Kamala Harris’ convention speech verified

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris delivered her acceptance speech at the party’s national convention in Chicago.

She spoke about her upbringing, her career and made a number of claims about Donald Trump’s record and what he would do if he won the election.

BBC Verify has looked at some of them.

CLAIM:Trump would “enact a national abortion ban.”

VERDICT:This is misleading. Trump has said he would not sign a national abortion ban and believes the issue should be left to individual states.

During his presidency, Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Roe v Wade is a decision that protected the federal constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years until it was overturned in June 2022.

Afterwards, 22 States Ban Abortion or have limited the procedure to earlier stages of pregnancy than those set by Roe v. Wade. In 14 of these states, abortion is prohibited in almost all circumstances, and 10 of them do not even provide an exception for rape or incest.

CLAIM“As part of his (Trump’s) agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control.”

VERDICT:That’s misleading. Trump didn’t say he would do that.

Ms. Harris appears to be referring to Project 2025, a document published by a right-wing research group, the Heritage Foundation.

He outlines policies he would like Trump to implement, including limiting access to certain birth control pills and ending taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.

The former president responded on his social media platform Truth Social, saying, “I am not limiting access to birth control, that is a lie.”

Harris has repeatedly tried to link Project 2025 to Trump, but he has distanced himself from it, saying: “I don’t know anything about Project 2025. I have no idea who’s behind it.”

However, according to a CNN investigationAt least 140 former Trump administration officials were involved in the project.

CLAIM“The Trump tax…would raise prices for middle-class families by nearly $4,000 a year.”

VERDICT:These figures are based on an estimate of the cost that Trump’s plan to impose tariffs – or taxes – on imported goods could represent for American households. Other estimates are lower.

The figure “nearly $4,000” comes from analysis by the center-left think tank, the Center for American Progress Trump’s promise to raise tariffs on all imported goods to 10-20% and on all goods imported from China to 60%.

They took the amount of goods the United States buys abroad each year, calculated the amount of new taxes on those goods, and divided that amount by the number of households in the United States.

That’s $4,600 per household, but if you consider “middle-income” families, you get a figure of $3,900 per year.

Other estimates are lower. Peterson Institute estimates impact would be closer to $1,700 per year.

Trump insists the cost of his tariffs would be felt by foreign countries instead.

It is difficult to assess the exact impact of these taxes, but studies of previous tariffs show that suggested that part of the costs was forwarded to American businesses and consumers.

CLAIM“Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he has ordered his allies in Congress to torpedo the deal.”

VERDICT:Trump publicly called on Republicans to vote against the Biden administration’s immigration bill and took credit for its failure.

The immigration bill sought to strengthen asylum standards, increase spending on Border Patrol and allow the southern border to automatically close to illegal crossings if a certain daily threshold is reached.

The majority of US senators opposed the proposed measures. Trump did not have a vote, but he called on his Republican representatives to oppose them.

Trump said the bill was “horrible” because he believed it was not tough enough on immigration.

At a Fox News event in February 2024, he said he opposed the deal because its passage would have “made things much better for the other side.”

The bill was blocked in the Senate a second time in May.

CLAIM: “Trump…threatened to abandon NATO.”

VERDICT: That’s right. Trump has threatened to leave the alliance. He has also said that the United States will remain a member of the alliance as long as European allies increase their defense spending.

As President, Trump recalled saying “Yes, I’m leaving you” when asked whether the United States would leave NATO if other members did not commit to increasing their defense spending.

In a Interview with GB News Earlier this year, he said that the United States, under his leadership, would be “100 percent” committed to NATO as long as European members paid their “fair share” of defense costs.

During his term, Trump did impose “strict requirements” on NATO members to meet their commitment to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, according to Rose Gottemoeller, who was NATO’s deputy secretary general during Trump’s presidency.

In 2016, the year Trump was elected, five countries spent 2% or more of their GDP on defense. That number rose to nine in 2020, the year Biden was elected.

And this has now expanded to 23 countries, according to NATO estimates for 2024.

Additional reporting by Joseph Cassidy and Gerry Georgieva.