The response frames the spending battle to come over the next weeks as lawmakers work to reach consensus on a short-term spending bill that would prevent a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Lawmakers hope to avoid a shutdown just weeks before voters go to the polls.

Johnson is punting the final decisions on full-year spending into next year when a new president and Congress take over. He’s doing so at the urging of members within his conference who believe that Republicans will be in a better position next year to secure the funding and policy priorities they want.

But Democrats said the appropriations process should be wrapped up by this Congress, and the short-term measure should reflect that. It also needs to be free of “partisan policy changes,” Jeffries said.

“There is no other viable path forward that protects the health, safety and economic well-being of hardworking American taxpayers,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to House Democrats released Monday.

Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week following a traditional August recess spent mostly working in their home states and districts. They are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund the agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure.

Johnson’s proposal is not only running into resistance from Democrats, but it was clear Monday night that there are also some in the GOP conference who won’t vote for any stopgap bill, let alone one they say spends too much. Johnson can afford to lose only four dissenters from within his conference if Democrats are united in opposition.

“We need to stop spending at a level that is untenable for the American people,” said Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who also predicted the bill would not have the votes to pass.

The House bill including the proof of citizenship mandate for voter registration complicates the effort. The voter registration measure is popular with House Republicans and has already passed once before in that chamber. The House Freedom Caucus, which generally includes the chamber’s most conservative members, called for it to be attached to the spending bill. But Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed.

Republicans say that requiring proof of citizenship would ensure that U.S. elections are only for American citizens, improving confidence in the nation’s federal election system, something that former President Donald Trump has sought to undermine over the years.

Opponents say it is already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and that the document requirements would disenfranchise millions of Americans who do not have the necessary documents readily available when they get a chance to register.

Trump and other Republicans have revved up their complaints about the issue of noncitizens voting with the influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border under President Joe Biden’s administration. They are contending Democrats let them in to add them to the voter rolls. But the available evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is incredibly rare.

Johnson called the proof of citizenship mandate a “righteous fight” as he entered the Capitol Monday afternoon. He said that even if a small percentage of people who have entered the U.S. illegally end up registering to vote, “they can throw the election. This is serious business.”

Senate Democrats have also come out against Johnson’s proposal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill “pure partisan posturing.”

“Speaker Johnson knows deep down that he needs to work with Democrats to get anything done,” Schumer said.

The White House said that if the bill reached Biden’s desk he will veto it. The veto threat said states already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain accurate voter rolls.

“Instead of working in a bipartisan manner to keep the Government open and provide emergency funding for disaster needs, House Republicans have chosen brinksmanship,” the White House statement said.

The bill does provide an additional $10 billion for a disaster relief fund administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But the White House said it did not cover the full amount needed through other disaster relief programs, such as for highways and bridges damaged by disasters in 38 states.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that long-term continuing resolutions, such as the current one before the House this week, harm military readiness. Austin said in a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees that, if passed, the bill would mark the second year in a row and the seventh time in the past 15 years that the department is delayed in moving forward with some critical priorities.

“These actions subject Service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events,” Austin wrote.

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

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ATLANTA (AP) — From her earliest campaigns in California to her serving as President Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has honed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to blend punch lines with details that build toward a broader narrative. She might shake her head to signal her disapproval while her opponent is speaking, counting on viewers to see her reaction on a split screen. And she has a go-to tactic to pivot debates back in her favor: saying she’s glad to answer a question as she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend a past one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will put the Democratic vice president’s skills to a test unlike any she’s faced. Harris faces former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who will participate in his seventh general election debate since 2016 for an event that will be seen by tens of millions of viewers just as early voting in November’s election starts around the country.

People who have competed against Harris and prepared her rivals say she brings a series of advantages to the matchup, including her prosecutorial background juxtaposed with Trump being the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Still, Harris allies warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who veers between policy critiques, personal attacks, and falsehoods or conspiracy theories.

“She can meet the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation against Harris in the fall of 2020. “She has shown that in different environments. I would not underestimate that in any way.”

Julian Castro, a Democrat who ran for president against Harris in the 2020 primary, said Harris blended “knowledge, poise and the ability to explain things well” to stand out during crowded primary debates.

“Some candidates get too caught up with trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a very good balance.”

Balancing narrative and detail

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about her approach, said the vice president views the events like a jury trial she would have led when she was district attorney in San Francisco or querying a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill as a U.S. senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on merit while leaving more casual or piecemeal viewers with key takeaways.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves but also about a larger strategy of offering a vision for what your leadership and style looks like,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 primary debate preparation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but folds them into a broader narrative — the same way she would talk to jurors.

“She states a thesis and then follows with fact, fact, fact,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris hammered Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable 2019 primary debate when she skewered Biden for how he had talked about race and institutional racism. She weaved her critique of Biden’s record with her own biography as a young, biracial student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl was me,” Harris said in a widely circulated quip that punctuated her story about court-ordered busing that helped non-white students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument aren’t good at wrapping that with an effective narrative,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Landing memorable punches

Castro said Harris has a good feel for when to strike, a quality he traced to her trial experience. In 2019, as multiple Democratic candidates talked over one another, Harris sat back before getting moderators to recognize her.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” she said, taking control of the conversation and drawing applause.

When Harris faced Pence in 2020, it was a mostly civil, substantive debate. But she got in digs that framed Pence as a serial interrupter, as Trump had been in his first debate with Biden.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at one point, with a stern look. At another: “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation.”

Finding traps in policy

Debates have sometimes put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primary matches, Tulsi Gabbard, who this year has endorsed Trump, blitzed Harris over how aggressively she prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders as a district attorney.

That fall, Pence made Harris sometimes struggle to defend Biden’s positions. Now, her task will be to defend not just Biden’s record, but her own role in that record and what policies she would pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top aides, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about more liberal positions Harris took in her 2020 primary campaign, especially on fracking, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery and how to treat migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.

“We were surprised that she missed some opportunities (against Pence) when the conversation was centered around policy,” Short said.

Timing, silence and nonverbal communication

One of Harris’ earliest debate triumphs came in 2010 as she ran for California attorney general. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public pension while still being paid a salary for a current public post.

“I earned it,” Republican Steve Cooley said of the so-called “double-dipping” practice.

Harris looked on silently, with a slightly amused look as Cooley explained himself. When moderators recognized her, she said just seven words – “Go for it, Steve. You earned it!” — in a serious tone but with a look that communicated her sarcasm. The exchange landed in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is quite effective at nonverbal communication and knowing when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often will shake her head and, with other looks, telegraph her disapproval while her opponent is speaking. Then she smiles before retorting, or attacking, in a conversational tone.

“She defuses some of the argument that Trump makes that she is ‘a nasty woman,’ that she’s engaging in egregiously unfair behavior, because her nonverbal presentation is actually undercutting that line of attack,” Jamieson said.

Meeting a new challenge with Trump

For all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and massive stage. Democrats who ordinarily tear into Trump instead appeared on Sunday’s news shows to make clear that Harris faced a big task ahead.

“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, yet another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, on CNN. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “a nasty and crafty stage presence” who makes preparation difficult. And with ABC keeping the candidates’ microphones off when they are not speaking, Harris may not find it as easy to produce another viral moment that hinges on viewers having seen or heard Trump at his most outlandish.

“The best thing she can do,” Castro said, “is not get distracted by his antics.”

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is using a New Hampshire campaign stop on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses — presenting a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.

She wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for small business startup expenses, with the goal of eventually spurring 25 million new small business applications over four years. Harris is making the announcement while visiting the Portsmouth area, across the Piscataqua River from Maine.

New Hampshire has been reliably blue in recent presidential elections, but the trip could also have some benefit across state lines since Maine splits its electoral votes, allowing candidates to win some without carrying the full state. Still, it marks a rare deviation from Harris spending most of her time visiting a tight group of Midwest and Sun Belt battlegrounds likely to decide November’s election.

Since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president has focused on the “ blue wall ” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that have been the centerpiece of successful Democratic campaigns.

She’s also frequently visited Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of which Biden narrowly won in 2020, and North Carolina, which she’s still hoping to flip from Republican former President Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s stop comes after Harris marked Labor Day with Monday rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh and before she heads back to Pittsburgh on Friday — marking her 10th visit to Pennsylvania in 2024. By contrast, Wednesday is her first visit to New Hampshire in years.

Trump has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% — a break with Biden who in his budget proposal in March suggested setting the corporate tax rate at 28%. Harris has released relatively few major policy proposals in the roughly six weeks since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket, but has not suggested she’s planning to deviate greatly from his administration on tax policy.

The small business plan Harris is presenting Wednesday has lots of facets that many in the business community would like. But that contrasts another proposal Harris unveiled last month, where she promised to help fight inflation by working to combat “price gouging” from food producers that she suggests have driven grocery store prices up unnecessarily.

Harris has built her campaign around calls to grow and strengthen the nation’s middle class — and suggested that rich Americans and large corporations should “pay their fair share” in higher taxes.

Biden, who similarly built his campaign around promoting the middle class, won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, but Trump came much closer to winning it against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, the Harris campaign notes that it has 17 field offices operating in coordination with the state Democratic party across New Hampshire, compared to one for Trump’s campaign.

Some of the state’s Democrats were angry that Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to vote in the party’s presidential primary this year — displacing Iowa’s caucus and a first-in-the-nation primary New Hampshire held for more than a century.

Despite that, New Hampshire pressed ahead with an unsanctioned primary. Though Biden didn’t campaign in it, or appear on the ballot, he still easily won via a write-in drive.

Trump is nonetheless hoping to use what happened to his advantage, posting on his social media account that Harris “sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up.”

“Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history,” the former president wrote. “I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will.”

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WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is betting that Americans crave trillions of dollars in tax cuts — and that growth will be so fantastic that it’s not worth worrying about budget deficits.

In short, he’s hoping that most economic analyses of his ideas are dead wrong.

Vice President Kamala Harris believes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy should pay more in taxes — and wants to use those revenues to help spur the construction of 3 million homes and offer tax breaks for parents.

She’s hoping to deliver on the types of policies that President Joe Biden has been unable to secure in a lasting way.

The two presidential nominees are using the week before their debate to sharpen their economic messages about who could do more for the middle class. Harris will discuss her policy plans Wednesday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, while Trump will address the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

The economy has historically been a dominant issue in presidential elections. In an August survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs, Trump did narrowly better on the economy with 45% saying he would handle it better and 38% saying Harris would.

There are high stakes in this showdown because the winner of November’s election could rewrite much of the federal tax code next year, when parts of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are set to expire.

A look at the candidates’ proposals:

DIFFERENT PITCHES TO THE MIDDLE-CLASS

Trump and Harris have different ways of trying to help the middle class.

The former Republican president sees tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy as essential for promoting more investment, with those who’ve previously advised him saying average growth would top 3%. Mind you, overall economic growth never hit 3% a year when Trump was president. But between 2018 and 2019, the median household income jumped by $5,220 to an inflation-adjusted $78,250, according to the Census Bureau.

“What I tell people all the time: The Trump policies were designed to lift middle-class wages, re-onshore and re-industrialize,” said Joseph LaVorgna, an economist who worked in the Trump White House. “The intention is to get wages higher.”

By contrast, Harris wants to upgrade the middle-class promise of home ownership and ease the high costs of parenthood. She also wants tax breaks for entrepreneurs. It’s a message meant to show that Harris can address the problem of prices as people are still recovering from inflation spiking to a four-decade high in 2022.

First-time homebuyers could get $25,000 in down payment assistance that would be coupled with broader policies to encourage the construction of 3 million additional homes in four years. New parents could get a $6,000 tax credit and an expanded child tax credit.

“When working- and middle-class Americans have the opportunity to earn more, to build a business, to buy a home, to climb the economic ladder, it strengthens our economy and helps us grow,” said Brian Nelson, a Harris adviser.

NO TAXES ON TIPS, SOCIAL SECURITY

Trump has proposed no taxes on tips paid to workers or Social Security income. Harris has embraced the idea of not taxing workers’ tips.

As Ernie Tedeschi at the Yale Budget Lab noted, excluding tips from taxes is unlikely to provide much of an economic boost even if some individuals feel better off. He noted that just 2.5% of workers receive tips and that many don’t earn enough money to owe income taxes to the federal government.

Trump would also exclude Social Security payments from taxation, which could cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The risk is those taxes help fund Social Security. Without those revenues, the program would be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2033, or two years earlier than currently forecast, according to an analysis by Brendan Duke, senior director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

TARIFFS

As much as Trump talks about tax cuts, he would also want to engage in a massive tax hike by charging higher tariffs on imports in order to grow jobs.

How much would the tariff be? No one really knows. Trump has proposed a broad tariff of 10%, but at an August event in North Carolina suggested it could be as high as 20%. Against Chinese products, he would like a tax of somewhere between 60% to 100%.

The Republican insists his tariffs wouldn’t jack up inflation, but the whole goal of the tax is to make imports more expensive so that more manufacturing occurs domestically. The Harris campaign says the middle class would face a higher tax burden, with the 20% tariff applied broadly costing a typical household $4,000 annually.

The Trump campaign did not answer questions about how the tariffs would work. If the goal is to bring jobs back from overseas, the tariffs would presumably be phased in over time so that manufacturing jobs could return to the U.S. But if the goal is to raise revenues, then they would be implemented immediately.

TRUMP’S NOT AFRAID OF DEBT

It’s not clear that Trump could pay for his ambitious tax cuts.

He wants to extend the expiring provisions of his 2017 tax overhaul. He’s floated the idea of chopping the 21% corporate tax rate to 15%, in addition to no taxes on tips and Social Security income. The estimated price is close to $6 trillion, but it could be higher. And the Congressional Budget Office already estimates $22 trillion in deficits over the next decade without the tax overhaul being extended.

Growth would not appear to cover the price tag. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget surveyed economic analyses and found that Trump extending his tax cuts would have roughly no impact on overall growth over 10 years because of the additional debt.

“The overall agenda doesn’t seem to be all that pro-growth,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

HARRIS IS MORE CAUTIOUS WITH DEFICITS

According to the Harris campaign, all her spending plans would be funded. Officials with her campaign have suggested that her sources of revenue would largely mirror Biden’s 2025 budget proposal.

Still, the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that her policies would add $2.3 trillion in spending. It forecasts that her plan to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% would produce $1.1 trillion in tax revenues. But the group did not include other proposals such as taxing the unrealized income gains of people worth $100 million or more, as there are not enough details to produce an accurate number. Nor did it include other revenue increases.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model suggests that the Harris plans would hurt growth more than Trump’s would through 2034, though it excluded his proposed tariffs from the analysis.

The real difference of the plan is how tax burdens would change starting in 2026.

Under Trump’s plans, someone in the top 0.1% of earners would after taxes get on average $376,910 more in income. The poorest 20% would get just $320 more.

Harris’ policies would reduce the average incomes of the top 0.1% by $167,225. But the bottom 20% get $2,355 more in income and benefits.

“Bigger picture: both Harris and Trump are causing the debt path to rise even faster than the fast pace under current law,” said Kent Smetters, the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

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SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended shifting away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign, but insisted her “values have not changed” even as she is “seeking consensus.”

Sitting with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about her reversals on banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, positions she took during her last run for president. She confirmed she does not want to ban fracking, an energy extraction process key to the economy of swing-state Pennsylvania, and said there “should be consequence” for people who cross the border without permission.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.

She went on to say: “I believe it is important to build consensus. It is important to find a common place of understanding where we can actually solve the problem.”

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash came as voters are still trying to learn more about the Democratic ticket in an unusually compressed time frame. President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid just five weeks ago. The interview focused largely on policy, as Harris sought to show that she had adopted more moderate positions on issues that Republicans argue are extreme, while Walz defended past misstatements about his biography.

Harris hadn’t done an in-depth interview since she became her party’s standard-bearer five weeks ago, though she did sit for several while she was still Biden’s running mate.

She said serving with Biden was “one of the greatest honors of my career,” and she recounted the moment he called to tell her he was stepping down and would support her.

“He told me what he had decided to do and … I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and that’s how I learned about it.”

She said she didn’t ask Biden to endorse her because “he was very clear that he was going to endorse me.”

Harris defended the administration’s record on the southern border and immigration, noting that she was tasked with trying to address the “root causes” in other countries that were driving the border crossings.

“We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequences,” Harris said.

Asked about Israel’s war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Harris said, “I am unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself.” But the vice president also reiterated what she’s said for months, that civilian deaths are too high amid the Israeli offensive.

She also brushed off Republican Donald Trump’s questioning of her racial identity after he suggested falsely that she changed how she presents herself for political reasons and “happened to turn Black.” Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage, said Trump’s suggestion was the “same old, tired playbook.”

“Next question, please,” she said.

Trump and Harris are set to debate on Sept. 10. In a post Thursday evening, it appeared Trump was paying close attention to the interview. After the debate was mentioned, he posted, “I look so forward to Debating Comrade Kamala Harris and exposing her for the fraud she is.”

Trump went on to say that his Democratic opponent “has changed every one of her long held positions, on everything. America will never allow an Election WEAPONIZING MARXIST TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.”

The debate will be the first-ever meeting for Harris and Trump. The opponents had only been in the same space when Harris, as a senator, attended Trump’s joint addresses to Congress.

During the early parts of the interview, Walz watched quietly and nodded when Harris made her main points. He was later asked about misstatements, starting with how he has described his 24 years of service in the National Guard.

In a 2018 video clip that the Harris-Walz campaign once circulated, Walz spoke out against gun violence and said, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”

Critics said the comment “that I carried in war” suggested that Walz portrayed himself as someone who spent time in a combat zone. He said Thursday night that he misspoke after a school shooting, adding, “My grammar’s not always correct.”

Asked about statements that appeared to indicate that he and his wife conceived their children with in-vitro fertilization, when they in fact used a different fertility treatment, he said he believes most Americans understood what he meant and pivoted to Republican opposition to abortion rights.

Democrats’ enthusiasm about their vote in November has surged over the past few months, according to polling from Gallup. About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55% in March.

This gives them an enthusiasm edge they did not have earlier this year. Republicans’ enthusiasm has increased by much less over the same period, and about two-thirds of Republicans now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting.

At a packed arena for a rally Thursday in Savannah, Harris cast her nascent campaign as the underdog and encouraged the crowd to work hard to elect her in November.

“We’re here to speak truth and one of the things that we know is that this is going to be a tight race to the end,” she said.

Harris went through a list of Democratic concerns: that Trump will further restrict women’s rights after he appointed three judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe, that he’d repeal the Affordable Care Act, and that given new immunity powers granted presidents by the U.S. Supreme Court, “imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”

The rally was the end of a two-day bus tour in southeastern Georgia. Harris has another campaign blitz on Labor Day with Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh with the election rapidly approaching. The first mail ballots get sent to voters in just two weeks.

___

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sagar Meghani and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

POTTERVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump says that, if he wins a second term, he wants to make IVF treatment free for women, but did not detail how he would fund his plan or how it would work.

“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for — or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he said at an event in Michigan. “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”

IVF treatments are notoriously expensive, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single round. Many women require multiple rounds and there is no guarantee of success.

The announcement comes as Trump has been under intense criticism from Democrats for his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion in the country.

The decision is expected to be a major motivator for Democrats and women this November, and was a major theme of the party’s national convention last week as well as Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech as she accepted her party’s nomination.

In response, Trump has been trying to present himself as more moderate on the issue, going as far as to declare himself “very strong on women’s reproductive rights.”

In an interview with NBC ahead of the event, Trump also suggested that he will vote to repeal Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which limits the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant.

Trump, in the interview, did not explicitly say how he plans to vote on the ballot measure when he casts his vote this fall. But he repeated his past criticism that the measure, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, is too restrictive.

“I think the six weeks is too short. It has to be more time,” he said. ”I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”

Trump had previously called DeSantis’ decision to sign the bill a “terrible mistake.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the rally Thursday that Trump “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida” known as Amendment 4 and that he “simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”

His comments nonetheless drew immediate reaction from those who oppose abortion rights, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who said she had spoken with Trump after his speech.

“He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4. President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position,” she said, adding that, “anyone who believes in drawing a different line” still “must vote against Amendment 4, unless they don’t want a line at all.”

In his speech, Trump also said that, if he wins, families will be able to deduct expenses for caring for newborns from their taxes.

“We’re pro-family,” he said.

Trump has held multiple conflicting positions on abortion over the years. After briefly considering backing a potential 15-week ban on the procedure nationwide, he announced in April that regulating abortion should be left to the states.

In the months since, he has repeatedly taken credit for his role in overturning Roe and called it “a beautiful thing to watch” as states set their own restrictions.

Trump, however, has also said he does not support a national abortion ban, and over the weekend, his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said he would veto such legislation if it landed on his desk.

“Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue,” Vance said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump first came out in favor of IVF in February after the Alabama state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, briefly pausing treatment and sparking national backlash.

Trump has since claimed the Republican party is a “leader” on the issue, even as at least 23 bills aiming to establish fetal personhood have been introduced in 13 states so far this legislative session, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. That kind of legislation, which asserts that life begins at conception, could imperil fertility treatments that involve the storage, transportation and destruction of embryos.

In a statement, Harris’ campaign said Trump shouldn’t be believed.

“Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” said Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Sarafina Chitika. “Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, IVF is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country. There is only one candidate in this race who trusts women and will protect our freedom to make our own health care decisions: Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILYs List, which works to elect women who support abortion rights, called Trump’s proposal “disingenuous and unserious.”

“Congratulations to Donald Trump for realizing that his position and his record on abortion are wildly unpopular, particularly with women who will decide this election,” she wrote. “But rather than give him credit for a disingenuous and unserious proposal that contradicts his own GOP platform, we’ll credit him for something he actually did: overturning Roe v. Wade, ending abortion access for millions of women across the country, and jeopardizing reproductive freedom for all of us.”

Trump made the IVF announcement during a campaign swing to Michigan and Wisconsin as he ramps up his battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.

Trump is intensely focused on recapturing states he won in 2016 but lost narrowly in 2020 as he continues to adjust to the reality of his new race against Harris.

Trump’s first stop was Alro Steel in Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing, where he railed against the Biden administration over inflation.

“Kamala has made middle class life unaffordable and unlivable and I’m going to make America affordable again,” he charged. It was his third visit to the state in the past nine days and second this week after a speech to the National Guard Association in Detroit on Monday.

Later, he will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed him in Detroit. It will be Trump’s first visit to Wisconsin since the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which ended three days before Biden dropped out of the race and made way for Harris.

Along with Pennsylvania, which Trump will visit on Friday, these three Midwestern states make up a northern industrial bloc Democrats carried for two decades before Trump won them in 2016. Biden recaptured them on his way to the White House in 2020.

Trump and Vance have blitzed the battleground states in recent weeks, with Vance in both states this week as well.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Christine Fernando contributed to this report from Chicago.

WASHINGTON — The high cost of caring for children and the elderly has forced women out of the workforce, devastated family finances and left professional caretakers in low-wage jobs — all while slowing economic growth.

That families are suffering is not up for debate. As the economy emerges as a theme in this presidential election, the Democratic and Republican candidates have sketched out ideas for easing costs that reveal their divergent views about family.

On this topic, the two tickets have one main commonality: Both of the presidential candidates — and their running mates — have, at one point or another, backed an expanded child tax credit.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination last week, has signaled that she plans to build on the ambitions of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration, which sought to pour billions in taxpayer dollars into making child care and home care for elderly and disabled adults more affordable. She has not etched any of those plans into a formal policy platform. But in a speech earlier this month, she said her vision included raising the child tax credit.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, has declined to answer questions about how he would make child care more affordable, even though it was an issue he tackled during his own administration. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has a long history of pushing policies that would encourage Americans to have families, floating ideas like giving parents votes for their children. Just this month, Vance said he wants to raise the child tax credit to $5,000. But Vance has opposed government spending on child care, arguing that many children benefit from having one parent at home as caretaker.

The candidates’ care agendas could figure prominently into their appeal to suburban women in swing states, a coveted demographic seen as key to victory in November. Women provide two-thirds of unpaid care work — valued at $1 trillion annually — and are disproportionately impacted when families can’t find affordable care for their children or aging parents. And the cost of care is an urgent problem: Child care prices are rising faster than inflation.

Kamala Harris: Increase the child tax credit

When Harris addressed the Democratic National Convention, she talked first about her own experience with child care. She was raised mostly by a single mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who worked long hours as a breast cancer researcher. Among the people who formed her family’s support network was “Mrs. Shelton, who ran the day care below us and became a second mother.”

As vice president, Harris worked behind the scenes in Congress on Biden’s proposals to establish national paid family leave, make prekindergarten universal and invest billions in child care so families wouldn’t pay more than 7% of their income. She announced, too, the administration’s actions to lower copays for families using federal child care vouchers, and to raise wages for Medicaid-funded home health aides. Before that, her track record as a senator included pressing for greater labor rights for domestic workers, including nannies and home health aides who may be vulnerable to exploitation.

This month at a community college in North Carolina, Harris outlined her campaign’s economic agenda, which includes raising the child tax credit to as much as $3,600 and giving families of newborns even more — $6,000 for the child’s first year.

“That is a vital — vital year of critical development of a child, and the costs can really add up, especially for young parents who need to buy diapers and clothes and a car seat and so much else,” she told the audience. Her running mate selection of Tim Walz, who established paid leave and a child tax credit as governor of Minnesota, has also buoyed optimism among supporters.

Donald Trump: Few specifics, but some past support

For voters grappling with the high cost of child care, Trump has offered little in the way of solutions. During the June presidential debate, CNN moderator Jake Tapper twice asked Trump what he would do to lower child care costs. Both times, he failed to answer, instead pivoting to other topics. His campaign platform is similarly silent. It does tackle the cost of long-term care for the elderly, writing that Republicans would “support unpaid Family Caregivers through Tax Credits and reduced red tape.”

The silence marks a shift from his first campaign, when he pitched paid parental leave, though it was panned by critics because his proposal excluded fathers. When he reached the White House, the former president sought $1 billion for child care, plus a parental leave policy at the urging of his daughter and policy adviser, Ivanka Trump. Congress rejected both proposals, but Trump succeeded in doubling the child tax credit and establishing paid leave for federal employees.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump said he was “proud to be the first president to include in my budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave, so that every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child.”

This year, there are signs that his administration might not pursue the same agenda, including his selection of Vance as a running mate. In 2021, before he joined the Senate, Vance co-authored an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal opposing a proposal to invest billions in child care to make it more affordable for families. He and his co-author said expanding child care subsidies would lead to “unhappier, unhealthier children” and that having fewer mothers contributing to the economy might be a worthwhile trade-off.

Vance has floated policies that would make it easier for a family to live off of a single income, making it possible for some parents to stay home while their partners work. Along with his embrace of policies he calls pro-family, he has tagged people who do not have or want children as “sociopaths.” He once derided Harris and other rising Democratic stars as “childless cat ladies,” even though Harris has two stepchildren — they call her “Momala” — and no cats.

Even without details about new care policies, Trump believes that families would ultimately get a better deal under his administration.

The Trump-Vance campaign has attacked Harris’ record on the economy and said the Biden administration’s policies have only made things tougher for families, pointing to recent inflation.

“Harris … has proudly and repeatedly celebrated her role as Joe Biden’s co-pilot on Bidenomics,” said Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman. “The basic necessities of food, gas and housing are less affordable, unemployment is rising, and Kamala doesn’t seem to care.”

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DETROIT (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday tied Vice President Kamala Harris to the chaotic Afghanistan War withdrawal on the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members, calling the attack a “humiliation.”

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in honor of Sgt. Nicole Gee, Staff Sgt. Darin Hoover and Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, who were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport. He then traveled to Michigan for an address to the National Guard Association of the United States conference.

“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told an audience of about 4,000, including National Guard members and their families in Detroit.

President Joe Biden’s administration was following a withdrawal commitment and timeline that the Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban in 2020. A 2022 review by a government-appointed special investigator concluded decisions made by both Trump and Biden were the key factors leading to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban takeover.

In his speech to the National Guard in Detroit, Trump said that leaving Afghanistan was the right thing to do but that the execution was poor. “We were going to do it with dignity and strength,” he said. He called the attack “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”

Since Biden ended his reelection bid, Trump has been zeroing in on Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, and her roles in foreign policy decisions. He has specifically highlighted the vice president’s statements that she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision on Afghanistan.

“The voters are going to fire Kamala and Joe on Nov. 5, we hope, and when I take office we will ask for the resignations of every single official,” Trump said in Detroit. “We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity, to be on my desk at noon on Inauguration Day. You know, you have to fire people. You have to fire people when they do a bad job.”

In her own statement marking the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack, Harris said she mourns the 13 U.S. service members who were killed. “My prayers are with their families and loved ones. My heart breaks for their pain and their loss,” she said.

Harris said she honors and remembers all Americans who served in Afghanistan.

“As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war. Over the past three years, our Administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and ISIS, without troops deployed into combat zones,” she said. “I will never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people.”

Biden said in a statement Monday that the 13 Americans who died were “patriots in the highest sense” who “embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless.”

“Ever since I became Vice President, I carried a card with me every day that listed the exact number of American service members who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—including Taylor, Johanny, Nicole, Hunter, Daegan, Humberto, David, Jared, Rylee, Dylan, Kareem, Maxton, and Ryan,” Biden said.

The relatives of some of the American service members who were killed appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention last month and spoke on Monday in a media call along with Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. They said they are still trying to get answers on how their loved ones died.

“For them to think that is OK and treat it as another page in a book that they’re just flipping over for the next chapter it saddens me and frightens me all at the same time,” said Alicia Lopez, the mother of Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, who added she has another son serving in the military. “I pray that I don’t get another knock on my door because of the lack of responsibilities this administration has for our military.”

Asked Monday why Biden and Harris weren’t marking the anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack as Trump did at Arlington National Cemetery, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Trump had been personally invited by the family members and he called it one way to honor the fallen.

“Another way is to continue to work,” Kirby said. “Maybe not with a lot of fanfare, maybe not with a lot of public attention, maybe not with TV cameras, but to work with might and main every single day to make sure that the families of the fallen and of those who were injured and wounded, not just at Abbey Gate, but over the course of the 20-some odd years that we were in Afghanistan, have the support that they need.”

Also Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced that Congress will posthumously honor the 13 service members by presenting their families with the Congressional Gold Medal next month. It’s the highest civilian award that Congress can bestow.

Under Trump, the United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban that was aimed at ending America’s longest war and bringing U.S. troops home. Biden later pointed to that agreement as he sought to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan, saying it bound him to withdraw troops and set the stage for the chaos that engulfed the country.

A Biden administration review of the withdrawal acknowledged that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but attributed the delays to the Afghan government and military, and to U.S. military and intelligence community assessments.

The top two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation said the administration inadequately planned for the withdrawal. The nation’s top-ranking military officer at the time, then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers earlier this year he had urged Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces to give backup. Instead, Biden decided to keep a much smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the U.S. embassy.

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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report from Washington.

They include the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office and three other agents assigned to that office, which was responsible for the security planning ahead of the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to the law enforcement official who had direct knowledge of the matter. One of the five agents was assigned to Trump’s protective detail, the official said.

The official was not authorized to publicly disclose details of the personnel investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The agents are on administrative leave, meaning they cannot do investigative or protective work.

Multiple investigations have been launched as officials probe a complicated law enforcement failure that allowed a man with an AR-style rifle to get close enough to shoot and injure Trump at the rally.

Trump was struck in the ear but avoided serious injury. One spectator was killed and two others were injured.

The shooting was a devastating failure of one of the agency’s core duties and led to the resignation of the Secret Service’s then-director, Kim Cheatle.

At a congressional hearing after the assassination attempt, Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting. She also revealed that the roof from which Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr., who took over after Cheatle’s resignation, has said he “cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

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CHICAGO (AP) — Warning of a difficult fight ahead, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama on Tuesday called on the nation to embrace Kamala Harris in urgent messages to the Democratic National Convention that were at times both hopeful and ominous.

“America, hope is making a comeback,” the former first lady declared. She then tore into Republican Donald Trump, a sharp shift from the 2016 convention speech in which she told her party, “When they go low, we go high.”

“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black,” Michelle Obama said of Trump.

Barack Obama, the first Black president in U.S. history, insisted the nation is ready to elect Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage and would be the nation’s first female president. He also called Trump “a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”

“It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” he said.

The fiery messages from two of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars underscored the urgency of the moment as Harris works to stitch together a broad coalition in her bid to defeat Trump this fall. The vice president is drawing on stars like the Obamas and other celebrities, officials from the far left to the middle, and even some Republicans to boost her campaign.

And while the theme of the night was “a bold vision for America’s future,” the disparate factions of Harris’ evolving coalition demonstrated, above all, that they are connected by a deep desire to prevent a second Trump presidency.

In an appearance perhaps intended to needle Trump, his former press secretary Stephanie Grisham — now a harsh critic of her former boss — also took the convention stage.

Trump “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” Grisham said. “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people. And she has my vote.”

Sens. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent beloved by progressives, both praised Harris.

Schumer called on voters to elect another Democratic majority to the U.S. Senate. “She can’t do it alone,” he said of a prospective President Harris.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, said he was eager to work with Harris in the White House as well. Their policy goals, he said, are “not a radical agenda.”

As Democrats addressed the nation from Chicago, Harris faced an estimated 15,000 people in battleground Wisconsin in the arena where Republicans held their convention last month. She said that she was running “a people-powered campaign.”

“Together we will chart a new way forward,” the vice president said in remarks that were partially broadcast to the DNC. “A future for freedom, opportunity, of optimism and faith.”

Still, it was not all serious on the second night of the four-day convention.

A symbolic roll call in which delegates from each state pledged their support for the Democratic nominee turned into a party atmosphere. A DJ played a mix of state-specific songs — and Atlanta native Lil Jon ran out during Georgia’s turn to his hit song with DJ Snake, “Turn Down for What,” to the delight of the thousands inside the cavernous United Center.

And various speakers offered personal stories about Harris, who has served as a California senator and vice president, but remains largely unknown among many voters.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who would become the nation’s first gentleman if his wife wins the presidency, shared details about his relationship with the vice president — their cooking habits, their first date and her laugh, which is often mocked by Republican critics.

“You know that laugh. I love that laugh!” Emhoff said as the crowd cheered. Later, he added, “Her empathy is her strength.”

Trump, meanwhile, was out on the campaign trail as part of his weeklong swing-state tour during the Democratic convention. He went to Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday and stood aside sheriff’s deputies as he labeled Harris the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said in one of many generalizations about an America under Harris.

Throughout their convention, Democrats have sought to balance a message of unity with an embrace of diversity.

Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday night made perhaps the most forceful case for that model as a logical step forward for a bitterly divided nation. In contrast to the party’s rhetoric in the recent past around race, Obama framed the Democrats’ approach as “a new way forward” for a modern society in contrast to a “divisive,” “old” and “tired” strategy of vision offered by the party’s chief opponent, Trump.

Michelle Obama also addressed race directly as she jabbed Trump, referencing a comment he made in a June debate.

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she said. ”It’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”

Barack Obama returned to the convention stage 20 years after making his first appearance at a national convention, a 2004 appearance in Boston that propelled him into the national spotlight ahead of his successful presidential run. And he praised President Joe Biden, who ended his reelection bid last month and endorsed Harris.

“History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger,” Obama said Tuesday as the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Joe.” “I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”

Harris, meanwhile, cast the election in dire, almost existential terms. She implored Americans not to get complacent in light of the Supreme Court decision carving out broad presidential immunity, a power she said Trump would abuse.

She has also seized on Trump’s opposition to a nationally guaranteed right to abortion.

“They seemingly don’t trust women,” she said of Trump and his Republican allies. “Well, we trust women.”

The vice president’s speech in Milwaukee evoked some of the same themes that underlaid Biden’s case for reelection before he dropped out, casting Trump as a threat to democracy. Harris argued that Trump threatens the values and freedoms that Americans hold dear.

Trump said he would be a dictator only on his first day in office, a quip he later said was a joke, and has vowed as president to assert more control over federal prosecutions, an area of government that has traditionally been left to the Justice Department.

Someone with that record “should never again have the opportunity to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States,” Harris said. “Never again.”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Farnoush Amiri and Will Weissert in Chicago contributed to this report.