion over 10 years) would be more than double Harris’s ($3.5 trillion). How Congress would grapple with the shortfalls — or if it would — is unclear.

The Casey campaign also pointed to comments that McCormick — a former senior Treasury Department official — made in 2022. Speaking at a meet-and-greet, McCormick noted that “we made promises” to “anybody in this room that’s got gray hair.” But he said, “as a matter of reality,” entitlements “aren’t sustainable in their current form for the future of our country.”

“I don’t think my kids are going to be able to live under the same entitlements [as] all of us that are here,” McCormick said. “We have to face that reality and do two things at the same time: keep our promises to people we made them to, and change our entitlements in a way that are defensible and fundable into the future.”

To some extent, this is an unremarkable statement. Since 1995, the trustees of Social Security have warned, year after year, that a financing crunch would occur early in the 2030s, resulting in an immediate cut in benefits, unless Congress took action to address the problem. There’s less than 10 years to go, but the two parties have been at an impasse. (Medicare faces similar financing challenges with a similar time frame.)

As a fix, Democrats have favored raising payroll taxes or raising the income level subject to tax. Republicans have preferred raising the retirement age from 67 or changing the rate at which Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation. For Republicans, higher taxes are a non-starter. For Democrats, a higher retirement age is unfair to workers who earn money through manual labor.

Trump, we should note, has ruled out any changes to Social Security. If he’s elected to a second term, the financing crisis probably will be deferred — something for the president elected in 2028 to deal with.

The Casey campaign also pointed to the fact that, as a Bush administration official, McCormick supported George W. Bush’s plan to add private accounts to Social Security. That plan was swiftly rejected by a Republican-controlled Congress nearly two decades ago. Republicans haven’t suggested the idea again.

Asked for comment, the McCormick campaign directed us to remarks he made at an event in June: “We need to support our seniors in retirement. Let me be perfectly clear: Our government needs to keep its promises to protect Social Security and Medicare.”

This line is in keeping with his statement in 2022 — that some adjustments in benefits might be necessary for younger workers, but current benefits would be kept for people at or near retirement. That’s far different from “slash your Medicare and Social Security.”

The Pinocchio Test

It’s a bold move for a campaign to have the candidate practically put words in the mouth of his opponent. Usually, when a candidate speaks in an ad, the claims he or she makes are factually grounded.

Casey claims that McCormick, in backing an extension of the Trump tax cut, “made clear he’ll slash your Medicare and Social Security and cut Medicaid for nursing home care.” McCormick has said no such thing. Rather he’s acknowledged financing challenges that are discussed in government reports.

One could question whether adding to the budget deficit is a wise move in the face of the fiscal challenges. But that’s not what Casey is doing. He’s falsely accusing McCormick of espousing a deliberate plan to cut benefits for seniors. He earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

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One of the central themes of the 2024 presidential election is that Americans exist within at least two different information environments. This has long been the case, of course, and this same divide affected 2016 and 2020 as well. In 2024, though, the bubble that surrounds former president Donald Trump has become more robust, with fewer critics within his party and a social media landscape less interested in paying the cost of limiting the spread of misinformation — or even actively embracing it.

Polling released by CBS News on Sunday presented a remarkable demonstration of the divide between Democrats and Republicans on basic matters of fact and on the reliability of different sources of information.

The poll, conducted for the network by YouGov, presented respondents with several politicians (including Trump, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris) and groups that provide data and opinions to the American people. Respondents were asked whether that information was generally accurate, well-intentioned but often wrong or generally a source of intentional falsehoods.

On net, the group that was most trusted were the respondents’ friends and family, who were much more likely to be seen as telling the truth than lying. They were followed by medical scientists — but here there was a wide partisan divide. Democrats were much more likely to say that scientists told the truth; Republicans were more divided.

And so it went down the line. Most sources of information were more likely to be seen as liars than truth-tellers. The source partisans were most likely to describe as truthful than dishonest was their party’s candidate. The source most likely to be described as dishonest instead of honest? The other party’s candidate.

It is objectively the case that Kamala Harris says untrue things less often than does Donald Trump. But, then, it is also the case that government economic reports are true, but Republicans — broadly skeptical of non-Trump authority — are more likely to say that those reports are lies than they are to say that they are true.

That particular distrust shows up in another set of questions in the CBS poll. Respondents were asked to evaluate the state of various measurable elements of the economy and government: stock prices, jobs data and border crossings. Stocks are up, as is the number of people working, while border crossings have fallen in recent weeks. Yet Republicans said either that the opposite was true or that things hadn’t changed much.

Even Democrats didn’t understand that border crossings had fallen. But not many Democrats joined a majority of Republicans in telling the pollsters that the Biden administration was intentionally trying to bring more immigrants into the United States — with 4 in 5 of those who said Biden was claiming that it was so those immigrants could vote illegally in American elections.

This is utter nonsense, promoted by Trump and his allies because it lets him inveigh against his two favorite targets: immigrants and purported fraud. Despite it being false and despite there being no evidence that it isn’t, half of Republicans think that Biden is intentionally doing this.

Nearly half of Republicans also told YouGov that they believed there would be “widespread” fraudulent and illegal voting in November, which there will not be. Nine in 10 Republicans said they thought there would be at least some fraud in the election. That’s not surprising, given that only 3 in 10 admitted that the 2020 election legitimately resulted in Biden’s victory.

The poll went a useful step further, though, asking nearly half of the Republicans who claimed there would be rampant fraud where this fraud would occur. Nearly all of that group said it would occur in “major cities and urban areas,” meaning that about 44 percent of Republicans think there will be widespread fraud. Relatively few think it will happen in rural areas.

It’s not hard to read between the lines here, but the poll went a step further, making the subtext overt. Most of the Republicans who thought there would be rampant fraud agreed that it would probably occur in “racial minority communities.” Less than half thought it would occur in “mostly White communities.”

Most Republicans also said that if Trump loses in November he and his party should “challenge and investigate the results.”

Again, there is no evidence at all that significant fraud occurred in 2020, despite four years of Trump and his allies desperately trying to uncover any. There is no reason to think that it will occur this year, either. But nearly half of Republicans think widespread fraud will occur, heavily in areas with Black and Hispanic communities.

In part because they think illegal voting happens all the time.

Because they think Democrats encourage it.

Because they think Democrats are liars and a Democrat-led government lies.

Because it is and has been useful for Trump to claim that they do.

One of Donald Trump’s superpowers as a politician is his ability to spread false and misleading claims without any apparent shame or indication that he knows better. Most politicians will stumble over themselves when confronted with their own whopper, as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) did in this month’s vice-presidential debate. Trump just charges forward with all the assurance of a man who is surprised to hear you even question his ridiculous claims. That gives his devoted supporters license to embrace his alternate reality.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, does not have Trump’s superpower. But what he does pack is a remarkable willingness to defend false claims in blatant, almost Machiavellian terms.

And he’s done it again, this time in response to Trump’s false claims about a Venezuelan gang taking over a city in Colorado.

This first example cropped up last month when Trump and Vance promoted the false claim about Haitian migrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Vance ultimately all but acknowledged they were saying these debunked things to draw attention to a related but distinct issue: the fraught situation brought on by an influx of Haitians in Springfield and other large numbers of migrants coming to this country.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana. Because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

Vance engaged in a similar exchange Sunday on ABC News with regard to Trump’s claim — which Trump made alongside the Springfield one at last month’s presidential debate — that a Venezuelan gang had taken over Aurora, Colo.

When ABC’s Martha Raddatz brought up the subject and noted that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman had called such claims “grossly exaggerated,” Vance saw his opening.

“Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated,” he said, adding: “That means there’s got to be some — that means there’s got to be some element of truth here.”

Raddatz noted that, in fact, there were “incidents” with Venezuelan gang members that “were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.”

“Martha, do you hear yourself?” Vance said. “Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’s open border?”

Vance added: “I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”

Trump’s campaign and conservative media and social media users have hailed Vance for fighting back and winning against the supposedly censorious and biased liberal media.

But it’s worth reflecting on the exchange, the actual details in Aurora, and what it says about one side of our political divide’s view of the importance of truth.

Despite Vance’s framing, Raddatz had not granted the premise that the apartment complexes had been “taken over” by a Venezuelan gang; she merely cited “incidents” involving the gang.

Plenty of local officials, too, have described the problem as incidents, not a takeover. In fact, Coffman, after initially saying the gang took over apartment complexes, backed off that claim and said more than a month ago that “a Venezuelan gang is not in control of either of these two apartment complexes.” Local police and other officials also debunked this long ago, including before Trump said it at the Sept. 10 debate.

It’s also worth emphasizing just how far removed that reality is from what Trump continues to say about the situation. Trump has said not only that apartment complexes were taken over, but that the gang “took over large sections of a town, large sections of an area of Colorado.” He mentioned Aurora at the debate while accusing migrants of “taking over the towns.”

The difference here isn’t between taking over a city and taking over some apartment complexes; it’s between taking over a city and taking over … nothing.

Vance’s argument is apparently that Trump is using some license here to highlight a real issue — to use a falsehood to draw attention to an underlying truth. As with Springfield, he’s suggesting that the political ends justify the dishonest means.

That’s certainly a calculation that politicians make. But it’s rare you see them acknowledge it so forthrightly, because implicit in it is that you can’t strictly believe what they’re saying. And if you can’t trust Trump on this, what else can you trust him on? (The answer is: Not much, given Trump’s 30,000 false and misleading claims as president.)

Vance himself once asked such a question about Trump. He suggested in 2016 that Trump’s dishonesty made it hard to believe him when he denied sexually assaulting a woman.

Vance is making a far different calculation today — one that conveniently gives the guy he’s running with license to say pretty much whatever he wants. Which, perhaps not coincidentally, is what Trump was going to do anyway.

Eight years ago, it was Kellyanne Conway’s infamous claims that Trump had “alternative facts.” Today, Vance is putting a new sheen on that.

It’s basically, “Trump 2024: There’s got to be some element of truth here.”

The eight-second video opens with author and influencer Liz Plank gazing up as a disembodied hand places a Doritos chip on her extended tongue, causing her eyes to roll back in apparent pleasure. The shot then pans left to reveal Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) holding a bag of chips, wearing a camouflage Harris-Walz presidential campaign hat and staring deadpan into the camera.

What Whitmer said was meant to be a riff on a social media trend has turned into a headache. Whitmer has apologized for the video after a Catholic organization accused her of mocking the sacred rite of Communion.

On Friday, the Michigan Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm in the state, published a statement to “express profound disappointment and offense taken at the actions in the video.”

“It is not just distasteful or ‘strange;’ it is an all-too-familiar example of an elected official mocking religious persons and their practices,” conference President and CEO Paul Long wrote.

In a statement, Whitmer said she didn’t mean to reference Communion in the video but nevertheless apologized for the miscommunication.

“Over 25 years in public service, I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” she said. “I’ve used my platform to stand up for people’s right to hold and practice their personal religious beliefs.”

Whitmer said the video was meant to be about the importance of the Chips and Science Act, which passed into law in 2022 to provide $52 billion to companies building computer chip factories and research facilities in the United States. The caption for the video, which was edited Friday, reads, “Chips aren’t just delicious, the CHIPS Act is a game changer for U.S. tech and manufacturing, boosting domestic production of semiconductors to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers! Donald Trump would put that at risk.”

“What was supposed to be a video about the importance of the CHIPS Act to Michigan jobs, has been construed as something it was never intended to be, and I apologize for that,” Whitmer said in her statement.

Regardless of Whitmer’s intent, the video “had an offensive impact,” Long said.

The video riffs off a social media trend in which someone out of view suggestively feeds the on-camera subject only for the shot to pan, revealing not a romantic interest but a friend or elderly relative who often looks disgusted. The videos are often set to Nelly’s 2002 song “Dilemma.” Late-night host Stephen Colbert and actor Jeremy Allen White hopped on at the height of the trend in June by releasing their pizza-related version.

That’s no excuse, Long said.

“The skit goes further than the viral online trend that inspired it, specifically imitating the posture and gestures of Catholics receiving the Holy Eucharist, in which we believe that Jesus Christ is truly present,” Long said.

Stacey LaRouche, a Whitmer spokeswoman, said Plank was not kneeling in the video but sitting on a couch.

In a Substack post titled “In Defense of my Demon Allegations,” Plank on Saturday said she chose to promote her new show “Chip Chat” and her Whitmer interview with what she called the “Feeding a Friend” challenge “because it felt fitting, given that we were eating together.”

“It is a non-controversial trend on social media that has been used by some of the biggest names and celebrities to build engagement and promote things like ‘Chip Chat,’” she said in a statement to The Post.

But, she added in her Substack post, critics turned something lighthearted into “an elaborate and utterly bizarre narrative,” and within minutes, she’d become the target of “a right-wing conspiracy accusing me of performing satanic rituals with Doritos.”

The same day she published the promotional video, Plank posted a 9½-minute one to YouTube in which she interviews Whitmer for her “Chip Chat” series. During the conversation, Whitmer talks about her stance on abortion, connecting with male voters, the prospect of meeting one of her would-be kidnappers and, yes, her favorite chips: Better Made, which are produced in Detroit.

The Michigan Catholic Conference has criticized Whitmer’s policies in the past, largely the ones concerning abortion rights, education funding and transgender issues.

Whitmer was elected Michigan’s governor in 2018 and vaulted into the national spotlight four years later with a double-digit reelection win while ushering in Democratic control of both chambers of the state legislatures for the first time in 40 years. Her name was bandied about to replace President Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket after his disastrous debate performance in June and again as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate when she became the presumptive nominee.

Ashley Parker and Jeanne Whalen contributed to this report.

Republican lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina challenging the legitimacy of overseas ballots have prompted a backlash among military personnel, their spouses, veterans and elected officials.

Scores of veterans and active-duty members of the armed forces have posted online or contacted their elected representatives out of concern that their votes might not be counted. Military and elected leaders, along with voting rights advocates, have decried the lawsuits as well, calling them a betrayal to the men and women serving the country overseas.

“Literally, these are the people who are putting it all on the line for what we have in America,” said Allison Jaslow, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and now is chief executive of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “And we’re going to compromise their ability to have a say in how they vote for who sends them to war? It’s just beyond the pale.”

A group of House Democrats over the weekend called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to guarantee that overseas Americans, including those serving in the armed forces, retain their right to participate fully in U.S. elections, after six Pennsylvania Republican members of Congress filed a lawsuit last week.

The Democrats said they had heard from constituents domestically and overseas after The Washington Post reported on the lawsuits. The Pennsylvania suit asks a federal judge to order that all overseas ballots, including those from military personnel and their families, be set aside and the identities of the voters confirmed before the votes are counted.

The Republican National Committee filed separate lawsuits in Michigan and North Carolina last week alleging that the states allow “overseas citizens who never lived in either state to illegally vote,” according to a news release. Both states allow people born to parents who were previously legal state residents to cast ballots.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) asked a judge Monday to sanction the RNC for what she described in a filing as a “frivolous” lawsuit.

Cleta Mitchell, one of the lawyers who helped former president Donald Trump challenge his defeat in Georgia in the last election cycle, worked with leaders in Pennsylvania on the lawsuit, she told The Post. Mitchell said protocols around overseas voting are “porous,” creating ample opportunities for noncitizens to request ballots and vote illegally.

Mitchell said those who support the lawsuit are not trying to disenfranchise eligible voters but rather trying to firm up a system that makes it too easy for those not entitled to vote in U.S. elections to cast ballots.

She said state-level failures “have created a very unstable, nonverified and nonverifiable voting program that is easily exploited and manipulated.”

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), an Army veteran whose district is home to 40,000 veterans and military families as well as the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, called the Republican lawsuits “an attempt to disenfranchise literal active duty military members who are overseas, risking their life for our country,” as well as their families. Ryan is among the Democrats who signed the letter to Austin.

Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general, said in an interview that he was shocked to learn of the lawsuit and compared it to a “hostage-taking” of the votes of men and women who have taken an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution.

“I would just say as a retired senior military officer and somebody that served overseas and did vote a number of times by absentee ballot very, very frequently, that the expectation of our military members and their roles as citizens is that their votes will count,” Votel said.

In the letter sent to Austin on Saturday and reviewed by The Post, Ryan, along with Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and others, requested “further clarification” on how Austin plans to protect voting rights among Pennsylvania residents living abroad.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said in statement that Austin “believes that service members serving overseas, eligible family members and U.S. citizens overseas have the right to vote, and DOD will continue to work to help them do so.”

The ballots in question are governed by a federal law known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which requires states to allow eligible Americans living overseas, including military personnel, to vote in federal elections. Although many states require overseas voters to provide identification such as a driver’s license or passport, Pennsylvania does not. The Republican House members who filed the suit said that makes those ballots vulnerable to fraud.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March 2021 requiring Austin, as the head of the Defense Department, to facilitate voting among both military and nonmilitary Americans abroad. The Democrats who signed the letter called on Austin to enforce that order, and also asked him to explore whether the Republican lawsuit could threaten the constitutional rights of overseas Americans.

“While some of our colleagues are actively seeking to sow discord and misinformation, we urge you to carry out President Biden’s executive order and Federal Law to the best of your ability and ensure that all Americans have their constitutionally guaranteed right to participate in federal elections,” the lawmakers wrote.

Overseas voting has traditionally been supported by both Republicans and Democrats because of how many uniformed Americans use it. Even in 2020, when Trump attempted to discredit domestic absentee balloting in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, he and his allies did not attack overseas voting.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit is notable for targeting a group of voters that was long thought to favor Republicans because of the prevalence of military personnel stationed overseas, but is now seen as more evenly divided or even leaning Democratic. The suit adds to a long list of Republican-backed litigation around the country with just weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election, with much of it aimed at disqualifying mail-in votes or removing ineligible voters from rolls.

While in the Army, Jaslow said, one of her duties was serving as a voting assistance officer, helping service members understand their rights, how to register to vote and how to vote absentee. The point, she said, is to make sure that service members follow the rules and understand them.

For voting purposes, service members can declare either where they lived before entering the military or a later address, but they must declare one, according to an Army guide on the issue.

Pat Moore, senior counsel for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, said it’s notable that none of the three lawsuits mentions an example of an ineligible voter casting a ballot from overseas. He said that roughly 20,000 overseas voters from Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina apiece cast ballots in the 2020 election.

It’s clear, Moore added, that Republicans are calculating that overseas votes overall, including civilians, will favor Harris.

“If six Republican congressmen want to go on record saying they are harmed by military voters casting ballots, be our guest,” Moore said.

Six of Pennsylvania’s eight Republican congressmen signed on to that lawsuit. Among them is Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), an Army veteran who served in the military for 40 years. All of the lawmakers who brought the case voted against accepting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, despite no evidence of widespread fraud. Perry’s phone was seized by the FBI during the Justice Department’s investigation into the attempt to activate Trump’s presidential electors in states he had lost, part of the effort to reverse the 2020 presidential election. Perry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In addition to Perry, the Republican House members who brought the suit are: Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Lloyd Smucker and Mike Kelly. All are seeking reelection this year.

Ryan said that soon after news of the lawsuit circulated, he heard from multiple local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion leaders as well as veterans in his district who were “really stunned” by the effort.

“This is an attack on the voting rights of veterans and a lot of other Americans from Trump cronies who have no respect for the law,” Ryan said.

The backlash has apparently cooled efforts by Republicans to remove people from voter rolls they claim are not eligible, in some cases using unreliable data to claim that the individuals are not residents of the states where they are registered. On Monday, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Attorney General Aaron Ford, both Democrats, announced a settlement with a longtime conservative activist in the state who had been seeking to remove scores of names from registration rolls, some of them people serving in the military overseas.

The activist, Chuck Muth, said he would screen out Army post office addresses in future voter-roll challenges.

ERIE, Pa. — Vice President Kamala Harris portrayed Donald Trump as dangerous and “unhinged” at a rally Monday night, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision granting presidents broad immunity for their official acts have significantly raised the stakes for a second Trump presidency.

Trying out a new tactic here in Western Pennsylvania, Harris ordered her aides to roll the tape on giant jumbotron screens inside the Erie rally hall to show clips of Trump making inflammatory statements and threats at his rallies and in a recent interview. Watching the former president speak, many in the crowd booed and some shouted “He’s a criminal!” Harris argued that Americans should be alarmed that Trump has threatened to jail his opponents and that he has described some fellow Americans as “the enemy from within.”

When the crowd chanted “Lock him up!” Harris pumped her hands toward the floor to hush those jeers. “The courts will handle that,” she said. “Let’s handle November, shall we? We’ll handle November.”

Her speech marked one side of a day of dueling campaign events in Pennsylvania, a state both parties regard as a crucial battleground and potential tipping-point contest with just over three weeks of campaigning left. Trump was on the other side of the state holding a town hall where he went after Harris and delivered meandering remarks on a range of topics. The event was interrupted twice when members of the crowd appeared to need medical attention and ended with Trump standing onstage swaying to music for some 39 minutes.

Here in Erie, one of the clips Harris showed was from a recent interview on Fox News where Trump referred to fellow Americans as “the enemy from within” — and went on to state that the country has some “very bad people,” “some sick people” and “radical left lunatics.”

“It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” Trump said in the Fox interview.

“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will the enemy, an enemy of our country. It’s a serious issue,” Harris said Monday night. “He is saying that he would use the military to go after them. … We know who he would target because he has attacked them before: journalists whose stories he doesn’t like; election officials who refuse to cheat by filling extra votes and finding extra votes for him; judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will.”

Harris said those assertions were “among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America — and dangerous.”

“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchecked power. That’s what he’s looking for,” Harris said.

Earlier in the day, the Harris campaign also sought to draw attention to a September social media post where Trump said he intended to jail anyone who was involved “in unscrupulous behavior” related to the 2024 election, continuing his long practice of threatening election officials and trumpeting unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

As Harris tried out those new lines in her speech, the campaign also released a new ad — “Enemy Within” — showing menacing footage of Trump yelling and making threats. The ad features two former Trump national security advisers who say Americans must consider the consequences of a second Trump presidency where his power is unchecked and he has no guardrails.

The Harris campaign is attempting to give the public a more unfettered view of Trump in these final weeks, in part because advisers say they believe many Americans are not familiar with the controversial statements he is making at his rallies.

In a new interview with New York magazine, Harris adviser David Plouffe — a former strategist for Barack Obama — argued that many Americans are not seeing the unfiltered Trump who appears at his rallies. Plouffe argued that Trump is “not a great asset at the close of the campaign, because he’s unhinged, he’s increasingly unstable, he’s giving Soviet-style multi-hour speeches that make little sense.”

Democrats have spent nearly $50 million on television ads in Pennsylvania, while Republicans have spent nearly $52 million, according to the firm AdImpact, the most for either party in the seven battleground states. The Washington Post’s polling average has Harris leading in Pennsylvania by two points.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 but lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Before the rally in Erie, Harris met with Black male voters at a Black-owned business in Erie where she touted what she has framed as her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.”

During her visit to LegendErie Records and Coffee House, Harris held a conversation with Black men from the Erie area. The reporters who accompanied her were escorted out of the venue before the private conversation began.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi L. Noem moderated Trump’s town hall in Oaks, which is in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She criticized Harris at the outset and introduced attendees who asked Trump friendly questions that enabled him to lob attacks on Harris over immigration and national security, among other issues.

The event took a turn when two attendees appeared to faint. Trump and Noem initially paused their remarks.

After the second incident, Trump jokingly asking the crowd if “anybody else would like to faint.” Then he tried a different approach.

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said. The event ended with Trump standing onstage swaying to music for an extended period of time.

Throughout his remarks, Trump focused heavily on border security, as he has at other recent stops, and reprised language decrying a migrant “invasion.”

“It is an invasion like we’ve never seen before,” Trump said.

Trump has faced criticism from immigrant rights advocates for using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants, but many supporters have cheered his comments and polls show voters trust Republicans over Democrats on immigration matters.

Trump offered meandering answers when asked about how he’d address affordable housing and help small businesses.

He also appeared to mix up the day of the election, telling attendees to “vote on January 5th” or before.

LeVine reported from Oaks, Pa.