Fact-check: 10-item list Trump shared of Harris’ plans

On Sept. 19 on Instagram, former President Donald Trump shared a graphic featuring an image of Vice President Kamala Harris next to a list of policies it described as “Kamala’s Project 2025.”

Trump, Harris’ Republican presidential challenger, was one of several social media users who shared this 10-point list that covered topics such as immigration, criminal justice, health care and more. 

Most of the plans listed misrepresent the policies Harris, a Democrat, is campaigning on in 2024. In many instances, the Trump campaign pointed to Harris’ prior support — often her positions in 2019, when she was running for president — as evidence that the graphic reflects her plans now. 

The graphic’s title refers to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025,  a 900-page manual detailing policies envisioned for the next Republican president. On the campaign trail, Harris has criticized the document repeatedly and linked it to Trump, who has sought to distance himself from the proposal. 

Although a few of the graphic’s listed plans are accurate or partially accurate, each is missing some additional information or context. 

We investigated the claims this graphic makes about Harris’ presidential plans.

(Screenshot from Instagram.)

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “abolishing ICE”

False. Harris does not support “abolishing” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her 2019 presidential primary immigration platform did not call for this, nor did the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign platform. And she hasn’t campaigned on this in 2024, either. 

As a U.S. senator in 2018, Harris said the agency’s function should be reexamined and that “we need to probably even think about starting from scratch.” She said it in the context of criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including a policy that led to family separations at the border.

Harris didn’t say there should be no immigration enforcement. In 2018, Harris also said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had a role and should exist.

In 2019, when asked whether she supported abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Harris said no. She called the department “dysfunctional” and said the government must “fix it, but I do not believe in getting rid of it.”

The Trump campaign pointed to Harris’ answers in a 2019 questionnaire in which Harris told the American Civil Liberties Union, a legal civil rights organization, that she supported decreasing funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “opening the border”

This is inaccurate.

Asked for evidence, the Trump campaign cited Harris’ past statements about decriminalizing border crossings. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, she said, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” In 2019, during a primary debate, Harris raised her hand to show she believed “it should be a civil offense, rather than a crime, to cross the border without documentation.” But these statements do not equate to supporting an “open border.”

Immigration experts say the term “open border” signals that no one is guarding the border or trying to stop people from entering the U.S. That is not the case: The border has security measures, including miles of fencing, surveillance systems, and on-the-ground personnel. There is not an “open border” between Mexico and the U.S., and Harris has not advocated for one. 

Harris’ campaign website says she would support and sign the bipartisan border security bill that would have given immigration officials more funding and changed how asylum is decided for people arriving at the southwest U.S. border. Harris “knows that our immigration system is broken and needs comprehensive reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” the site said.

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “defunding the police”

Mostly False. 

“Defund” is not an official legal term and can include closing a police department or diverting some of its budget to social services. The movement to “defund” the police reached its height in summer 2020, following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. 

In June 2020, Harris called for “reimagining” public safety and investing in other areas, such as education, but said he country needed law enforcement. She did not call for dissolving police departments. Harris also told The New York Times in June 2020, “We’re not going to get rid of the police.”

The Harris campaign said she does not support police defunding and pointed to statements in which she spoke in favor of police funding. 

Harris supported giving federal funding to local or state law enforcement agencies when she was the San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator. The Biden-Harris administration has backed funding for law enforcement. Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal called for $1.2 billion over five years to support law enforcement agencies and combat crime.

When Harris became Biden’s 2020 presidential running mate, their campaign was unequivocal on its position: no defunding of police.

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise,” Sabrina Singh, Harris’ press secretary, told PolitiFact in October 2020. “Throughout her career, Sen. Harris has supported increasing funding to police departments and boosting funding for community policing.”

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris greets Houston police officers after receiving a briefing on Hurricane Beryl recovery efforts at the City of Houston Emergency Operation Center in Houston, July 24, 2024. (AP)

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “releasing violent offenders”

We found no evidence that Harris advocates for releasing people accused or convicted of committing violent crimes.

The Trump campaign pointed to Harris’ past support for ending cash bail: In 2017, Harris and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bail reform bill meant to encourage states to reform or replace their bail systems. In 2019, while campaigning for president, Harris described herself as a Senate “leader” in the push to “get rid of the cash bail system in America.”

Generally, bail reform efforts aim to prevent people accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses from being held in jail while awaiting trial solely because they cannot afford to pay bail. Laws eliminating or reforming cash bail in places such as Illinois and New York didn’t prohibit detaining people who are considered threats to public safety.

In August, James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told Fox News that Harris “believes that we need a system where public safety, not wealth, determines who should stay behind bars following an arrest. Anyone who is a danger to society should be detained regardless of how wealthy they are.”

In September, The New York Times analyzed Harris’ record as a prosecutor and found that she “focused on protecting the most vulnerable victims by cracking down on violent offenders while seeking alternatives to incarceration for less serious criminals.” 

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “eliminating middle-class tax cuts”

Trump’s team said this refers to Harris’ opposition to a tax law Trump signed in 2017. Harris voted against the bill, and in her 2019 presidential campaign pledged to repeal Trump’s tax law on her first day in office.

The 2017 law, which remains on the books, provided initial tax relief for most income groups. However, many of the tax cuts for middle-income families and people will expire in 2025 unless Congress extends them.

Since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate, Harris has adopted the Biden-Harris ticket’s ongoing campaign promise, saying that she would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. 

It’s less clear what this means for the tax cuts nearing expiration for middle income families. 

However, Harris’ website includes a section titled: “Cut Taxes for Middle Class Families.” There, Harris pledges that under her administration, “more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans will get a tax cut.” By restoring the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, the website says “millions of Americans get to keep more of their hard-earned income.”

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “banning fracking”

Harris’ 2024 position supports hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a common and controversial technique used to access hard-to-reach oil and gas in rock formations — but that wasn’t always so.

In August and September, Harris repeatedly said she wouldn’t ban fracking as president. But before she became Biden’s running mate, Harris opposed fracking. 

In 2016, as California attorney general, Harris sued the Obama administration to prevent fracking off California’s coast, Agence France-Presse reported. As a Democratic primary candidate in 2019, Harris opposed fracking: “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said in a 2019 CNN town hall.

After she joined the Biden ticket in 2020, Harris aligned with his policies, which did not involve a fracking ban. During the 2020 vice presidential debate with Republican Mike Pence, Harris said, “Joe Biden will not end fracking.” Harris didn’t say she no longer supported a fracking ban, but that Biden would not pursue one.

Agence France-Presse also reported that Harris has referred to the Biden administration’s energy record to underscore that she has changed her policy views on a fracking ban. In August 2022, Harris cast the tiebreaking Senate vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a requirement to lease public lands for oil and gas drilling. 

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “ending fossil fuel usage”

That is misleading. Harris has said she supports cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing fossil fuel use, but we found no Harris policies calling for a total end to fossil fuel use. 

The Trump campaign pointed to Harris’ support of the Green New Deal, nonbinding congressional resolutions that addressed ways to curb climate change and protect the environment. 

Harris was one of 11 Democratic Senate co-sponsors of the 2019 Green New Deal. It included a goal to eliminate “pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible” — but not an outright call to end all fossil fuel use. An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that burning fossil fuels contributes directly to climate change.

Trump’s team also pointed to a 2023 X post in which Harris said she was “honored” to have represented the U.S. at an international climate conference that resulted in “historic global commitments to triple renewable energy by 2030 and to transition away from fossil fuels.” The agreement called on countries to “accelerate efforts” to phase down “unabated coal power,” and the United Nations said it signaled “the ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel era.”

During an August CNN interview, Harris said her “values have not changed” since 2019, adding that she has always believed the climate crisis is a “real” and “urgent matter” and that the U.S. should set goals and deadlines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Dec. 2, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP)

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “confiscating guns from legal gun owners”

Mostly False. The phrase “confiscating guns” is broad and could lead voters to think that Harris wants to confiscate all guns from law-abiding owners. That’s not what she has said. 

In her 2019 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris said, “I support a mandatory gun buyback program” for assault weapons. That plan did not apply to all guns, and she no longer holds that position. 

We found no examples that she supports mandatory gun confiscation now; the majority of guns sold in the U.S. are handguns.

As evidence, however, Trump’s team pointed to a report from The Reload that cited a 2005 local news report that said Harris supported a ballot measure that banned handguns in San Francisco and required people to turn in their weapons. That applied to San Francisco, 18 years ago, when Harris was the city’s district attorney. Although it passed, the measure faced legal challenges and never took effect. 

In August, a Harris campaign spokesperson pointed to a comment the campaign gave to The New York Times that, like Biden, Harris wants to ban assault weapons but not require people to sell them to the federal government.

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “taking away the healthcare plans of hundreds of millions of Americans” 

This misrepresents Harris’ health insurance positions.

Trump’s team cited Harris’ 2019 presidential primary support for ending private health insurance in favor of a government-run program that would prohibit duplicate private health insurance plans. 

In April 2019, Harris was one of 14 original co-sponsors of Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt.’s’ Medicare for All bill. It would have established an automatic, federally run health insurance program for all Americans without deductibles, coinsurance or copayments — similar to socialized medicine systems in such countries as the United Kingdom. Private insurers could continue to operate, but only to offer supplemental coverage.

Medicare for All failed to advance to a vote in the Senate, however. After her 2020 candidacy ended, Harris focused instead on bolstering the Affordable Care Act instead of pushing for Medicare for All.

Harris’ 2024 campaign’s policy website describes health care as “a right” and says Harris pledged to expand and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and to “accelerate” Medicare and pharmaceutical companies’ negotiations to bring down drug prices. 

CBS News reported that a campaign official said Harris will not push for single-payer government health insurance as president and that she plans to bring down the health care prices by other means. 

Claim: Harris’ plan includes “taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for illegal aliens”

We rated a similar Trump statement Mostly True, but it regarded transgender people who rely on government-funded medical care, including people who are imprisoned. We haven’t heard Harris address this in her 2024 presidential run, but Trump’s campaign pointed again to Harris’ 2019 American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire response.

“As President,” the questionnaire asked, “will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”

Harris checked the box for “yes” and wrote, “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.”

Harris also pointed to her work as California attorney general, saying she “pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.” 

What that means for a potential Harris presidency in 2025 is less clear. When Fox News hosts asked about the questionnaire Sept. 10, Harris’ spokesperson Michael Tyler said the questionnaire “is not what she’s proposing; it’s not what she’s running on.” When we asked the Harris campaign about her current position on the issue, it provided no additional information. Her policy page does not address transgender care.

Reporting from NPR and The 19th shows access to gender-affirming surgery in federal prisons is limited, and inmates have gone to court over lack of access.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe, Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson and Staff Writer Grace Abels contributed to this report.

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