Politics

(WASHINGTON) — While polling sites around the country are gearing up for huge voter turnout on Election Day, data and experts predict that a majority of the votes that will decide this year’s key races will be cast months before.

In fact, many of those votes could be cast in the next few weeks.

Analysts who have been studying early-voting trends say mail-in balloting and voting done at early opening polling sites will not only be a crucial indicator for this year’s races, but also future voting methods adopted by the country.

Early in-person voting options are available for almost all registered voters in 47 states with some allowing voters to cast their ballot as early as September, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks election laws across the country.

Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida who helps run the school’s election lab, told ABC News that early voting exploded during the 2020 election and its effectiveness has reshaped the way the electorate and campaigns navigate the election.

“People find it easier to navigate and return the ballot at their convenience and it gives them more chances. They’re more likely to cast a ballot with those options,” he said.

How and where voters can cast a ballot early

In addition to offering voters a chance to cast their ballot through the mail, many states offer voters two ways of casting a ballot in person: either dropping off their absentee ballot at an election office or site, known as in-person absentee voting; or at a polling machine polling place that is open prior to Election Day.

As of 2024, 22 states offer all voters who vote via absentee the option to turn in their ballot in person early, according to NCSL data.

Alabama and New Hampshire offer no in-person early voting options — something the state’s election officials have not opted to do. Mississippi only offers in-person absentee to voters who meet specific criteria such as a physical disability, or proof that they will not be in the state on Election Day, such as military members.

Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia give voters both in-person absentee and early in-person poll site options, NCSL data shows.

Eight states — California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont and Hawaii — and D.C. have adopted all-mail ballots and allow voters to cast their ballots in person before Election Day. With this process, states mail ballots to all registered voters and they can send it back, drop it off in-person absentee or ballot box, or simply choose to vote in a polling site either early or on Election Day.

Some election offices will offer voters a chance to submit their paper ballots in person as early as mid-September.

​In Pennsylvania, some voters may be able to cast absentee ballots in person at their county’s executive office starting Sept. 16, which is the date for when counties must begin processing applications for mail-in or absentee ballots. The Pennsylvania Department of State told ABC News, however, that counties might not necessarily have the ballots ready by that date.

Rise in popularity

Charles Stewart, the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab, told ABC News that voting data has shown a gradual increase in votes cast before Election Day over nearly three decades.

In fact, during the 2020 election, more than 69% of votes cast in the election were done through either mail-in ballots or early in-person voting, according to election data. By comparison, only 40% voted early in the 2016 election and 33% in the 2012 election, the data showed.

The data did not indicate how many mail ballots were turned in person.

Stewart noted that the pandemic was a factor behind the 2020 surge in early voting, and even though there was a decrease in early voting numbers during the 2022 midterms, there was still a jump in the number of people who cast their ballots either through the mail or at an early-voting site compared to previous midterms.

“If you extend the trend line and extend it to 2022, there is only a little bit more voting by mail,” he said. “That tells me that voters have, on aggregate, returned to patterns we saw before 2020, which is that of a slowly growing reliance on convenience voting methods.”

The extra convenience isn’t the only incentive that is moving more voters to early voting, particularly mail-in ballots, according to Stewart.

Stewart said that several studies that have been published about voting behaviors have shown that voters who cast their ballot through the mail are thinking about their choices “more deeply and thoroughly.”

“I heard it from a voter the other day who said they appreciate being able to lay the ballot on the table and do the research on the issues and the candidates,” he said.

The enthusiasm has also had ripple effects, according to research conducted by McDonald.

McDonald said that data has shown that the states that opted to give all registered voters their ballot in the mail, such as Colorado, Washington and Oregon, saw the highest turnout rates in the country in 2020.

“In the early states that opted [into] mail balloting, places like Oregon and Washington, they’ve done satisfaction surveys and voters there love it, both Democrats and Republicans,” he said.

A boon for voters, election offices and campaigns

Election experts said that 2020’s jump in early voting helped to decrease long lines on Election Day at a time when the pandemic required smaller indoor crowds and social distancing.

Even though the need to decrease crowds has lessened, McDonald stressed there is still a need for “safety valves” when it comes to Election Day lines.

“It means if someone has a problem … and they try to catch their problem earlier, they have more time to rectify that problem,” he said, citing examples such as an error on their form or improper voter ID.

McDonald also cited the sudden snowstorm that hit northern Arizona in November 2022 as a major obstacle that voters and election offices faced when it came to Election Day voting.

“These are the things that can happen and campaigns kind of know they shouldn’t rely too much on Election Day because there could be things that go wrong,” he said.

Christopher Mann, the research director for the non-profit group, The Center for Election Innovation & Research, told ABC News that early voting also gives election office teams, many of whom are understaffed and underfunded, extra time to handle the large number of ballots that come through during presidential cycles.

“They can move more people around during those early weeks, especially on the weekends,” he said.

At the same time, early voting has reshaped how campaigns are conducted.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden pushed for their debates to take place prior to October because of early voting. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are scheduled to debate on Sept. 10 on ABC News.

Aside from the campaign trail, McDonald said that early voting also affects the campaign staffers on the ground who receive voter information from election offices.

“Then the campaigns can say, ‘OK this voter already voted, I don’t need to call them or mail them something. I can scratch them off the list,” he said.

Trump’s false claims on early voting shift dynamics

In both the 2020 election and in this year’s contest, Trump has been vocal about his distrust in early voting, falsely claiming it is not secure and pushed for only voting on Election Day.

Despite appearing in a video at the Republican National Convention encouraging Republicans to vote by mail or early if available, Trump has been criticizing early voting at his events.

“We should have one-day voting. We should have paper ballots, we should have voter ID, and we should have proof of citizenship,” he told reporters at a news conference last month.

McDonald said Trump’s rhetoric led to a major shift in the 2020 election as the number of Republicans who voted by mail dropped compared to Democrats. Prior to 2020, more Republicans cast their vote in the mail, according to McDonald.

“We can see that those patterns really haven’t restored themselves [to] pre-pandemic,” he said.

The election experts stressed that there is no evidence of fraud when it comes to mail-in ballots and, in fact, showed there is no correlation between the number of early votes cast and the outcome of the election.

“If you look at states where half of the ballots were issued before Election Day, Trump won half of that vote,” Mann said.

The experts say the election data is showing an upward trend of more voters opting to vote early versus on Election Day, with mail-in voting seeing the biggest increases, and they predict more states will expand those early voting offerings.

Stewart noted that the momentum is still there as several states failed to pass measures in the last four years that would have restricted early-voting options, specifically ending pandemic-era rules that allowed for no-excuse absentee.

Ultimately, Stewart contended that giving voters as many options to safely and properly cast their ballot leads not only to more convenience, but a stronger electorate.

“I would encourage voters to think about their own lives, their own habits, their own values and choose their mode that is keeping with all of those things,” he said.

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(ATLANTA) — A federal judge in Atlanta on Tuesday issued a temporary injunction ordering Donald Trump and his campaign to stop using a song co-written by the late musician Isaac Hayes at their events.

The song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” published in 1966, was played at Trump rallies and can be heard in campaign videos that were posted online, according to court documents reviewed by ABC News. The judge did not order that these videos be taken down, according to a statement from Trump representative Ronald Coleman.

“The campaign had already agreed to cease further use,” Coleman told ABC News in a statement. “We’re very gratified that the court recognized the First Amendment issues at stake and didn’t order a takedown of existing videos.”

Isaac Hayes III, Hayes’ son, said in a social media post last month that he was demanding $3 million in licensing fees from Trump and his campaign for unauthorized use of the song “Hold On, I’m Coming.” Trump and his partners played the song over 150 times without permission, court documents said.

“We won,” Isaac Hayes III posted on Instagram on Tuesday after the hearing. “@realdonaldtrump has been barred from playing @isaachayes music forever.”

The injunction stops the campaign from playing the song pending further proceedings, Coleman told ABC News, and the court would consider a motion for reconsideration based on copyright ownership if appropriate.

“The campaign has a license to play the music through an agreement with BMI and ASCAP,” the Trump campaign said in a statement emailed to ABC News in response to the ruling, referring to performance rights groups Broadcast Music Inc and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Neither Isaac Hayes III nor attorneys for Isaac Hayes Enterprises — the company that handles licensing for Hayes’ estate — have responded to ABC News’ request for statements. Neither sides’ attorneys have responded to ABC News regarding any decision made on money allegedly owed to Isaac Hayes Enterprises.

The song was popularized by the music duo Sam & Dave in 1966 and reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the time, according to court documents. Hayes, who wrote the song with David Porter, passed away at age 65 in 2008, but his estate is the current owner of right and title to the song, the court documents noted.

After Trump and his campaign played the song in 2020 as “outro” music at one of their events, a cease-and-desist letter was sent to the Trump campaign on behalf of Isaac Hayes Enterprises, according to court documents.

The Donald J. Trump for President campaign, Republican National Committee (RNC), conservative advocacy group Turning Point, National Rifle Association (NRA), American Conservative Union and BTC were named as defendants on the complaint filed by Isaac Hayes Enterprises last month, for hosting events and uploading videos where the song was played, according to court documents.

The motion was withdrawn on Tuesday by Hayes Enterprises as to Turning Point, NRA and RNC, the court noted.

Hayes is part of a group of musicians who have called for Trump to stop playing their music at his events, which include Beyoncé, the Foo Fighters, Jack White and Celine Dion.

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(NEW YORK) — Linda Sun, a former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, schemed to advance the interests of China while working in New York State government, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The indictment charges Sun with failure to register as a foreign agent, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering conspiracy.

Her husband, Christopher Hu, allegedly facilitated the transfer of millions of dollars in kickbacks for personal gain, prosecutors said.

Sun and her husband were arrested at their Long Island home Tuesday morning, according to federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York and the FBI. The FBI had searched the Manhasset home in July.

Both are due in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear whether they are represented by attorneys.

Sun was hired by the Executive Chamber more than a decade ago, before being fired last year, according to Avi Small, Hochul’s press secretary.

“We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” Small said in a statement to ABC News.

Sun worked in state government for about 15 years before she was fired last year from her job as deputy commissioner for strategic business development at the New York State Department of Labor. She previously served as Hochul’s deputy chief of staff and in the administration of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The indictment alleges that, acting at the request of Chinese government officials and representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, Sun blocked Taiwanese government officials from having access to high-level New York State officers, changed New York State officers’ messaging about China and arranged meetings for visiting delegations from the PRC government with New York State government officials.

In return for these and other actions, Sun allegedly received economic and other benefits from China, including the facilitation of millions of dollars in transactions for the China-based business activities of Hu; travel benefits; tickets to events; promotion of a close family friend’s business; employment for Sun’s cousin in the PRC; and Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a PRC government official’s personal chef that were delivered to the residence of Sun’s parents, according to the indictment.

“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign kicked off a weekslong 50-stop “reproductive freedom bus tour” across battleground states in West Palm Beach, Florida — former President Donald Trump’s backyard — on Tuesday.

The campaign said “reproductive rights storytellers” will join campaign surrogates along the route to help emphasize the split screen on the issue between the Harris-Walz campaign and Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance.

Women’s reproductive rights are a key voter issue driving suburban women to the polls, and has been a spotlight since the Supreme Court overruled the constitutional right to abortion that had been the law nationwide for almost 50 years.

“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back,” Harris-Walz Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a statement.

The bus tour began just days after Trump announced a sweeping new policy proposal on in vitro fertilization, promising to make the costly treatments free. The former president has not yet provided any specific details about how he would fund the initiative.

Trump’s initiative is seen as a way to court those suburban women as November approaches.

On a phone call with reporters on Friday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been campaigning for Harris, said “American women are not stupid” and that they understand the promise is coming from Trump, who has consistently bragged about being responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.

“It was Donald Trump who opened the door for any extremist judge or extremist state legislature to ban IVF without legal protection for abortion and IVF,” Warren said.

Tuesday’s bus tour kicked off in West Palm Beach — not far from Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.

“Now my friends, I ask you, what better place to kick off the Harris/Walz reproductive freedom bus tour than in Donald Trump’s backyard?” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke at the event and called on women to have their voices heard.

“Americans have shown us time and time again that they will not tolerate a country where our daughters have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers, and they believe that women have the right to make their own health care decisions and not politicians,” Klobuchar said.

Chavez Rodriguez said the campaign is mobilizing around women’s reproductive rights.

“Today, by launching this bus tour, we are reminding Trump of the fact that by pulling our reproductive freedom and putting it on the ballot, he is going to have an incredible amount of energy and organizing that he is going to have to contend with.”

Later in the bus tour, there will be appearances from reproductive rights advocates Amanda Zurawski, Hadley Duvall and Kaitlyn Joshua throughout the tour as well, according to the campaign.

So far, the Harris-Walz campaign already has events scheduled in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Georgia for the bus tour — with more stops scheduled throughout the fall.

This election cycle, seven states, including the critical battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, will vote on abortion-related ballot initiatives in November.

According to a New York Times/Siena Poll released in August, abortion was a top-three issue among all registered voters in swing states with 14% of registered voters saying it was the most important issue in deciding their vote this November.

Trump, whose stance on abortion has wavered at times over the past year, recently criticized Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he said to NBC News last month.

His campaign attempted to walk back that comment before Trump clarified that he’ll be voting “no” on Florida’s Amendment 4 — also known as the “Right to Abortion Initiative” — come November, despite continuing to claim that a ban at six weeks is “too short.”

This isn’t Harris’ first time hitting the campaign trail to focus on reproductive rights. She had already been tapped to lead reproductive rights discussions under President Joe Biden’s former campaign. In January, she embarked on a “reproductive freedom tour” on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, making stops in Florida and Arizona.

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(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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(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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