CHICAGO — Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris said she’ll be a president who is “practical and has common sense and always fights for the American people.”
In a 37-minute acceptance speech — roughly one-third the length of former President Donald Trump’s at the Republican National Convention in July — Harris retold the story of her upbringing in a “beautiful working-class neighborhood” in San Francisco’s East Bay. She went on to describe being a child of divorce who was raised with the help of people, “none of them family by blood, and all of them family by love.”
As she has at recent rallies, Harris leaned into several key policy themes: abortion rights, voting rights and support for Ukraine as it fights a continuing Russian invasion. Broaching an issue Democrats have sometimes been reluctant to raise — immigration — Harris dared Republicans to oppose a revival of a bipartisan immigration bill that GOP lawmakers abandoned earlier this year under pressure from Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
As Harris sounded notes of unity and optimism, she also expressed disdain for her opponent, Trump.
During the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Harris said, “Politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help. He did the opposite; he fanned the flames.” Such criticism of Trump prompted repeated chants from the crowd: “We’re not going back.”
Harris said, “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
Harris was the night’s undisputed focus, not eclipsed by the superstar wattage of previous nights, when people such as Barack and Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey spoke.
PolitiFact fact-checks politicians across the political spectrum. We also fact-checked the Republican National Convention in July. Read more about our process.
Here are fact-checks of some of Harris’ statements on the convention’s fourth and final night.
We will continue to update this story.
Related: Live fact-checking of Night 4 of the DNC
Abortion
Harris: Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.”
Mostly False.
What Harris describes is Project 2025. Although the 900-page policy manual makes such recommendations, it isn’t Trump’s plan. The project, led by conservative Heritage Foundation, contains proposals for the next Republican administration, and got input from dozens of Trump allies. But Trump and his campaign have repeatedly said they were not involved in the project and Trump is not listed as an author, editor or contributor.
Project 2025 doesn’t mention a “national anti-abortion coordinator.” The document calls for a “pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families.”
It says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abortion surveillance and maternal mortality reporting systems are inadequate and proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the CDC how many abortions take place in their states.
The document calls for the Health and Human Services Department to “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
It also says that the statistics should be separated by category, including spontaneous miscarriage, treatments that incidentally result in fetal death (such as chemotherapy), stillbirths and “induced abortion.”
In an April interview with Time magazine, Trump said some states “might” choose to monitor and punish women for illegal abortions. But, when asked about the topic, he told the reporter to “speak to the individual states” about it.
Taxes
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.”
Half True.
Trump has said that he would propose a 10% tariff on all nondomestic goods sold in the U.S. Although tariffs are levied separately from taxes, economists say that much of their impact would be passed along to consumers, making them analogous to a tax.
Harris’ figure about how much it will cost families is higher than most estimates.
The American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, has projected additional costs per household of $1,700 to $2,350 annually.
The Peterson Institute of International Economics, another Washington, D.C.-based think tank, projected that such tariffs would cost a middle-income household about $1,700 extra each year.
A more recent estimate, from the liberal group the Center for American Progress Action, came up with a $3,900 figure, but that was based on the high end of a 10% to 20% tariff range that Trump on one occasion speculated about.
Presidential Immunity
Harris: “The United States Supreme Court just ruled he would be immune from criminal prosecution.”
The court did not grant Trump — or any president — full immunity.
In a landmark decision July 1, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that presidents have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.”
“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” the court wrote. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
We don’t yet fully know how the ruling will affect the outcome of pending criminal cases against Trump. The ruling delayed Trump’s federal prosecution on charges that he interfered with the 2020 election. A federal judge now must decide whether Trump’s actions constituted official acts.
The ruling also delayed the sentencing of Trump’s Manhattan conviction for falsifying business records.
PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Grace Abels, Kwasi Asiedu, Madison Czopek, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero and Maria Ramirez Uribe and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.
Our convention fact-checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew.