There’s no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations approached over the summer with leaked stolen information have also said they did not respond. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts.

The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest U.S. government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.

U.S. officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to U.S. audiences.

It’s a stark turnabout from the government’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump’s behalf as he ran against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The agencies have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

The FBI informed Trump aides within the last 48 hours that information hacked by Iran had been sent to the Biden campaign, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to speak because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the effort to dangle stolen information to the Biden campaign “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Iran’s intrusion on the Trump campaign was cited as just one of the cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials at a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans for safeguarding the election, and the attacks they’d seen so far.

“The most perilous time I think will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on American tech companies’ efforts to safeguard the election from foreign disinformation and cyberattacks.

“Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

He added, “We sought commitments from both [former president Donald] Trump and [Vice President Kamala] Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”

The union’s decision comes two days after senior leaders met with Harris as they weighed whom to endorse.

The Teamsters, which represents truck drivers, freight workers and others, held similar meetings with Trump and President Joe Biden when he was still seeking re-election.

The union, which at 1.3 million members is one of the largest in the world, collected input on an endorsement from its members through straw polling and a QR poll from a code printed on a union magazine, a vice president at large of the union, John Palmer, said.

On Wednesday, the union released the results of their survey, which was conducted after Biden dropped out of the race. It found that almost 60% of rank-and-file union members preferred to endorse Trump, while 34% backed Harris, according to an electronic member poll. A phone poll indicated similar margins, with 58% supporting Trump and 31% supporting Harris.

The union has not released the number of poll participants or the margin of error.

The Teamsters have for decades endorsed Democratic presidential candidates. The union supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. They also backed Barack Obama in both of his presidential runs, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

In an email Wednesday, the Trump campaign highlighted the Teamsters polling.

“While the Teamsters Executive Board is making no formal endorsement, the hardworking members of the Teamsters have been loud and clear— they want President Trump back in the White House!” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “These hardworking men and women are the backbone of America and President Trump will strongly stand up for them when he’s back in the White House.”

The former president addressed the union’s decision not to endorse a candidate when talking with reporters on Wednesday, saying that it is “a great honor.”

“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight. The Democrats cannot believe it,” Trump said. “Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’ so that was an honor for me.”

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to local Teamsters chapters that endorsed the vice president.

“The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor,” Hitt said in a statement. “As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what — because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for.”

Over the course of his presidency, Biden has promoted his support for organized labor and has frequently weighed in on disputes between union workers and corporate leaders. In 2021, he expressed support for the right to unionize in a direct-to-camera video as Amazon workers in Alabama were about to vote on whether to organize.

Then-Teamsters president James P. Hoffa in 2021 credited Biden with including an $83 billion pension-fund bailout in the American Rescue Plan Act, which boosted the Teamsters’ Central States pension fund.

In 2023, Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he visited striking autoworkers in Michigan.

But despite calling himself “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden drew criticism from organized labor two years ago when he worked with Congress to pass a law that averted an impending rail strike.

The law forced union workers to accept a union contract that had been brokered by the Biden administration. At the time, four of the 12 unions involved had rejected the deal.

As he signed the legislation, Biden called it “a tough [vote] for me,” but cited the need “to keep the supply chains stable around the holidays.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters is the most prominent union that has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate this year. The union endorsed Biden in 2020.

The AFL-CIO, which represents dozens of unions and millions of workers, and the United Auto Workers union have each endorsed Harris.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president on Tuesday.

“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”

The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

Duvall blames Trump, too.

“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”

During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Trump repeatedly took credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices and leaned heavily on his catchall response to questions on abortion rights, saying the issue should be left up to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban.

“I’m not signing a ban,” he said, adding that “there is no reason to sign the ban.”

But he also repeatedly declined to say whether he would veto such a ban if he were elected again — a question that has lingered as the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the crucial election issue.

Duvall of Owensboro, Kentucky, first told her story publicly last fall in a campaign ad for the governor’s race in her home state supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Duvall’s stepfather was convicted of rape and is in prison; she miscarried.

Beshear won reelection, and Democrats have said Duvall’s ad was a strong motivator, particularly for rural, male voters who had previously voted for Trump.

Duvall is also touring the country to campaign for Harris along with other women who have been telling their personal stories since the fall of Roe, joining Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro last week.

Kerr took the stage on the first night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, an arena he is familiar with from his time playing with the Bulls, and addressed a crowd of approximately 26,000-plus attendees and millions watching from home, endorsing current Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election while channeling Steph Curry’s viral “night night” celebration in speaking out against former President Donald Trump.

The Warriors coach joined “The Dan Le Batard” show on Tuesday, where he was asked about the opportunity to speak at the convention and his nerves leading up to it.

“Yeah, that was an interesting experience,” Kerr said. “They asked me to do it a couple days before I went on and I really gave it a lot of thought because I knew I was going to take a lot of heat for it. But I wanted to make sure I got the right message across, what was most important to me. After thinking about it I realized ‘Hey, they asked me for a reason. They think it matters that I speak my mind.” And so I decided to do it and it was very nerve-wracking and I’m glad I did it. Met a lot of great people, there’s a lot of great energy in the building. It was a lot of fun to be a part of.”

Kerr received some criticism for his appearance but the feedback overall for his speech was positive as he aimed to convey a message of unity in a divided political climate.

“I got some emails. But generally speaking, the vast majority of people who contacted me were very supportive,” Kerr shared. “I wanted to make sure my message was one of unity, especially coming off the Olympic gold medal performance by the team in Paris.

“I just think the political rhetoric, really the national rhetoric on a lot of platforms is just so ugly these days and divisive and I just wanted to make sure my message was a reminder to people that when we come together in a lot of different ways we can accomplish a lot. I think it applies to sports, it applies to our country too and we need to come together.”

Despite playing in numerous NBA Finals games, including Game 6 of the 1997 series where he hit the game-winning shot to deliver the Bulls their second of three consecutive titles, Kerr felt out of place in a different kind of arena.

“I just felt like a fish out of water because it was such a different realm for me,” Kerr explained. “I’m used to game nerves and those actually feel good. Competing in sports is so much fun because you have to lay it on the line and you do everything you can to win but you kind of know you’re going to lose your fair share.

“There’s going to be nights where you lose sleep because of decisions you made, backfired, all that kind of stuff … but the political spectrum is different, the setting was different. Having teleprompters on either side of me, addressing the crowd, knowing there were millions of people watching on TV. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

Kerr cherished the opportunity and appreciated the chance to convey his message to such a large audience but certainly is looking forward to returning to the arena he is far more comfortable in.

Republican nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week.

Speaking at his first public appearance following Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt, Trump said Modi is “fantastic” but also called India a “very big abuser” as he criticized several countries for their trade policies with the U.S.

“So when India, which is a very big abuser- he happens to be coming to meet me next week, and Modi, he’s fantastic. I mean, fantastic, man,” Trump said at at town hall in Flint, Michigan. “These, a lot of these leaders are fantastic … You know the expression, they’re at the top of their game, and they use it against us. But India is very tough.”

Trump did not provide further details on the meeting. The Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

As president, Trump visited India in 2020, vowing to boost trade ties between the two countries. The U.S. is currently India’s second-largest trading partner, behind China.

Modi is scheduled to visit the U.S. from Sept. 21 to 23, and will partake in the fourth Quad Leaders’ Summit in Wilmington, Delaware hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden. The Indian prime minister is also slated to attend and speak before the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

This will be Modi’s first visit to the U.S. since he won a historic third term in office in June.

During Modi’s state visit to Washington in June 2023, the U.S. and India signed a slew of technology and defense deals signaling a new era of bilateral relations.

Since then, cooperation between the two countries has deepened. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of State announced it will partner with the India Semiconductor Mission and India’s electronics and IT government body to improve the global semiconductor value chain.

“The United States and India are key partners in ensuring the global semiconductor supply chain keeps pace with the global digital transformation currently underway. This collaboration between the United States and India underscores the potential to expand India’s semiconductor industry to the benefit of both nations,” the release said.

“It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday.

NBC News reported on Sunday that Trump planned to visit the city “soon,” according to a source familiar with the former president’s planning, after amplifying during a presidential debate a baseless claim that had circulated in right-wing spheres online for weeks, saying Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” and cats of local residents.

Officials in Springfield have said the allegations were meritless, with city police issuing a statement that said there were “no credible reports” of pets being harmed by Haitian immigrants.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had also panned the claims as “garbage” and visited Springfield Tuesday as the city responds to dozens of bomb threats, deemed hoaxes that have led to temporary closures and evacuations of schools and city buildings.

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DeWine said that a campaign visit from a presidential candidate is “generally very, very welcomed,” but acknowledged that it would pose challenges.

“I have to state the reality though that resources are really, really stretched here,” DeWine said.

DeWine said he hasn’t spoken to Trump or Vance and hasn’t heard about the candidates potentially visiting Springfield.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee who has also spread the false claims about pets in Springfield, told reporters on Tuesday that he hasn’t made plans to visit the city.

Asked on Tuesday whether he would be joining the former president on the trip or if he had his own travel plans, Vance said a trip had not been formalized, but safety would be a top concern.

“I haven’t made plans to go just in the last few days,” Vance said. “I know the president would like to go but also hasn’t made any explicit plans.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“It’s a crying shame. Literally,” Harris said in her most extensive remarks to date about her Republican opponent’s baseless claims.

“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” she said during a discussion hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Follow live campaign coverage here

The city has been hit with dozens of bomb threats, some at elementary schools, after Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, promoted false rumors that immigrants were eating residents’ pet dogs and cats.

“I mean, my heart breaks for this community. You know there were children, elementary school children,” who had to be evacuated on what was supposed to be school picture day, Harris said.

 “A whole community put in fear,” she added.

During last week’s presidential debate, which was viewed by more than 67 million people, Trump said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Harris said of Trump on Tuesday, “When you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to understand how much your words have meaning.”

“You say you care about law enforcement? Law enforcement resources being put into this because of these serious threats,” Harris said.

“The American people deserve and, I do believe, want better than this,” she added.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Harris’ remarks.

Vance, speaking at an event in Michigan, said he and Trump are not to blame for the threats to Springfield.

“The governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax, and all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries. So the American media for three days has been lying and saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats when, in reality, the American media has been laundering for this information. It is disgusting,” he said Tuesday.

In his statement Monday, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said that “many of these threats are coming from overseas,” but he did not say all of them originated abroad. He also announced he was deploying dozens of state troopers to help sweep schools.

DeWine was in Springfield on Tuesday and visited elementary school students accompanied by a therapy dog.

In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, DeWine said the immigrants in Springfield are there legally, that there is no evidence that they have been eating pets and that the conspiracy theories were “garbage.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, told reporters Tuesday that school attendance is down and that “there’s a high level of fear in our community,” which has been plagued by threats to government offices, as well.

“We did not have threats seven days ago,” Rue said, referring to the Sept. 10 presidential debate, at which Trump amplified the baseless claims.

“We need those on the national stage to stop this and tell the truth,” he said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Here’s a breakdown of important dates to know, Election Day information, and what to know about California’s 2024 ballot propositions.

Important Nov. 5 general election dates

• Last day to register is Oct. 21
• Registered voters will get a vote-by-mail ballot. County elections office will begin mailing ballots by Oct. 7
• Ballot drop-off locations open Oct. 8
• Vote centers open for early in-person voting in all Voter’s Choice Act counties starting Oct. 26
• Election Day is Nov. 5.
• Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Nov. 12

Plan Your Vote

Use NBC News’ Plan Your Vote tool to supplement your voter guide and for more information on early voting, mail-in voting rules, Election Day voting rules, voter ID requirements, key-races in your state and more.

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How to track your ballot

Voters can track a ballot they have mailed or submitted at a drop-off location by signing up at WheresMyBallot.sos.ca.gov to receive text, email, or voice status alerts.

How long are polls open on Nov. 5 Election Day?

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Find your Southern California county election office

Your county elections officer is the go-to source for information on voting in the 2024 General Election. Find a link to your county office below.

• Los Angeles County
• Orange County
• Riverside County
• San Bernardino County
• Ventura County
• All California county elections offices

What are the California propositions on the November ballot?

California voters will see 10 propositions on their ballot:

• Proposition 2: Authorizes bonds for public school and community college facilities.
• Proposition 3: Constitutional right to marriage.
• Proposition 4: Authorizes bonds for safe drinking water, wildfire prevention, and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.
• Proposition 5: Allows Local bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure with 55% voter approval.
• Proposition 6: Eliminates constitutional provision allowing involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons.
• Proposition 32: Raises minimum wage.
• Proposition 33: Expands local governments’ authority to enact rent control on residential property.
• Proposition 34: Restricts spending of prescription drug revenues by certain health care providers.
• Proposition 35: Provides permanent funding for Medi-Cal health care services.
• Proposition 36: Allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain drug and theft crimes.

How to serve as a poll worker

If you’re interested in serving as a poll worker, visit pollworker.sos.ca.gov to apply.

Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence or other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five.”

“I would have loved to have sank that last putt,” Trump said. He credited the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of a rifle and began firing toward it as well as law enforcement and a civilian who he said helped track down the suspect.

World Liberty Financial is expected to be a borrowing and lending service used to trade cryptocurrencies, which are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of Bitcoin and other currencies.

Other speakers after Trump, including his eldest son, Don Jr., talked about embracing cryptocurrency as an alternative to what they allege is a banking system tilted against conservatives.

Experts have said a presidential candidate launching a business venture in the midst of a campaign could create ethical conflicts.

“Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling; the troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said earlier this month.

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During his time in the White House, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency and tweeted in 2019, “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” However, during this election cycle, he has reversed himself and taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies.

He announced in May that his campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to Election Day. He attended a bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.

Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has done research on cryptocurrencies, said she was skeptical of Trump’s change of heart on crypto.

“I think it’s fair to say that that reversal has been motivated in part by financial interests,” she said.

Crypto enthusiasts welcomed the shift, viewing the launch as a positive sign for investors if Trump retakes the White House.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has not offered policy proposals on how it would regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies.

In an effort to appeal to crypto investors, a group of Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, participated in an online “Crypto 4 Harris” event in August.

Neither Harris nor members of her campaign staff attended the event.

____

Gomez Licon contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In the presidential debate and in recent TV interviews, Trump and Sen. Vance, R-Ohio, have depicted the former president as selflessly choosing to protect the ACA, or “Obamacare,” during his four years in office as a way to put country over politics.

“Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It’s not very good today. … I had a choice to make when I was president: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be? Never going to be great. Or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away,” Trump said at the recent ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. “And I saved it. I did the right thing.”

On NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Vance echoed his remarks by saying Trump “actually protected those 20 million Americans from losing their health coverage” and “chose to build upon” the ACA when he “could’ve destroyed” it. Vance added: “It illustrates Donald Trump’s entire approach to governing, which is to fix problems.”

Both Trump and Vance are misrepresenting the facts.

As president, Trump fought to repeal and undo the ACA using executive action, legislation and lawsuits.

“Trump was not successful as president in undoing the ACA, but it was not for lack of trying,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan research group. “Trump encouraged congressional efforts to repeal and replace the ACA, and then took administrative steps to try to weaken it when the legislative route failed.”

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order proclaiming: “It is the policy of my Administration to seek the prompt repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

He ordered agencies to “exercise all authority and discretion available to them to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions they deemed burdensome.

Trump made good on his promise to pursue repeal. It was the first major item on the Republican-led Congress’ agenda in 2017. In May, the House passed the American Health Care Act, a bill to undo ACA subsidies and regulations, which was projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to lead to 23 million fewer people with insurance. Trump celebrated its passage in a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony alongside House Republicans.

“Make no mistake: This is a repeal and replace of Obamacare,” Trump said at the time.

The effort fell one vote short in the Senate as three Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona — joined Democrats to vote it down. Trump has since repeatedly criticized McCain for his now-iconic thumbs down on the Senate floor.

The legislative push was never revived, with one exception: Trump and Republicans succeeded at zeroing out the ACA’s tax penalty for most Americans who failed to buy insurance.

But Trump persisted in seeking other ways to take aim at the ACA.

He leaned on his executive power and his administration slashed funding for programs to advertise and promote ACA sign-ups. Enrollment dipped the following year, in 2018, with some blaming the cuts in funding.

“He cut outreach by 90% and funding for community-based navigators by 84%, making it harder for people to sign up,” Levitt said, referring to individuals who helped Americans sign up for Obamacare plans. “He expanded short-term insurance plans that do not have to follow the ACA’s rules, including coverage of pre-existing conditions.”

That fall, Democrats put a dagger in the legislative efforts to undo President Barack Obama’s signature achievement when they won control of the House, in part by campaigning on protecting the ACA.

But even as other Republicans sought to abandon what they came to see as a losing political fight, Trump was undeterred.

In 2020, he endorsed a lawsuit that would have wiped out the ACA entirely. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration formally asked the justices to rule for the challengers and terminate the law, despite the political risks as he sought re-election.

The court upheld the ACA the following year. By then, Trump had lost the election and Joe Biden was president.

Now, as he seeks a comeback in 2024, Trump has occasionally brought up his desire to revisit the ACA battle, calling for replacing the law last fall and declaring that “Obamacare Sucks.” This year, Trump’s campaign has softened its rhetoric against the ACA while still calling for alternatives.

Trump admitted he doesn’t have a replacement plan.

“I have concepts of a plan,” Trump said at last week’s debate, adding that there are “concepts and options” for a better and cheaper system that he’ll outline “in the not-too-distant future.”

Asked when Trump will roll out his plan, campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not provide a timeline. “As President Trump said, he will release more details but his overall position on health care remains the same: bring down costs and increase the quality of care by improving competition in the market place,” Leavitt said. “This is a stark contrast to Kamala Harris’ support for a socialist government takeover of our health care system which would force people off their private plans and result in lower quality care.”

Harris is running on a platform of preserving the ACA, without offering specifics on how she would make good on her call for expanding coverage. She has abandoned her 2019 position of putting all Americans in Medicare. On the campaign trail, the Democratic nominee is seizing on Trump’s debate remarks.

“He has ‘concepts of a plan.’ Concepts of a plan,” she said Thursday at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “Which means no actual plan.”

“And 45 million Americans are insured through the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “So, understand what that means. He’s going to end it based on a concept and take us back when folks were suffering.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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• Trump plans to visit Springfield, Ohio, the site of his baseless claims about Haitian immigrants

The latest packages were sent to elections officials in Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Rhode Island. Mississippi authorities reported a package was delivered there Monday, and the Connecticut Secretary of State’s office said the FBI alerted it of a package that was intercepted.

The FBI is collecting the packages, some of which contained “an unknown substance,” agency spokesperson Kristen Setera in Boston said in a statement.

“We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters,” she said. “As this is an ongoing matter we will not be commenting further on the investigation, but the public can be assured safety is our top priority.”

It’s the second time in the past year that suspicious packages were mailed to election officials in multiple states.

The latest scare comes as early voting has begun in several states ahead of the high-stakes elections for president, Senate, Congress and key statehouse offices, causing disruption in an already tense voting season. Local election directors are beefing up security to keep workers and polling places safe while also ensuring that ballots and voting procedures won’t be tampered with.

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The National Association of Secretaries of State condemned what it described as a “disturbing trend” of threats to election workers leading up to Nov. 5, as well as the second apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

“This must stop, period,” the group said. “Our democracy has no place for political violence, threats or intimidation of any kind.”

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said a package containing white powder and with the sender listed as “U.S. Traitor Elimination Army” was intercepted at a mail facility. It said the package was similar to those sent to other states and that early indications suggest the powder was harmless.

On Tuesday, the FBI notified the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office that postal service investigators had identified a suspicious envelope delivered to a building housing state offices. The package was intercepted.

Packages also were sent to secretaries of state and election offices in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming this week. The packages forced evacuations in Iowa, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Hazmat crews quickly determined the material was harmless.

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Elections Division said it received a package similar to those sent to other states and that the state Department of Homeland Security was testing it. The division said it has notified county election officials to be on the lookout.

Oklahoma officials said the material sent to the election office there contained flour.

“We have specific protocols in place for situations such as this,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement after the evacuation of the six-story Lucas State Office Building in Des Moines.

A state office building in Topeka, Kansas, was evacuated due to suspicious mail sent to both the secretary of state and attorney general, Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson April M. McCollum said in a statement.

Topeka Fire Department crews found several pieces of mail with an unknown substance on them, though a field test found no hazardous materials, spokesperson Rosie Nichols said. Several employees were exposed to it and were being monitored.

In Oklahoma, the State Election Board received a suspicious envelope in the mail containing a multi-page document and a white, powdery substance, agency spokesperson Misha Mohr said. Testing determined the substance was flour.

State workers in an office building next to the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne were sent home Monday pending testing of a white substance mailed to the secretary of state’s office.

Suspicious letters were sent to election offices and government buildings in at least six states last November, including the same building in Kansas that received suspicious mail Monday. While some of the letters contained fentanyl, even the suspicious mail that was not toxic delayed the counting of ballots in some local elections.

One of the targeted offices was in Fulton County, Georgia, the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important swing states. Four county election offices in Washington state had to be evacuated as election workers were processing ballots cast, delaying vote-counting.

The letters caused election workers around the country to stock up the overdose reversal medication naloxone.

Election offices across the United States have taken steps to increase security amid an onslaught of harassment and threats following the 2020 election and the false claims that it was rigged.

Christina Almeida Cassidy in Atlanta; Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut; Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

In a message posted to multiple social media platforms Monday, Trump accused his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden of taking “politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred.” He said their rhetoric is responsible for threats and violence against him, even though they routinely denounce political violence and did so on Sunday.

Trump’s most powerful ally, billionaire Elon Musk, wondered in a tweet why “no one is even trying to assassinate” Biden and Harris — a post that Musk later said was a joke and deleted.

But it was clear by midday Monday that Trump and his brain trust have no intention of dialing back on hot rhetoric, with less than two months left before Election Day. In turning so fast to Biden and Harris, Trump skipped past appeals for sympathy and even a perfunctory call for calm or unity.

The Republican presidential nominee was playing golf at his West Palm Beach course Sunday afternoon when a Secret Service agent noticed the muzzle of a gun protruding from the bushes several hundred yards from him, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a news conference later that day.

The Secret Service fired at a suspect, who fled and was quickly apprehended by police. Trump was forced to shelter at the golf club for more than an hour before being transported to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, a source familiar with the matter said.

From Mar-a-Lago, where guests included House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Trump took phone calls from friends expressing their relief, listened in when acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe phoned Johnson to deliver a briefing on the incident, and told golf-related jokes, according to people familiar with his activities. The scare is unlikely to interfere with his schedule or campaign plans, according to a Trump adviser who has spoken with him since Sunday’s incident.

“There won’t be many noticeable changes or anything too major,” the adviser said. “He is not frazzled or shaken by this, and, considering what he has been through, relatively relaxed.”

But, as Trump avoided a brush with death that could have come as close as the sniper’s bullet that clipped his ear at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, he once again had a decision to make about his own response: try to seize political advantage from the threats to his life or play them down in order to discourage future violence. It took less than 24 hours for him to choose the former, though there are signs of division within his ranks about his approach.

Some Trump allies believe that the campaign squandered an opportunity for unity following the first assassination attempt. Instead, Trump ramped up his anti-Harris rhetoric, which coincided with him losing traction in polls over the summer.

“Even independents were like, ‘This can’t stand, you can’t assassinate a political candidate,'” said one former Trump adviser. “And then all of a sudden it’s back to the clown show.”

While his campaign’s top advisers focused on his security — and that of his aides — in a message sent to staff Sunday night, his fundraising team pressed donors to give money in the immediate aftermath of the incident. On Monday, he repeated an assertion he made in an ABC News debate last week that Biden and Harris are responsible for him being targeted.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” he said in an interview with Fox News Digital, “when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside out.”

On Sunday, Harris took a much different tack.

“As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” she said in a statement. “I am thankful that former President Trump is safe.”

Trump has not rebuked Musk for musing about assassinations of the sitting president and vice president.

For a brief moment after he survived being shot in July, Trump aides told the media that he was interested in unifying the country and would attempt to do so in his speech at the Republican National Convention. But he quickly pivoted from that stance and took off running in the other direction. The reversal was evident even within the four corners of that address, delivered July 18 in Milwaukee.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed,” he said in the opening minutes. But later, he accused the Democratic Party of “weaponizing the justice system” because he has been convicted of felonies in New York and charged with crimes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in federal court.

“We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement,” he said. “In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”

Since then, he has regularly threatened to jail his political opponents.

Donald Trump Sep 16

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Trump aides say that he will be his own spokesman on the aborted assassination attempt.

“We follow his lead,” said one aide. “We’re not going to get ahead of his truth.”

So far, that truth has been an attack on his political rival, Harris, and her boss, Biden, despite their disavowal of violence as a political tool.

Throughout nearly a decade in national politics, Trump has glorified violence — at least when it is not aimed at him.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote in a social media post during the protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder by Minneapolis police. He has suggested that the nation’s top general be executed; made light of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband being attacked with a hammer in a gruesome assault; and praised the Jan. 6 rioters who pummeled cops, stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the counting of 2020 electoral votes by force.

It is not immediately clear whether the apparent second attempt on Trump’s life will have an effect on the outcome of the campaign. He was facing a different candidate — Biden — at the time of the Pennsylvania shooting.

Since Harris replaced Biden as the Democrats’ standard-bearer eight days after the first attempt, polls show Democrats to be in a stronger position to win in November. But most surveys reveal an extremely close race in which the two candidates are within the margin of error in pivotal swing states.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Suspect was by the Trump golf course for nearly 12 hours, phone records show
• Trump dispenses with unity and blames Democrats after apparent second assassination attempt
• Suspect in assassination attempt charged with possessing firearm as felon, erasing its serial number

Local authorities said the U.S. Secret Service agents protecting Trump fired at a man pointing an AK-style rifle with a scope as Trump was playing on one of his Florida golf courses in West Palm Beach.

Here are five things to know about what happened Sunday to the Republican presidential nominee.

Who is the suspect?

Law enforcement officials said the man who pointed the rifle and was arrested is Ryan Wesley Routh.

Records show Routh, 58, lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving in 2018 to Kaaawa, Hawaii, where he and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.

Routh frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion. Routh previously told other news outlets that he had been in Ukraine to help its war effort, NBC News reports.

In June 2020, he made a post on X directed at then-President Trump to say he would win reelection if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That year, he also posted in support of the Democratic presidential campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and endorsed Trump.

However, in recent years, his posts suggest he soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Biden and Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally.

Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012, most recently voting in person during the state’s Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Federal campaign finance records show Routh made 19 small political donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.

Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement, including a conviction for possessing a machine gun in 2022. He was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.

The records do not provide details about the case. But a News & Record story from 2002 says a man with the same name was arrested after a three-hour standoff with police. The story says he was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a gun and barricaded himself inside a roofing business. He owned the roofing company, according to state incorporation filings.

How did this happen?

Local authorities said the gunman was about 400 yards to 500 yards away from Trump and hiding in shrubbery while the former president was playing a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Ric Bradshaw, sheriff of Palm Beach County, said that when people get into the shrubbery around the course, “they’re pretty much out of sight.” Bradshaw said the entire golf course would have been lined with law enforcement if Trump were the sitting president, but because he’s not, “security is limited to the areas the Secret Service deems possible.”

Trump’s protective detail has been higher than some of his peers because of his high visibility and his campaign to seek the White House again. His security was bolstered days before the July assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, U.S. officials said.

What has Trump said since the attempt?

In an email to supporters, Trump said: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!”

His running mate, JD Vance, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said they spoke with Trump after the incident, and both said he was in “good spirits.” Trump also checked in with several Fox News hosts.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close friend of the former president’s, said on air that he spoke with Trump and his golf partner, Steve Witkoff, afterward. They told Hannity they had been on the fifth hole when they heard a “pop pop, pop pop.” Within seconds, he said Witkoff recounted, Secret Service agents “pounced on” Trump and “covered him” to protect him.

Moments later, Witkoff said, a “fast cart” with steel reinforcement and other protection was able to whisk Trump away.

Hannity said Trump’s reaction after this happened — and when it was clear that everyone, including Witkoff, was safe — was to quip that he was sad he hadn’t been able to finish the hole since he “was even and had a birdie putt.”

What is Vice President Kamala Harris saying?

Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she had been briefed on the reports of gunshots fired.

“I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”

The White House said President Joe Biden and Harris would be kept updated on the investigation. The White House added it was “relieved” to know Trump is safe.

What’s next?

Trump has not announced any changes to his schedule and is set to speak live on X on Monday night from his Mar-a-Lago resort to launch his sons’ crypto platform.

Meanwhile, the leaders of a congressional bipartisan task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump said they have requested a briefing by the Secret Service.

Donald Trump Sep 15

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“We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement. They said the task force will share updates.

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat who is part of the task force, said he “will seek answers about what happened today and then.”

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So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.

Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.

Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.

“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”

It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.

“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.

Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.

Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.

“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”

The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.

Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.

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“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”

Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”

Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.

They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.

Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”

DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.

Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.

“I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.

Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.

“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”

They told her that Donald Trump had been posting on social media about a false and racist rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. The former president might mention it during the debate, they said.

The warning, described by two people with knowledge of the conversation, proved spot on.

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While answering a question about immigration policy, Trump said migrants in Springfield were “eating the dogs” and “they’re eating the cats.” Harris laughed, shook her head and stared at her Republican opponent in amazement. “Talk about extreme,” she said, and then moved on.

It was easily the most bizarre moment from last week’s debate, spawning an explosion of online memes and parody videos. Now, Harris is trying to use her performance as an ongoing source of momentum, hoping to rekindle the kind of energy that she generated when she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

It is unclear whether the debate will affect the outcome of the Nov. 5 election. In a flash poll of viewers conducted by CNN afterward, opinions of Trump were unchanged and Harris received only a slight bump in the share of people who view her favorably. But her team is making the most of it, turning key points into television advertisements and flooding the internet with clips. No equivalent effort is apparent from Trump’s side, despite his repeated insistence that he came out on top.

There almost certainly will not be another debate; Trump has said he will not do one. That means the debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia may be the only chance that voters will have to see the candidates side by side.

This story is based on interviews with five people close to Harris, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and reveal new details about how she prepared for and handled the debate. It was her first time meeting Trump in person.

Harris spent five days getting ready at a hotel in downtown Pittsburgh after a breakneck few weeks of campaigning.

Her team recreated the set where she would debate Trump on the night of Sept. 10. It was a far more professional setup than Harris had used eight years earlier as she was running for Senate in California, when campaign staff taped together cardboard boxes to serve as makeshift lecterns.

Two communications aides — one man, one woman — stood in for David Muir and Linsey Davis, the ABC News debate moderators.

Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, reprised his role as Trump, which he played when the former secretary of state ran for president. Reines wore a dark suit, a long red tie and orange bronzer to embody Trump.

One challenge would be the microphones.

When Biden was running, his team agreed that the debate microphones should be muted when it was not a candidate’s turn to speak. But Harris’ staff wanted the microphones hot at all times, which would allow her to jump in and create more opportunities for Trump to make outbursts.

But their campaign could not reach an agreement to change the rules, and the original plan remained in place.

Harris decided to make the most of the split screen format, where each candidate would be on camera at all times. Biden had flubbed the visual test when he debated Trump in June, often looking aimless with his mouth slightly agape. Harris provided silent commentary through her expressiveness — laughing, raising her eyebrows, bringing her hand to her chin with a quizzical look.

At one point during preparations, staff members suggested practicing mannerisms that Harris could use. The vice president waved them off, saying she would be fine without that kind of rehearsal.

Harris rarely left the hotel during preparations. On Sept. 7, she took a field trip to Penzeys Spices, where she picked up some seasoning mixes. One woman in the store wept as Harris hugged her. On Sept. 8, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, went to a military airbase and took a walk for about a half hour. Because of security considerations, the tarmac was the only place where they could stretch their legs.

Asked if she was ready for the debate, Harris gave reporters a thumb’s up and said “ready.”

She ended up leaving Pittsburgh on Sept. 9 rather than the day of the debate, canceling an extra mock debate and getting to Philadelphia earlier than expected.

As the clock ticked down to the start of the debate, dozens of staff members in the campaign’s Delaware headquarters assembled in assigned seats in front of four television screens. Some were nervous, still rattled from watching Biden implode in his own debate with Trump.

But Harris’ opening move, striding toward Trump to shake his hand as they took the stage, helped ease those jitters.

Throughout the debate, Harris mocked and needled Trump, throwing him off balance with jabs about the size of crowds at his campaign rallies. She pounced on questions about abortion and promised the country a new generation of leadership, while Trump became increasingly agitated and missed opportunities to press his case against her.

During the final commercial break, Trump departed the stage with a sigh. Harris stayed at her lectern, writing on her notepad, reviewing her words and taking a sip of water.

In her closing statement, she told viewers that “I think you’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country — one that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past.”

Trump ended his remarks by calling Harris “the worst vice president in the history of our country.”

There was no live audience in the room to react to the candidates, and it was not always clear whether certain lines or expressions were hitting their marks.

So when Harris left the stage, she had a question for her staff: How did I do?

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported. 

Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment.

Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would spiral into the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post. 

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Other posts have also contributed to the false allegations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose that was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was spread by some online as evidence of the claims about Springfield. Graphic video of a woman who allegedly killed and tried to eat a cat was also found not to have originated in Springfield but in Canton, Ohio, and does not have any connection to the Haitian community.

Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield, but that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country and igniting a national frenzy that landed on the presidential debate stage this week. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was born less than an hour away from Springfield, have repeated the baseless allegations.

Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate.

“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

The anti-immigrant fervor in Springfield led to school and municipal building closures on Thursday and Friday after city officials received bomb threats. 

Lee said she pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse. 

“I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”

Immigrant advocacy groups have said these kinds of claims can be dangerous.

“The Haitian-American community in Springfield, OH and around the country is feeling targeted and unsafe because dehumanizing, debunked and racist conspiracies are being advanced at the highest levels of American politics and are still being repeated,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration reform said in an email. “The false claim that Black immigrants are violently attacking American families by stealing and eating their pets is a powerful and old racist trope that puts a target on people’s backs, and it is turbo-charged in the era of MAGA when political violence has become commonplace and we have already witnessed violent incidents incited by such rhetoric.”

Lee said that there are very real problems related to Springfield’s population boom that caught the struggling city off guard. Springfield was not prepared to address the housing, health care and other service needs that came with the sudden increase of new residents over the last five years when Haitians arrived, many of them with protected status under federal law. 

Still, she never imagined that her Facebook post would set off a national news cycle.

“I didn’t think it would ever get past Springfield,” she said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Far-right activist Laura Loomer’s access to Trump reveals a crisis in his campaign
• Before Trump, neo-Nazis pushed false claims about Haitians as part of hate campaign
• For Haitians, disparaging tropes are an opportunity to share ‘the beauty of our country and people’

The image, which caused controversy in August after being shared by the former president on Truth Social, originally circulated with text reading, “Taylor wants you to vote for Joe Biden,” and was posted in a pro-Biden Facebook group with just 8,000 members in December 2023. That post was viewed by NBC News. A reverse-image search conducted by NBC News did not find any earlier incidences of the image being posted online.  

After the pro-Biden image featuring the AI-generated Swift was first posted on Facebook, it began to travel around the pro-Biden internet, particularly among Gen X and baby boomer supporters of the then-candidate. The Facebook group it was initially posted in is largely a place for Democrats to share memes and information in support of Biden and against Trump. 

The image also traveled to X and Instagram’s messaging platform, Threads. S. E. Hinton, author of “The Outsiders,” shared it on X in December. It was posted in a liberal subreddit the same month.

“I am a Boomer for Biden,” one X post of the image was captioned in January. 

The image’s creator, a Democrat, asked NBC News to keep his identity private, wanting to avoid backlash. Inspired by Swift’s 2020 endorsement of Biden, he said he used a generative AI platform to create an image from the text prompt “Taylor Swift as Uncle Sam,” then used Photoshop to add text over it.

On Aug. 17, around nine months after it was posted with the pro-Biden text, a pro-Trump X account with over 340,000 followers posted an edited version that read, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” The X account did not respond to a request for comment about whether it edited the image itself or where it came from. The next day, Trump posted a screenshot of the X post on his Truth Social account with the caption, “I accept!”

“I woke up one morning and I got a text message from somebody who sent me a picture of the altered version and said, ‘Was this you?’ I was like, ‘Yeah that’s an altered version of my original,’” the person who created the AI image of Swift endorsing Biden told NBC News in a phone interview. “I didn’t think much of it until I sat down and started looking at the news. It started blowing up from there, with people saying Taylor might sue him and I thought, ‘Holy crap, what did I do?’”

On Tuesday, after the presidential debate between Trump and Harris, Swift posted an endorsement for Harris on Instagram. In the caption, she cited the AI-generated image Trump posted as one of the reasons why she wanted to make her stance known publicly. 

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

Swift included a link to the official voter registration website in the Instagram Story announcing her endorsement. In the 24 hours that followed, more than 400,000 people clicked the link from her account.

“I agree with Taylor that AI, when used by bad actors, can be a danger to democracy,” the AI image creator said. “If this leads to stronger regulation, I’m not only happy to comply, but I’ll be happy that it makes the world a safer place.”

The AI image creator, an artist, said he initially started experimenting with AI to stay in step with technological advancement he perceived as a threat to his career. He said he realized it could be a useful way to create political satire. 

His public Facebook group is where he posts content in support of Democrats, starting with Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 and now in support of Harris’ presidential campaign. 

“I didn’t think it would go down this way,” he said. “The intent of it was to boost support for Joe Biden because his communication was poor and his polls were low and Trump was a looming threat and I just couldn’t stand idly by.”

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“Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

He added, “We sought commitments from both [former president Donald] Trump and [Vice President Kamala] Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”

The union’s decision comes two days after senior leaders met with Harris as they weighed whom to endorse.

The Teamsters, which represents truck drivers, freight workers and others, held similar meetings with Trump and President Joe Biden when he was still seeking re-election.

The union, which at 1.3 million members is one of the largest in the world, collected input on an endorsement from its members through straw polling and a QR poll from a code printed on a union magazine, a vice president at large of the union, John Palmer, said.

On Wednesday, the union released the results of their survey, which was conducted after Biden dropped out of the race. It found that almost 60% of rank-and-file union members preferred to endorse Trump, while 34% backed Harris, according to an electronic member poll. A phone poll indicated similar margins, with 58% supporting Trump and 31% supporting Harris.

The union has not released the number of poll participants or the margin of error.

The Teamsters have for decades endorsed Democratic presidential candidates. The union supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. They also backed Barack Obama in both of his presidential runs, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

In an email Wednesday, the Trump campaign highlighted the Teamsters polling.

“While the Teamsters Executive Board is making no formal endorsement, the hardworking members of the Teamsters have been loud and clear— they want President Trump back in the White House!” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “These hardworking men and women are the backbone of America and President Trump will strongly stand up for them when he’s back in the White House.”

The former president addressed the union’s decision not to endorse a candidate when talking with reporters on Wednesday, saying that it is “a great honor.”

“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight. The Democrats cannot believe it,” Trump said. “Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’ so that was an honor for me.”

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to local Teamsters chapters that endorsed the vice president.

“The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor,” Hitt said in a statement. “As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what — because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for.”

Over the course of his presidency, Biden has promoted his support for organized labor and has frequently weighed in on disputes between union workers and corporate leaders. In 2021, he expressed support for the right to unionize in a direct-to-camera video as Amazon workers in Alabama were about to vote on whether to organize.

Then-Teamsters president James P. Hoffa in 2021 credited Biden with including an $83 billion pension-fund bailout in the American Rescue Plan Act, which boosted the Teamsters’ Central States pension fund.

In 2023, Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he visited striking autoworkers in Michigan.

But despite calling himself “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden drew criticism from organized labor two years ago when he worked with Congress to pass a law that averted an impending rail strike.

The law forced union workers to accept a union contract that had been brokered by the Biden administration. At the time, four of the 12 unions involved had rejected the deal.

As he signed the legislation, Biden called it “a tough [vote] for me,” but cited the need “to keep the supply chains stable around the holidays.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters is the most prominent union that has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate this year. The union endorsed Biden in 2020.

The AFL-CIO, which represents dozens of unions and millions of workers, and the United Auto Workers union have each endorsed Harris.

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“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,″ Francis said.

The Argentine Jesuit was asked to provide counsel to American Catholic voters during an airborne news conference while he flew back to Rome from his four-nation tour through Asia. Francis stressed that he is not an American and would not be voting.

Neither Republican candidate Donald Trump nor the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, was mentioned by name.

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But Francis nevertheless expressed himself in stark terms when asked to weigh in on their positions on two hot-button issues in the U.S. election — abortion and migration — that are also of major concern to the Catholic Church.

Francis has made the plight of migrants a priority of his pontificate and speaks out emphatically and frequently about it. While strongly upholding church teaching forbidding abortion, Francis has not emphasized church doctrine as much as his predecessors.

Francis said migration is a right described in Scripture and that anyone who does not follow the Biblical call to welcome the stranger is committing a “grave sin.”

He was also blunt in speaking about abortion. “To have an abortion is to kill a human being. You may like the word or not, but it’s killing,” he said. “We have to see this clearly.”

Asked what voters should do at the polls, Francis recalled the civic duty to vote.

“One should vote, and choose the lesser evil,” he said. “Who is the lesser evil, the woman or man? I don’t know.

“Everyone in their conscience should think and do it,” he said.

It’s not the first time Francis has weighed in on a U.S. election. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Francis was asked about Trump’s plan to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Francis declared then that anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants “is not Christian.”

In responding Friday, Francis recalled that he celebrated Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border and “there were so many shoes of the migrants who ended up badly there.”

Trump pledges massive deportations, just as he did in his first White House bid, when there was a vast gulf between his ambitions and the legal, financial and political realities of such an undertaking.

The U.S. bishops conference, for its part, has called abortion the “preeminent priority” for American Catholics in its published voter advice. Harris has strongly defended abortion rights and has emphasized support for reinstating a federal right to abortion.

In his comments, the pope added: “On abortion, science says that a month from conception, all the organs of a human being are already there, all of them. Performing an abortion is killing a human being. Whether you like the word or not, this is killing. You can’t say the church is closed because it does not allow abortion. The church does not allow abortion because it’s killing. It is murder.”

However, cells are only beginning the process of developing organs in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that by 13 weeks, all major organs have formed. For example, cardiac tissue starts to form in the first two months — initially a tube that only later evolves into the four chambers that define a heart.

In other comments, Francis:

— denied a French media report that he would travel to Paris for the December inauguration of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral, saying flat-out he would not be there. But he confirmed he would like to go to the Canary Islands to highlight the plight of migrants.

— tamped down renewed speculation that he might finally return to Argentina later this year, saying he wants to go but that nothing had been decided. He added: “There are various things to resolve first.” Francis has not been home since before the 2013 conclave that elected him pope.

— declared that China was “a promise and a hope” for the Catholic Church and hoped to one day visit.

— called sexual abuse “demonic” and weighed on the latest revelations of assault against a legendary French priest, Abbe Pierre.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

“Laura has been a supporter of mine. Just like a lot of people are supporters, and she’s been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign. I’m not sure why you asked that question,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle blasted Loomer, who repeatedly appeared alongside Trump this week — including at a Sept. 11 memorial event — as she promoted baseless and inflammatory remarks about immigrants on her social media accounts. Loomer lashed out at Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in response to their criticisms.

“I don’t control Laura. Laura — she’s a, she’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. I mean, look, I can’t tell Laura what to do,” Trump added on Friday.

Loomer’s relationship with Trump came under particular scrutiny after the former president mentioned a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.

Loomer did not immediately return a request for comment about Trump’s remark Friday. Representatives for the Trump and Harris campaigns also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The baseless theory, which city officials and police have denied, originated online and spread through far-right circles.

Several of Loomer’s posts on social media this week came under fire, including one where she nodded to a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks.

“23 years later, and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions,” Loomer posted Friday, alongside a video of Trump in 2001 questioning whether airplanes could cause explosions like the ones that happened at the Twin Towers on 9/11.

In another post, Loomer alleged that the “White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if Harris wins the presidential election.

That statement earned her condemnation from Greene, who called the comment “appalling and extremely racist.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing Thursday of Loomer, “No leader should ever associate with someone who spreads this kind of ugliness, this kind of racist poison.”

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“In Springfield they’re eating dogs,” the former president said, referring to an Ohio city dealing with an influx of Haitian immigrants. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating … the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

The extraordinary moment — the airing of a claim worthy of a chain email while participating in a prime-time presidential debate — probably puzzled most of the 67.1 million people tuned in for Trump’s clash with Vice President Kamala Harris. But the rumor, which has been criticized as perpetuating racist tropes, was already thriving in right-wing corners of the internet and being amplified by those close to Trump, including his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.

No one involved in Trump’s debate preparations or in a position to speak for his campaign agreed to discuss the strategy on the record or answer questions about how it mutated from a fringe obsession to a debate stage sound bite. 

“Just, suffice to say, he was aware of it. He decided to bring it up,” Tim Murtaugh, a senior Trump adviser, told NBC News. “Now it’s a major story. We would otherwise probably not be talking about immigration if not for that.”

Others close to Trump expressed misgivings about the execution.

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“Immigration should be talked about, because Harris as border czar has failed,” said a Trump adviser, who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Did that issue come out in the best way? Probably not. But it’s not something to be shied away from.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally from South Carolina, questioned the former president’s focus.  

“I don’t know about dogs and cats,” Graham said in an interview Thursday. “But there are numerous young women who have been raped and murdered by people who were in our custody here illegally, and we let them go. That’s what I’d be talking about. That should be the face of a broken immigration system, not cats and dogs.”

While the fallout has been a combination of bafflement and outrage, the makings of the moment are rooted in grievances that have long defined and animated Trump and his followers — and on the platforms where those grievances blossom.

Trump, who launched his first presidential campaign with a speech that broadly characterized Mexican immigrants as dangerous criminals, has kept immigration and border security issues central to his third White House bid. 

Meanwhile, the right-wing social media ecosystem that rose up around his 2016 run has calcified as an additive and disruptive force: Trump now has his own social media network, Truth Social, and ally Elon Musk controls X, formerly Twitter. Vance in particular has reveled in fighting the culture wars and other right-wing causes online and often assumes a trolling posture on X while acting as a filter of information between the fringe and the mainstream.

Vance and others close to Trump have argued that, even if the claims are false, they have served a purpose by pushing the Springfield story into the spotlight.

“The media didn’t care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats, and that speaks to the media’s failure to care about what’s going on in these communities,” Vance told CNN after Tuesday’s debate. “If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep on doing it, because the media could, should, care about what’s going on.”

The issue in Springfield, about 45 miles from Columbus in southwest Ohio, involves thousands of Haitian immigrants who have settled in the city in recent years, many of them there legally under federal programs after having fled violence and political turmoil. Residents and political leaders, including Vance, have for months raised economic and public safety concerns, asserting that an influx of as many as 20,000 immigrants to a city that in 2020 counted a population of 59,000 has strained resources.

Claims about pets being abducted, slaughtered and eaten are more recent. 

Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, was among the early purveyors of the rumor in August, posting about it on Gab and Telegram, social networks popular with extremists. While the group’s leader has taken credit for Trump’s indulgence of the claims, Blood Tribe’s reach is unknown; its accounts on those sites have fewer than 1,000 followers.

Some Blood Tribe members also planned a couple of events in the real world, like a small Aug. 10 march in Springfield protesting Haitian immigration and an appearance at a city commission meeting later that month.

The rumor soon crossed over to mainstream social media, like Facebook and X. NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, traced the origins to an undated post from a private Facebook group that was shared in a screenshot posted to X on Sept. 5. 

“Remember when my hometown of Springfield Ohio was all over National news for the Haitians?” the user wrote. “I said all the ducks were disappearing from our parks? Well, now it’s your pets.”

Around that time, other social media posts about the rumor sprouted and went viral, some of them based in part on residents’ comments at public hearings. On Sept. 6, there were 1,100 posts on X mentioning Haitians, migrants or immigrants eating pets, cats, dogs and geese, according to PeakMetrics, a research company. The next day there were 9,100 — a 720% increase.

The number of posts spiked again Monday, to 47,000, when Vance advanced the rumor on X.

“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote, referring to remarks he had made at a Senate hearing. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Vance, as he noted in his post, had been raising the issue for months, but in less provocative terms. 

“Now go to Springfield, go to Clark County, Ohio, and ask the people there whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in four years,” he said in early July, before Trump selected him as his running mate, at NatCon, a right-wing nationalist conference. “Housing is through the roof. People, middle-class people in Springfield who have lived there sometimes for generations cannot afford a place to live.”

Soon after Vance’s post Monday, Springfield police officials told the Springfield News-Sun — and, later, NBC News and other national media — that they had received no credible reports of such incidents. Vance issued a follow-up post the next day, writing that his office had received reports of “pets or local wildlife” being “abducted by Haitian migrants.”

“It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he added.

But by that point, Trump was fully on board with them. At 5:19 p.m. Tuesday, less than four hours before his debate with Harris, Trump posted to Truth Social a meme showing cats armed for war and wearing MAGA hats. Fifteen minutes later, he shared a second meme depicting him surrounded by cats and ducks. 

Then came the debate. When moderator David Muir of ABC News asked about his opposition to a bipartisan border bill, a distracted Trump first insisted on responding to a jab Harris had landed about people leaving his campaign rallies early. His meandering answer eventually turned to Springfield, where, he said, “they’re eating dogs … and cats.”

Discomfort and disapproval from Trump’s fellow Republicans were soon palpable.

“I want to be clear on this. That is a very minor, minor issue happening in the United States,” Rep. Byron Donalds, a Trump loyalist from Florida, told NBC News when asked about the pets remark in the post-debate spin room.

Those looking for someone to blame offered several suspects. Laura Loomer, a right-wing political activist and conspiracy theorist who had been posting about the rumor, traveled with Trump to the debate Tuesday. 

“Why do you want to speak to me? I don’t work for President Trump,” Loomer responded when reached by NBC News.

Loomer and Trump did not speak on the plane ride, a source familiar with the trip said. And a Trump aide noted that Loomer “is not a member of our staff.”

“The president is the most well-read man in America, and he has a pulse on everything that is going on,” the aide added. 

The Springfield rumor “made it to his desk. He was made aware of what these residents were saying.”

Others focused their suspicions on Vance, given how he had forced the issue into the spotlight.

“It’s all JD,” a source linked to the campaign said.

Another source close to Trump’s campaign said Trump and Vance did not discuss the Springfield issue ahead of the debate.

“I don’t know what he was thinking,” a different Trump ally said of his choice to bring up the Springfield rumor unprompted. 

The blame, this person said, solely rests with Trump.

“You don’t prep Donald Trump,” the ally added. “You can make suggestions.”

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“We just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump told Telemundo Arizona in an exclusive interview ahead of his campaign rally in Tucson Thursday.

“I had one with as you know, Joe, it was quite a famous debate, and then we had another one the other day and it was both very successful. In fact, my poll numbers went up since the debate and we think we’ve discussed everything and I don’t think they want it either.”

The former president in a Truth Social post earlier Thursday claimed that he won his first debate against Harris on Tuesday night, citing as evidence the fact that Harris’ campaign had challenged him to another debate shortly after the first one ended.

The post read in part, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

Harris said at a rally in North Carolina on Thursday that she and Trump “owe” voters another debate, NBC News reported.

“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate, and I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate, because this election and what is at stake could not be more important,” Harris said.

The presidential running mates, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are still set to meet on Oct. 1 for their only vice-presidential debate.

In the interview Thursday, Trump was also asked about the sensational and baseless claim he made during the debate that Haitian immigrants in Ohio have been eating dogs and other pets; he did not back down, saying he’d heard the information “from local authorities, but also from the newspapers.”

Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Police there knocked down the stories Monday in a statement saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples.

“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the statement said.

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Both political parties’ national conventions, the presidential inauguration and the U.N. General Assembly already have this designation, but it’s the first time the Jan. 6 vote count and certification have received it.

The Secret Service said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the designation following a request from the mayor of Washington, D.C. The move means these are particularly high-profile events that might be targets for terrorists or criminals.

The Secret Service is in charge of running security for such events in a planning process that kicks off many months in advance. A steering committee for the Jan. 6 certification has been formed and will begin meeting in the coming weeks, the Secret Service said.

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The goal is to improve planning and coordination, especially when it comes to pulling in resources across the federal government.

“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” Eric Ranaghan, the special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division, said in a statement. The agency and its partners “are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants,” he said.

Rioters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election descended on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021. They scaled walls, shattered windows, beat police and hunted down lawmakers in the halls of Congress. About 140 police officers were injured that day. One officer collapsed and died. Four others later died by suicide. A Trump supporter seeking to climb through a broken window was shot and killed by authorities.

In the aftermath of the riot, 1,500 criminal cases have been brought to court with more than 900 people pleading guilty and roughly 200 convicted.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that House Democrats are “committed to protecting the democracy, we’re committed to free and fair elections and we’re committed to the peaceful transfer of power that will begin on Jan. 6.”

Asked if the special security designation was needed, he said that given what happened in 2021, “and the refusal by many extreme MAGA Republicans to stop something like that from ever happening again … this designation by national security professionals seems to have been necessary.”

It’s a high-profile job for an agency struggling to defend its reputation in the wake of the assassination attempt against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The Secret Service has been criticized for failing to secure the building that Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed on top of and opened fire as Trump spoke. A bullet nicked Trump on the ear. The agency’s director, Kim Cheatle, resigned after a heated congressional hearing, and the agency’s decisions and planning are the subject of multiple investigations.

___

AP Writer Lisa Mascaro contributed reporting.

Trump, fresh off Tuesday’s debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, was scheduled to attend an evening reception Thursday for a fundraiser in the LA area, according to a post by the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. The location for the event, which comes just over 50 days ahead of Election Day, was not provided.

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Attending the event cost a minimum of $3,300, according to City News Service.

On Friday, Trump spoke at Trump National Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes with the Pacific Ocean in the background. The seaside community has been plagued by landslides that forced people from their homes.

Trump briefly addressed the land movement and voiced support for residents. Local leaders were doing a “great job” of responding to the crisis, he said. About a dozen people gathered along the road leading into the golf club. Some held signs reading “Save Our Homes” and “Slip Sliding Away.” Other signs read “200+ Homes, No Gas, No Power, No Help.”

Trump also met with RPV Mayor John Cruikshank.

“I want to express my support for all of the families affected by the landslides in Rancho Palos Verdes,” Trump said. “This area is very solid, but you go a couple of miles down, you’ll see something that’s pretty amazing. The mountain is moving. And it could be stopped but they need some help from the government. So I hope they get the help. And I’m sure John will have the help. And I want to thank the mayor for the great job he’s doing, and tell that to the people, what a great job he’s doing.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in the seaside community earlier this month a day after more homes lost power due to the shifting land.

Geologists have said that shifting land, which accelerated after 2023 rainstorms, could potentially threaten hundreds of more homes. Scientists working to stop the movement said their findings showed the issue is much deeper than they originally thought. They found the issue below the surface, described as a much deeper “slip plain,” is moving faster and wider than anticipated.

Trump also spent a lengthy amount of time disparaging his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. He said the country cannot allow Harris “and the communist left to do to America what they did to the state of California.”

Trump was expected to head to Woodside in Northern California for another fundraiser.

The GOP presidential nominee was last in Southern California in June, when he attended a sold- out luncheon event in Newport Beach and an evening event in Beverly Hills. That visit was Trump’s first to Southern California since Sept. 29-30, when he spoke at the California Republican Party Fall Convention in Anaheim and a fundraiser in Costa Mesa and visited the Carvel Ice Cream shop in Westwood.

The Southern California visit follows a stop Thursday in Arizona for a rally in Tucson. Also Thursday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that there will not be another debate against his Democratic rival.

Vice President Harris was in North Carolina Thursday, with stops planned for Charlotte and Greensboro.

New York startup company Kalshi began taking what amounts to bets on the outcome of the November congressional elections after a judge refused to block them from doing so.

The ruling enabled the company, at least temporarily, to offer prediction contracts — essentially yes-or-no bets — on which party will win control of the Senate and the House in November.

“The Kalshi community just made history, and I know we are only getting started,” said Tarek Mansour, a co-founder of the company. “Now is finally the time to allow these markets to show the world just how powerful they are at providing signal amidst the noise, and giving us more truth about what the future holds.”

It was not clear whether the company intends to offer bets beyond the ones posted Thursday for congressional races, including potentially taking bets on the presidential race.

It also was not immediately clear whether sports books or online casinos would seek to offer similar political bets in light of the ruling.

Prices on Kalshi’s so-called predictive contracts varied throughout the early afternoon. As of mid-afternoon, a bet on the Republicans to win control of the Senate was priced at 76 cents; a $100 bet would pay $129. A bet on the Democrats to win control of the House was priced at 63 cents, with a $100 bet paying out $154.

It was not clear how long such betting might last; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which last year prohibited the company from offering them, said it would appeal the ruling as quickly as possible.

Better Markets, a nonprofit organization that says it advocates for the public interest in financial markets, called the development “a dangerous move that opens the floodgates to unprecedented gambling on U.S. elections, eroding public trust in both markets and democracy.”

Contrasting his client with foreign companies who take bets from American customers on U.S. elections without U.S. government approval, Roth said Kalshi is trying to do things the right way, under government regulation.

“It invested significantly in these markets,” he said during Thursday’s hearing. “They spent millions of dollars. It would be perverse if all that investment went up in smoke.”

But Raagnee Beri, an attorney for the commission, said allowing such bets could invite malicious activities designed to influence the outcome of elections and undermine already fragile public confidence in the voting process.

“These contracts would give market participants a $100 million incentive to influence the market on the election,” she said. “There is a very severe public interest threat.”

She used the analogy of someone who has taken an investment position in corn commodities.

“Somebody puts out misinformation about a drought, that a drought is coming,” she said. “That could move the market on the price of corn. The same thing could happen here. The commission is not required to suffer the flood before building a dam.”

Thursday’s ruling will not be the last word on the case. The commission said it will appeal on an emergency basis to a Washington D.C. circuit court, and asked the judge to stay her ruling for 24 hours. But the judge declined, leaving no prohibition in place on the company offering election bets, at least in the very near term.

The company already offers yes-no positions on political topics including whether a government shutdown will happen this year, whether a new Supreme Court justice will be confirmed this year, and whether President Joe Biden’s approval rating will be above or below a certain level by the end of the year.

The Kalshi bets are technically not the first to be offered legally on U.S. elections. West Virginia permitted such bets for one hour in April 2020 before reversing itself and canceling those betting markets, deciding it had not done the proper research beforehand.

___

Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday said there will not be another debate against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

The former president in a Truth Social post claimed that he won his first debate against Harris on Tuesday night. He cited as evidence the fact that Harris’ campaign had challenged him to another debate shortly after the first one ended.

Numerous conservative commentators and some of Trump’s own supporters have said Harris outperformed him.

But Trump in Thursday’s post wrote, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.'”

“Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate,” Trump wrote.

Multiple post-debate polls actually show audiences by a sizable margin believe Harris won. In the wake of the debate, Trump and his allies lashed out at host network ABC News and accused the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, of political bias.

The showdown in Philadelphia was Trump’s second presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle. He debated in late June against President Joe Biden, who performed so badly that he ultimately withdrew his reelection bid and endorsed Harris as his replacement.

Trump in his Truth Social post wrote, “KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

Less than an hour after that post was sent, Harris again called for another debate.

“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” she said at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“And I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate because this election and what is at stake could not be more important.”

The two presidential running mates, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are still set to meet Oct. 1 for their one and only vice presidential debate.

The campaigns have publicly squabbled over the debate schedule since Harris took over the Democratic ticket.

Trump had previously tried to push Harris to accept an early-September debate on Fox News. He also said at one point that he was game for another debate hosted by NBC News on Sept. 25. Harris’ campaign did not immediately agree to that debate.

Trump had waffled on whether to participate in an ABC-hosted debate, claiming that his ongoing defamation lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos created a “conflict of interest.”

The campaigns also traded barbs about the debate rules, with Harris’ team unsuccessfully pushing for both candidates’ microphones to stay on even when it was not their turn to answer.

Trump and Harris ended up facing off for the first, and possibly only, time Tuesday night.

Moments after the debate ended, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon called for a second debate in October.

“Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” she said.

Trump claimed victory in the debate, and quickly cast doubt on whether he would agree to another round.

In a Truth Social post Wednesday, he wrote, “Why would I do a Rematch?”

The General Services Administration, which oversees the website, confirmed to NBC News that as of 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, 337,826 people have visited a custom URL that Swift posted on Instagram when she announced she was endorsing Harris.

The custom URL directs people to vote.gov, a website that helps visitors to register to vote in their state. The site also breaks down Americans’ voting rights, explains election processes and provides a roadmap to frequently asked questions.

Swift’s Tuesday post, which has garnered more than 9.6 million likes, urged voters to do their own research and remember to register to vote.

“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” she said. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.”

In a boost to the Harris campaign, Swift unveiled her endorsement to her massive Instagram following of 283 million accounts after the debate.

“I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift said in her post. “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• What do conservative Swifties think of the Kamala Harris endorsement?
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This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Swift Tuesday posted on Instagram her official endorsement of Kamala Harris as the next president following the debate with former President Donald Trump.

It was an announcement so highly anticipated that it garnered over one million likes in 13 minutes, with 10 million on the horizon.

Among the millions of likes fans observed was WNBA star Caitlin Clark, the 22-year-old who is making major waves in women’s sports and the sporting spectrum in general.

Clark on Wednesday explained why she liked Swift’s endorsement, citing the need to bolster her own platform for political awareness.

“I have this amazing platform, so I think the biggest thing would be to encourage people to register to vote,” Clark said. “…I think that’s the biggest thing I can do with the platform that I have and that’s the same thing Taylor did.

“And I think continue to educate yourself with the candidates that we have, the policies that they’re supporting…that’s what I would recommend to every single person that has that opportunity in our country.”

Clark did not outright endorse either candidate when asked in the same question.

Along with her post, Swift also shared a link to a government website that directs users to state-specific voting information, which saw at least 337,000 people visit it.

Decision 2024 Sep 11

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The 31-year-old provocateur and influencer posted photos from ground zero and shared a video of Trump talking with firefighters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday morning, writing, “They were thrilled to see him.” She also accompanied the former president to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the planes crashed 23 years ago after crew members and passengers fought back against the hijackers.

“HAPPENING NOW: President Trump just visited the Shanksville Fire Department after visiting the memorial site of United Flight 93 and meeting with family members of 9/11 terrorist attack victims in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,” she posted on X on Wednesday afternoon. “NEVER FORGET!”

Loomer said in a text message to The Associated Press that she doesn’t work for the Trump campaign and that she was “invited as a guest.” She did not respond to questions about her past statements about 9/11.

The Trump campaign responded with a statement from an unnamed campaign official. “Today, President Trump put politics aside and stood beside Kamala Harris and Joe Biden to honor those who lost their lives during the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. The day wasn’t about anyone other than the souls who are no longer with us, their families, and the heroes who courageously stepped up to save their fellow Americans on that fateful day,” it read.

Loomer was also spotted departing Trump’s plane when he landed in Philadelphia for Tuesday’s debate.

Trump has a long history of elevating and associating with people who trade in falsehoods and conspiracy theories, and he regularly amplifies posts on his social media site shared by those like Loomer, who promote QAnon, an apocalyptic and convoluted conspiracy theory centered on the belief that Trump is fighting the “deep state.” During the debate, Trump pushed baseless claims about migrants stealing and eating cats and dogs and later defended his comments by saying he was repeating things he’d seen on TV.

She frequently makes anti-Islam and anti-immigrant posts on social media and has been targeting Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, with vile racist and sexist attacks. Last year, she shared a video on X that said “9/11 was an Inside Job!” and claimed it was somehow related to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s announcing $2.3 trillion in “lost” government funds on Sept. 10, 2001.

The post misrepresented Rumsfeld’s remarks, which were about a challenge in tracking funds due to outdated technology. The day before 9/11 was not the first time the problem had been discussed.

The conspiracy theory that U.S. officials are hiding information about the Sept. 11 attacks or were somehow involved in the planning has taken hold among a segment of determined “truthers,” but many of their most prevalent claims have fallen apart upon further scrutiny.

Loomer’s stepped-up presence in Trump’s entourage comes as he has made a number of staff changes in recent weeks, including bringing back veterans of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, like former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski was known for the mantra “Let Trump be Trump.”

She has long served as one of Trump’s fiercest supporters in the Make America Great Again wing of the Republican Party. She led attacks against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Trump’s behalf during the primary phase of the 2024 campaign and has been deeply involved in pro-Trump politics — and the more extreme elements it has attracted — for years.

Some Trump allies would prefer the former president to distance himself from Loomer, but Trump has welcomed her as a semi-regular presence in recent months.

When she ran as a Republican for Congress in Florida in 2020, Loomer celebrated her primary win at a party attended by controversial figures including Gavin McInnes, the founder of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. She later lost the 2020 House race to Democrat Lois Frankel. She also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022.

As Harris and former President Donald Trump walked on stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night for their first presidential debate, the vice president strolled past her podium and over to Trump, confidently initiating a handshake and greeting him.

“Let’s have a good debate,” Harris said.

“Good luck,” Trump responded before Harris returned to her podium.

It was a move to assert dominance that, in the past, Trump himself would regularly use. 

Follow live politics coverage here

Harris going on the offensive in that initial exchange was emblematic of much of the ensuing 90 minutes, which ultimately ended up being a stunning juxtaposition to the first presidential debate in June that saw Trump victorious over Joe Biden to the degree that the president dropped out of the race.

The debate amounted to a missed opportunity for many Trump allies, who hoped that a solid performance would turn the page on Harris’ “honeymoon” period.

Debates roughly two months apart have had drastically different outcomes for Trump, leaving some of his supporters concerned that his most recent performance could leave him spiraling, while others defended his performance.

“Kamala had the burden of convincing voters she could turn around an economy that is failing due to her tie-breaking votes in the Senate,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a longtime Trump ally who helped him with debate preparations. “She failed to meet the moment, with President Trump effectively reflecting the economic anxieties off Americans.”

“Kamala’s joy doesn’t pay the grocery bills,” he added. “President Trump showed he’s determined to fix what she has broken.”

There was, however, concern even among some who support Trump that his lackluster performance less than two months ahead of Election Day is a self-inflicted wound.

“I know everyone in the world has said this, but the inability or unwillingness to realize when he’s being baited and not fall for it is constantly baffling,” a longtime Republican operative said.

Others inside Trump’s debate camp, who were granted anonymity to speak freely, said that they agree the performance was lackluster, and at times Harris caught him flat-footed, but they were skeptical that during an election cycle in which both sides are already entrenched in their positions that this debate could move many votes.

“It was not his best performance, without question,” one Trump adviser said. “But he did enough to get out, I think, without really losing any votes. Like everything else, the debate will have a short shelf life. People will move on to what’s next.”

Trump has taken part in 18 debates over his three runs for president, making him among the most experienced debate participants in American political history. In nearly all those contests, Trump was a tour de force, using his hyperaggressive style and willingness to flood the zone with lies to take up most of the oxygen in the room and overshadow his opponents. 

“This guy does not play by the rules, which means then he has more options, and when someone has more options, he’s a more challenging person to debate,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told MSNBC before the debate began. “So, I’m not suggesting this is not only high stakes, this is a huge challenge.”

This time, however, those Trump axioms did not play out against Harris, who throughout the night baited the former president into focusing on the sort of grievances — like the size of the crowds at his rallies — that he has long fixated on, and conspiratorial falsehoods — like Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating family pets — that Trump advisers hoped he would avoid in order to focus on a Harris record that is replete with policy position changes.

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said during an answer related to immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

In a brief appearance in the spin room after the debate, Trump doubled down on the debunked story, which was started by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, and has been rebutted by local officials.

In that same exchange with reporters, Trump said it was his “best debate ever.”

The perception that Trump lost the debate was so overwhelming that even some of his staunchest cheerleaders were unable to spin the performance in its immediate aftermath.

“While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to @RealDonaldTrump @KamalaHarris exceeded most people’s expectations tonight,” Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X on Tuesday night.

Not only has Musk endorsed Trump, but he is also funding a pro-Trump super PAC.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Harris “moved the points a little bit on betting markets,” while three other Republican sources told NBC News that Trump came off as “angry” as Harris pushed his buttons and got him going off on tangents after questions about some of his key policy areas.

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing education reformer and prominent conservative activist, said Harris won the night.

“Harris wins slightly on points,” he posted on social media. “This shouldn’t change the race significantly either way, but she was able to de-risk this event and now the Right has lost the narrative that Harris is refusing media or engagement. Will be interesting to see if she goes silent again.”

Blaming ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis did become a common theme for Trump supporters looking to try to put a positive spin on the night’s events. On a handful of occasions, the pair fact-checked Trump in real time, something his supporters said was evidence of bias — especially because they did it noticeably less for Harris. She brought far fewer falsehoods to the debate.

“I’m still perplexed why any Republican candidate for president submits themselves to activist moderators who are driven to integers and undermine any conservative Republican in any debate,” said Ed McMullen, a South Carolina-based Trump fundraiser who served as ambassador to Switzerland during Trump’s first term in office. 

He said there should have been less of a focus on abortion, which has been a key issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and has, so far, been an issue that has benefited Democrats politically.

“People are suffering in this economy and left and right politicos want to talk about abortion,” McMullen said. “The states now have the responsibility to act — get it over with. Time to move on and face the issues that real people are affected by every day.”

Others were critical specifically of the debate moderators’ failure to focus enough on Harris’ own background, which includes her own 2020 run for president where she staked out several positions in the Democratic primary that are now seen as far left in a general election.

Those positions, many of which were outlined in recent CNN reporting about an American Civil Liberties Union candidate questionnaire that Harris filed out at the time, include saying that she supported using taxpayer dollars to pay for gender transition surgeries for immigrants in federal prison.

“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition,” Harris wrote. “That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.”

It became a much-discussed topic of conversation among Trump supporters.

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“Do you think it’s strange that someone could support something as radical as sex change operations paid for by taxpayers for convicts and illegal immigrants … and not get asked a question about it?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump in a post-debate interview.

“I brought it up,” Trump responded. “They were not so happy when I brought it up.”

Omeed Malik, a veteran Wall Street executive who has pledged to raise $3 million for Trump, said the former president made a “strong case” for his economic message, which includes reducing regulations, cutting taxes, strengthening the border and ending foreign wards.

“In contrast,” he said. “Harris provided canned and rehearsed platitudes unable to defend her administration’s failures around inflation, immigration and foreign policy.”

Adding to the chaos of the night was a post-debate endorsement of Harris from Taylor Swift. The pop star posted on Instagram that she is endorsing Harris because “she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.” 

Swift has 283 million followers on Instagram, far more than the number of people who voted in the 2020 election.

In an early morning call-in to “Fox and Friends,” Trump once again defended his debate performance and predicted Swift would regret her endorsement.

“I am not a Taylor Swift fan, he said, adding, “She will probably pay a price for it in the market.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Harris-Trump debate nabs at least 57.5M viewers, per early ratings
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• NBC’s Steve Kornacki evaluates Trump’s performance and future strategy

“I don’t want my place and my platform to be used to endorse a candidate or do whatever, either way,” Mahomes said before heading out to practice for Sunday’s game against Cincinnati. “I think my place is to inform people to get registered to vote. It’s to inform people to do their own research and then make the best decision for them and their family.”

The comments from the three-time Super Bowl champion came less than a day after Taylor Swift, who is dating his Chiefs teammate Travis Kelce and has become friends with the Mahomes family, endorsed Harris for the presidency.

Swift’s endorsement led Trump to say in a phone interview with Fox News on Wednesday: “I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better, if you want to know the truth. She’s a big Trump fan. I like Brittany. I think Brittany is great.”

Trump began referencing Brittany Mahomes last month, after she had liked — and then unliked — an Instagram post by the Republican presidential nominee outlining the “2024 GOP platform.” Trump posted soon afterward on Truth Social: “I want to thank beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me.”

Brittany Mahomes has since stayed out of the political spotlight except to respond to critics on social media, saying in a post: “To be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood.”

Patrick Mahomes sidestepped a question Wednesday specifically about Trump’s references to his wife, saying instead that “at the end of the day, it’s about me and my family and how we treat other people.”

“I think you see Brittany does a lot in the community. I do a lot in the community to help bring people up, and give people an opportunity to use their voice,” he said. “In political times people are going to use stuff here and there, but I can’t let that affect how I go about my business every single day of my life, and trying to live it to the best of my ability.”

Swift became close with the Mahomes family last year, when she began to date Kelce, often sharing the same suite during games at Arrowhead Stadium. Some thought a rift had developed between them when they were not seen together during the Chiefs’ season-opening win over the Ravens last week, but they showed up together in New York last weekend to watch the U.S. Open.

“Whenever I’m hanging out with whoever, I’m not thinking about their political views or anything like that,” Patrick Mahomes said. “I’m thinking about the people and how they treat other people, and I was with a lot of great people this week.”

Swift offered her support to Harris shortly after the presidential debate ended Tuesday night, a potentially significant coup for the Democratic nominee given Swift’s dedicated following among young women, an important demographic for the November election. The endorsement also came after Trump’s campaign shared a collage of AI-generated images purporting to show Swift fans supporting him.

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“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post, which had been liked more than 9 million times by Wednesday afternoon.

Trump’s posts “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” Swift wrote. She added that “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice.”

Mahomes declined to speak specifically about his own political beliefs, instead talking more broadly about national unity.

“You’ve seen my history. I’ve come up with people from every aspect of life, from every background,” the Chiefs quarterback said, “and the best thing about football locker rooms and kind of how I’ve grown up in baseball locker rooms is people can come together and achieve something, and achieve a common goal. We talked about it a while back. If we can do that as a nation, we can get the best out of each other, so that’s something I do every single day.”

Within moments of leaving the debate stage on Tuesday night with a performance that some Republicans were quick to pan, Trump began dismissing the idea he would participate in another debate — a reversal from his previous talking point that he was willing to do several debates and it was Harris who was hiding.

Trump’s campaign said before the debate that he had already accepted debate invitations from Fox News and NBC News, and that Harris had not. But in post-debate interviews, Trump was noncommittal. He claimed victory on Truth Social, saying, “Why would I do a Rematch?”

“When you win the debate, I don’t know that I want to do another debate,” the former president told Fox News on Wednesday morning.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said he would participate in debates with NBC News or Fox News.

Trump viewed his first debate of the season against Joe Biden as a resounding success — not only did Republicans say he demonstrated restraint, but Biden’s performance ultimately led to him stepping aside. Fresh off the perceived win, pushing Harris into several debates seemed like a strategic goal for Trump, and Harris rebuffed a request for one on Fox News in early September.

But Tuesday night’s debate did not go like the earlier faceoff.

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Fact-checking the presidential debate between Trump and Harris

“She was exquisitely well prepared. She laid traps and he chased every rabbit down every hole instead of talking about the things that he should have been talking about,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally turned critic, said in an interview with ABC News after the debate.

Trump’s allies who were more defensive of his performance dismissed criticism that he had a bad debate by blaming the moderators. One said that the highlight of the evening was the final minute, when he delivered a closing statement. Trump told reporters on Tuesday night that he might consider another if it were run by a “fair” network.

Harris has not accepted a second debate with Trump, but her campaign appeared more open on Wednesday.

“That was fun,” Brian Fallon, a top spokesperson, wrote on X. “Let’s do it again in October.”

Failure by the candidates to meet for more than one debate would defy modern historical precedent.

Trump’s campaign had warned in a pre-debate call that Tuesday’s showdown might be the “the one and only debate” that Trump and Harris took part in, placing the onus on Harris.

Now Trump’s campaign said he is waiting to make a final decision.

“We accepted Fox, they rejected it. We accepted ABC, they waffled on the rules and finally agreed. We accepted Sept. 25 NBC and they rejected,” Trump senior advisor Brian Hughes said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday. “So President Trump said he will determine it later.” (A spokesperson for NBC News did not respond when asked if the invitation from the network still stood and who has accepted.)

Hughes said Harris had “missed the moment” and still not accounted for her record in the White House, and said this was the reason for any enthusiasm by her team for a rematch.

“But the most important indication here is that Harris failed to explain why she hasn’t already done the things she claims she cares about. A failed record of nearly 4 years is on view, and she failed to lie her way out of owning it,” Hughes said. “She missed the moment and lost, so it’s no wonder her team is scrambling to try a do over.”

Eric Levine, a New York-based Republican fundraiser, said Trump needed to return to the debate stage if only to squeeze out better answers from his opponent after the moderators on Tuesday failed to do so.

“He missed opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to eviscerate her,” said Levine.

Still, Levine said he appreciated the challenge awaiting Trump if they face off again. “She’s like a hologram. Getting substance from her is like trying to nail jello to a wall,” he added.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• After years of threats, Trump still doesn’t have a plan to replace Obamacare
• Harris-Trump debate nabs at least 57.5M viewers, per early ratings
• Trump’s conspiracy-laced debate performance concerns some allies

When asked the sole debate question on climate Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “young people of America care deeply about this issue,” and added that the United States has increased domestic production of oil to historic highs, a fact that will contribute to global warming. Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, didn’t answer the question, instead saying incorrectly that the administration of President Joe Biden and Harris is “building big auto plants in Mexico, in many cases owned by China.”

While climate was not front and center, statements made by both candidates — on fracking, energy policy and renewables — provided windows into major climate policy issues. What to know about key climate topics covered — and not covered — during Tuesday’s debate.

Fracking

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling method used to extract oil and natural gas from deep underground bedrock using a highly pressurized liquid. The technique is part of what allowed the U.S. to become the world’s top producer of oil. As of March, the country produced more crude oil than any nation ever for the past six years, according to the Energy Information Administration.

On Tuesday, Trump falsely said about Harris: “If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on Day 1,” arguing that her administration would harm the state and nation’s economy. Without a law approved by Congress, a president can only ban fracking on federal lands, which make up about 2% of the state of Pennsylvania, where the debate took place.

Harris said during her 2020 campaign for president that she opposed fracking. But lately, including during the debate, Harris said she would not ban the practice if she is elected. Though Harris said her values have not changed, the discussion of fracking was notable because the drilling method does not align with efforts to switch to clean energy, which Harris also says she champions.

Oil and natural gas are fossil fuels, the burning of which produce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that warm the planet.

Energy policy

During the debate, Harris also called for investment in “diverse” sources of energy, “so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”

After Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change during his first term, the Biden-Harris administration reentered the global pact aimed at reducing emissions. The administration also set a target to slash U.S. emissions 50% by 2030 and put forth policy to accelerate clean energy projects and shift away from fossil fuels.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021, has provisions related to climate change, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is the most sweeping climate law in the nation’s history, pouring billions of dollars into the clean energy workforce that has prompted a massive buildout of manufacturing facilities. It includes production tax credits for electricity produced from renewables, including wind and solar.

But these policies alone won’t be enough for the U.S. to reach its goal of cutting carbon pollution in half, nor do they stop the fossil fuel industry from having opportunities to expand on federal lands before renewables can be built.

Renewable energies

During the debate, Trump falsely claimed that under Harris there would “be no fossil fuels” and the country would “go back to windmills.” At one point, Trump called himself a “fan” of solar but then criticized solar farms that take up large plots of land.

Solar power can be generated on a large or small scale, but even the largest solar farms use a tiny fraction of the land used for agriculture in the U.S. Experts say wind and solar, both clean energies, will be key to tackling the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the climate crisis, causing substantial damages to humans and ecosystems alike.

Last year, 30% of the world’s electricity was produced with renewables and the U.S. has committed to tripling renewables by 2030 in order to do its part in addressing climate change.

Some key issues not discussed

Permitting of new energy projects in the U.S. has not gotten much attention throughout the election cycle, but it’s important because it can make or break the nation’s ability to meet clean energy targets.

Wind and solar power can contribute millions of dollars in tax revenue per year to rural communities, an Associated Press analysis found. But first those projects have to get approved in local governments, a process out of the federal government’s control. Misinformation runs rampant, and communities can turn against those projects.

For instance, wind developers told the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in a January report at least a quarter of applications to build wind projects were canceled in the last five years, with local rules and community opposition cited as some of the leading reasons.

Meanwhile, during the debate, insurance only got a brief mention by Harris, as part of a dig at Trump.

“The former president has said that climate change is a hoax,” she said. “And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.”

Residents living in areas prone to disasters like flooding and wildfires are having a hard time getting insurance at all, and federal policies may force people to pay more, an AP review found.

Electric vehicles also got little attention Tuesday, though Trump raised the idea of all critical minerals coming from China, which would include lithium and nickel. China currently dominates global EV battery production. Though EVs can run on clean electricity, mining for their batteries is an environmental and human rights concern.

Biden has created U.S. tax credits for EV purchases. While Trump has said the current administration’s efforts have resulted in an EV “mandate,” that is not true. Automakers do have to sell some electric vehicles to meet Environmental Protection Agency standards, but those regulations can also be met with more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars.

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Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.

A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield’s main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city’s annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.

Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”

“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.

Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at times in recent days at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.

“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.

The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were previously spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders whose strange behavior is a shock to American culture.

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“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at Tuesday’s presidential debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged during the debate by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.

Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges the city faces.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday that he would send law enforcement and millions of dollars in health care resources to Springfield as it faces a surge in Haitian arrivals.

Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.

The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. on June 3 could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status to spare people from being deported to strife-torn countries..

Springfield, about 45 miles from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the demand for labor. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population.

The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Wednesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.

Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.

On Monday, Vance posted on X. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he said. The next day, he posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office had received inquiries from residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

Long-time Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims “preposterous.”

“It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It’s dehumanizing a community,” he said of the accusations against the city’s Haitian residents.

Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political.

“My view is that’s their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America,” she said.

With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.

“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S.

Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.

Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, and Noreen Nasir in New York, contributed.

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

The officials also said that repeated outreach to the Postal Service to resolve the issues had failed and that the widespread nature of the problems made it clear these were “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”

The letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy came from two groups that represent top election administrators in all 50 states. They told DeJoy, “We have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns.”

“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service,” they added. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

A message seeking a response from the U.S. Postal Service was not immediately returned.

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The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail.

The letter comes less than two weeks after DeJoy said in an interview that the Postal Service was ready to handle a flood of mail ballots expected as part of this November’s presidential election and as former President Donald Trump continues to sow doubts about U.S. elections by falsely claiming he won in 2020.

That year, amid the global pandemic, election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.

While it’s likely that number will be smaller now, many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it. And both Democrats and Republicans have launched efforts to push supporters to vote early, either in person or by mail to “bank” their votes before Election Day on Nov. 5.

The letter went out on the day the first mailed ballots of this year’s general election were being sent, to absentee voters in Alabama.

Postal Service officials told reporters last month that almost 98% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days in 2020, and in 2022, the figure was nearly 99%. DeJoy said he would like to inch closer to 100% this election cycle and that the Postal Service is better positioned to handle ballots than four years ago.

But officials in rural states have been critical of the Postal Service for years as it has consolidated mail-processing centers to cut its costs and financial losses.

In addition to being signed by the current and incoming presidents for both groups of election officials, the leaders of groups that represent local election officials in 25 states were listed.

The election officials warned that any election mail returned to an election office as undeliverable could trigger a process outlined in federal law for maintaining accurate lists of registered voters. That means a voter could be moved to “inactive” status and be required to take additional action to verify their address to participate in the election, the officials said in the letter.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, the recent past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, sent his own letter in recent days to DeJoy. He said nearly 1,000 ballots from his state’s Aug. 6 primary election couldn’t be counted because they arrived too late or without postmarks — and more continue to come in.

“The Pony Express is more efficient at this point,” Schwab posted on the social media platform X in late August.

Schwab and other Kansas election officials also have said some ballots arrive on time but without postmarks, which keeps them from being counted under Kansas law. What’s more, Schwab told DeJoy, local postal clerks have told election officials that they can’t add postmarks later even if it’s clear that the Postal Service handled the ballot ahead of the mail-in deadline.

Kansas will count ballots postmarked on or before Election Day if they arrive within three days. The Republican-controlled Legislature created that grace period in 2017 over concerns that mail delivery had slowed after the Postal Service shut down seven mail-processing centers in the state. That left much of the state’s mail handled through larger centers in Denver, Amarillo, Texas, and Kansas City, Missouri.

Schwab has promoted the use of local ballot drop boxes for voting in advance, breaking with other Republicans who have suggested without evidence that they can be sources of fraud. Schwab has long said the boxes are more secure than the U.S. mail.

“Keep your ballot out of the hands of the federal government!” he advised voters in a post on X after the August primary.

In their letter Wednesday, election officials said colleagues across the U.S. have reported that Postal Service staff, from managers to mail carriers, are uninformed about the service’s policies for handling election-related mail, give them inconsistent guidance and misdeliver ballots.

“There is no amount of proactive communication election officials can do to account for USPS’s inability to meet their own service delivery timelines,” the officials wrote. “State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS.”

Cassidy reported from Detroit.

Before the ceremony started, Trump and Harris shook hands and greeted each other.

President Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Ohio Sen. JD Vance flanked the two candidates. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to make the connection between Harris and Trump on Wednesday.

The night before, the candidates sparred in their first, and possibly only, debate.

It was the first time the two political leaders had met each other.

As they walked on stage Tuesday night, Harris walked towards Trump, held out her hand and introduced herself.

“Kamala Harris,” she said. “Let’s have a good debate.”

Trump shook her hand and said, “Nice to see you. Have fun.”

The two candidates then took their spots behind their podiums.

In their debate in June, Biden and Trump did not shake hands with each other.

Wednesday morning in New York, Trump and Harris shook hands once again. It was unclear what they said to each other.

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post, which included a link to a voter registration website.

Swift has a dedicated following among young women, a key demographic in the November election, and her latest tour has generated more than $1 billion in ticket sales. In a half hour, the post received more than 2.3 million likes.

The viral post also included an intentional sign off.

Swift included a picture of herself holding her cat Benjamin Button, and she signed the message “Childless Cat Lady.” The remark is a reference to three-year-old comments made by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, about women without children not having an equal stake in the country’s future.

During Vance’s 2021 bid for the Senate in Ohio, he said in a Fox News interview that “we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats,” and referred to them as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He said that included Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance had said.

Harris became stepmother to two teenagers when she married entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. And Buttigieg announced he and his husband adopted infant twins in September 2021, more than a month before Vance made those comments.

A Harris senior campaign official said the endorsement was not coordinated with the campaign. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, appeared to learn about the endorsement in the middle of a live interview on MSNBC. As Rachel Maddow read the text, Walz broke into a smile and patted his chest.

“That was eloquent. And it was clear,” Walz said. “And that’s the kind of courage we need in America to stand up.”

Swift wrote that her endorsement was partially prompted by Trump’s decision to post AI-generated pictures suggesting that she had endorsed him. One showed Swift dressed as Uncle Sam, and the text said “Taylor wants YOU to VOTE for DONALD TRUMP.”

Trump’s posts “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” Swift wrote. She added that “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice.”

The Trump campaign dismissed Swift’s endorsement.

“This is further evidence that the Democrat Party has unfortunately become a party of the wealthy elites,” said spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.

“There’s many Swifties for Trump out there in America,” she said, herself included.

Swift’s endorsement was not exactly a surprise. In 2020, she supported President Joe Biden, and she cheered for Harris in her debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. She also was openly critical of Trump, saying he had stoked “the fires of white supremacy and racism.”

Swift is a popular figure nationwide, but especially among Democrats. An October 2023 Fox News poll found that 55% of voters overall, including 68% of Democrats, said they had a favorable view of Swift. Republicans were divided, with 43% having a favorable opinion and 45% an unfavorable one.

AP VoteCast suggests that a partisan divide on Swift was apparent as early as 2018. That’s the year Swift made her first political endorsement, supporting Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate over Republican Marsha Blackburn.

VoteCast found that among Tennessee voters that year, 55% of Democrats and just 19% of Republicans said they had a favorable opinion of Swift. Blackburn won by a comfortable margin in the deep red state.

Swift is the leading nominee at Wednesday’s MTV Video Music Awards. While it’s unclear whether Swift will attend the show in New York, she could use any acceptance speeches to elaborate on her support of Harris.

The event was shifted a day later to accommodate Tuesday’s debate, and MTV has a long history of encouraging voter participation.

Heading into the debate, Harris appeared to have more to gain — and more to lose. A New York Times/Siena poll found that 28% said they “need to learn more about Kamala Harris,” compared to just 9% who said the same about Trump. Overall, Trump led Harris by 1 point among likely voters, with 5% unsure or not backing either.

The debate covered a wide range of issues and featured a series of intense exchanges between the two bitter rivals. Harris presented herself as a pragmatic problem-solver and diminished Trump as a wannabe dictator who can’t keep his rally crowds engaged. Trump attacked Harris as a radical and frequently returned to his theme of criticizing migration, sometimes veering into conspiracy theories.

Here are five key takeaways from the debate.

Harris leans in quickly on lowering costs

Harris used the first question to lean into her plan for an “opportunity economy,” seeking to cut into Trump’s advantage on the issue with swing voters by presenting herself as the candidate of the middle class while calling Trump a corporate tax-cutter.

“I was raised as a middle-class kid, and I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America,” Harris said. “We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children, and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time, so that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy a car seat, buy clothes for their children.”

Trump for his part, blasted the Biden-Harris economy, saying, “I’ve never seen a worse period of time.” He also defended his tariff plans and called Harris “a Marxist,” even as he accused her of copying his policies: “I was going to send her a MAGA hat.”

Both candidates seek the mantle of change

In the opening minutes of the debate, both rivals sought to claim the mantle of change in a country full of voters who are hungry for it.

“In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook: a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” Harris said of Trump. “What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025, that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected.”

Harris returned to that message later in the debate: “The American people are exhausted with the same entire playbook.” Harris went back to it later when criticizing Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

“Let’s turn the page on this. Let’s not go back,” she said.

Trump, meanwhile, sought to portray Harris as a continuation of President Joe Biden on immigration and the economy.

On migrants coming into the United States illegally, Trump said, “These are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous.”

And on the economy, Trump said: “She copied Biden’s plan. And it’s like four sentences. Run, spot, run.”

Trump attacks as Harris defends policy shifts

A significant weakness for Harris in her 2024 campaign has been the left-wing positions she took as a Democratic presidential primary candidate in 2020 that she has since abandoned or backtracked from — such as banning fracking, a mandatory buyback of semi-automatic firearms and decriminalizing border crossings. She was asked about her evolution again.

“I made that very clear on 2020 I will not ban fracking,” Harris said. “I have not banned fracking as vice president. In fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the inflation Reduction Act which opened new leases for fracking.”

Harris added, “My values have not changed.”

Trump sought to capitalize.

“She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this. She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania,” Trump said. “If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.”

Trump dodges on vetoing federal abortion ban

Trump and Harris engaged in a lengthy clash on abortion, during which the former president declined twice to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one.

“Well, I won’t have to,” Trump replied. He said he’s “not signing” such a ban because there’s “no reason to,” arguing that “everybody” is happy with the termination of Roe v. Wade.

When told that his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, said he would veto such a ban, Trump contradicted Vance. the Ohio senator made his comments recently on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness. JD — and I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking to me,” he said, arguing that Congress won’t pass any major abortion bill.

“I pledge to you: when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it in to law,” she said. “But understand, if Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban.”

Harris baits Trump into missed opportunities

Harris came into the debate with the hope of rattling Trump, and she appeared to succeed at some moments, baiting the president into a defensive posture rather than highlighting his strongest issue: concerns about inflation and the cost of living.

She attacked him on abortion rights, linked him to the right-wing policy blueprint Project 2025, highlighted his praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping around the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Both times, he jumped in to defend himself. She invited Americans to watch a Trump rally.

“He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer.’ And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” Harris said, looking into the camera.

That didn’t sit well with Trump, who said he has “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics” and went on a tangent by citing a debunked conspiracy theory about some migrants eating pets. “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said.

Trump bashes Biden, sparking pithy Harris reply

Trump’s performance included a wide sprinkling of attacks on Biden, who dropped out after his disastrous late-June debate showing against Trump. He criticized Biden’s handling of classified documents, knocked him for opposing the Keystone XL pipeline and called the Biden’s administration “the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.”

“Where is our president? We don’t even know if he’s the president,” Trump said toward the end of the debate. “They threw him out of a campaign like a dog. We don’t even know. Is he our president? We have a president that doesn’t know he’s alive.”

Harris replied, “It is important to remind the former president: You’re not running against Joe Biden, you are running against me.”

When Trump later said, “She is Biden,” Harris responded: “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden. And I am certainly not Donald Trump.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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She signed the post “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” in reference to resurfaced JD Vance’s statements that have become a rallying cry among some women voters, and shared a photo of her with one of her well-known cats.

Swift’s political leanings have been the subject of speculation for weeks, heightened after former President Donald Trump re-shared a fake AI image to his Truth Social account suggesting he had her support.

Swift previously gave her support to President Joe Biden and Harris during the 2020 presidential race.

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades,” Swift wrote.

Swift, 34, also told her 283 million Instagram followers that she had “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make,” before calling on them to make sure to register to vote.

In late August, Trump posted “I accept!” on his Truth Social account, along with a carousel of images that appeared to be of Swift, and at least some of which appeared to be AI-generated.

Swift seemed to confirm this in her post.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” she wrote.

The Swift endorsement came as a surprise, two Harris campaign officials told NBC News.

One official said this added to what they view as a “decisive victory” tonight and speaks to Harris’ ability to attract support.

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The Democratic vice president moved to get under the skin of the former Republican president, provoking him with reminders about the 2020 election loss that he still denies and delivering derisive asides at his other false claims. Harris’ needling prompted Trump to launch into the sort of freewheeling personal attacks and digressions that his advisers and supporters have tried to steer him away from.

The high-pressure matchup after a tumultuous campaign summer offered Americans their most expansive look at a campaign that’s been dramatically changed just hours before the first early presidential ballots will be distributed.

The vice president moved to far more effectively press the Democratic case against Trump than President Joe Biden did in June, presaging a more contentious and competitive race now that Harris is the one taking on Trump.

The pair outlined sharply opposite visions of where the nation is and where they intend to take it if elected. Harris promised tax cuts aimed at the middle class and said she would push to restore a federally guaranteed right to abortion overturned by the Supreme Court two years ago. Trump said his proposed tariffs would help the U.S. stop being cheated by allies on trade and said he would work to swiftly end the Russia-Ukraine war, even if it meant Ukraine didn’t achieve victory on the battlefield.

Harris at times shook her head derisively as Trump spoke, occasionally staring at him with a hand on her chin, while Trump seemed to avoid looking toward the Democrat. Trump hewed closely to his rally talking points and the familiar attacks that have proven popular with his Republican base but his advisers worry don’t appeal to a broader cross section of voters.

In one moment, Harris turned to Trump and said that as vice president, she had spoken to foreign leaders, “And they say you’re a disgrace.”

Trump again denied his loss to President Joe Biden four years ago, when his efforts to overturn the result inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said, “So let’s be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

Trump in turn tried to link Harris to Biden, questioning why she hadn’t acted on her proposed ideas while serving as vice president. “Why hasn’t she done it?” he said. Trump also focused his attacks on Harris over her assignment by Biden to deal with the root causes of illegal migration.

The Republican pledged anew to deport millions of people in the U.S. illegally and warned that Harris was “worse than Biden” and her policies would turn the U.S. into Venezuela.

He repeatedly dismissed her and Biden as weak, and cited the praise of Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán to show that he is a widely respected by leaders around the world, saying Orbán calls him the “most feared person.”

Saying it’s “time to turn the page,” Harris delivered an appeal to Republicans and independents turned off by Trump’s style and his efforts four years ago to overturn the 2020 presidential election, saying there’s a place in her campaign for them “to stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos.”

Trump twice declined to say that it was in the best interest of the U.S. for Ukraine to win its war against Russia. Harris said it was an example of why America’s NATO allies were thankful he was no longer in office, as she and Biden have sent tens of billions of dollars to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s invasion.

As the former president made a series of false claims about migrants, Harris seemed to smirk as he said that migrants are “taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics.”

“Talk about extreme,” Harris responded, when Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats.

The candidates met in a small, blue-lit amphitheater converted into a television studio, with no live audience, meaning there was no rowdy applause, cheers or jeers. The intimate setting — with the candidates’ lecterns positioned less than 10 feet from each other — belied the contentious debate to follow.

As Harris seemed to try to interject during one of his responses, Trump replied, “I’m talking now, sound familiar?” harkening back to a moment when shut down an interruption from then-Vice President Mike Pence.

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Harris sharply criticized Trump for the state of the economy and democracy when he left office, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the nation and after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess,” Harris said. She opened her answer by saying she expects voters to hear “a bunch of lies, grievances and name calling” from her GOP opponent during their 90-minute debate.

Trump, meanwhile, quickly went after Harris for abandoning some of her past liberal positions and said: “She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.” Harris smiled broadly and laughed.

Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.”

As the debate opened, Harris walked up to Trump’s lectern to introduce herself, marking the first time the two had ever met. “Kamala Harris,” she said, extending her hand to Trump, who received it in a handshake — the first presidential debate handshake since the 2016 campaign.

Harris, in zeroing in on one of Trump’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities, laid the end of national abortion rights at Trump’s feet for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving more than 20 states in the country with what she called “Trump abortion bans.”

Harris gave one of her most impassioned answers as she described the ways women have been denied abortion care and other emergency care and said Trump would assign a national abortion ban if he wins.

Trump declared it “a lie,” and said, “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”

The Republican has said he wants the issue left to the states.

Harris used a question about her plans to improve the economy by saying she would extend the tax cut for families with children and a tax deduction for small businesses while attacking Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs as a “sales tax” on goods that the American people will ultimately pay.

Trump was stone-faced during her answer but retorted: “I have no sales tax. That’s in incorrect statement. She knows that.”

Trump, who is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House continued to call Harris a “Marxist,” and said “Everyone knows she’s a Marxist.”

Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

“I read where she was not Black,” Trump said when asked about comments questioning Harris’ race, and then he added a minute later, “and then I read that she was Black.” He seemed to suggest her race was a choice, saying twice, “That’s up to her.”

“I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” Harris responded.

Harris said Trump has a long history of racial division, going back to when his family’s company was investigated for refusing to rent to black people decades ago. She also mentioned that he called for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five,” who were falsely accused of rape, and spread false “birther” theories about President Barack Obama.

“I think the American people want better than that, want better than this,” she said, nodding toward Trump.

Harris hit Trump on one of his biggest sources of pride, his freewheeling campaign rallies. Harris noted how at the events, Trump, as he meanders through subjects, will sometimes muse on “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and whether “windmills cause cancer,” and then said that if you watch his events “you will also notice that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

“The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. Your needs, your dreams and your desires.”

Trump tried to use his next question to respond by accusing Harris of having no one attending her rallies except the people that he claimed, without evidence, that she has bused in and paid to be there.

“She can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” he said.

In rapid fashion after the June 27 debate between Trump and Biden, the incumbent bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.

The debate subjected Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

Trump at one point launched into an attack on Biden, questioning his mental acuity by making the claim that Biden “doesn’t even know he’s alive.”

Harris quickly tried to turn it around to make Trump look less than sharp.

“First of all, I think it’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,” she said.

The senator from Ohio, as well as other Republican lawmakers and several conservative commentators, have in recent days asserted without evidence that the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Haiti had created chaos in Springfield. 

In a post on X, Vance wrote Monday that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” 

The Springfield Police Division said in a statement that they were aware of the “rumors” and had no information to support them. 

“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the police said in a statement emailed to NBC News. 

They added that they had no information to support similar assertions about immigrants squatting or disrupting traffic. 

“Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic,” the police said. 

After NBC News asked the Vance campaign about the lack of evidence for his claim, a spokesperson said that the senator had received “a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield” and that “his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them.” 

The spokesperson did not say, however, whether any of those calls or emails had included evidence of violence against pets, and did not offer proof of Vance’s statements.

There is a long history of conservative politicians and pundits denigrating Haitian immigrants in particular, including with baseless allegations of cannibalism, according to historians who have studied the former French colony. 

Viles Dorsainvil, president of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, a nonprofit organization in Springfield, condemned the recent rumors as uninformed and racist. 

“It’s just bigotry, discrimination and racism,” he said. “There is a group of people who have been fabricating some news just to denigrate Haitians.” 

Dorsainvil said his organization helps immigrants with job applications, legal support and more. He added that Haitians have moved to Ohio because of the gang conflict and political turmoil in their home country. 

“They are looking for a place to raise their family and look for a job. But it happens that the city has not been prepared for the influx of Haitians coming here,” he said. 

The false claims about threats to pets began going viral on social media over the weekend, fueled in part by a fourth-hand story that appeared to come from a Facebook group focused on local crime in Springfield. 

The group was set to private on Monday, but according to screenshots posted on X, someone in the Facebook group posted that “my neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat.” The poster went on to describe Haitians allegedly taking the cat for food. 

Conservative pundit Charlie Kirk posted a screenshot of the Facebook post Sunday on X, and within 24 hours, it had received more than 3 million views. 

The rumor was picked up by other right-wing commentators, including Jack Posobiec, who posted about it on X more than 30 times Sunday and Monday. Others echoed the allegations, including X owner Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. 

“Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Cruz wrote on X, as a caption on a photo of cats. 

By midday Monday, Haitians were the No. 1 trending topic in the U.S. on X. 

In his post on X, Vance attributed his information about pets to unspecified “reports” and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame for Haitian immigrants’ “generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” In 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with tackling the “root causes” of migration. 

Vance also asserted without evidence that the Haitian population in question is made up of illegal immigrants. 

A Springfield city website says that’s not true. “Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program,” the website says, referring to a federal humanitarian program for migrants. 

Representatives for Kirk, Posobiec, Musk, Cruz and Jordan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

X and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

As many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived in the Springfield area in recent years, and although they’ve helped to revitalize the city, there have been protests, The New York Times reported this month. In May, a jury found a Haitian immigrant guilty of causing a school bus crash that killed an 11-year-old boy.

NBC News’ Alec Hernández contributed.

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When they do, they’ll both be asked adhere to a set of rules the candidates agreed upon last week.

As the debate gets underway, here’s a look at what to expect.

Here’s a look at what to expect:

What time is the debate tonight?

The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. CT on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

It will last for an estimated 90 minutes.

List of debate rules

The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.

According to ABC News, the candidates will stand behind lecterns, will not make opening statements and will not be allowed to bring notes during the 90-minute debate. David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the event.

“Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network noted.

A Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning around the debate, said a candidate who repeatedly interrupts will receive a warning from a moderator, and both candidates’ microphones may be unmuted if there is significant crosstalk so the audience can understand what’s happening.

After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens. There will be no audience, written notes or any topics or questions shared with campaigns or candidates in advance, the network said.

Here’s the full list of rules:

– The debate will be 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.

– The two seated moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, will be the only people asking questions.

– A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday, Sept. 3, to determine podium placement and order of closing statements; former President Donald Trump won the coin toss and chose to select the order of statements. The former president will offer the last closing statement, and Vice President Harris selected the right podium position on screen (stage left).

– Candidates will be introduced by the moderators.

– The candidates enter upon introduction from opposite sides of the stage; the incumbent party will be introduced first.

– No opening statements; closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.

– Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate.

– Props or prewritten notes are not allowed onstage.

– No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.

– Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

– Candidates will have two-minute answers to questions, two-minute rebuttals, and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications, or responses.

– Candidates’ microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate.

– Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other.

– Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.

– Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion.

– There will be no audience in the room.

Trump reluctantly agreed to the mute function when he faced Biden in June, but after that debate, his team determined it was a net positive if voters did not hear from the Republican former president while his opponent was speaking. Harris’ team was pushing to return to a normal format without mute buttons.

Are other debates planned?

Though the September debate is currently the only debate currently planned between Harris and Trump, Harris’ campaign said that a potential October debate was contingent on Trump attending the Sept. 10 debate.

In addition to the planned Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance also agreed to a debate, scheduled to be hosted by CBS News on Oct. 1.

When is Election Day?

Voters will officially head to the polls just over a month later on Nov. 5 for Election Day, though early voting starts significantly earlier in many states.

In Illinois, early voting will begin on Sept. 26 and will run through Nov. 4, with Election Day voting held at a designated polling place from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 5.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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Here are the moderators of the presidential debate

“World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir and “World News Tonight” Sunday anchor and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis will moderate the debate.

Muir joined ABC News in August 2003. Davis joined ABC News in June 2007.

Where and when is the presidential debate?

The first 2024 presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is set to be held at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Sept. 10.

There will be no audience in the room.

The planned debate comes nearly three weeks after the conclusion of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, in which Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination after a turbulent month kickstarted by Biden’s withdrawal.

What time does it start and how can I watch?

The debate is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET.

NBC News will broadcast the full debate live and offer extensive primetime coverage beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie will anchor a pre-debate primetime special starting at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, followed by a live presentation of the ABC News-hosted debate at 9 p.m. ET.

Holt and Guthrie will continue special coverage following the debate.

After a disastrous performance in the first general election debate of this cycle in June, President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, upending the campaign in its closing months and kicking off the rapid-fire process that allowed Harris to rise as Democrats’ nominee in his place.

As was the case for the June debate, there will be no audience present.

Pennsylvania is perhaps the nation’s premier swing state, and both candidates have spent significant time campaigning across Pennsylvania. Trump was holding a rally in Butler, in western Pennsylvania, in mid-July when he was nearly assassinated by a gunman perched on a nearby rooftop. Harris chose Philadelphia as the spot where she unveiled Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in August.

In 2020, it was Pennsylvania’s electoral votes that put Biden over the top and propelled him into the White House, four years after Trump won the state. Biden’s victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed the processing of some ballots, and the Trump campaign mounted several legal challenges.

An estimated 51.3 million people watched Biden and Trump in June. But that was before many people were truly tuned into the election, and the potential rematch of the 2020 campaign was drawing little enthusiasm.

Tuesday’s debate will almost certainly reach more people, whether or not it approaches the record debate audience of 84 million for the first face-off between Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016.

Here’s a look at what to expect:

When is the presidential debate?

The presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump takes place at 8 p.m. CT/9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

The planned debate comes nearly three weeks after the conclusion of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, in which Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination after a turbulent month kickstarted by Biden’s withdrawal.

How to watch the presidential debate

Will mics be on or off? Full list of debate rules

The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.

According to ABC News, the candidates will stand behind lecterns, will not make opening statements and will not be allowed to bring notes during the 90-minute debate. David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the event.

“Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network noted.

A Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning around the debate, said a candidate who repeatedly interrupts will receive a warning from a moderator, and both candidates’ microphones may be unmuted if there is significant crosstalk so the audience can understand what’s happening.

After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens. There will be no audience, written notes or any topics or questions shared with campaigns or candidates in advance, the network said.

Here’s the full list of rules:

– The debate will be 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.

– The two seated moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, will be the only people asking questions.

– A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday, Sept. 3, to determine podium placement and order of closing statements; former President Donald Trump won the coin toss and chose to select the order of statements. The former president will offer the last closing statement, and Vice President Harris selected the right podium position on screen (stage left).

– Candidates will be introduced by the moderators.

– The candidates enter upon introduction from opposite sides of the stage; the incumbent party will be introduced first.

– No opening statements; closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.

– Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate.

– Props or prewritten notes are not allowed onstage.

– No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.

– Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

– Candidates will have two-minute answers to questions, two-minute rebuttals, and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications, or responses.

– Candidates’ microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate.

– Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other.

– Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.

– Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion.

– There will be no audience in the room.

Are other debates planned?

Though the September debate is currently the only debate currently planned between Harris and Trump, Harris’ campaign said that a potential October debate was contingent on Trump attending the Sept. 10 debate.

In addition to the planned Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance also agreed to a debate, scheduled to be hosted by CBS News on Oct. 1.

When is Election Day?

Voters will officially head to the polls just over a month later Tuesday, Nov. 5, for Election Day, though early voting starts significantly earlier in many states.

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The threat was issued in a post on Truth Social, his social media website, and repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, accusing Democrats of “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery.”

“The 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” he wrote.

He continued, “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

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The threat was one of the most wide-ranging that he’s made while running for president after his 2020 defeat — going beyond threatening old foes and issuing warnings to those involved with the current election.

While he spent much of the 2016 campaign threatening to jail his opponent Hillary Clinton, he tends not to go after people on the periphery, like donors and election workers.

Election workers across the country have been subject to threats, most famously Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two election workers whose entire lives were uprooted when Trump and his allies targeted them after the 2020 election with false accusations of fraud.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump began making baseless warnings of election interference that grew louder after he lost and culminated in a mob attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to block certification of Biden’s election. He’s begun making similar statements ahead of the 2024 election.

He also emphasized the GOP’s focus on election integrity this cycle during a speech Saturday in Wisconsin, suggesting that if Republicans stop Democrats from cheating, he does not need to continue campaigning. 

“We gotta stop the cheating. If we stop that cheating, if we don’t let them cheat, I don’t even have to campaign anymore,” Trump said. “We’re going to win by so much. In the meantime, too big to rig, too big to rig.”

Trump and his allies filed dozens of unsuccessful cases after the 2020 election in an attempt to overturn the results. Some Democrats say that Republicans’ new legal fights in battleground states ahead of the November election raise concerns that Republicans are attempting to sow seeds doubts about the result if Donald Trump loses.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign could not immediately be reached on Saturday night to provide additional context regarding Trump’s plan.

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On Saturday, they took their campaign against the conservative Project 2025 blueprint, written by allies of Republican Donald Trump, to the sky above college football stadiums in key swing states.

Democratic National Committee -sponsored banners pulled by small airplanes flew Saturday over Michigan Stadium, where the defending national champion Wolverines lost to Texas, and at home games for Penn State and Wisconsin. A banner set to fly over Georgia’s home game was grounded due to weather.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her allies have spent months warning about Project 2025, betting that the initiative makes Trump seem especially extreme. More than 900 pages and produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the plan lays out how Trump in his second term might do everything from firing tens of thousands of federal workers to abolishing government departments to imposing new restrictions on abortion and diversity initiatives.

Trump has rejected a direct connection to Project 2025, though he’s also endorsed some of its key ideas.

Saturday’s gambit aimed to put Democratic messaging over stadiums with a total capacity of 380,000-plus, with tens of thousands of fans more in the vicinity of each game.

“JD Vance ‘hearts’ Ohio State + Project 2025,” read the message going over Michigan Stadium, suggesting Trump’s running mate loves the project as much as he famously does Michigan’s hated archrival.

In Wisconsin, which hosted South Dakota, the message was “Jump Around! Beat Trump + Project 2025,” a nod to fans jumping with enough ferocity to shake Camp Randall Stadium when House of Pain’s “Jump Around” plays between the third and fourth quarters.

Penn State’s Bowling Green matchup got more general messages urging fans to “Beat Trump, Sack Project 2025.

Banners started flying around four hours before each kickoff, said DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman. The Trump campaign did not answer a message Saturday seeking comment.

Harris’ campaign and party bring up Project 2025 multiple times each day, often unprompted.

The DNC marked Labor Day by arguing that Project 2025 would undermine overtime rules and “hard-fought” worker rights. It also paid for internet ads on the initiative that flashed up for users searching “back to school.” Democrats have further pointed to Project 2025 in seemingly incongruous places, while highlighting Vance getting booed at a recent firefighters convention or slamming Trump for laying into his perceived political enemies in online posts.

“We want people to know exactly what Project 2025 is, what the ties are to Trump,” Rahman said. “Finding creative avenues to get the message out is something that we’re always trying to do.”

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon warned that Harris’ focus on Project 2025 “can’t overwhelm her positive message about the changes she wants to make.”

“She can’t afford to go overboard,” he said, “if it interferes with her establishing her own personal profile.”

A large portion of Saturday’s game crowds, meanwhile, may support Trump. Many college football fans hail from rural, more Republican areas, well beyond the confines of reliably Democratic college towns.

“One of the really interesting things when political candidates try to leverage sports is that they’re putting themselves at risk,” said Amy Bass, who is a professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University in Purchase, New York.

She pointed to Trump being surprised to get booed while attending Game 5 of the 2019 World Series — though the former president also made largely successful stops at tailgates before the Iowa-Iowa State football game in 2023 and when South Carolina hosted Clemson after last Thanksgiving.

Sports crowds have “a propensity to get loud, also have the added layer of alcohol and tailgating and all kinds of things pregame, and they haven’t curated that crowd,” Bass said.

Rahman, though, shrugged off such concerns.

“They can get rowdy all they want at a banner,” he said. “But the message is definitely there. It’s there for a reason.”

The GOP presidential nominee’s full response fell short of offering a coherent vision or policy for how he’d address child care needs, as he pivoted to promoting his proposed tariffs on imported goods to the U.S. and touting the revenue they would bring in.

Asked if he would “commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable” and “what specific piece of legislation” he would support during a Q&A session at the Economic Club of New York Thursday, Trump said:

“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.

“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country.

“Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in.

“We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”

Trump’s response went viral online after the clip and transcript were shared, sparking criticism from the campaign of Democratic presidential rival Kamala Harris and leaving policy experts across the ideological spectrum baffled.

“Somewhere in that incoherent word salad was a claim that the proposed tariffs could both balance the budget and pay for free child care across the country, which is of course mathematically absurd,” said Brian Riedl, an economic policy expert with the conservative Manhattan Institute and a former policy adviser to prominent Republicans. “Trump sounded like the student who hadn’t studied for the test and was making up numbers.”

The Harris campaign responded by attacking Trump’s tariffs while highlighting her proposals to expand the child tax credit.

“Billionaire-bought Donald Trump’s ‘plan’ for making child care more affordable is to impose a $3,900 tax hike on middle class families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said, citing estimates from two think tanks on the impact of Trump’s tariff plan. “The American people deserve a President who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’ plan to bring back a $3,600 Child Tax Credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”

The Harris proposal is less aggressive than what the Biden White House has endorsed for families with children, which includes capping child care expenses for the middle class at 7% of income, as well as universal preschool. The Harris campaign didn’t respond when asked if she’d push for those provisions if elected president.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates mocked Trump’s answer during a Friday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“If you have any idea what the hell that answer means, you’re a better detective than I am,” Bates said, before citing analyses by nonpartisan experts that Trump’s tariffs would limit economic growth.

Reshma Saujani, who asked Trump the child care question at the Economic Club of New York, told NBC News after the event that the former president’s answer “kind of blew my mind.”

“He basically said that child care was not that expensive or that tariffs would solve it,” said Saujani, who is a member of the board and said the club had invited her to ask Trump a question. “That demonstrates to me how out of touch he really is. If you’re talking to parents and moms and families on the campaign trail, they’re talking about child care and the cost of it.”

In her question to Trump, Saujani, a founder of the groups Moms First and Girls Who Code, cited statistics showing that child care costs a total of $122 billion a year and described it as “one of the most urgent economic issues facing our country.”

She asked him to mention a specific piece of legislation he would advance to address the problem.

Trump did not answer her directly. Instead, he talked about the amount of money that would come into the U.S. through tariffs on foreign countries. He seemed to be suggesting that those sums could more than pay for child care needs, although he did not outline a plan for how the government should cover them.

For her part, Saujani believes Trump was making a different point that she called “shocking”: that the cost of child care is not that a big problem for the U.S. when compared to the sums involved in tariff collection.

Asked to clarify his response, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt replied: “President Trump’s first-term economic policies uplifted families by putting more money in our pockets, while making expanded access to childcare and paid family leave top priorities in his Administration. Now in Kamala Harris’ America, hardworking families are struggling to buy basic groceries, diapers, and baby formula for their children. President Trump will make America strong, safe, and prosperous again for struggling American families when he returns to the White House.”

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“Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

He added, “We sought commitments from both [former president Donald] Trump and [Vice President Kamala] Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”

The union’s decision comes two days after senior leaders met with Harris as they weighed whom to endorse.

The Teamsters, which represents truck drivers, freight workers and others, held similar meetings with Trump and President Joe Biden when he was still seeking re-election.

The union, which at 1.3 million members is one of the largest in the world, collected input on an endorsement from its members through straw polling and a QR poll from a code printed on a union magazine, a vice president at large of the union, John Palmer, said.

On Wednesday, the union released the results of their survey, which was conducted after Biden dropped out of the race. It found that almost 60% of rank-and-file union members preferred to endorse Trump, while 34% backed Harris, according to an electronic member poll. A phone poll indicated similar margins, with 58% supporting Trump and 31% supporting Harris.

The union has not released the number of poll participants or the margin of error.

The Teamsters have for decades endorsed Democratic presidential candidates. The union supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. They also backed Barack Obama in both of his presidential runs, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

In an email Wednesday, the Trump campaign highlighted the Teamsters polling.

“While the Teamsters Executive Board is making no formal endorsement, the hardworking members of the Teamsters have been loud and clear— they want President Trump back in the White House!” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “These hardworking men and women are the backbone of America and President Trump will strongly stand up for them when he’s back in the White House.”

The former president addressed the union’s decision not to endorse a candidate when talking with reporters on Wednesday, saying that it is “a great honor.”

“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight. The Democrats cannot believe it,” Trump said. “Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’ so that was an honor for me.”

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to local Teamsters chapters that endorsed the vice president.

“The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor,” Hitt said in a statement. “As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what — because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for.”

Over the course of his presidency, Biden has promoted his support for organized labor and has frequently weighed in on disputes between union workers and corporate leaders. In 2021, he expressed support for the right to unionize in a direct-to-camera video as Amazon workers in Alabama were about to vote on whether to organize.

Then-Teamsters president James P. Hoffa in 2021 credited Biden with including an $83 billion pension-fund bailout in the American Rescue Plan Act, which boosted the Teamsters’ Central States pension fund.

In 2023, Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he visited striking autoworkers in Michigan.

But despite calling himself “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden drew criticism from organized labor two years ago when he worked with Congress to pass a law that averted an impending rail strike.

The law forced union workers to accept a union contract that had been brokered by the Biden administration. At the time, four of the 12 unions involved had rejected the deal.

As he signed the legislation, Biden called it “a tough [vote] for me,” but cited the need “to keep the supply chains stable around the holidays.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters is the most prominent union that has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate this year. The union endorsed Biden in 2020.

The AFL-CIO, which represents dozens of unions and millions of workers, and the United Auto Workers union have each endorsed Harris.

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