Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the nomination for president during the fourth night of Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday, Aug. 22.
The theme of the convention’s final night was “For Our Future.” Harris’ speech followed remarks from various lawmakers, civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and comedian D.L. Hughley, as well as musical performances from The Chicks and Pink.
Harris spoke about various policy issues during her speech, including health care, taxes and abortion laws.
VERIFY fact-checked several claims from Harris’ speech.
THE CLAIM
Harris: “[Trump] intends to enact what in effect is a national sales tax – call it a Trump tax – that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year.”
THE SOURCES
Erica York, a senior economist and research director with the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy
THE ANSWER
Harris was likening Trump’s proposal to impose a tariff of 20% on all imports and up to 60% on imports from China to a “national sales tax.”
While tariffs are taxes on imported goods, this isn’t the same as a national sales tax that would be applied to every purchase Americans make.
But economists do estimate that Trump’s proposed tariffs would increase costs for middle-class Americans.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund, a progressive advocacy group, estimates that a 20% across-the-board import tax combined with the 60% tax on Chinese goods would amount to about a $3,900 tax increase for a middle-income family.
“The methodology Center for American Progress uses is a good way to estimate the tariff burden for median households,” Erica York, a senior economist with the nonpartisan Tax Foundation’s Center for Tax Policy, told VERIFY.
However, Trump has also floated a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods rather than 20%. Some estimates looking at the tax burden of the 10% universal tariff proposal on middle-income Americans are lower than the CAP Action Fund’s estimate.
For example, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, projects that such tariffs would cost a middle-income household about an extra $1,700 in increased taxes each year.
THE CLAIM
Harris: “[Donald Trump] plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.”
THE SOURCES
Project 2025 policy plan, “Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise”
Interviews with Donald Trump
THE ANSWER
VERIFY found no record of Trump saying that he supports either an “anti-abortion coordinator” or forcing all states to report miscarriages and abortions. He has said as recently as April that states should decide whether to monitor pregnancies.
The claim appears to stem from proposals included in Project 2025, which is an agenda assembled by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation.
In its document called “Mandate for Leadership,” Project 2025 proposes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enforce a nationwide “abortion surveillance system.”
While many states already report certain statistics on abortion to the CDC, Project 2025 proposes stricter requirements, including that all abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths should be reported.
Project 2025 does not call for an “anti-abortion coordinator” to oversee the surveillance system.
A separate chapter of the project calls for “an unapologetically pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families” – but this is unrelated to nationwide abortion surveillance. It’s instead related to Project 2025’s suggested changes to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a foreign aid agency that does not deal in domestic policy.
Specifically, Project 2025 proposes renaming the current USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment to the Office of Women, Children, and Families. It suggests “an unapologetically pro-life” coordinator because it calls for foreign aid not to be given to any organization that in any way promotes or assists with abortion.
Although several people who worked in Trump’s presidential administration authored Project 2025 and Trump has praised the Heritage Foundation in the past, Trump has never publicly endorsed Project 2025 and recently called some of its ideas “ridiculous and abysmal.”
THE CLAIM
Harris: “[Donald Trump] tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.”
THE SOURCES
A 2017 Executive Order
Trump’s Truth Social posts from November and December 2023
THE ANSWER
It’s true that Donald Trump has tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act in the past.
On his first day in office as president, Trump outlined this goal in an executive order. The order called on federal agencies to “to minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens of the Act, and prepare to afford the States more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.”
During Trump’s presidency, Republicans proposed the American Healthcare Act of 2017, which would have made significant changes to the ACA and Medicaid. However, the bill failed to receive the required amount of votes needed in the Senate.
In November 2023, Trump said on Truth Social that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the ACA, also known as “Obamacare.” One month later, he wrote that “the cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare,” adding that he will come up with a “better and less expensive alternative.”
THE CLAIM
Harris: “[I] delivered $20 billion for middle-class families who faced foreclosure.”
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
Harris is referring to a settlement that she negotiated with several large banks in 2012 while she was serving as California’s attorney general. Harris said homeowners in California would see $20 billion in overall financial relief following the foreclosure crisis.
But many homeowners did not stay in their homes as a result of the settlement, multiple news outlets have reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2024 that the banks offered $18 billion in mortgage debt relief, plus $2 billion in refinancing and transition assistance for California homeowners. That’s where Harris is getting the $20 billion figure from.
Harris’ office wanted to use most of that money for mortgage principal reductions.
Her office said at the time that the relief would ensure homeowners would “actually see a benefit that will allow them to stay in their homes.” But that didn’t happen for many Californians who received assistance under the settlement, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2016.
In many cases, the banks opted to write off mortgages of homes that had already been abandoned, according to the Wall Street Journal. The banks agreed for the homes to be sold for less than the value of the mortgage and wrote off the difference, a practice that’s known as a short sale.
Short sales accounted for more than half of the debt relief given to California homeowners, the Wall Street Journal reported.
This story is also available in Spanish / Lee este artículo también en español: Verificamos afirmaciones del discurso de Kamala Harris en la Convención Nacional Demócrata
