Kamala Harris delivered her acceptance speech to Democratic delegates at the DNC in Chicago on Thursday, telling an excited crowd that broke into chants of “U.S.A.” that they were in “a fight for America’s future.”
Harris, who is now the Democratic party’s official candidate for the 2024 election, made a direct plea, warning that Donald Trump would “take away reproductive freedom” and was a threat to “fundamental freedoms,” including gun safety, LGBTQ+ rights, action on climate change, and voting rights.
Trump posted on his Truth Social account around 37 times during Harris’s roughly half-hour speech, telling his followers he was “getting ready to be fair but critical of Comrade Kamala Harris.”
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Newsweek’s Fact Check team has assessed Harris’ claims throughout the speech in detail.
‘As attorney general of California, I took on the big banks, delivered $20 billion for middle-class families who faced foreclosure’
As attorney general, Harris secured a $20 billion settlement for Californians hit by foreclosure agreements. Harris led negotiations in California that eventually secured $18 billion in mortgage debt relief and $2 billion of other financial assistance to support residents as part of the National Mortgage Settlement, a deal that meant the five biggest U.S. banks had to pay out in a $25 billion settlement to Americans facing foreclosure.
A summary by the Attorneys General on the Executive Committee that negotiated the settlement said: “The agreement settled state and federal investigations finding that the country’s five largest mortgage servicers routinely signed foreclosure related documents outside the presence of a notary public and without really knowing whether the facts they contained were correct.
“Both of these practices violate the law.”
Harris said she ‘…helped pass a homeowner bill of rights, one of the first of its kind in the nation’
This legislation, announced following the National Mortgage Settlement, provided new protections for Americans facing foreclosure.
Kevin Stein, speaking to PolitiFact in 2020, said the bill was “one of the first” and had “clear consequences for banks’ malfeasance and misconduct.”
A statement from Harris in 2012 said the bill prohibited unfair bank practices and restricted dual-track foreclosures, which is where a lender forecloses even if there are loan discussions to save a home.
It also guaranteed a “single point of contact” at lenders, who would have knowledge of the loan, had access to “decision makers,” and could impose penalties on fraudulently signed documents.
‘I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big, for-profit colleges’
As AG, Harris sued Corinthian Colleges Inc. in 2013, accusing the company of predatory and unlawful practices. A judge ruled in 2016 that the company’s advertising practices misled students and broke the law, the Los Angeles Times reported.
At its height, Corinthian Colleges was one of the largest for-profit education companies in North America, with more than 100 campuses and in excess of 80,000 students. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015.
As was widely reported at the time, and noted in a statement by Harris addressing her actions against Corinthian, veterans were among the populations targeted by Corinthian.
Harris said she supported ‘….workers who were being cheated out of their wages”
In 2015, Harris and the U.S. Department of Labor signed an agreement to combat wage theft. The working and information-sharing agreement was designed to help the Department and the California Attorney General’s office work together on investigating and prosecuting cases of wage theft.
Harris said she supported ‘….seniors facing elder abuse’
As AG, Harris worked with the AARP on preventing elder abuse and educating families about types of abuse and fraud. Harris also prosecuted care home owners on felony counts of elder abuse and reinstated programs designed to combat abuse across California.
‘I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings’
Harris organized a task force targeting cartels and transnational gangs shortly after becoming AG in 2011 and oversaw multiple arrests of gang and cartel members in California.
‘Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes’
This is almost certainly an offhand reference to Donald Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 election. Trump was indicted in 2023 on charges from the Department of Justice’s probe into the January 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
He was also indicted in Georgia over accusations he and 18 others engaged in criminal activity in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump saw some of the charges against him dropped earlier this year.
The six charges that were squashed were related to efforts to solicit Georgia officials into violating their oaths of office by unlawfully appointing presidential electors.
Trump was facing three of the dropped charges for allegedly soliciting former Georgia House Speaker David Ralston and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate their oaths of office. Eisen noted that the infamous phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” the votes that would allow him to win Georgia was not entirely thrown out of the case.
‘When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers’
This is a characterization of the events of January 6. Trump encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol during his Save America March on January 6, but Harris’ statement may imply he knew there were armed members of the crowd and, by implication, that there was an intent to cause or anticipation of violence.
While Trump has been accused of inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol, and that he did not act quickly enough to quell the riot, Harris’s statement is her view of January 6. Trump told protestors during his speech to “peacefully…make your voices heard.”
‘When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite—he fanned the flames.’
The House of Representatives select committee that investigated the events of January 6 heard that Trump had ignored his children and aides who had “begged him” to call off the riot.
“President Trump sat at his dining table and watched the attack on television while his senior-most staff, closest advisers and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president,” Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat on the committee, said.
The committee investigated the 187 minutes between Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and telling his supporters to end the riot. Those close to Trump, including daughter Ivanka, said they tried to persuade him to call it off.
Trump also sent a tweet during the riot attacking former Vice President Mike Pence for not having the “courage to do what should have been done” and stop the 2020 election results being certified.
‘He was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans’
This is a reference to Trump’s hush money trial, in which a jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
‘…and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse’
In May 2023 Manhattan jury of nine men and three women found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
As Newsweek’s Fact Check team has previously reported, Trump was found liable for battery, a civil tort, based on the preponderance of evidence provided by E. Jean Carroll that he sexually abused her.
‘Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol’
Trump said he would pardon people charged with criminal offenses linked to the January 6 riot at the Capitol Building should he win in 2024.
On March 11, 2024, he wrote on Truth Social: “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”
Trump has ‘explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy’
Trump has previously suggested that journalists should be jailed for doing their job. In a post on Truth Social in January 2023, Trump demanded that the journalists who published the leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade be jailed if they did not disclose their source.
“So, go to the reporter & ask him/her who it was,” Trump suggested. “If not given the answer, put whoever in jail until the answer is given.”
It has been reported elsewhere that he asked former FBI Director James Comey to consider imprisoning journalists for reporting classified information, The New York Times reported, citing a memo Comey wrote after speaking to Trump.
President Joe Biden said in February 2024 that he had spoken to two journalists who said they would leave the country if wins “because he’s threatened to put them in jail.”
In an interview with Glenn Beck in August 2023, Trump indicated that he would “lock up” his political enemies. Beck asked Trump if he regretted not jailing Hillary Clinton.
“Do you regret not locking her up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Beck said.
“Well, I’ll give you an example. Uh, the answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us,” Trump replied.
Of course, these threats are not part of Trump’s official presidential platform and may amount to no more than bluster. Trump has not said how or who he would jail his “enemies” and it’s uncertain if any attempts to prosecute would be successful.
Responding to this and Harris’s other comments at the DNC, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “Comrade Kamala continues to be a liar and fraud, spewing fabrications and out-right falsehoods in order to gaslight the American people.
“She is lying to voters in order to scare them into believing she should be president, but the fact remains she is wholly unqualified to be commander-in-chief.”
Newsweek has contacted a media representative for Harris via email for comment.
Trump has ‘explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens’
Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in 2023 that he would not wait to call in the military to deal with crime in cities, claiming he had been prevented from doing so, reported the Associated Press.
“And one of the other things I’ll do—because you are not supposed to be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in—the next time, I am not waiting,” Trump said.
“One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said.
“Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
This comment is far more explicit in its intent than his other threats, which Harris claims he will follow through on.
‘Consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.’
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling from July states that Trump has “some immunity” from criminal liability for acts taken while in office. As stated by the Congressional Research Service, the ruling established a three-tier framework whereby presidents receive “absolute immunity for actions that relate to ‘core’ or ‘exclusive’ presidential powers, at least presumptive immunity for all other ‘official acts,’ and no immunity for ‘unofficial’ acts.”
Harris’s statement does not detail these layers of immunity or indicate that Trump does not have absolute immunity.
‘And we know, and we know what a second Trump term would look like. It’s all laid out in Project 2025, written by his closest advisers.’
Much like Tim Walz’s speech at the DNC yesterday, Harris makes a direct tie between Trump and Project 2025.
As Newsweek has stated previously, Trump has denied any association with Project 2025, calling some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” However, the policy document, which many see as a blueprint for a Trump government, was written in conjunction with a host of former Trump staffers—as many as 140, according to an analysis by CNN.
Many elements of Project 2025’s plan for a conservative government match some of Trump’s policy aims in areas including immigration and energy.
‘We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. We are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.’
Trump did try to eliminate the Affordable Care Act when he was president, but has since claimed that his approach would be softer if elected.
Trump’s policy platform says he would not introduce cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Point 14 of the agenda says his administration would “fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age.”
Kamala Harris’s spokespeople have previously told Newsweek that Trump’s historical opposition to the Affordable Care Act was “indisputable,” adding that in a second term “there would be nothing stopping Trump from trying again to gut critical benefits and succeeding.”
Trump previously suggested that he may be open to cutting Social Security and Medicare but, as FactCheck.org reported, his campaign team said he was referring to cutting waste. In an interview with Breitbart in March 2024, Trump said: “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare. We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
As stated by a Washington Post investigation earlier this month and in a 2019 report by Vox, Trump’s proposed “cuts” to Medicare included ideas borrowed from Barack Obama. Trump signed an Executive Action in 2019 to suspend payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare.
A 2018 Budget proposal, assessed by PolitiFact, found Trump proposed net cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security that were close to $1 trillion when including budgetary savings made by repealing Obamacare.
‘We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools’
In June, during a speech to the Faith & Freedom Conference, Trump said he would “shut down the Federal Department of Education and we will move everything back to the states where it belongs and where they can individualize education and do it with the love for their children.”
‘We are not going to let him end programs like Head Start that provide preschool and child care for our children’
Newsweek could not find reference to claims Trump has made on the campaign trail about plans to end Head Start, a program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that promotes “school readiness” by providing education, nutrition, and other services to toddlers of low-income families.
However, plans to eliminate the program are in Project 2025, which Trump has not contributed to and denies involvement in or knowledge of.
The Congressional Budget Office has said extending Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act over 10 years would add $4.6 trillion to the country’s deficit.
While analysis by the Tax Policy Center from 2017 found that higher-income households, would receive “larger average tax cuts as a percentage of after-tax income” and that the largest cuts, as a share of income, went to taxpayers in the 95th to 99th percentile, the bill would reduce taxes “on average for all income groups.” Therefore, while analysis suggests that the greatest benefits of these cuts were seen in higher-income households, the cuts were not exclusively for the benefit of billionaires.
Trump’s tax cuts are due to expire next year.
Trump ‘intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax, call it a Trump tax, that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year.’
Harris’s claim is based on an analysis by the left-leaning think tank the Centre of American Progress (CAP), which claims that Trump’s plans to increase tariffs on imported goods by 10 to 20 percent, 60 percent on all imported goods from China, would amount to a $3,900 tax increase for middle-income families.
“A typical family would, therefore, pay between $2,500 to $3,900 from Trump’s import taxes, depending on the precise tax rate between 10 percent and 20 percent that various countries’ goods could be taxed at,” the CAP report stated.
Other estimates, such as one from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, suggest the 20 percent tariff proposal would cost the typical American household just over $2,600 a year.
‘Donald Trump handpicked members of the U.S. Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom. And now, he brags about it. In his words, ‘I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.”
At a Fox News Town Hall broadcast in January 2024, Trump was asked about his role and the legacy of overturning Roe v. Wade. He replied: “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.”
Trump picked Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barret who, with Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, created a Supreme Court majority that overturned the landmark legislation.
In a CBS interview in August 2024, political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns said to Trump: “You were influential in picking three Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. Do you have any regrets about the overturning of Roe v. Wade?” After claiming that “All legal scholars, all Democrats” wanted to hand decision making to the states, pressed again Trump said he had “no regrets.”
‘As a part of his agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control’
The key part of this claim seems to be “agenda,” which ties this and the following claims to Project 2025.
Tim Walz made a similar claim about Trump and contraception at his DNC speech on Wednesday.
In May 2024, when asked whether he supported restrictions on access to contraception, Donald Trump said he would be “looking at that,” adding that he will have “a policy.” He later walked back the remarks.
During his time in office, Trump’s administration tried to finalize rules that would have allowed employers to remove contraception services if they went against their religious beliefs or moral convictions.
The administration attempted to alter an Obama-era contraceptive mandate, promulgated in August 2011, which required that employer-based health plans cover prescription contraceptives at no cost to the patient.
Project 2025 states its plans to eliminate access to the week-after pill Ella.
Trump plans to ‘ban medication abortion’
Trump has made contrasting statements about banning abortion medication.
Trump said at a press conference earlier this month that he would be open to restricting the abortion mifepristone, a medication that when taken along with misoprostol is used to terminate a pregnancy within its first 10 weeks of gestation.
“You can do things which supplement, absolutely, and those things are pretty open, and humane, but you have to be able to have a vote,” Trump said. “All I want to do is give everybody a vote, and the votes are taking place right now as we speak. There are many things on a human basis that you can do outside of that, but you also have to give a vote, and the people are going to have to decide.”
He had previously praised a decision maintaining access to the drug.
A Trump spokesperson to NBC News that the questions had been difficult to hear and that the former president supported “‘the right of states to make decisions on abortion.'”
In mid-June, the Supreme Court had declined to limit access to mifepristone. The unanimous decision overturned a lower court’s ruling and means the FDA still has the power to give expanded access to medications which are now used in more than 60 percent of all abortions in the U.S.
Speaking during the June 27 CNN debate with his previous 2024 challenger, President Joe Biden, Trump said: “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.”
Trump plans to ‘enact a nationwide abortion ban, with or without Congress’
Trump has not said he would enact a nationwide abortion ban, saying he would leave decision-making to the states. While some Democrats think that Trump would institute such a ban while in office, this claim is not supported by any policy documents or statements.
While there are a number of plans in Project 2025 that support restricting access to abortions, there are no plans within it for a nationwide abortion ban.
‘He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions’
Newsweek could not find any comment or policy plan from Trump on these points.
Project 2025 proposes withholding funding from states “to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
The Project encourages the creation of statistical categories that would categorize incidences of “spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion” adding “Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.”
While not called an “anti-abortion co-ordinator,” Project 2025 does mention appointing a “pro-life Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families” in what would be called the “USAID Office of Women, Children, and Families” a proposed renaming of the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.
‘Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.’
In February, Senate Republicans killed a comprehensive $118 billion immigration package that included $20 billion for U.S.-Mexico border security as well as aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Trump had urged Republicans not to accept anything less than a “perfect” border deal before the general election in November, sparking questions about whether some Republicans were working to prevent President Joe Biden from scoring a victory by signing the border bill into law.
Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, late last month: “We need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially ‘PERFECT’ Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal.”
President Joe Biden, who supported the bill, said that Trump would “rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”
Ultimately the decision was left to Congress, but many felt that Trump had been a major influence on its downfall.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council said the bill would “drop illegal border crossings nationwide and will allow our agents to get back to detecting and apprehending those who want to cross our border illegally and evade apprehension.”
“While not perfect, the Border Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction and is far better than the current status quo,” Judd said in a statement.
“This is why the National Border Patrol Council endorses this bill and hopes for its quick passage.”
‘He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could ‘do whatever the hell they want”
The context of this comment sits in Trump’s ongoing pushback against NATO countries that did not meet guideline targets on spending. NATO allies agreed in 2014 to a guideline spending figure of 2 percent of their GDPs on militaries by 2024.
During a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump recalled a conversation he had with another head of state at a NATO meeting. Trump said during the meeting, the unnamed president hit back at him for suggesting the U.S. would not not protect a NATO member that fails to meet its defense spending target.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?'” No, I would not protect you,” Trump told the crowd.
“In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
His remarks were condemned by President Biden who said Trump’s “admission that he intends to give [Russian president Vladimir] Putin a greenlight for more war and violence, to continue his brutal assault against a free Ukraine, and to expand his aggression to the people of Poland and the Baltic States, are appalling and dangerous.”
