Fact-checking GOP Trump fliers flooding swing-state mailboxes

If you’re a swing state voter, your mailbox has probably been flooded with fliers, especially on behalf of Donald Trump’s campaign. We’ve been collecting examples of Trump fliers and, though they are underwritten by different state Republican parties, they often have virtually the same language.

Typically, on one side, there’s a defense — Vice President Kamala Harris is telling “lies” about Trump and Project 2025. On the other side, there’s an attack — 10 policies proving Harris is “failed, weak and dangerously liberal.”

As a reader guide, here’s an assessment made of the claims in the mailers. It’s quite possible Trump may repeat some of these lines in tomorrow’s debate, so even if you’re not voting in a swing state, you’ll now know what he’s talking about.

Project 2025

In ads and campaign appearances, Harris has been relentlessly linking Trump to a Heritage Foundation report called “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page manifesto filled with detailed conservative proposals that is popularly labeled Project 2025. Harris’s efforts must be having an effect, because the tone of the mailer is defensive.

“Trump disavows Project 2025: Calls some of the group’s ideas ‘absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,’” the flier says. It then lists what it describes as Trump’s real agenda, such as eliminating taxes for tips and securing the southern border. Oddly it does not include one of Trump’s signature initiatives — a plan to impose across-the-board tariffs on imported goods. Perhaps that is because Harris has been attacking it as a national sales tax.

Project 2025 is not an official campaign document, and we’ve called out Democrats for sometimes falsely suggesting policies that are not in it, such as on Social Security and the definition of family. A CNN review found that 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to the report. In April, at a Heritage event, Trump praised Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage, and appeared to endorse Project 2025. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” he said. It’s fair to say that these are policies that people who hope to work in a future Trump administration would want to implement. But there’s not necessarily unanimity. While Trump is an advocate of more tariffs, for example, the trade chapter in the book has dueling essays — one arguing for tariffs and another for free trade.

Interestingly, Trump has never explained what Project 2025 policies he thinks are ridiculous and abysmal. That might be a good question for the debate.

Ten “dangerously liberal” Harris policies

As San Francisco district attorney: “Granted probation to a violent criminal who then murdered two men”

This lacks context. The flier cites a 2007 article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the arrest of a man, Devaughndre Broussard, 19, who admitted he killed Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. He said he did so on the orders of Yusuf Bey IV, son of the founder of a bakery who had been the subject of critical articles. Broussard also confessed to killing another man on Bey’s orders. (Bey was convicted of three murders in 2011, including Bailey’s.) Broussard was on probation at the time for robbing and assaulting another man; the article quotes the man’s father as blaming the office of then-district attorney Harris for Broussard’s release.

The article quotes a Harris aide, Chief Assistant District Attorney Russ Giuntini, as saying that prosecutors agreed to probation because they couldn’t precisely identify which of four suspects committed which specific crime. Broussard was only 18 and a first-time offender at the time of the attack, factors that also figured in the probation decision, Giuntini said.

In other words, it’s a stretch to pin this on Harris.

As district attorney: “Shielded convicted crack dealers suspected of being illegal immigrants from federal immigration officials.”

This is false. Harris was not involved in this case and supported a change in the policy. The flier cites a San Francisco Chronicle article about how eight young Honduran crack dealers in 2008 escaped from Southern California group homes after city officials shielded them from deportation because the city had been deemed a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants nine years earlier. They were sent to the group homes after the Chronicle revealed that the city — under a policy set by the city attorney, not the district attorney — flew juvenile offenders to their home countries rather than cooperate with federal authorities. Two days after the crack dealers escaped, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the city would start turning over juvenile undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies to federal authorities for possible deportation. Harris supported Newsom, even as the policy shift was opposed by the elected Board of Supervisors.

As California attorney general: “Opposed concealed carry permits for law-abiding citizens unless they could ‘demonstrate an extraordinary need to carry a gun beyond concern for public safety.’”

This is misleading. The 2014 Times of San Diego article the flier lists as a source — about an appeal Harris made of a judicial ruling — does not include this quote; neither does the petition filed by her office. The 9th Circuit appeals court had ruled, 2-1, that San Diego County had violated the Second Amendment by requiring people to show “good cause” when applying for a concealed-carry weapons permit.

Harris objected to the court ruling. “Local law enforcement must be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon,” Harris said in a statement.

Harris asked the full appeals court to reverse the decision, which it did in 2016. The Supreme Court in 2017 left the ruling in place, over the objections of conservatives. In 2022, the Supreme Court’s enhanced conservative majority, in a 6-3 ruling, said all such “good cause” laws were unconstitutional. So the matter is now moot.

As attorney general: “Categorized rape of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving sex acts with minors, assault with a deadly weapon and more as ‘nonviolent’ crimes, allowing inmates who committed those offenses to receive earlier parole.”

This is false. (Trump has also posted a video making a more extreme version of this claim.) The flier cites as its source a misleading article by the Daily Mail, a right-leaning outfit, and it’s a good example of how attacks on complex policy issues are crafted to confuse people.

At issue is Proposition 57, a 2016 referendum promoted by then Gov. Jerry Brown (D) that allowed people convicted of nonviolent felonies to be considered for early release parole. Brown argued it would save the state millions of dollars of incarceration costs and encourage rehabilitation. Harris did not take a position on the referendum — which had the support of leading newspapers and was approved by 64 percent of voters — but in her role as attorney general she approved a brief summary description of the initiative on the ballot. That’s the hook on which to pin this on Harris.

But in her description, which was fewer than 150 words, Harris provided no new definition of nonviolent. An accompanying statement by the legislative analyst (which ran almost 2,700 words) said: “Although the measure and current law do not specify which felony crimes are defined as nonviolent, this analysis assumes a nonviolent felony offense would include any felony offense that is not specifically defined in statute as violent.” Opponents of the resolution claimed the “poorly drafted measure” would make perpetrators of certain horrific sex crimes eligible for early parole — but that was refuted by Brown in a rebuttal statement.

The California penal code lists 23 violent felonies, including sexual abuse of a child and rape. Ultimately, the law leaves it to the parole board to determine whether sex offenders are eligible for early release.

Whether the proposition was successful is still in dispute. It significantly reduced prison overcrowding, according to a July analysis by a legal group, but it’s only had a slightly positive impact on recidivism rates.

In any case, Harris was barely a player in this debate.

As U.S. senator: “Encouraged donations to a fund that bailed out now-convicted rapists, assaulters and murderers.”

This needs context. Until the 2020 killing of George Floyd in police custody, the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) was a relatively small vehicle for assisting people who needed cash for bail. Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised an astonishing $35 million, in part because of a tweet by Harris, who at the time was a senator for California lending her name to a fundraising effort.

It turned out that few people involved in the protests needed the MFF’s help to get out of jail. But there have been some instances of the MFF assisting people accused of serious crimes after they were released, including murder, attempted murder and third-degree assault. The man accused of murder had been jailed originally on an indecent-exposure charge, which called for bail of $2,000.

As U.S. senator: “Co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’s $32-trillion socialist government healthcare plan that would raise taxes, increase national debt and functionally eliminate private health insurance.”

Mostly true. Harris, as a presidential hopeful in 2019, co-sponsored the senator’s Medicare-for-all plan, which would have replaced private health insurance. Laying aside the hyperbolic “socialist” language, an estimate cited by the Sanders campaign projected the federal cost of Medicare-for-all as $32.6 trillion. President Joe Biden, who opposed the idea during the 2020 campaign, frequently mentioned this figure as well. Four of the five key studies on the effect of the Sanders plan estimated that national health expenditures would rise over 10 years. Harris in her current campaign has not embraced this idea.

As U.S. senator: “Co-sponsored Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $93-trillion Green New Deal which would kill up to 2 million American jobs and cost the average American family $165,000.”

Much of this is false. Harris was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution — an aspirational document for a 10-year plan that had no teeth and would not have become law if it passed. The $93 trillion figure came from a Republican-aligned think tank, and it factors in things that are not in the resolution, such as building high-speed rail at a scale where air travel becomes unnecessary. Harris in her current campaign has said the “climate crisis is real,” but green-energy initiatives enacted under Biden have mitigated the need for passing the Green New Deal resolution.

As vice president: “Failed on the economy, with inflation reaching a 40-year high and grocery prices rising over 21%”

The first part is out of date; the second part is accurate. Inflation did spike to 9 percent in 2022, though many economists attribute the rise to supply-chain issues after the pandemic, meaning prices would have risen no matter who was president. The annual inflation rate is now below 3 percent. Food prices overall have risen 21.4 percent since Biden took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data that measures inflation for dairy products, meats, and fruits and vegetables.

As vice president: “Failed as Border Czar, allowing over 10 million people to enter the U.S. illegally.”

This is exaggerated. Customs and Border Protection recorded about 10 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through June of this year. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.

CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million.

As for the “border czar” label, Harris was given the discrete task of managing the “root causes” strategy — essentially a diplomatic effort with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to stem migration from those countries. She was never in charge of border security.

As vice president: “Crippled domestic oil & gas production, driving gas prices up over 30%”

This is false. The price of crude oil when Trump left office was unusually low because the coronavirus pandemic flattened economies around the world. After mass vaccination helped reopen many economies, demand increased again. But supply was lacking because oil producers decreased their production levels. That sent prices much higher. Gasoline prices then soared even more because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Meanwhile, domestic oil production and natural gas production are at record highs under Biden, so it’s wrong to claim it’s been “crippled.”

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