A national poll finds that the 2024 vice presidential nominees are both still fighting to make themselves known to the U.S. voting public. 

The poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shows 4 out of 10 Americans don’t know enough about Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to form an opinion. 

The same goes for about 3 out of 10 Americans regarding Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Walz is currently enjoying a higher level of support among U.S. adults, maintaining a 36% favorability rating compared to Vance’s 27%. 

This is compounded by Vance’s higher unfavorability rating among those polled, with 44% holding an unfavorable view compared to Walz’s 25%.

Vance’s popularity within the Republican Party is on the rise. In mid-July, only 3 out of 10 Republicans reported favorable feelings towards the Ohio senator as former President Donald Trump’s running mate — 6 out of 10 didn’t know enough about him.

The current polling finds that Vance’s support within the Republican Party has doubled to 6 out of 10 among Republicans — mostly attributable to a rise in awareness about him and his policies.

Similarly, the AP-NORC poll found Walz maintains favorable opinions with 6 out of 10 Democrats, with approximately 3 out of 10 not knowing enough about him to form an opinion. 

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll was conducted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 12. 

It surveyed 1,164 adults via the NORC ‘probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel,’ which it describes as ‘designed to be representative of the U.S. population.’ Its margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, first lady Gwen Walz, have clarified that they conceived their children not through IVF, as the governor had previously said or implied in interviews, but through another fertility treatment. 

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to seize on the revelation and ask, ‘Who lies about something like that?’ after asserting that Walz had deceived the public about having children via IVF, adding to his earlier attack that Walz had ‘lied’ about his service in the National Guard. 

But the Harris-Walz campaign hit back at Vance:

‘The Trump campaign’s attacks on Mrs. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare,’ Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg told Fox News Digital. ‘Infertility is a deeply personal journey, but the Governor and Mrs. Walz came forward to share their story because they know that MAGA attacks on reproductive rights are putting all fertility treatments at risk.’

Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg argued to CNN that Tim Walz ‘talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.’ The couple did not receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) but instead intrauterine insemination (IUI). 

In a statement shared with media, Gwen Walz said that the journey through fertility treatments is riddled with anxiety, agony and ‘desperation that can eat away at your soul.’ 

‘I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need,’ she said. ‘After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country — particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments — Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience.’

‘Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time — not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family,’ Gwen Walz explained. ‘The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor.’

‘She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school, and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.’

Tim Walz stated during an interview with MSNBC in July that he had IVF to thank for their children, saying, ‘Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.’ In other instances, Walz referred to ‘fertility treatments’ and stressed that the issue of IVF rights remained ‘personal’ for him due to the struggles he and his wife went through to have their children. 

Tim Walz has made his support of IVF a central cause after the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos created by IVF treatments should be considered children, which would lay the groundwork for further legislation on treatments. Embryos that have been fertilized but go unused are often discarded, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The ’embryo disposal decision’ deals with the question of storage after successful childbearing. Many couples end up donating good-quality embryos to a research program, but discarding fertilized embryos remains a common practice. 

IVF requires the removal of several eggs and fertilization outside the body before transfer into the uterus, while IUI directly injects the sperm into the uterus. IUI also involved ‘washing’ sperm to separate them from seminal fluid to increase the number of sperm transferred and increase chances of successful fertilization, according to Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials.

Former President Donald Trump shortly after the Alabama ruling stressed, ‘We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.’ 

‘Today, I am calling on the Alabama Legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama,’ Trump said in a post on Truth Social following the decision. ‘The Republican Party should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life – and the side of Mothers, Fathers, and their Beautiful Babies.’

The correction issued by the Harris-Walz campaign is another they have had to make regarding previous statements Tim Walz has made, including clarification on his National Guard service. 

The team altered its biography of Tim Walz on the campaign website amid ongoing scrutiny of Walz’s service, changing it from saying he was a ‘retired Command Sergeant Major’ to ‘served as a command sergeant major.’

Tim Walz retired from the Guard after nearly 25 years of service, but his rank was reduced months later, leaving him as a master sergeant. 

National Guard officials have said that he retired before fulfilling requirements for the position, including coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. The subsequent lower rank was due to benefit requirements and a technicality.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by the time of publication. 

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

The House GOP is setting its sights on a handful of Democratic candidates who have been bankrolled by left-wing billionaires whose money has also gone toward promoting what Republicans call ‘soft-on-crime’ policies.

At least eight Democratic House candidates who have positioned themselves as left-of-center or moderate have received donations from the same wealthy liberals who poured thousands into promoting progressive crime policies in states like California and Florida, campaign finance records show.

All eight are also running in competitive districts, making them prime targets for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the House Republicans’ campaign arm.

‘Defund the police donors backed up the Brink’s truck to bankroll the campaigns of extreme House Democrats,’ NRCC spokesman Will Reinert told Fox News Digital. ‘If elected, these far-left Democrats will work hand in hand with San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris to send violent crime rates soaring, reward felons and punish cops for trying to keep communities safe.’

Among the eight is Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., one of the most vulnerable Democrats this election cycle — the most recently available campaign finance data shows Davids received $3,300 in April from Quinn Delaney, a California billionaire who runs the nonprofit Akonadi Foundation.

The Akonadi Foundation committed $12.5 million to an Oakland-based initiative whose goals include closing youth prisons and taking police officers out of schools, according to its website.

Delaney also spent hundreds of thousands to help elect progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, whose progressive reforms have been accused of making residents feel less safe during his tenure.

Delaney along with California megadonor Patty Quillin were named as two of four billionaires who ‘channeled $22 million toward criminal justice ballot measures and allied candidates the previous two years,’ Politico wrote in 2021.

Quillin and her husband, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, also donated $1 million to support a California measure to end the cash bail system and replace it with a risk-based assessment.

Recent campaign finance records show Quillin donated $3,300 to Will Rollins, a former prosecutor running against Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif.

Delaney and Quillin also both gave $3,300 to Adam Gray, who is running to unseat Rep. John Duarte, R-Calif.

Gray, a former state lawmaker, has also received two $6,600 checks from Django Bonderman and Cale Bonderman respectively, both of whom donated significantly to support a 2018 Florida ballot initiative to grant most felons the right to vote.

Django Bonderman is also linked to Mountain Philanthropies, which Influence Watch has classified as a left-wing dark money group that has supported causes promoting leniency in criminal justice.

Campaign finance records show the Bondermans have also donated similar amounts to George Whitesides, who is running against Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif.; Laura Gillen, who is challenging Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y.; Monica Tranel, who is challenging Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.; and former House Rep. Mondaire Jones, who is running to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.

The Bondermans have also donated $3,300 each to Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum, who is challenging Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore.

Django Bonderman has given small amounts to more moderate members of the House GOP as well, giving $1,000 each to Reps. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, and Steve Womack, R-Ark., in late June. 

A spokesperson for Womack said he returned the donation.

‘Voters have to remember what happened when George Soros funded all of those left-wing DAs,’ John Feehery, a former aide to ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert and current partner at EFB Advocacy told Fox News Digital.

‘Crime spiraled out of control. The same principle applies to these candidates. They will do what the billionaires want and the results won’t be pretty.’

Feehery argued there was a dissonance between such Democrats running more moderate campaigns while accepting funds from progressive sources. ‘They can try, but voters know where their bread is buttered,’ he said.

Crime and perceptions of public safety are likely to play a critical role in suburban districts where Republicans have hammered big-city Democrats as soft on crime. 

Democrats, particularly in competitive districts, have sought to dispel those arguments during this election cycle.

Both Gray and Rollins have touted campaign endorsements from local law enforcement in their areas. Gray has support from both the district attorney and the sheriff of Merced County, while Rollins is endorsed by the Palm Springs Police Association.

‘As a former federal prosecutor with the support of local law enforcement, I understand more than most that defendants should be detained if they’re a danger to our communities, that Prop 47 needs to be repealed so that cops aren’t put in the position of rearresting the same people for theft crimes again and again, and that our police officers need all of the support they can get to keep our families safe,’ Rollins told Fox News Digital. ‘I believe no one is above the law and that we should fund both local police and federal law enforcement.’

He also knocked rival Calvert for once claiming the FBI was ‘infiltrated’ by ‘rot’ and for House GOP proposals, not led by him, that would have seen funding cut to various law enforcement offices.

Tranel, meanwhile, told Fox News Digital, ‘Over half of my donors are from Montana, while only 7% of Zinke’s contributions came from Montanans. If we’re going to talk about donors, let’s look at Ryan Zinke, who took money from a company controlled by the Chinese Communist Party that has bought up US farmland and voted to make it harder for Montana ranchers to compete with China and drive up the cost of living. Montanans deserve a representative who stands up for them, not one who continues to exploit Montana for their own personal profit.’

Zinke’s campaign pointed out that Tranel also received donations from Jonathan Soros and his wife, adding, ‘Ryan Zinke continues to outperform perennial failed candidate Monica Tranel in every aspect of this campaign. Talk about a liberal afraid to be truthful to voters, she refuses to acknowledge that her top client wants to defund the police, she refuses to answer questions about her support for her VP nominee who let criminals burn Minneapolis to the ground, and her presidential nominee who tried to bail them out of jail.’

‘And on the point of Tranel’s statement — Congressman Zinke is the only person in this race who has actually taken action against the Chinese buying farmland, whereas Monica Tranel is pushing American’s reliance on Chinese-made solar, wind and EVs,’ the campaign added.

In Oregon, Bynum previously touted her support for recriminalizing fentanyl possession after the state’s controversial decision to ease drug penalties, which has since been reversed.

‘Voters can see right through the NRCC’s weak falsehoods for what they are: a lame attempt to hide the fact that it’s only been House Republicans who’ve voted for cuts to cripple local law enforcement and make our communities less safe, all while rewarding their convicted felon presidential nominee,’ Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spokesperson Viet Shelton told Fox News Digital.

The remaining candidates did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is urging House GOP leaders to hold a chamber-wide vote on impeaching President Biden days after a highly anticipated report accused the commander in chief of committing impeachable offenses.

‘I’ve felt that way for a long time. I’m on the Oversight Committee, I’ve seen all of the evidence up close and personal. It is without a doubt that he used his office when he was vice president to enrich his family as pay for play,’ Donalds told Fox News Digital. ‘That’s public corruption.’

Referencing the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy that precipitated the first impeachment of former President Trump, Donalds added, ‘Listen, if a phone call is quote-unquote, an impeachable offense, then public corruption absolutely is. I think the House should hold that vote.’

House Republicans released a 292-page report on Monday, a joint effort by the House Oversight Committee, House Judiciary Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, arguing Biden engaged in ‘impeachable conduct.’

Those committees have been working on a monthslong investigation into whether Biden helped enrich himself and his family through foreign business deals while he was vice president.

Donalds’ public pressure is significant; while a majority of House Republicans have publicly accused Biden of at least acting improperly, it’s not clear that House leaders would risk forcing their most vulnerable GOP members to take such a weighty vote with just a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., indicated in March that criminal referrals could be the end of the road for the probe. He told Newsmax the House ‘would vote to impeach Joe Biden right now,’ but ‘the best path to accountability is criminal referrals.’

In his statement on the impeachment report on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., praised the investigation as ‘thorough, diligent and thoughtful’ but made no mention of a House-wide vote. Johnson himself has previously said he believes Biden is guilty of wrongdoing.

Donalds appeared to reference his colleagues’ hesitation when he told Fox News Digital he would make the case for an impeachment vote to Johnson the next time he spoke with the GOP leader.

‘It’ll definitely probably come up, and we’ll see where it is,’ Donalds said. ‘And look, I know members, they all are trying to figure out what they’re going to do in their re-elections, but we have a responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable. That is the job of Congress.’

‘I think one of the reasons why a lot of people are losing faith in our institutions is because it appears that people at the top of our politics just get away with everything and are never held accountable. And that’s wrong.’

In their report, Republicans said there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Biden participated in a ‘conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family.’ They alleged that the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by ‘leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.’ 

The committees said the Biden family and its associates received more than $27 million from foreign individuals or entities since 2014.

They also alleged that the Biden family leveraged Biden’s position as vice president to obtain more than $8 million in loans from Democratic benefactors. The loans ‘have not been repaid and the paperwork supporting many of the loans does not exist and has not been produced to the committees.’

The White House said in response to the report, ‘This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories. The American people deserve more from House Republicans, and perhaps now they will finally join President Biden in focusing on the real issues that American families actually care about.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Donalds’ remarks.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, claimed Monday that President Biden at this point is ‘basically president in name only.’ 

‘Tonight, we are going to hear from President Joe Biden, who at this point is basically president in name only,’ Shanahan said in a video shared to X. 

‘You know, no matter what your opinion is of Joe Biden, if you love him or if you hate him or don’t really care, you have to realize that something feels very wrong about how the Democratic Party ran a full core pressure campaign to get him out of office after he won 14-15 million votes in the primaries,’ she said. 

‘Isn’t it strange how he bowed out because he didn’t feel like he could serve another four years, but somehow he’s OK to serve four more months as we face historic inflation, debt and war? Any impartial observer can look at that and realize the DNC machine did what they always do. They pushed someone out they couldn’t successfully puppeteer,’ Shanahan said. ‘So much for defending democracy.’ 

At the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, Biden said he had ‘a lot to do’ in the remaining five months of his presidential term. 

Comparing himself to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden said, ‘Like many of our best presidents, she was also vice president. That’s a joke…’ 

Biden appeared to be referencing how he served as former President Barack Obama’s vice president.

‘But she’ll be a president our children could look up to,’ Biden continued. ‘She’ll be a president respected by world leaders because she already is. She’ll be a president we can all be proud of. And she will be a historic president who puts her stamp on America’s future. This will be the first presidential election since January 6th.’ 

 ‘Selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made before I became, when I became our nominee, and it was the best decision I made my whole career,’ Biden said. 

X users on Monday questioned whether Biden is truly in charge. 

‘Are we just forgetting that Joe Biden is still in office?’ wrote Jerry Wayne, a Michigan autoworker who went viral for confronting Biden about gun control on the 2020 campaign trail.

‘Joe Biden is still the President for 154 more days. Pray for America,’ Fox News contributor and former Trump campaign operative Steve Cortes wrote on X. 

At the DNC, Biden stressed that his term is not over. ‘Folks, I’ve got five months left in my presidency. I’ve got a lot to do. I intend to get it done,’ Biden said. 

Regardless of the outcome of the election in November, a new president would not, under traditional circumstances, be inaugurated until Jan. 20, 2025. As of Tuesday, that means Biden has 153 days left of his four-year term. The 25th Amendment of the Constitution stipulates that if the president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president automatically becomes president.

After Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Republican nominee and former President Trump in June, Democratic lawmakers and donors pressured the 81-year-old president to step aside from the race amid concern his age and mental fitness would destroy the party’s chances of holding onto the White House and Senate, as well as reclaiming the House in November. 

In a clip shared by RNC Research, Biden stood at the podium during a stage test earlier Monday afternoon at the United Center while reporters shouted questions. 

One reporter asked, ‘Donald Trump claims that you were pushed out, put from the top of the ticket, and this amounts to a coup from your party. What do you make of these claims?’ 

Biden started to answer, but his response was quiet and barely audible, so the reporter pressed, ‘his what?’ The president then went silent, waved her off and other reporters began asking different questions. 

Biden ended his re-election campaign on July 21 and immediately endorsed Harris’ presidential candidacy. Harris secured enough delegates to become the presidential nominee on Aug. 1 during a virtual roll call conducted by the Democratic National Committee two weeks before the start of the party’s convention at the United Center in Chicago. The RNC, by contrast, did their roll call in person in Milwaukee. 

In his DNC speech Monday night, Biden insisted there was no bad blood and that he made the decision to back out of the race for the good of the country. 

‘It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more. I love my country more. Now, all this talk about how I’m angry. All those people said I should step down. That’s not true. I love my country more,’ Biden said. ‘And we need to preserve our democracy in 2024. We need you to vote, I need you to keep the Senate. We need you to win back the House of Representatives. And above all, we need you to beat Donald Trump.’ 

Harris isn’t expected to formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination until Thursday. But Biden left the DNC immediately after what some mainstream media billed his ‘farewell address’ Monday night. 

The speech concluded in the dead of night, and the president and first lady Jill Biden touched down in California early Tuesday morning. 

Listing priorities for the remainder of his presidency, Biden told the DNC that he would continue working with Harris to bring all Americans wrongfully detained around the world home. 

Biden said Monday night that his administration, namely Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is ‘working around the clock’ to prevent a wider war in the Middle East, bring back the remaining hostages held by Hamas after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, surge humanitarian assistance into Gaza to ‘end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people’ and ‘finally deliver a cease-fire and end this war.’ 

CHICAGO – Gov. Gavin Newsom said in the four weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket, ‘everyone and their mother is jumping on to help.’

Harris has been riding a wave of momentum as she has enjoyed a surge in polling and fundraising after Biden’s blockbuster announcement that he was ending his re-election bid for a second term in the White House.

Biden’s disastrous performance against former President Trump in their late June debate fueled questions over whether the 81-year-old president had the physical and mental abilities to handle another four years in the White House and sparked a chorus of calls from within his own party to end his 2024 campaign.

Biden eventually caved to the pressure, announcing the suspension of his re-election campaign three days after the Republican National Convention ended with a solidified GOP ticket of Trump and running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. 

Until Biden dropped out of the race, Newsom had been one of the president’s top surrogates.

When asked if he would be as voracious for Harris on the campaign trail as he was for Biden, the two-term California governor pointed to his longtime friendship and working relationship with the vice president, who also hails from the Golden State.

‘We knew each other a decade before we both got into politics. One of my oldest friends. So it’s a no brainier,’ Newsom told Fox News Digital on Monday during the first night of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago’s United Center arena.

‘But here’s the difference,’ Newsom said. ‘I’m a solution in search of a problem. Everyone and their mother is jumping on to help. So, I’m as needed. But obviously all in.’

However, Newsom, who is thought to have long harbored national ambitions of his own, added that he may not be asked by the Harris campaign to hit the trail on behalf of the vice president.

‘We’ll see. Because everybody’s out there. Everybody’s doing everything,’ the governor said.

Pointing to his campaign travels across the country on behalf of Biden this summer before the president ended his 2024 bid, Newsom told this reporter ‘you were with me in New Hampshire. There wasn’t many of us. Everything about that was very different. Right now, everybody is out there for Kamala.’

‘Everybody’s sort of jumping over each other to be out there on the campaign trail.’