Kamala Harris defends Gaza stance in interview with Black journalists – live | US elections 2024

Kamala Harris has condemned the campaign against the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, waged by Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and conservative commentators.

“It’s a crying shame,” the vice-president said in her ongoing conversation with Black journalists in Philadelphia. “My heart breaks for this community.”

Without mentioning Trump or Vance, Harris described the baseless allegations that Haitians who moved to the Ohio city were eating people’s pets as irresponsible:

When you are bestowed with a microphone that is that big, there is a profound responsibility that comes with that. That is an extension of what should not be lost in this moment, this concept of the public trust, to then understand what the public trust means. It means that you have been invested with trust to be responsible in the way you use your words, much less how you conduct yourself, and especially when you have been and then seek to be again president of the United States of America.

She also decried the wave of threats that have closed schools and other buildings in Springfield, noting the toll it has taken on law enforcement:

It’s a crying shame, literally, what’s happening to those families, those children in that community, not to mention what is happening in terms of, look, you say you care about law enforcement, law enforcement resources being put into this because of these serious threats that are being issued against a community that is living a productive, good life before this happened, and spewing lies that are grounded in tropes that are age old.

More on the threats that have disrupted daily life in Springfield for days:

Kamala Harris was pressed by her interviewers at the National Association of Black Journalists event about what specific changes she would make to US policy towards Israel and its invasion of Gaza.

“In the way that we send weapons, in the way that we interact as their ally, are there specific policy changes?” asked Politico reporter Eugene Daniels, one of three interviewers on the panel.

Harris replied:

For example, one of the things that we have done that I am entirely supportive of, is the pause that we put on the 2,000lb bombs. And so there is some leverage that we have had and used, but ultimately, the thing that is going to unlock everything else in that region is getting this deal done. And I’m not going to disclose private conversations, but I will tell you, I’ve had direct conversations with the prime minister, with the president of Israel, with Egyptian leaders and with our allies, and I think we’ve made ourselves very clear this deal needs to get done in the best interest of everyone in the region, including getting those hostages out.

Washington has supplied many of the bombs used in Israel’s assault on the enclave, but recently blocked a shipment of 2,000lb munitions blamed for strikes that have killed scores of people in Gaza. Here’s more on that:

Kamala Harris is on stage now in Philadelphia, taking questions from three reporters in a live conservation organized by the National Association of Black Journalists.

In July, Donald Trump spoke at the group’s annual convention, where he said Harris was lying about her racial identity. Here’s our coverage of that infamous moment:

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, has condemned as “dangerous” comments made by JD Vance that the difference between Democratic rhetoric and Republican rhetoric in this election is that only Donald Trump – the Republican party nominee for president – has been shot at.

Vance, the Republican nominee for vice-president, has pointed out on the campaign trail that nobody has tried to assassinate Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee for president, only her rival, Trump.

Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July and a man was arrested pointing a rifle through the fence of Trump’s golf course this last Sunday, as the former president was playing a round.

Vance said at a rally in Sparta, Michigan, moments ago that “what’s one-sided is that it’s Donald Trump who’s getting shot at” and he said at a previous event that the difference between the effects of both parties’ rhetoric is that “no-one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months”.

Jean-Pierre said at the ongoing press briefing just now: “When you are a national leader and you have a community that looks up to your leadership … and when you have that type of language out there, it’s dangerous … [and] it opens up an opportunity for people to listen to you and potentially take you very seriously.”

Joanna Walters

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden would travel to New York City next week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

The press briefing just got under way at the White House. Jean-Pierre made the announcement about the US president at the top of the briefing and will take journalists’ questions shortly.

World leaders will descend on the UN headquarters in New York for the annual gathering.

Israel’s war in Gaza will probably be a headline issue at this year’s gathering. The attack on southern Israel lead by Hamas last 7 October occurred after last fall’s UNGA event.

Israel’s counterattack on Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, has raged since and a lasting ceasefire remains elusive. The death toll among Palestinians has passed 41,000, according to health authorities in the territory.

The Guardian is covering the latest events in this war and the current news out of Lebanon today in this live blog.

Joanna Walters

JD Vance has called for stepped-up security for Donald Trump following two apparent assassination attempts on the former president in the last two months, asking for him to have Secret Service resources equivalent to those afforded to Joe Biden, the sitting US president.

Vance, Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket for this November’s presidential election, also blamed Democratic party rhetoric criticizing Trump for armed individuals targeting the former president.

“Democrats have got to cut this crap out,” he said.

He repeatedly criticized Kamala Harris, the Democratic party nominee for president, across policy platforms ranging from energy to taxes. She said, after a man was arrested on Sunday after pointing a rifle through the fence at Trump’s golf course in Florida as the former president was playing a round: “I will be clear: I condemn political violence.”

Asked by a journalist if the rhetoric was all one-sided, Vance said “there are absolutely people on our side who say ridiculous things”, but he added that “what is one-sided” is that only one person was being targeted by known gunmen.

“It’s Donald Trump who’s getting shot at,” he said, reiterating that Democrats should stop talking in tones of eliminating him as a threat.

“They are going to get someone killed,” he said.

Joanna Walters

The Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, is on the campaign trail talking in Sparta, near Grand Rapids in central Michigan, the vital swing state, right now.

The White House daily media briefing, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, has been moved back to 2pm, from its previous schedule of 1.30pm.

Vance is talking about prices, the cost of food, gas, housing, saying “the number one thing” the US has to do to get “this crazy inflation” under control is to have better energy supply from the US.

“Drill, baby, drill,” Vance said. He said the US has “abundant American energy” and natural resources that are the envy of other countries.

Senate Democrats will later this afternoon hold a vote on protecting access to IVF care, as they seek to pressure Republicans over the politically volatile topic that will sure to be on voters’ minds when they head to the presidential polls in 49 days. Over in the House, the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, announced plans for the chamber to vote tomorrow on a spending bill that will prevent a partial government shutdown but be paired with legislation aimed at cracking down on non-citizen voting, which rarely happens. Democrats have come out against the latter part of the bill, with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer saying today that Johnson’s proposal will likely meet “a dead end”, though that could increase the possibility of a government shutdown.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Kamala Harris said anti-abortion laws supported by Donald Trump were to blame for the death of a Georgia woman.

• In an interview with popular Spanish radio host Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis, Harris warned that Trump’s policies would result in the separation of migrant families at the southern border.

• Trump said Joe Biden was “very nice” when the president called him after the second assassination attempt against him on Sunday, and asked if he had any suggestions for how to improve his security.

Lauren Gambino

Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat who conceived her daughters using IVF and sponsored the bill coming up for a vote today to protect the fertility treatment, accused Trump and Vance of “lying about their records on IVF, and pretending to champion this cause”.

Speaking on the campaign call, Duckworth said Vance’s decision to campaign instead of returning to Washington to vote for her bill was proof that “when given the chance, they’ll never actually do anything to support IVF”.

“I’m not going to sit quietly while Donald Trump and JD Vance run on a platform that would threaten access to IVF,” she said, “because every American deserves their right to be called mommy or daddy without being treated like a criminal.”

Lauren Gambino

On the call, Democratic lawmakers said Americans should not trust Donald Trump when he says he does not support an abortion ban, and noted that he has bragged about appointing the supreme court justices whose votes were decisive to overturning Roe.

“This is somebody who has started a complete crisis, healthcare crisis for women in this country, and now he’s trying to scramble and somehow, as he always does, say it’s not his fault,” Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow said.

Even if Republicans fail to muster the 60 votes needed to enact a federal abortion ban, she pointed to the conservative blueprint, Project 2025, which was created by former Trump officials and suggests invoking an archaic law to ban the distribution of the pills used in medical abortions. Trump has sought to distance himself from the lengthy policy document.

“Everything that we have seen so far – the efforts by states that he has supported – would indicate to us that that’s very much a part of his toolbox,” Stabenow said.

Abortion remains Harris’s strongest issue, on which she holds a 15-percentage-point advantage over Trump, a national poll of likely voters by the New York Times and Siena College found. Yet there were some signs Trump’s mixed signals over his stance on abortion had muddied the waters. According to the survey, nearly half of independent voters say they did not think the former president would sign into law a national abortion ban.

The Harris campaign has responded with a swing state ad buy highlighting Trump’s comments bragging about his role overturning Roe.

“Make no mistake: Donald Trump is to blame for, you know, what we are seeing across this country,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the Harris-Walz campaign manager, said on the call.

Lauren Gambino

Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said Donald Trump was “scrambling” to rewrite his position on reproductive rights amid a political backlash and fears that a Republican administration would curtail access to IVF.

“There’s no way in the world that I believe that Donald Trump is serious about this,” Staebnow said. The former president last month announced plans, without offering any detail, to require the federal government or health insurance companies to cover the cost of fertility treatments, which can be tens of thousands of dollars.

Stabenow, on a call organized by the Harris campaign, said Tuesday’s vote was all the more important after Trump’s claim that he is a “leader on IVF”.

“Be great if he was,” she said. “And the way to find out if he’s serious? Was he on the phone last night, calling our colleagues, urging them to vote yes, just like he was on the phone last weekend, urging the US House to shut the government down, just like he was on the phone telling people to vote against the effective border bill. If he was on the phone last night urging people to vote yes, then I’ll take him seriously.”

Republicans are expected to block the procedural measure to open debate on the Democrats’ bill to protect IVF. JD Vance, the Ohio senator who voted against the bill earlier this year, is campaigning in the midwest and will miss the vote.

The Senate’s Democratic majority will today try once again to pass legislation protecting access to IVF care nationwide, but Republicans are likely to block its passage.

Democrats have seized on the issue every since Alabama’s supreme court earlier this year handed down a ruling that cut off most access to the treatment used to start families, until its Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that restored access.

In remarks today on the Senate floor, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, warned that IVF remained under threat, and federal legislation was necessary to guarantee access across the country.

“Sadly, access to IVF can no longer be taken from granted. From the moment the Maga supreme court eliminated Roe, the hard-right made clear that they would keep going. As we saw earlier this year in Alabama, IVF has become the next target of ultra-conservatives, and access to this incredible treatment is more vulnerable than ever,” Schumer said.

He tied the GOP’s opposition to the bill to Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government authored by conservatives with ties to Donald Trump.

“If Senate Republicans vote no today, and strike IVF protections down yet again, it will be further proof that Project 2025 is alive and well,” Schumer said. “If people want to see how strong Project 2025’s grip is on the GOP, the outcome of today’s IVF vote will be very, very revealing.”

In June, Senate Republicans blocked the Right to IVF act, which Schumer is moving to reconsider today. Here’s more on that:

Responding to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to tomorrow hold a vote on a six-month government funding bill paired with a new federal law against non-citizen voting, the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, implied that the proposal would go nowhere in his chamber.

“Speaker Johnson is reportedly going to hold a vote on his six-month CR tomorrow, but the only thing that will accomplish is make clear that he’s running into a dead end – we must have a bipartisan – a bipartisan – plan instead,” Schumer said.

The majority leader said he was “heartened” that Johnson’s spending proposal did not contain sweeping budget cuts, but said it was otherwise not acceptable to Democrats. The party opposes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which requires people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote, though Schumer did not name the bill in his remarks.

“I hope it’s a sign that the speaker realizes that these bipartisan funding levels must be part of any solution moving forward. But beyond that, the speaker’s CR [continuing resolution] is too unworkable,” Schumer said.

“I urge him to drop his current plan, and to work together to reach a bipartisan agreement with the other leaders – Leader McConnell, Leader Jeffries, and myself, as well as the White House. We do not have time to spare.”

Lauren Gambino

In an interview Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis’s show Nueva Network, the vice-president said Latino voters “have the power to determine the outcome of the election”.

“Don’t let anyone silence you or tell you your vote doesn’t matter,” Harris said, a nod to the aggressive misinformation campaigns targeting Spanish speakers in the United States.

She also touted her economic agenda, saying she would expand the child tax credit and called growing small businesses “one of my passions”. She noted the explosion of Latino and Latina-owned small businesses.

Harris also emphasized her personal biography as the daughter of immigrants, raised by a working mother. She said her mother – “a five-foot tall woman with an accent” – arrived in the US alone at 19. She raised two daughters while working as a breast cancer researcher.

Kira Lerner

Kamala Harris answered questions about the economy and immigration on Chiquibaby’s radio show, telling the popular Spanish radio host about the work the Biden administration has done to secure the border but also support immigrants already in the country.

“He wants to run on the problem instead of fixing the problem,” she said about Trump during the interview, which was translated from English into Spanish.

“His policies would separate families,” she added. “I have already stood, and will always stand, with the belief that we have to keep families together.”

The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, announced that he would tomorrow hold a vote on legislation to head off a partial government shutdown that would begin 1 October, and ban non-citizens from voting.

The proposal is unlikely to become law, since Senate Democrats and Joe Biden have both said they are opposed to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which requires people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Donald Trump and many Republican lawmakers have nonetheless made the legislation a priority, raising the possibility of a standoff that could bring the government to the brink of a shutdown just weeks before the 5 November presidential election.

Here’s what Johnson said about tomorrow’s vote:

Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government and ensure the security of our elections. Because we owe this to our constituents, we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the six-month CR with the Save Act attached. I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this country rightfully demand and deserve – prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections.

The speaker’s announcement is something of an about-face, since just last week, he scrapped a vote on the bill after several Republicans objected: