Fox News 2024-10-24 12:10:17


Harris stumbles on the border when pressed on illegal immigration

Vice President Kamala Harris stumbled through the Biden-Harris administration’s border and immigration policies when pressed about the border crisis during a CNN town hall moderated by Anderson Cooper. 

“Let’s talk about this compromise bill that you want to pass if you are elected. You said that’s going to be a priority. It includes $650 million in funding for the border wall. That’s something Republicans wanted that was part of the compromise. Under Donald Trump, you criticized the wall more than 50 times. You called it ‘stupid, useless, and a medieval vanity project.’ Is a border wall stupid?,” Cooper asked Harris Wednesday. 

“Let’s talk about Donald Trump on that border wall,” Harris said while laughing. “So remember, Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it. Come on, they didn’t. How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw was about 2%. And then when it came time for him to do a photo op, you know, where he did it? In the part of the wall that President Obama built.”

“But you agreed to a bill that would earmark $650 million to continue building that,” Cooper pressed. 

OBAMA CLAIMS TRUMP ‘DID NOT SOLVE’ IMMIGRATION ‘PROBLEM.’ THE NUMBERS TELL A DIFFERENT STORY

“I pledge that I am going to bring forward that bipartisan bill to further strengthen and secure our border. Yes, I am, and I’m going to work across the aisle to pass a comprehensive bill that deals with a broken immigration system,” Harris responded. 

“We need a president who is grounded in common sense and practical outcomes, like, let’s just fix this thing. Let’s just fix it. Why is there any ideological perspective on this? Let’s just fix the problem,” she continued.  

“So you don’t think it’s stupid anymore?” Cooper continued. 

“I think what he did and how he did it was, did not make much sense because he actually didn’t do much of anything. I just talked about that wall, right? We just talked about it. He didn’t actually do much of anything,” she responded. 

Vice President Kamala Harris joined CNN for a town hall event Wednesday evening, speaking to Pennsylvania voters outside of Philadelphia. The town hall event kicked off at 9 pm on Wednesday from Chester Township, which is located less than 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. 

Cooper asked Harris earlier in the town hall to explain why justweeks before the first presidential debate with President Biden was still in the race this summer, the administration instituted executive actions that curbed illegal border crossings and had not issued such orders sooner. 

‘UTTER BETRAYAL’: NEW REPORT REVEALS DHS OFFICIAL USED SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

“You’re exactly right, Anderson. And as of today, we have cut the flow of immigration by over half. In fact, the numbers I saw most recently, illegal immigration,” Harris told Cooper. 

“If it was that easy without executive action, why not do it in 2022, 2023?” Cooper pressed. 

“Because we were working with Congress and hoping that actually we could have a long term fix to the problem instead of a short-term fix,” Harris responded. 

MIGRANTS CAUGHT AT BORDER BUSED, FLOWN OUT OF SAN DIEGO IN POSSIBLE ‘COVER UP’ BEFORE ELECTION: OFFICIAL

“You couldn’t have done one and both at the same time,” Cooper noted. 

Cooper went on to ask Harris if she wished she haddone those executive orders in 2022, 2023,” sparking Harris to say she believes the administration “did the right thing.” 

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“I think we did the right thing. And but the best thing that can happen for the American people, is that we have bipartisan work happening. And I pledge to you, that I will work across the aisle to fix this longstanding problem. I think the American people are demanding it, on both sides of the aisle,” she responded. 

State sues Biden-Harris administration over 450,000 ‘potentially ineligible’ voters

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden-Harris administration for not providing information that the Republican says he needs to verify the citizenship of 450,000 “potentially ineligible voters.” 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, as well as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and its director, Ur Jaddou, are named as defendants. 

DHS says states wishing to verify citizenship can use the USCIS SAVE program and that it will not provide an “alternative process to any state.”

The federal lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Texas, claims that the Biden-Harris administration has refused to comply with federal law and answer “valid requests” for information from Paxton and Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson “for the citizenship status of the over 450,000 people on Texas’s voter rolls for whom the State cannot verify their citizenship status using existing sources.” 

Paxton says those over 450,000 people did not use a Texas-issued driver’s license or ID card to register to vote in the state, so “those voters never had their citizenship verified.” 

TEXAS AG OPENS INVESTIGATION INTO ‘SUSPICIOUS DONATIONS’ MADE TO HARRIS CAMPAIGN THROUGH DEMOCRATIC GROUP

Nelson wrote to Jaddou on Sept. 18 saying the Texas Secretary of State’s office compiled a list of individuals on Texas’ voter rolls whose citizenship could not be verified and asked for assistance in doing so. 

Paxton penned a similar letter to the USCIS director on Oct. 7, stating, “Although I have no doubt the vast majority of the voters on the list are citizens who are eligible to vote, I am equally certain that Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote.”

In a letter to Nelson on Oct. 10, Jaddou responded, saying that the “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program is the most secure and efficient way to reliably verify an individual’s citizenship or immigration status, including for verification regarding voter registration and/or voter list maintenance,” and maintained that USCIS “currently cannot offer an alternative process to any state.”

“Since 2009, SAVE has been used by elections authorities in states for voter registration and/or voter list maintenance. Currently, ten states are registered to use SAVE for these purposes,” he wrote. “The process has been the same since the program’s inception.” 

“By inputting an individual’s name, unique DHS-issued immigration identifier, and birthdate, registered agencies can determine whether that person obtained U.S. citizenship through the naturalization process or, for certain other individuals born abroad, whether USCIS has information confirming their U.S. citizenship. Each registered agency determines the best process to obtain the required identifiers,” Jaddou explained. “The state elections authority must provide any individual who is not verified as a U.S. citizen through SAVE the opportunity to show documentation of their U.S. citizenship.”

 BIDEN ADMIN SLAPPED WITH MAJOR LAWSUIT OVER ALLEGED REFUSAL TO HELP STATE PURGE NONCITIZENS FROM VOTER ROLLS

Paxton’s lawsuit states that “pointing to the SAVE system” does not fulfill the Texas secretary of state’s request and Jaddou’s response does not satisfy USCIS’ “unambiguous obligations under federal law.” 

It also says that Jaddou has not responded to Paxton’s letter. 

According to Paxton, the SAVE program, designed to confirm a person’s lawful presence in the United States, “is not an adequate tool, on its own, for a state seeking to verify the citizenship status of an individual on the voter rolls.” That’s because it requires the use of a “unique DHS-issued immigration identifier,” which the lawsuit says is “information that is not maintained by, or readily available to, the Secretary of State of Texas or Texas’s voter registrars.” 

Texas’s statewide voter registration system “does not contain any “DHS-issued immigration identifier[s],” the lawsuit says, so even if the Texas secretary of state “could obtain this data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, that effort would be limited to individuals who provided such information to obtain a driver license or personal identification card — and thus would not encompass individuals for whom there is no Texas-issued driver license or ID card number in Texas’s voter registration system.” 

The filing also noted that USCIS charges users a fee for each verification submitted to the SAVE system — fees that the state is willing to pay but “will more than double over the next three years.” 

“Although federal and state law prohibit non-citizens from voting, federal law paradoxically creates opportunities for non-citizens to illegally register to vote while prohibiting States from requiring voters to have proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections — a common sense measure to identify illegal registration,” the suit says. “Under any circumstances, this federal prohibition against citizenship verification makes little sense, but it is especially troubling given the current scale of the illegal immigration crisis.” 

The filing also cited how the Senate has not passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (“SAVE Act”), “which would allow states to ensure that votes are being cast legally by eligible voters.” 

Asked about Paxton’s lawsuit, a DHS spokesperson again pointed to the SAVE program. 

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“DHS does not comment on pending litigation,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “More broadly, USCIS has engaged with Texas and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels.  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) administers an online information service called SAVE that allows registered and authorized agencies, including election authorities in states, to verify certain individuals’ citizenship or immigration status.”  

Scores of election-related lawsuits happen in every cycle, and Florida filed a similar lawsuit citing how the SAVE program’s DHS identifier requirement is a roadblock in verifying citizenship of those on the voter roll.

While Texas could see Republican Sen. Ted Cruz locked in a close race against Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred, the Lone Star State is unlikely to go blue in the presidential contest. 

NY Times source corroborating Harris’ McDonald’s claim is a campaign surrogate

The New York Times was called out for discounting its source’s ties to Vice President Kamala Harris while reporting on the controversy over whether she had worked at McDonald’s. 

Harris’ claim that she worked at the iconic fast food chain for a summer while she was in college has faced tense scrutiny in recent weeks, especially since no records proving her employment have surfaced and none of her co-workers have been found.  

On Sunday, after former President Trump spent his day working at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania to troll the vice president, The Times published a report writing “Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris never worked at the fast-food chain. Her campaign and a friend say she did.”

AOC, MEDIA WANTS AMERICANS TO KNOW TRUMP DOESN’T REALLY WORK AT MCDONALDS

That friend was Wanda Kagan, who The Times described as someone “who had known Ms. Harris as a teenager and remained in touch with the family for years afterward.”

“Answering questions by email, Ms. Kagan said that Ms. Harris’s mother, who died in 2009, had told Ms. Kagan about the summer job years ago. Ms. Kagan said she herself had also worked at one of the fast-food chain’s many franchises in those years,” The Times reported. “‘That’s what us regular folks did,’ Ms. Kagan wrote. Still, she indicated that it had not been a frequent topic of conversation for Ms. Harris. ‘We didn’t talk much about our McDonald’s days back then,’ she said.”

TRUMP MAKES FRIES AT PENNSYLVANIA MCDONALD’S: ‘I’VE NOW WORKED FOR 15 MINUTES MORE THAN KAMALA’

However, The Washington Free Beacon took a swipe at The Times for not acknowledging that Kagan is a surrogate for the Harris campaign.

As the Free Beacon noted, Kagan sang her friend’s praises during an MSNBC appearance at the DNC convention in Chicago. She also co-hosted the “Survivors for Kamala Harris” online campaign event and recently visited the White House to celebrate Harris’ birthday. 

A spokesperson for The Times told Fox News Digital “This was a thoroughly reported and edited piece of independent journalism. The Times stands behind it completely.”

Harris has repeatedly touted her work at McDonald’s and how she “did fries” as part of her sales pitch to voters about a middle class upbringing. 

WALZ TAUNTS TRUMP OVER MCDONALD’S APPEARANCE, SAY HARRIS ‘ACTUALLY WORKED’ AT ONE

Reporting from The Free Beacon has cast doubt in Harris’ claim, which she first made in 2019, and drew attention to the “shifting narratives” from her campaign and a pro-Harris super PAC about her alleged gig.

“First, they claimed she held the job to pay her way through college at Howard University by working at McDonald’s. Then, they said Harris worked there in the summer of 1983, after her freshman year of college, for extra spending money,” the Free Beacon wrote, noting that The Times report did not acknowledge the change.

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Trump has repeatedly accused Harris of lying about her working at McDonald’s and took a swipe at his Democratic rival while working the drive-thru. 

“I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump told reporters standing outside the drive-thru window.

Several news outlets, including The Times, dinged Trump for accusing Harris of lying “without evidence” despite the fact that Harris has yet to provide evidence she actually worked at McDonald’s. 

Liberal network anchor shocked by group of Black, Latino voters backing Trump

MSNBC host Alex Wagner was shocked when Black and Latino voters in Pennsylvania, expressed support for former President Trump and his immigration policies. 

Wagner, the host of “Alex Wagner Tonight,” sat down with members of the Black Republican Club of Philadelphia over the weekend and asked various Black and Latino voters why Trump has won their support instead of Vice President Kamala Harris. While Wagner noted that Black voters in Philadelphia are expected to support Harris by wide margins, she asked how many voters in the county can Trump “pick off.”

When asked what Trump policy resonates with them, one voter named Dorian Urizar said immigration is the key issue. He also noted that he is from a Guatemalan immigrant family.

“For us, like, seeing the new immigrants come in, it’s just – they are more violent, it is more chaos, they do more bad than anything, and we have been here for longer than them,” he said. “And it is starting to affect us more, because like, stuff is getting stolen, they are making us look bad, as immigrants, and we stayed longer than them, and we have been getting more misrepresentation because of them.”

HARRIS RAMPS UP OUTREACH TO BLACK MALE VOTERS AS POLLS SUGGEST TRUMP MAKING GAINS

While he felt  unsure about whether he could support mass deportation, ultimately he argued, “but I do think it’s a good idea for the immigrants that are coming in, because they are the problem.”

Another voter argued in favor of mass deportation. 

“I agree with the idea of mass deportation, largely,” Pastor Philip Fisher said. “We have criminals in this country who are destroying our nation, they are coming in here, getting earmarked bills, policies to open up businesses, get free housing, get access – easier access than those who are legally immigrating to this country to welfare and other benefits.” 

“So, like, as a taxpayer, we have to pay for these guys to have luxuries of life, and we don’t get anything. Especially Black Americans, who have suffered so much in the system under Democrats. We don’t get anything. That’s insane,” he added. 

One woman named Sheila Armstrong, said, “the part that is driving me crazy about immigration, is the fact that I feel, and I really do feel, that the Democrats are celebrating people breaking the law. Why create the law, create a whole process for immigration, for y’all to break it?”

HARRIS UNVEILS NEW AGENDA AS SHE COURTS BLACK MALE VOTERS

Wagner asked the group about Trump’s comments about migrants coming to take “Black jobs.”

“Well, first of all, they are,” Armstrong said. “They are illegal aliens. They are taking jobs that belong to the citizens of this country. It is just the fact that Trump is saying it out loud. That is why the fact that we rally around, behind Trump, because at the end of the day, this is the stuff we have been shouting out as a community.”

In the following segment, Wagner spoke to Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and pressed him on whether Democrats made a mistake. 

“So, in one hand, you’d think in this battle to peel off of voters, Harris seems more organized, more focused, but, the emotional draw of Trump is undeniable,” she said. “And if you heard that sound we played in the last segment, I wonder if you think maybe Democrats made  a miscalculation in feeling overly confident in the Harris campaign’s structure and organization, when Trump has so much emotional weight to his argument, that he is pulling people in, impromptu.”

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Davis replied that he believes “quite the opposite,” because “I think Democrats recognize that this election is going to be close, which is why the Harris campaign is running the biggest presidential organization in Pennsylvania.” 

Sister of slain soldier rebukes The Atlantic’s ‘hit piece’ on Trump, says she was misled

The sister and family lawyer of 20-year-old Vanessa Guillén, the slain Army private who The Atlantic claimed former President Trump disparaged while in office, appeared exclusively on “The Ingraham Angle” to rebuke the report. 

Mayra Guillén called out The Atlantic’s “vile” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg who authored the report alleging Trump referred to his sister, the daughter of Mexican immigrants who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020, as a “f—ing Mexican” and refused to pay the money he promised to provide for her funeral. 

“It was just hurtful in all kinds of ways,” Guillén told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. “It brought back so many bad memories that we had given already after four long years, and it was just a slap in the face to my family, myself, being the main spokesperson for them and for my sister, who unfortunately passed away. It was just a lie from the very beginning, and it was very upsetting.”

THE ATLANTIC REPORT ALLEGING TRUMP DISPARAGED SLAIN ARMY PRIVATE BLASTED BY FAMILY, OTHERS: ‘ABSOLUTELY FALSE’

Natalie Khawam, the family attorney, said she was first confronted by Goldberg for the story back in January, but was told the story was about the four-year anniversary of Vanessa Guillén’s murder. 

“He first reached out to me, and he said he was interested in doing [a story of] the four-year anniversary of Vanessa’s murder,” Khawam said. “I texted Mayra. I said, ‘Hey, can you take it from here? You wanna speak to him about Vanessa’s case? They’re gonna discuss more issues about the case, things he found.’ And she spoke to him in January. He reached out again to me just recently and this is where the story popped up and obviously bamboozled with. It wasn’t really, you know, talking about Vanessa here. It was just a gotcha with Trump.”

ATLANTIC ARTICLE COMPARING TRUMP TO ‘HITLER, STALIN’ SPARKS CRITICISM ONLINE FROM JOURNALISTS, PUNDITS 

When asked whether she felt she was misled by Goldberg, Mayra Guillén replied “most definitely.”

“Initially, when we first spoke, he did mention that this was going to be, again, a wrap-up of the four-year anniversary and how we passed legislation and all the achievements that were done in Vanessa’s honor,” Guillén said, adding that Goldberg did not tell her about the disparaging comments he planned to report about Trump and that he told her he expected to story to be published around April. 

“I released a statement to him, letting him know that I was not happy about what he was going to release, and I did not wish to be a part of it anymore, or have my sister’s name be a part of that article. And he still proceeded to not only publish it, but basically stain my sister’s image with this, and it’s very upsetting,” she later said.

“This piece… was full of lies,” Khawam said. “I myself spoke to him and I told him certain things. For a matter of fact, I said I could not speak about the issue about these things and not these things. And then he says, ‘Natalie Khawam said this,’ and that was not true. I mean, that’s what really bothers me. I’ve worked with both sides of the aisle, with producers and reporters and the media for years, both sides of the aisle. I’ve never had to deal with somebody that just went that low below the belt just to get a story out. It was, quite honestly, it was wrong. It was unethical. And I had to take on that position of I’m gonna call him out.”

In response to “The Ingraham Angle,” The Atlantic issued a statement saying “Everyone should read this essential reporting in The Atlantic.” 

Goldberg also appeared to dismiss the criticism from Guillén, Khawam and others of his report, telling CNN “I don’t make much of them at all.”

“The sister wasn’t in the meeting. The lawyer for the family wasn’t in the meeting. Mark Meadows was in the meeting. Kash Patel was in the meeting. A whole bunch of senior officials were in the meeting. I have sources who were sitting in that meeting. I have contemporaneous notes taken by participants in that meeting that describe exactly what I described in the story,” Goldberg said Tuesday night. 

Goldberg began his report on Trump’s interaction with the Guillén family in July 2020 when they visited the White House. While consoling the family, Trump offered offered to provide financial assistance to cover the funeral costs. But Goldberg reported Trump became enraged when he got the bill, refusing to pay it, saying, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—ing Mexican!”

According to the report, Khawam told Goldberg the family did not receive money from Trump and that the costs were ultimately covered in part by the Army and donations. 

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Both Mayra Guillén and Khawam took to social media to blast the report.

“Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Guillén wrote on X. “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”

The report included on-the-record denials from Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, the former chief of staff of then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who allegedly were at the meeting.

Meadows spoke out against The Atlantic.

“I was in the discussions featured in the Atlantic’s latest hit piece against President Trump. Let me say this. Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” Meadows wrote on X. “He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family.”

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Ben Williamson, Meadow’s spokesman, shared a screenshot of the statement he provided to Goldberg saying, “President Donald Trump absolutely did not say that,” and called out how Goldberg “translated” that comment in the report, which said that Meadows “denied having heard Trump make the statement.”

“Treat this dishonest piece accordingly,” Williamson warned.

Polling guru makes prediction about neck-and-neck presidential election

While pollster Nate Silver revealed last month that he’d vote for Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5, his “gut” is telling him that former President Trump will win.

Silver set the scene in his new opinion piece by noting that several battleground states have Trump and Harris neck-and-neck. But those numbers don’t seem to satisfy observers, who he said often ask him for a straight answer.

“So OK, I’ll tell you,” Silver wrote in The New York Times on Wednesday. “My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.”

He says his intuition is partly driven by the notion of nonresponse bias, musing that pollsters aren’t reaching enough of Trump’s supporters. 

TRUMP LEADS HARRIS IN GEORGIA 2 WEEKS FROM ELECTION DAY, POLL FINDS

“Nonresponse bias can be a hard problem to solve,” Silver wrote. “Response rates to even the best telephone polls are in the single digits — in some sense, the people who choose to respond to polls are unusual. Trump supporters often have lower civic engagement and social trust, so they can be less inclined to complete a survey from a news organization. 

“Pollsters are attempting to correct for this problem with increasingly aggressive data-massaging techniques, like weighing by educational attainment (college-educated voters are more likely to respond to surveys) or even by how people say they voted in the past. There’s no guarantee any of this will work.”

But Silver doesn’t leave Democrats without any hope. He suggests there is a way that Harris can “beat the polls.”

“A surprise in polling that underestimates Ms. Harris isn’t necessarily less likely than one for Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “On average, polls miss by three or four points. If Ms. Harris does that, she will win by the largest margin in both the popular vote and the Electoral College since Mr. Obama in 2008.”

POLLING GURU NATE SILVER SAYS LATEST POLLING ‘PRETTY NEGATIVE’ FOR HARRIS AS TRUMP GAINS MOMENTUM NATIONALLY

Silver recently highlighted data that appeared to be “pretty negative” for Harris.

“There are now three recent high-quality national polls that show Donald Trump leading — a difficult circumstance for Harris, given Democrats’ Electoral College disadvantage — and her edge in our national polling average is down to 1.7 points,” Silver wrote on his Substack. “National polls don’t influence the model that much, and the race remains basically a toss-up, but it’s not hard to think of reasons that Trump could win.”

He referenced a recent Fox News Poll, which shows Trump ahead of Harris in the presidential contest 50%-48%, marking a reversal from last month when Harris had a narrow edge. Silver also cited the TIPP tracking poll, which showed Trump overtaking Harris by a 2-point lead, 49% to 47%. 

FOX NEWS POLL: TRUMP AHEAD OF HARRIS BY TWO POINTS NATIONALLY

Democratic strategist James Carville, meanwhile, said he’s “certain” the election will swing the other way.

“America, it will all be OK. Ms. Harris will be elected the next president of the United States. Of this, I am certain,” he wrote in a New York Times column on Wednesday.

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Silver, who advised his readers not to blindly trust his gut, offered one more potential outcome in his Times piece: that pollsters could be wrong and this won’t be a photo finish at all. With polling averages so tight, he said, even a small systematic polling error like the one seen in 2016 or 2020 “could produce a comfortable Electoral College victory for Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump.”

Riley Gaines details harrowing experience sharing locker room with trans swimmer

Former President Trump has made protecting women’s sports from transgender inclusion a key campaign issue two weeks ahead of the election. Trump and Republican leaders have pounded Democrats for enabling transgender athletes in women’s sports in recent weeks, and that criticism continued Wednesday during a campaign event in Georgia. 

Former NCAA swimmer and OutKick contributor Riley Gaines emerged on stage at the Turning Point Action conference to precede Trump and gave a harrowing recollection of her experience being forced to share a locker room with a transgender competitor during her collegiate career. 

“I could share the grotesque details of what it was like being forced to undress, inches away from a 6-foot-4 man who watched us strip down to nothing, while he did the same, exposing his fully-intact naked male body,” Gaines said. “There are no words to describe the violation and the betrayal, the humiliation that we felt.” 

Gaines leads a lawsuit against the NCAA with other female athletes, accusing the governing body of violating their Title IX rights due to its policies on gender identity. Gaines has cited her experience at the 2022 NCAA swimming championships when transgender woman Lia Thomas was allowed to compete and share a locker room with the other athletes despite being a biological male. 

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Gaines reiterated that this was not something she nor her teammates ever agreed to. 

“Nobody asked for our consent. We did not give our consent to be exposed and exploited to a naked man. This used to rightfully be labeled as sexual harassment,” Gaines said. 

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.

For Gaines, the experience has played into her decision to support Trump and Republican policies that restrict and aim to prevent transgender inclusion in women’s sports. 

Trump and wife Melania, who has admitted to disagreeing with Republicans on issues of LGBT rights, each announced that they are opposed to letting biological males compete in girls and women’s sports. Trump has gone so far as to advocate for a ban in a recent town hall event on Fox News.

“We’re not going to let it happen,” Trump said of the issue. “We stop it, we stop it, we absolutely stop it. We can’t have it.

“You just ban it. The president bans it. You don’t let it happen. It’s not a big deal. “

TRANS GOLFER DISCUSSES DECISION TO STOP COMPETING AGAINST BIOLOGICAL FEMALES: ‘I’M NOT A WOMAN’

Multiple states filed lawsuits and enacted their own laws to address this issue after the Biden-Harris administration issued a sweeping rule that clarified that Title IX’s ban on “sex” discrimination in schools covers discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and “pregnancy or related conditions” in April. 

The administration insisted the regulation does not address athletic eligibility. However, multiple experts presented evidence to Fox News Digital in June that it would ultimately put more biological men in women’s sports. 

The Supreme Court then voted 5-4 in August to reject an emergency request by the Biden administration to enforce portions of that new rule after more than two dozen Republican attorneys general sued to block the Title IX changes in their own states.

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Idaho Gov. Brad Little even issued an executive order later that month to enforce the “Defending Women’s Sports Act,” which would require schools and colleges to prohibit transgender athletes in women’s sports. 

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Little acknowledged concern that his order could result in public schools in his state losing federal funding if Kamla Harris becomes the 47th president. 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Little said. “From a national standpoint, there are radical little groups that want to implement changes in the rules that we have already. I’m confident in what we have, and we will aggressively (act), as the state of Idaho, both legally and legislatively, to protect women’s athletes and the great advances they’ve made because of Title IX.”

Many Democrats have backed off from their support for transgender inclusion in women’s sports as Election Day nears. U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who is challenging Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, has aired TV ads and statements claiming he “doesn’t want boys in girl’s sports” despite a history of cosponsoring legislation that would allow that to happen. 

In June, a survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago asked respondents to weigh in on whether transgender athletes of both sexes should be permitted to participate in sports leagues that correspond to their preferred gender identity instead of their biological sex. 

Sixty-five percent answered that it should either be never or rarely allowed. When those polled were asked specifically about adult transgender female athletes competing on women’s sports teams, 69% opposed it.

The United Nations released study findings that say nearly 900 biological females have fallen short of the podium because they were beaten out by transgender athletes.

The study, titled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” said that more than 600 athletes did not medal in more than 400 competitions in 29 different sports, totaling over 890 medals, according to information obtained up to March 30.

“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report said.