Former President Trump vowed to ‘protect women at a level never seen before’ if elected, and to ensure that ‘powerful exceptions’ for abortion are adopted across the nation, in a social media post early Saturday.

Trump, in the lengthy late-night missive to his Truth Social in all capitalized letters, said ‘women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are more depressed and unhappy than they were four years ago, and are less optimistic and confident in the future than they were four years ago.’ 

‘I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this national nightmare will be over,’ he said. ‘Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free!’

Polls have consistently shown Trump running strongly, against Vice President Kamala Harris in most demographic groups, but struggling with women. Much of that has been attributed to the fact that the three justices he picked for the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, which had enshrined abortion protections under federal law.

In his post, Trump wrote that women ‘will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and a vote of the people—and with powerful exceptions, like those that Ronald Reagan insisted on for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—but not allowing for Democrat demanded late term abortion in the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, or even execution of a baby after birth.’

‘I will protect women at a level never seen before,’ he said. ‘They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure.’ 

Trump added: ‘Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again!’ 

The former president’s play for the female vote comes after Vice President Harris campaigned in Georgia, delivering a speech about the consequences of, what her campaign calls ‘extreme Trump Abortion Bans.’ 

‘After Vice President Harris spent the week speaking about the consequences of Trump Abortion Bans and the stakes of this election for women’s lives, Donald Trump snapped — taking to his phone late at night to rant and rave about women,’ Harris-Walz 2024 Spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in response to Trump’s Truth Social post. ‘After ripping away our reproductive freedom, now he’s trying to tell us how to think.’ 

Chitika said ‘Trump thinks he can control women — he’s wrong.’ 

The Harris campaign said he is ‘terrified that women across the country will vote like our lives and freedoms depend on it, because they do.’ 

‘Women aren’t stupid. We see Trump’s Project 2025 agenda for what it is: an extreme plan to ban abortion nationwide and threaten access to IVF and birth control,’ Chitika said. ‘We’ll vote like it this November.’

But Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital that Harris and President Joe Biden have put women’s lives in danger, and noted the names of women who have been killed by illegal immigrants.

‘President Trump is right. Kamala may want to be the first woman president, but she’s made the lives of women worse — more dangerous and more unaffordable,’ Leavitt said. ‘If Kamala cared about protecting women, she would close the border and stop allowing rapists and murderers to flow into our country to prey on young women and girls. Kamala has never said the names of Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nunguaray, and Rachel Morin. President Trump has honored their lives and consoled their grieving families.’ 

Leavitt added: ‘If women want safety, security and prosperity for our families, there’s only one option on the ballot — President Trump.’

As for Project 2025, a blueprint for a Republican administration crafted by the Heritage Foundation, Leavitt repeated Trump’s assertion that he did not commission it and has no plans to implement it if elected.

‘President Trump has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Project 2025,’ Leavitt said, adding that ‘Kamala’s campaign is lying because they are losing.’

Harris continues to claim that Trump will install a national abortion ban that would allow for no exceptions, despite Trump repeatedly saying that he would never support a national abortion ban, and believes in exceptions for abortion, including rape, incest, and life of the mother. 

Harris has refused to say whether she supports any abortion restrictions up to birth. 

Trump has vowed that he ‘will not block’ abortion pills or abortion medication for women, should he be elected president.

Vice President Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of the 2024 race for the White House with a large fundraising advantage over former President Trump, new federal filings show.

Harris hauled in nearly $190 million in fundraising for her 2024 campaign in August, more than quadrupling the $44.5 million that Trump’s team reported bringing into his principal campaign account last month — this according to figures from the Federal Election Commission made public on Friday.

The Harris campaign also vastly outspent the Trump campaign last month, as it dished out roughly $174 million. Much of those expenditures went to creating and running ads, as the campaign aimed to familiarize Americans with Harris after she replaced President Biden on the Democrats’ 2024 ticket two months ago.

The Trump campaign, by comparison, listed just $61 million in expenditures, with most of the spending going toward media buys.

But despite the Harris spending spree, the vice president’s campaign entered September with $235 million cash-on-hand, far ahead of the $135 million Trump’s coffers, according to the FEC filings.

The latest cash figures are another sign of the vice president’s surge in fundraising since becoming her party’s standard-bearer.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns use a slew of affiliated fundraising committees to haul in cash, and those panels file their reports on a different schedule.

The Harris campaign announced earlier this month that they and their allied committees hauled in $361 million in August — nearly triple the $130 million reported raised by the Trump campaign and its aligned committees.

The vice president’s team also touted that Harris hauled in $47 million from nearly 600,000 donors in the 24 hours after her first and potentially only debate with Trump, which took place earlier this month in Philadelphia.

When asked about the fundraising deficit, Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley told Fox News Digital in the debate spin room earlier this month that ‘the Democrats have a ton of money. The Democrats always have a ton of money.’

However, he emphasized that ‘we absolutely have the resources that we need to get our message out to all the voters that we’re talking to and feel very comfortable that we’re going to be able to see this campaign through and we’re going to win on November 5.’

Democrats roundly condemned political violence after news that a suspect had been arrested for threatening to hurt and kill six of the Supreme Court’s nine Justices and some of their family members.

‘Threats and acts of violence are unacceptable. Period,’ Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the Washington Post. ‘As President Biden and Vice President Harris have always said, violence has absolutely no place in our country. Violent rhetoric and threats are unacceptable,’ White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said. ‘There’s absolutely no place for political violence in this country – full stop,’ said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

It remains unknown exactly which justices 76-year-old Alaska resident Panos Anastasiou intended to attack. 

However, a complaint filed against him Wednesday indicated that his threats included anti-Black slurs, and there is only one Black Supreme Court Justice – Clarence Thomas, who typically votes with the Court’s conservative majority. Additionally, the complaint laid out that Anastasiou’s threats included extreme remarks about a former president described by Anastasiou as a ‘convicted criminal.’ Former President Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, earlier this year.

Democrats have repeatedly slammed the Supreme Court as illegitimate. In a foretelling speech from Duke Law School on Monday, Kannon Shanmugam, who is widely considered one of the nation’s top appellate litigators and has argued 35 cases in front of the Supreme Court, said that ‘attacks on the legitimacy of the courts are contributing to the threat of violence against judges in general.’ 

‘Enough is enough. When will the media press Democrats like Sen. Schumer, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Whitehouse, VP Harris and others to stop their baseless attacks on the Supreme Court that have created actual threats to the safety of our Justices?’ questioned GOP Florida Sen. Rick Scott following news of Anastasiou’s arrest. ‘Hey, look, someone who took Chuck Schumer seriously,’ said Trent England, the founder and executive director of conservative nonprofit Save Our States. Other critics pointed to how Anastasiou was a frequent donor to Democrats. 

Trump’s ability to shakeup the Supreme Court with new Justices has not sat well with Democrats. 

In a fiery speech in front of the Supreme Court after a preliminary draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in spring 2020, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., put conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both nominated by Trump, in his crosshairs: ‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,’ Schumer exclaimed outside the steps of the Supreme Court in 2020. ‘You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.’

‘The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it,’ a cohort of Democratic senators said in an August 2019 brief after the High Court took up a case about the constitutionality of a New York City law restricting legal gun owners from transporting their firearms.

In 2020, during the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s final Supreme Court nomination that would eventually make it to the bench, then-Sen. Kamala Harris called the confirmation ‘illegitimate’ and ‘reckless.’ Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Harris warned that there is ‘a national movement afoot to attack hard-won and hard-fought freedoms.’ 

‘I don’t want to, at this point, use my voice in a way that is alarmist,’ she added earlier this year in an interview with the New York Times. ‘But this court has made it very clear that they are willing to undo recognized rights.’ 

Meanwhile, in July, Sen. Ed Markey said: ‘Donald Trump and his MAGA partners’ were to blame for the fact that ‘Our most fundamental freedoms are under attack from an illegitimate, extremist U.S. Supreme Court majority.’ 

‘They started by breaking the rules for confirming justices and ended up breaking the Supreme Court itself,’ Markey said.

The DOJ indicated Wednesday that Anastasiou was charged with nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce. He faces up to 10 years in jail. 

‘Our justice system depends on the ability of judges to make their decisions based on the law, and not on fear,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday. ‘Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families.’

After months of public optimism about the prospects of a ceasefire, Biden administration officials have soured on the prospects of an end to the war between Israel and Hamas. 

‘We aren’t any closer to that now than we were even a week ago,’ National Security Council spokesman John Kirby admitted to reporters on Wednesday. He called the prospects of a completed deal ‘daunting.’ 

‘No deal is imminent,’ one U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal. ‘I’m not sure it ever gets done.’

Israelis point the finger at Hamas for killing six hostages earlier this month, including a U.S. citizen. Arab officials lay blame on Israel for explosive pagers and walkie-talkies and airstrikes aimed at killing Hezbollah fighters for making the prospect of a multi-front war more likely. 

‘There’s no chance now of it happening,’ an Arab official said after the recent campaign against Hezbollah. ‘Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode until after the election. The outcome will determine what can happen in the next administration.’

For Biden, a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who ran on his diplomacy chops, failure to secure a deal would be a blow to his legacy. It would mean a presidency bookended by a chaotic pullout from Afghanistan at the start and the false hope that peace — and the return of some 250 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 — was just around the corner after the outbreak of war in the Middle East. 

Along with the recent attacks on Hezbollah, officials cited another main reason for pessimism to the Journal: the number of Palestinian prisoners that Israel would be asked to release to bring home its hostages.

Joel Rubin, former deputy assistant secretary of state, told Fox News Digital he’s less pessimistic about the potential for a deal. 

‘Nobody’s walked away from the table. They haven’t stated they’re done. Qatar and Egypt are still partnering with us on these talks. The three-stage agreed-upon framework is still in place,’ he said.

‘The hangups are on the implementation side, not the framework side,’ he said, noting that negotiations as far as which prisoners will be released, how their safety will be guaranteed and what to do with Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar remain open-ended. 

‘These implementation issues keep coming up,’ he said. ‘That’s where you keep hearing Hamas growing its demands, adding new names, expecting more. And that’s where you hear Israel, you know, calling for the Philadelphia corridor, which suddenly has dropped out of the discussion, right? They both want more and more advantage and gains on their side, which is why negotiators are exasperated.’

While the Biden administration continues to try to find ways forward on a deal, public comments that have strung along hope for months are now conflicted by some of the privately held sentiment that cease-fire efforts are futile. 

On July 19, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a cease-fire deal was within sight. 

‘I believe we’re inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a cease-fire, get the hostages home and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability,’ Blinken said.

On Aug. 17, President Biden said he was ‘optimistic’ a deal could be reached. ‘We are closer than we’ve ever been,’ he said, adding that he was sending Blinken to Israel to continue ‘intensive efforts to conclude this agreement.’ 

On Aug. 19, Blinken said that Israel had ‘accepted a proposal’ and the next step was for Hamas to agree.

‘The next important statement is for Hamas to say ‘yes,’ and then, in the coming days, for all of the expert negotiators to get together to work on clear understandings on implementing the agreement,’ Blinken said at a press conference in Tel Aviv.

‘This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.’

But those comments came one day after Hamas had said it would not agree to that proposal. They objected to Israel having control of the Rafah and Philadelphia corridors, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had demanded. 

Then again on Sept. 2, Biden claimed the U.S. was ‘very close’ to finalizing a cease-fire deal that would see the release of hostages. Asked why he was optimistic despite other deals having failed, he said, ‘Hope springs eternal.’

Even this week, Blinken expressed optimism about a deal, though he warned after the pager blasts that ‘escalation’ threatens to thwart progress.

‘It’s imperative that all parties refrain from any actions that could escalate the conflict,’ Blinken said at a news conference in Egypt. 

He said he was focused on a deal that would bring calm on all fronts, including Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Blinken said that 15 out of 18 paragraphs of a deal had been agreed by all sides.

He blamed long wait times for messages to be passed between the parties for leaving space to disrupt the talks. 

‘We’ve seen that in the intervening time, you might have an event, an incident — something that makes the process more difficult, that threatens to slow it, stop it, derail it — and anything of that nature, by definition, is probably not good in terms of achieving the result that we want, which is the cease-fire,’ Blinken said.

After Egypt, he went to Paris to discuss the prospects of a deal with his European counterparts. 

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met Wednesday with the relatives of the seven remaining U.S. hostages held in Gaza, where the families said they ‘expressed ​frustration with the lack of tangible progress’ to Sullivan. 

On Thursday, ​​Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a televised address called the pager attacks ‘a declaration of war’ and that attacks against Israel would continue until the war with Gaza is over. Likewise, Israel’s defense minister vowed to continue striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, aiming to stop the group’s rocket and missile attacks so some 70,000 Israelis who live in the northern border region could return home. 

The House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan bill increasing U.S. Secret Service (USSS) protections for major presidential and vice presidential candidates after two foiled assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump.

It passed with an overwhelming unanimous 405 to 0 vote, a rare show of bipartisanship in Congress.

The legislation was introduced by Reps. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., in response to the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

A 20-year-old gunman was able to open fire on the rally from a rooftop just outside the rally perimeter, killing one attendee and injuring Trump and two others.

Weeks later, USSS agents arrested a man near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course who had been waiting for the ex-president during a game on Sunday with an SKS rifle.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Biden, the bill would mandate a comprehensive review of USSS protective standards and impose uniform standards for the security of presidents, vice presidents and major White House candidates.

‘Regardless of how every American feels, regardless of how every American intends to vote, it is the right of the American people to determine the outcome of this election. The idea that our election could be decided by an assassin’s bullet should shake the conscience of our nation, and it requires swift action by the federal government,’ Lawler said during debate on the bill Thursday.

‘It is shocking that it took a second assassination attempt for Donald Trump to get the same level of protective detail from the Secret Service as the president of the United States.’

Progressive Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said he is backing the bill but argued it would be meaningless without stronger firearm laws.

‘I support this legislation because the Secret Service must be able to protect our highest elected officials and candidates. But this legislation will do nothing to make the rest of us any safer, or change the fact that gun violence continues to take the lives of more than 100 Americans every single day,’ Nadler said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pushed back on Nadler’s comments and accused him of painting the assassination attempts as ‘Republicans’ fault.’

‘Next thing they’re going to say is, oh, some crazy guy on the left tries to assassinate President Trump, and it’s President Trump’s fault. Oh, wait a minute. They said that too. This is ridiculous,’ Jordan said.

It is not immediately clear how the bill would classify ‘major’ candidates.

Following the first attempt against Trump, Biden extended heightened USSS protection to the ex-president, who he was still running against at the time before dropping out of the race.

He also granted a request by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then running as a third-party candidate, for USSS protection.