Did you simply get catfished by a political advert? When you have been scrolling on Fb or Instagram recently, possibly.
A gaggle referred to as “Progress 2028” has paid for Fb and Instagram adverts that give the impression that they’re selling Vice President Kamala Harris’ agenda on polarizing points, together with immigration, gun management and hydraulic fracturing aka fracking. However the Harris marketing campaign isn’t behind the adverts, they usually distort her platform.
“Do you know?” one advert reads, alongside an image of Harris smiling and holding a microphone. “A nationwide, obligatory buy-back program means fewer weapons & fewer tragedies. Kamala Harris will get it!”
The identical advert promotes Harris’ biography “because the daughter of immigrants.” “Let’s prepare for the subsequent section in Kamala’s daring progressive agenda!” it says earlier than inviting viewers to “study her plan” by clicking on a blue button that redirects them to the web site, progress2028.com.
The fifth bullet on that web site claims: “Kamala Harris is devoted to creating communities safer by decreasing the variety of firearms in civilian fingers by means of a good and efficient obligatory buy-back program.”
Native police departments manage gun buyback packages to encourage folks to voluntarily flip over their weapons in trade for one thing, corresponding to reward playing cards.
When President Donald Trump claimed that Harris “helps obligatory gun confiscation,” we rated it Principally False. The declare contained a component of reality about her previous place on assault weapons, but it surely left a deceptive impression about her 2024 platform.
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Throughout a 2019 gun management discussion board in Las Vegas, when Harris was working for president, she stated, “I assist a compulsory gun buyback program” for assault weapons.
However we discovered no proof that she helps a compulsory buyback program now in her 2024 marketing campaign, for assault weapons or every other weapon.
The Harris marketing campaign didn’t present feedback for this fact-check. It informed The New York Occasions in July that Harris helps banning assault weapons, however not requiring their sale to the federal authorities. As vp, Harris has urged states to move purple flag legal guidelines and supported federal laws that included funding for psychological well being and faculty safety sources.
In a Sept. 19 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harris stated, “I am in favor of the Second Modification, and I am in favor of assault weapons bans, common background checks, purple flag legal guidelines.” Harris additionally stated she was a gun proprietor. However she didn’t say there ought to be obligatory buyback packages.
Who’s behind Progress 2028?
Camouflaged as a pro-Harris-Walz marketing campaign web site, the Progress 2028 web site consists of two webpages — one is about its privateness coverage and the opposite accommodates about 1,200 phrases dedicated to what it claims displays the form of “sweeping reforms that can be sure that fairness throughout each nook of America,” ought to Harris be elected.
Adopting the form of phrasing Democrats would possibly use, the webpage lays out seven “insurance policies,” refers to assault weapons as “harmful” and requires “common sense gun reform that respects the rights of accountable homeowners.” It contains what it says are Harris’ stances for “banning fracking” and making certain that LGBTQ+ youth have entry to gender-affirming care “with out concern of discrimination or parental intervention.”
On the finish of the insurance policies web page, it says “Paid for by Progress 2028.” The positioning doesn’t specify who’s behind it. However there are clues it’s not Harris: Harris in 2024 stated she doesn’t assist a ban on fracking. Though she helps entry to gender-affirming care, she has not stated she believes dad and mom shouldn’t be concerned.
OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that tracks cash in politics, discovered the group behind Progress 2028 is the conservative nonprofit Constructing America’s Future. Virginia’s State Company Commision exhibits Constructing America’s Future registered “Progress 2028” in late September as a “fictitious identify,” which is another identify {that a} company can use aside from its authorized identify. The New York Occasions reported that Constructing America’s Future raised greater than $100 million over the past 4 years.
The identify Progress 2028 alludes to Challenge 2025, a proposal for a Republican administration drafted by the conservative suppose tank The Heritage Basis. Trump has sought to distance himself from Challenge 2025 whereas the Harris marketing campaign and her surrogates have sought to attract connections between the doc and a few of Trump’s coverage proposals.
Meta’s advert library exhibits that Progress 2028’s gun buyback adverts are being directed to folks in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all swing states in what polls present is a really shut presidential election.
Our ruling
Progress 2028 claims to point out a pro-Harris web site selling her assist for a compulsory gun buyback program.
However the web site, Progress 2028, will not be from her marketing campaign or her supporters and it distorts Harris’ platform.
Throughout Harris’ 2019 presidential marketing campaign, she supported a compulsory buyback of assault weapons. However she now not holds that place. She helps banning assault weapons, however not requiring buyback packages.
We fee the declare False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
