Category: Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Every election cycle, political observers speculate about the power and prevalence of ticket-splitters: voters who support one party for president and another on down-ballot races. This year, their influence is unquestioned: they hold the House and Senate majorities in their hands.

Given the congressional maps and margins, both chambers are set for flips. In the Republican-controlled House, if Democratic House candidates win every district that President Joe Biden won in 2020, the party will regain control there. And if states with Senate races follow the expected presidential results, Republicans will retake the Democratic-controlled upper chamber in November.

That leaves the already influential but dwindling tribe of voters willing to split their tickets with a particularly uncommon amount of sway this November, underscoring the unsteady footing Democrats and Republicans hold in Washington and the vast importance of candidates’ ability to reach beyond partisan loyalties.

“I don’t recall any time in our history where it’s been this way, especially not in my lifetime,” said former Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Bishop, who was swept out of office in the 2018 blue wave. “It’s going to be razor thin.”

Republicans are defending their tissue-thin majority in the House, with 17 Republicans holding the line in districts that Biden took four years ago — 10 of which are in sapphire blue California and New York. And Democrats can afford to suffer only one loss in the Senate — and with a surefire defeat in West Virginia’s open Senate race, they’ll need battle-tested incumbents to hang on in ruby red Montana and Ohio.

That’ll leave both parties leaning on a trend that has precipitously dropped in recent years.

In 1988, the first of a series of consecutive, competitive election years, half the states with Senate races supported the same party for president and Senate, a number that grew to around 70% by 2000. By 2016, there was no difference between the Senate and presidential map, and in 2020, only Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, bucked her state’s presidential results, winning reelection on the back of a longstanding brand of pragmatism.

The trend has bucked the historic mantra that “all politics is local,” leaving national politics to rule the day and margins in statewide and House races to more closely track presidential election results.

“With ticket-splitting, you’re dancing on the head of a pin,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist based in California, which is home to several House Republicans in Biden-won districts.

The key to winning over enough of the remaining ticket-splitters, Democrats and Republicans said, is establishing a candidate’s unique brand, which lawmakers this year are hard at work trying to accomplish.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, makes a concerted effort at bolstering his just-like-you reputation as a farmer, while Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown doubled down on his blue-collar appeal as a pre-Trump era populist.

And in California, Republican Reps. David Valadao and Mike Duarte have highlighted their own experience as farmers, for instance, while Republican Rep. Mike Garcia has promoted his time as a naval combat pilot.

All the while, the lawmakers have avoided hammering away at the other party, instead focusing on flaws specifically with their leaders, while working to push bipartisan measures in Congress that could address local issues and constituents’ concerns.

“It’s the way you act and the way you speak,” said New York GOP strategist Tom Doherty. “Work with the other side. Everything you do can’t be, ‘they’re bad people because they’re Democrats,’ or ‘they’re bad people because they’re Republicans.'”

“It’s incredibly important that the brand is built on authenticity, and that’s really why people split tickets,” added one Democratic strategist working on Senate races. “Partisanship tells us a lot, but ultimately, people tend to vote for the candidate who they think is A, on their side, and B, giving it to them straight.”

For some lawmakers in particularly hostile political territory, having a high-profile break with your party or staking out a big claim on an unconventional issue given a candidate’s partisanship could also prove beneficial.

New York Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro used his opening ad to discuss abortion, saying that “I believe health decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor, not Washington.” Tester stayed away from his party’s national convention in Chicago this month. And Brown is out with an ad featuring a Republican sheriff highlighting efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.

“You need to have something that people don’t expect,” said former Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, a former chair of House Republicans’ campaign arm. “It doesn’t need to be a giant disagreement, but it needs to be unexpected, I think, to really catch people’s attention and build an independent brand.”

“You have to have those disagreements,” agreed former Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, whose opposition to abortion and A+ rating from the National Rifle Association helped protect him in a red district in Ohio until Republicans finally unseated him in 2014. But, he warned, “it’s not a guarantee.”

Already, the country saw some candidates defy political gravity.

Despite having a disappointing 2022 cycle overall, Republicans were able to win and flip several Biden-won House districts in California and New York — the same seats that make up the path to the House majority — on messages on crime and the border while keeping former President Donald Trump at arm’s length.

But that was then. This year, the matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump will be the gravitational force in elections.

“Republicans in Biden districts found an issue that resonated with persuadable voters,” said former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chaired House Democrats’ campaign arm for two cycles. 

Replicating that success, though, will be “more difficult in a presidential year for Republicans,” Israel said.

This year’s presidential election is shaping up as another test of how much the rubber band between presidential and down-ballot margins can stretch — before it snaps.

“There are elections where the top the ticket is so overwhelming that everybody gets washed away. That is certainly something that can happen. But the only defense is to control your own persona and your own message,” said William O’Reilly, a GOP strategist who has worked on down-ballot races in New York. “You have to swim the tide, do the best you can and hope it’s not too overwhelming.”

There’s no way to know precisely how far a candidate can run ahead of the top of the ticket, but Madrid, who is also a senior fellow at the University of California, Irvine, studying the state’s competitive Orange County, said, “anything over 5-7 points is stretching the rubber band pretty tight.”

That’s on top of the increasing tribalism of modern politics.

Bishop, the former Michigan congressman who lost in 2018, said more and more people are less eager to split tickets and more than willing to simply pull a lever against a party they dislike — and there’s virtually nothing a candidate can do to reach those voters.

“There was nothing that I could say,” Bishop said of his 2018 race. “It didn’t matter who I was, what I stood for, whether or not they had confidence in my ability to represent them. It was an absolute protest vote, and for the first time I almost lost my hometown that I used to drag through at 60%, 70%.”

When asked if there’s anything down-ballot candidates can do to distance themselves from the party standard bearers, Bishop sounded a pessimistic tone.

“I just think the current is so strong at the top of the ticket that they’re getting pulled along,” Bishop said of the presidential candidates’ pull. “These personalities are bigger than life.”

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(DETROIT) — Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota blitzed the country on Labor Day, making a concerted effort to court union workers ahead of the November election.

Harris kicked off Labor Day in Detroit, Michigan, meeting with union members and delivering brief remarks. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell joined Harris.

“The way we celebrate Labor Day is we know that hard work is good work; we know that when we organize, when we bring everyone together,” Harris said at the Northwestern High School gym in Detroit. “It’s a joyful moment where we are committed to doing the hard work of lifting up America’s families, and I want to thank everyone here for that work and the way you do it every day.”

“So, on Labor Day, and every day, we celebrate the dignity of work,” she later added. “The dignity of work, we celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build America’s middle class.”

Harris also credited union labor with many current workplace standards.

“Everywhere I go, I tell people, look, you may not be a union member, you better thank a union member; for the five-day work week, you better thank a union member; for sick leave, you better thank a union member,” she said. “For paid leave you better thank a union member for vacation time. Because what we know is when union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”

Union leaders, including United Autoworkers President Shawn Fain and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, stood behind Harris on stage as he delivered her remarks. They took the stage shortly before Harris.

Harris was set to join Biden later Monday in Pittsburgh at a union hall for the pair’s first joint campaign event since Biden dropped his bid for reelection. They will both deliver informal remarks, the Harris campaign said. The United Steelworkers, AFSCME, and other unions will be in attendance, as well as Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Mayor Ed Gainey and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio.

Walz and his wife, Gwen, started off the day meeting with laborers in St. Paul, Minnesota, before attending Laborfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to prominent labor groups, including SEIU, Teamsters, and United Autoworkers, Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Gwen Moore and Mayor Cavalier Johnson were there.

Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff was in Newport News, Virginia, to participate in Rep. Bobby Scott’s annual Labor Day Cookout and deliver remarks, the campaign said.

“Vice President Harris always put workers first and held powerful interests accountable. As California’s attorney general, she fought wage theft to make sure workers got the pay they earned. As senator, she fought tirelessly for the most vulnerable workers, walking the picket line with UAW and McDonald’s workers and introducing a domestic workers’ bill of rights,” the campaign said in a statement.

“Vice President Harris chairs The White House Task Force on Worker Organizing, which made it easier for working people to exercise their right to join a union,” the campaign continued.

“Meanwhile, Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in history,” the Harris campaign later added, criticizing former President Donald Trump. “He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor advocates. He hurt autoworkers, shipped jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of the super wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the middle class.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden, as he returned to the White House on Monday to meet with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure an agreement.

Ahead of the Situation Room meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and the negotiating team, Biden was asked if by a reporter, “Do you think it’s time Prime Minister Netanyahu to do more on this issue, do you think he’s doing enough?”

“No,” Biden replied, emphatically.

The president was also asked if he was planning to present a “final” proposed hostage deal to Israel and Hamas this week after months of tense negotiations have failed to reach to reach an agreement.

“We’re very close to that,” he said.

According to senior administration officials, President Biden is considering presenting Israel and Hamas a final proposal for a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza but nothing is definitive.

If the deal falls apart, there is a chance it could lead to the end of the U.S.-led negotiations, according to one of the officials.

Another senior official said that they all have a “sense of urgency and believe this negotiation needs to come to a close.”

Biden is deliberating whether the parties should continue hashing out the deal and its technical details, or if the U.S. should present a new proposal that bridges the gaps.

“President Biden expressed his devastation and outrage at the murder, and reaffirmed the importance of holding Hamas’s leaders accountable,” the White House said in a statement after the meeting.

“During the meeting, President Biden and Vice President Harris received an update from the U.S. negotiation team on the status of the bridging proposal outlined by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt,” the White House said. “They discussed next steps in the ongoing effort to secure the release of hostages, including continuing consultations with co-mediators Qatar and Egypt.”

As Biden returned to Washington to speak with his team, protests were unfolding in Tel Aviv calling for Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire and hostage-release deal with Hamas after six Israeli hostages were found dead in Gaza.

Netanyahu on Sunday said efforts to free hostages are ongoing and blamed Hamas for refusing “to conduct real negotiations.”

“He who murders hostages does not want a deal,” Netanyahu said in a recorded statement as he faced pressure to address Israelis.

Hamas, meanwhile, said it was Israel who “evading reaching a ceasefire agreement.”

Ninety-seven Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including seven Americans, three of whom are confirmed to be dead.

On Monday, the funeral procession is being held for Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Jerusalem. The 23-year-old was at a music festival in south Israel celebrating his birthday on Oct. 7 when he was taken hostage by Hamas.

President Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” after Israel Defense Forces recovered the six killed hostages, including Goldberg-Polin.

“I have gotten to know his parents, Jon and Rachel. They have been courageous, wise, and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable,” Biden said. “They have been relentless and irrepressible champions of their son and of all the hostages held in unconscionable conditions. I admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express.”

ABC News’ Victoria Beaulé contributed to this report.

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(DETROIT) — Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota will blitz the country on Labor Day, the Harris campaign said, as they make a concerted effort to court union workers ahead of the election.

Harris will kick off Labor Day in Detroit, Michigan, meeting with union members and delivering brief remarks, the campaign said. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell will join Harris, the campaign said.

Labor groups and leaders, including UAW President Shawn Fain, AFT President Randi Weingarten, Teamsters, the AFL-CIO, Building Trades, IATSE and the SEIU, will also join, the campaign added.

Harris will then join Biden in Pittsburgh at a union hall for the pair’s first joint campaign event since Biden dropped his bid for reelection. They will both deliver informal remarks, the Harris campaign said. The United Steelworkers, AFSCME, and other unions will be in attendance, as well as Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Mayor Ed Gainey and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio.

Walz and his wife, Gwen, will start off the day meeting with laborers in St. Paul, Minnesota, before attending Laborfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to prominent labor groups, including SEIU, Teamsters, and United Autoworkers, Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Gwen Moore and Mayor Cavalier Johnson will be there, the campaign said.

Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff will be in Newport News, Virginia, to participate in Rep. Bobby Scott’s annual Labor Day Cookout to deliver remarks, the campaign said.

“Vice President Harris always put workers first and held powerful interests accountable. As California’s attorney general, she fought wage theft to make sure workers got the pay they earned. As senator, she fought tirelessly for the most vulnerable workers, walking the picket line with UAW and McDonald’s workers and introducing a domestic workers’ bill of rights,” the campaign said in a statement.

“Vice President Harris chairs The White House Task Force on Worker Organizing, which made it easier for working people to exercise their right to join a union,” the campaign continued.

“Meanwhile, Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in history,” the Harris campaign later added, criticizing former President Donald Trump. “He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor advocates. He hurt autoworkers, shipped jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of the super wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the middle class.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado defended Vice President Kamala Harris’ shifts on policy between her 2020 presidential campaign and her White House bid this year as Republicans seize on perceived discrepancies.

Polis, a Harris ally, told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl that Harris’ shifts on issues like fracking, the border wall, health care and others are the sign of someone who can adapt as needed.

“I think it’s a sign of a good leader, that they learn and evolve over time,” Polis said. “Whether it’s a move to the middle, the left, the right, it’s really about what works. Kamala Harris is a pragmatic leader who looks at data and science and makes the best decisions she can.”

“Democrats are a broad tent party, and they have people who are conservative, they have people who are liberal,” he added when asked if Democrats running for president in 2020 had veered too far to the left. “What Kamala Harris has said, and I take her at her word, is she’s going to be a leader for all Americans, a president for all Americans. And that means, regardless of your ideology, there’s going to be a place for your viewpoints.”

Republicans have seized on what they cast as flip-flops on a range of issues from her 2020 campaign, when progressive fervor gripped the Democratic Party.

During an interview with CNN on Thursday — her first in-depth interview since accepting the Democratic nominee, Harris insisted that her values hadn’t changed — an argument Polis echoed on Sunday.

When pressed on Harris’ past support for “Medicare for All” — a proposal she no longer supports — the Coloradan said the vice president is still invested in making health care more affordable.

“As a basic value, should every American have access to health care? Absolutely. Almost every other wealthy country does that. We do it very poorly,” he said. “I think she understands that Americans want to have their choice of health care, but can we do better and save people money on health care? Absolutely.”

Harris in 2019 also lambasted the border wall proposed by then-President Donald Trump, calling it at the time a “medieval vanity project” and that she would not support funds for it. Now, she is touting support for a bipartisan border security bill that Republicans blocked from advancing at Trump’s direction, which included roughly $650 million for border wall construction — shy of the $18 billion Trump sought in 2018.

Polis said Harris was right to cast Trump’s border wall proposal as ineffective and a waste of taxpayer money, but that walls and other barriers in certain places along the border could prove effective.

“That’s true that the border wall that Donald Trump has proposed is a huge boondoggle and waste of taxpayer money. He effectively talked about a wall across the entire border, rather than using barriers of different kinds effectively in a cost-effective manner, including imagery from satellites, including on-the-ground intel to secure and lock down the border. What Kamala Harris is for is securing it in the most cost-effective way possible,” Polis said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is “heartbroken, devastated, mad” over the six hostages whose bodies were recovered Saturday in Gaza.

The hostages, which included 23-year-old Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, “were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said. IDF officials identified the additional five hostages as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt. Ori Danino.

“If you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the great Satan. Hamas is the junior partner. They’re barbaric, religious Nazis — Hamas, they could care less about the Palestinian people,” Graham told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl during an interview on Sunday. “I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of [the] remaining hostages and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released.”

Graham urged President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “tell the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] what he values is on the target list. Until that happens, nobody is coming home.”

Graham, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, also criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for not attending Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress in July, saying: “She boycotted Bibi’s speech to Congress, sending a signal to Hamas and Iran that America does not really have Israel’s back.”

At the time, a Harris aide insisted to ABC News that the vice president did not preside because of a scheduling conflict, not to boycott or snub the Israeli prime minister. When pressed by Karl on Sunday that Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance also decided to not attend the address, Graham defended the Ohio senator, saying: “JD has been unequivocally supporting Israel. She [Harris] has been horrible. She is slow-walking weapons. She did not attend the speech, and that juiced up every terrorist in the region.”

“I would say on foreign policy, she [Harris] has been a wrecking ball,” Graham said.

Graham said Trump should highlight her failure on foreign policy and her role with the southern U.S. border at the ABC News presidential debate scheduled for Sept. 10.

While he acknowledged Harris “obviously has some talent” given her political experience, Graham said overall “her job performance has been lousy” as vice president. He urged Trump to focus on issues in a head-to-head race, saying: “Every poll says the same thing. The American people trust you with what matters the most to them — the economy, inflation, border security and just managing the government.”

“If I were you, my friend, I would focus on those issues laser-like and you will win this race,” he added.

Trump last week added a new campaign pledge to get IVF paid for by the government or covered by insurance. When asked Sunday about Trump’s IVF announcement, Graham told Karl: “I think he [Trump] just tried to show his support for IVF treatments that, you know, we’ve been accused, the party has, of being against birth control. We are not. We’ve been accused of being against IVF treatments. We’re not.”

Graham said he’d support a tax credit for Americans using IVF and other treatments to become pregnant.

“I would support a tax credit,” Graham said. “That makes sense to me, to encourage people to have children.”

However, when pressed by Karl, the South Carolina senator said he does not support mandating insurance companies to cover what Trump proposed regarding IVF.

“You wouldn’t support this idea of mandating insurance companies to cover this, would you?” Karl asked.

“No. No, I wouldn’t because there’s no end to that,” he said. “I think a tax credit for children makes sense, means tested. … I’ll talk to my Democratic colleagues. We might be able to find common ground here.”

The presidential debate set to be held by ABC News will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 10 and will be moderated by “World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis. It will be produced in conjunction with ABC station WPVI-TV/6abc, and will air live at 9 p.m. ET on the network and on the ABC News Live 24/7 streaming network, Disney+, and Hulu.

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(NEW YORK) — In a new report released as students return to campus, a Columbia University antisemitism task force has found the school failed to stop hate on campus and has not treated Jewish student concerns “with the standards of civility, respect, and fairness it promises,” calling the problem “serious” and “pervasive.”

Additionally, the task force of faculty members at the New York City school recommends a new definition of anti-Jewish hate, concluding, in part, that “celebrating violence against Jews or Israelis and discriminating against them based on their ties to Israel” constitutes antisemitism.

It comes as House Republicans in Washington have requested Columbia and other colleges and universities provide detailed plans on how they will deal with pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the GOP lawmakers say caused “antisemitic chaos” and disrupted the previous academic year.

Unrest broke out this past spring at Columbia and schools across the country, with students setting up encampments and clashing with police, disrupting classes and graduations as they protested against Israel’s invasion of Gaza after the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The Columbia task force said it heard testimonials from hundreds of Jewish and other students.

“These student stories are heartbreaking, and make clear that the University has an obligation to act,” its report said.

The task force said many Jewish and Israeli students “were on the receiving end of ethnic slurs, stereotypes about supposedly dangerous Israeli veterans, antisemitic tropes about Jewish wealth and hidden power, threats and physical assaults, exclusion of Zionists from student groups, and inconsistent standards. We propose this definition for use in training and education, not for discipline or as a means for limiting free speech or academic freedom.”

The report continued, “Specifically, we recommend anti-bias and inclusion trainings for students, resident advisers, resident assistants, teaching assistants, student-facing staff, and faculty. In a community dedicated to freedom of speech and pluralism, we must prepare students with different views and backgrounds to engage with each other. We must encourage mutual respect, tolerance, civility, and an open learning environment.”

In an Aug. 23 memo to students obtained by ABC News, interim President Katrina Armstrong said the school recently established an Office of Institutional Equity to redouble its commitment to addressing discrimination and harassment on campus, including alleged Title VI violations. The office will streamline any violations to ensure they’re handled fairly, according to Armstrong.

“Redoubling our commitment to addressing discrimination and harassment and the toll they take will be essential going forward,” Armstrong wrote, adding, “Effectively managing protests and demonstrations allows us to advance our educational and research missions while enabling free speech and debate.”

The letters from the Republican chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Education and the Workforce Committee ask “what policies, procedures, and concrete measures your University will be implementing to prevent a reoccurrence of the anti-Semitic chaos that swept across America’s campuses last school year.”

“These disruptions are likely to return to campuses this fall and you [the schools’ leadership] must be prepared to act,” Reps. Jason Smith and Virginia Foxx, respectively, wrote to 10 universities, asking for responses by Sept. 5.

Columbia student Eden Yadegar was a guest of Foxx during Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July and spoke at a roundtable on Capitol Hill in February, detailing how she said she was followed around campus by protesters brandishing sticks.

“At this point ignoring Jewish students is a characteristic of the administration not just a transient issue,” Yadegar told ABC News after the task force report was released. “And if they won’t even listen to us, I don’t see how they plan on fixing the issues directly affecting us every single day.”

The latest such disruptions include a pro-Palestinian organization at the University of Michigan, which held a ‘die-in’ demonstration on campus this week, according to the Michigan Daily.

Michigan President Santa Ono sat down for a transcribed interview before Foxx’s committee earlier this month. The university’s student government was shut down by pro-Palestine activists at the start of the new school year, according to the report.

In Ono’s welcome message to the Michigan community, he said protest is embraced and celebrated at the school so long as it doesn’t endanger or disrupt the operations of the university.

Other schools, including the University of Central Florida (UCF), will vote on how to tighten protest restrictions later in September, according to a UCF notice of proposed regulation amendment. The university didn’t see massive protest encampments last school year but there were noticeable demonstrations at its graduation ceremonies.

The House Republican letters to schools come amid a congressional probe the GOP says is aimed at rooting out antisemitism on college campuses, a drive now led by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

This spring, Johnson broadened the jurisdiction of six Republican-led committees by sending letters to the 10 schools that the Ways and Means and Education committees were already investigating. Smith and Foxx’s investigations include elite institutions such as MIT and Harvard as well as Columbia. An MIT spokesperson said the school is reviewing the request.

In contrast, the former chairman of the Education committee, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, sent an open letter to colleges in his southeastern Virginia congressional district on Friday. He told ABC News that his letter was meant to notify schools of the resources available to them through the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

“Campuses should be prepared for whatever might happen to make sure they’re not in violation of constitutional rights for freedom of speech or Title VI,” Scott said.

“It is a violation of Title VI to allow a hostile racial or ethnic environment. You also have to have freedom of speech, and sometimes these are in conflict,” he said, adding, “There are resources available at the Department of Education to help people balance these.”

Scott has criticized the GOP investigations into antisemitism on college campuses because he said Republicans don’t raise the same concerns about Islamophobia.

“The only way you can effectively deal with antisemitism is to address all forms of hate and discrimination, and we [the committee] have aggressively ignored everything else,” Scott told ABC News.

In December, House Republican Conference Chair and Education Committee member Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., pressed the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT at a hearing on alleged antisemitic conduct at their institutions. Stefanik called their testimony “morally bankrupt” and demanded their resignations. Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn President Liz Magill resigned not long afterward.

Earlier this year, the Education committee sent subpoenas to Harvard for failing to produce “priority documents” related to the monthslong congressional antisemitism probe.

In August, after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned, Foxx subpoenaed Columbia for failing to turn over “necessary” documents to her committee.

Shafik wrote in her resignation announcement that her stepping down would allow Columbia to better deal with future challenges.

“Even as tension, division, and politicization have disrupted our campus over the last year, our core mission and values endure and will continue to guide us in meeting the challenges ahead,” she wrote.

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(WASHINGTON) — The White House is expected to keep in place its restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American long-range weapons deep inside Russia, despite pressure from a delegation of Ukrainian officials that arrived in Washington on Thursday, a U.S. official said.

Ukrainian Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, and Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, arrived with a list of Russian targets that Kyiv believes it could strike using U.S. weapons if given permission, according to several officials.

According to a Ukrainian official, the officials will argue that such strikes could be effective in altering the course of the conflict, which is now in its third year.

All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss ongoing private talks between the two countries.

The Biden administration has already eased some restrictions on the use of U.S. arms, allowing Ukraine to launch limited defensive strikes against Russian forces across its border.

Among Ukraine’s most coveted items is a long-range missile system — the Army Tactical Missile System, or “ATACMS,” which the Biden administration has delivered. And this spring, after months of pressure by the Ukrainians, the U.S. shipped a longer-range version that could strike as far as 190 miles, enabling it to hit targets inside Russian-occupied Crimea.

But while the U.S. has made its support for Ukraine clear, it’s also sought to avoid deep strikes inside the Russia homeland, seeing such a move as a major provocation with both U.S. and NATO trying to avoid direct conflict with Moscow.

According to a U.S. official familiar with the latest round of discussions, the reluctance by the White House to relax its rules on the use of ATACMs to hit far-flung targets inside Russia is due in part to the limited number of them.

The system is successfully being used in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, including Crimea. And pulling those systems to focus on other targets wouldn’t likely be useful, the official said.

Another question for Washington would be whether loosening restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons would make much of a difference.

Recent intelligence suggests Russia is believed to have relocated more than 90 percent of its aircraft out of range of the system, according to the U.S. official.

“There’s not a silver bullet to win the war,” the official said. And a change in policy “means Ukraine would have to choose between striking in the Donbas in Crimea or inside Russia with limited resources.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has long advocated for more weapons from the West with no restrictions. At an Aug. 24 press conference in Kyiv, he said he plans on attending the United Nations General Assembly in September where he’ll present the U.S. and other world powers a path to victory in the war.

“We need no less determination from our partners in these matters. Each of our friends who can persuade our allies to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons can truly help bring our shared victory closer,” he said.

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(LA CROSSE, Wis.) — Former President Donald Trump introduced a new campaign platform on Thursday aimed at helping Americans with the cost of IVF.

At a town hall moderated by his supporter, one-time Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, Trump said he and his team have been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.

“I’ve been looking at it, and what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” he told Gabbard.

“We want to produce babies in this country, right?” he added.

Trump first spoke about the idea of government-funded or insurance-covered fertility treatments earlier in the day during a campaign stop in the battleground state of Michigan.

When asked by NBC News if it would be the government or insurance companies paying for IVF, the network reported that Trump said it would be the latter, “under a mandate.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s camp on Thursday night walked back comments the former president made earlier in the day suggesting he did not support Florida’s now-implemented six-week ban on abortions.

“I think the six week is too short, there has to be more time and I told them I want more weeks,” Trump told NBC.

“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he added, noting that he believes abortion should be a states’ issue, something he’s said before.

Later, though, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to clarify the candidate’s remarks.

“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life America, President Marjorie Dannenfelser also released a statement Thursday night saying she had spoken to the president, and he told her he hasn’t “committed” to how he’ll vote on Florida’s Amendment 4. The amendment, if passed, would insert language into the state’s constitution that abortions determined medically necessary by a patient’s healthcare provider would be permitted.

“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,” her statement read.

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(NEW YORK) — Most Americans say they and Kamala Harris alike are prepared to accept the outcome of the 2024 presidential election as legitimate. Donald Trump, not so much.

Eighty-one percent of Americans in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll say that regardless of which candidate they support, they are prepared to accept the outcome of the election. Fewer, but still 68%, see Harris as prepared to accept the outcome. Just 29% say the same about Trump.

Nearly all of Harris’ supporters, 92%, say they personally are prepared to accept the outcome. That declines to 76% of Trump’s supporters. Instead, 21% of his supporters — which translates to 8% of all adults — are not prepared to do so.

Other, sharper political divisions inform views in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates with fieldwork by Ipsos. Just 6% of Harris’ supporters think Trump is prepared to accept the election outcome, rising to a still-mild 58% among his own supporters. Ninety-seven percent of Harris’ supporters think she is prepared to accept the outcome; among Trump’s supporters, only 44% think the same.

See PDF for full results.

Election integrity

Trump’s election denial claims resonate with some Americans.

One in three (34%) lacks confidence that votes in the election will be counted accurately, similar to the share who said so in 2022. Sixty-five percent are very or somewhat confident in an accurate count; just half of them, 32%, are very confident.

Moreover, an identical 34% think Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, little changed since his inauguration.

These views are strongly related: Nearly nine in 10 Americans who think Biden legitimately was elected are confident that votes will be counted accurately this year, dropping to 26% of those who think it wasn’t legitimate.

Views on election integrity also are associated with preparedness to accept the outcome. Among people who are confident that votes will be counted accurately, 92% say they are prepared to accept the outcome, versus 61% of those who lack confidence in the count. And 91% of those who think Biden was legitimately elected are prepared to accept this year’s outcome, versus 64% of those who think not.

Groups

There are wide gaps by partisanship in confidence in the vote count, with half of Republicans (51%) lacking confidence it will be accurate. Ninety percent of Democrats express confidence in the count, dropping to 64% of independents and just 48% of Republicans.

In a similar pattern, 96% of Democrats think Biden was legitimately elected; 66% of independents and just 30% of Republicans agree.

That said, partisan divisions in personal preparedness to accept the outcome this year are much milder. About eight in 10 Republicans (78%) and independents (81%) alike say they’ll accept it, as do 89% of Democrats.

Ideology is another factor: At least eight in 10 people who are liberal, moderate or somewhat conservative are prepared to accept the outcome, dropping to 64% among those who identify themselves as very conservative.

Just 38% of very conservatives are confident that votes will be counted accurately this year, rising to 50% of somewhat conservatives, 68% of moderates and 89% of liberals. And only 21% of very conservatives think Biden legitimately won in 2020; this doubles to 42% of somewhat conservatives, then jumps to 70% of moderates and 92% of liberals.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® Aug. 23-27, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 2,496 adults. Partisan divisions are 29-29-30%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the full sample. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Ipsos. See details on ABC News survey methodology here.

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