For the first time, both major parties’ presidential candidates have families that have been knit together by divorce. It's a sign that politics is finally catching up with America.

The historic nature of the two first families-in-waiting comes after a half-century of dramatic shifts in American family life. And though there has been a long running tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats over which party is the most “pro-family,” that political fight is more heated than ever.

Many conservatives have embraced former President Donald Trump despite his personal life and family structure, rather than because of it; important figures on the right, including Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, are pushing for a return to the traditional family structure as a salve for social ills, like declining birth rates, student achievement and crime. Democrats, meanwhile, are articulating a vision of families that includes same-sex couples, blended families, adoptive families and single parents or grandparents — one they argue is reflected in Vice President Kamala Harris’ family.

“It tells the honest story of America and that we’re doing the work of building a more just America where everyone can sit at this table, however you show up, in whatever kind of family model,” said Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who is among the two dozen members of Congress who are stepparents. “Whether you’re talking about two mommies, two daddies, bonus moms — this is reflective of today’s American modern family.”

Harris, herself a child of divorce, has a blended family that includes her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and her stepchildren, Cole and Ella. Trump, who has been divorced twice, has five children, half-siblings with each other from three moms.

It’s a notable sea change since Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce and subsequent remarriage helped sink his 1964 presidential bid. More than a third of children don’t live with two married parents, and nearly one in six kids live in a blended family household with stepparents, stepsiblings or half siblings, according to the Pew Research Center. And 78 percent of people now think single-parent households are acceptable, while 58 percent support married gay or lesbian couples raising children together, according to Pew.

Until Trump, Ronald Reagan was the only president who had ever been divorced. And, as recently as 2008, John McCain’s first “broken marriage” to Carol McCain, his first wife, was the source of media speculation and titillation. President Joe Biden also has a blended family, though because of the death of his first wife Neilia, not from divorce. (First Lady Jill Biden is stepmom to the late Beau Biden and his brother Hunter, and Ashley Biden is their half-sister.)

“We’re a long way from the nuclear family,” said Rick Davis, McCain’s presidential campaign manager, calling Harris' family the “classic new nuclear family.”

“That looks more like America these days than a traditional nuclear family that’s been married for 25 years and has two kids,” he added. “I don’t think that’s the America we live in anymore.”

For many communities of color, blended and extended families have long been a part of family life, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

“The whole ‘Leave It to Beaver’ family structure has never been the family structure for many communities,” Brown said. The blended family structure “has always been the backbone of so many communities, that their greatest economic security and infrastructure was the way that we actually saw family.”

Affairs, which were once kryptonite to a presidential bid, also don’t appear to have the same impact they used to. Kerstin Emhoff, Doug's ex-wife, quashed an early attack on an affair he had during their marriage, calling him “a great father” and “a great friend,” and is a vocal Harris booster. And Democrats have attacked Trump for his felony convictions related to hush money payments — rather than the alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. (Trump denies the affair took place.)

Strategists on both sides of the aisle attribute the lack of stickiness of attacks on candidates’ marriages to changing standards about what’s fair game in a presidential campaign as cultural attitudes shift.

“Donald Trump is on his third marriage. Certainly, on my side of the aisle, I don’t see anything wrong with that — because that’s life,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Still, as much as social norms have changed, Trump’s decision to pick Vance as his running mate has elevated the discussion about traditional families, which the New Right sees as the solution to many modern problems — with a populist twist. They argue that small-government programs have failed to beget traditional families and instead favor more government intervention, like the child tax credits and paid family leave Trump pushed as president.

“The marriage rate has come down to record lows, and fertility rates hit record lows last year," said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. "Whatever was the kind of standard Republican agenda — limited government, low taxes — that hasn’t really done much to revise the fortunes of the American family.”

Vance's proposal to raise the child tax credit to $5,000 per child is an example of the kinds of pro-government intervention policies once more traditionally aligned with Democrats now being advocated for as part of a new conservative pro-family agenda. But Vance, who was raised by his grandparents and has a collection of half and stepsiblings, has said this policy would apply to all families — whether kids are being raised by same-sex couples, grandparents or heterosexual couples — suggesting a desire to help more than just traditional families.

“Senator Vance supports policies that will make life better for all kinds of American families: lower prices, a stronger economy, safer streets, and a closed border to stop the deadly flow of fentanyl,” said Luke Schroeder, a Vance spokesperson. “All kids in America, whether they’re raised in a ‘traditional’ family or a ‘nontraditional’ family as JD was, deserve to achieve their American dream.”

Trump, meanwhile, has pledged free in vitro fertilization treatments to all Americans, paid for either by insurance companies or the federal government. His campaign has defended the proposal — which is angering social conservatives and deficit hawks alike — as a necessary long-term investment in light of the country’s record-low birth rate.

The former president also suggested last week that the federal costs of making child care more affordable in the U.S. would be “small” compared to the money that would be generated through his proposed tariffs on imported goods to the U.S.

At the same time, Democrats see their bevy of social safety net programs as a means of pushing a “pro-family” platform. Harris has pitched restoring the expanded child tax credit, as well as adding an additional $6,000 tax credit for children in their first year of life, a variation on the proposal Vance has put forward — all regardless of family structure. Democrats have also couched proposals to offer paid parental leave and expand health care access as similarly “pro-family.”

It’s part of their effort to counter that there is more than one way to build a happy family in the 21st century. That sentiment was underscored by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s comments last month at the Democratic National Convention, highlighting his relationship with his husband, Chasten, and their two kids.

"The makeup of our kitchen table, the existence of my family, is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago," he said. “This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime.”

Donald Trump pitched himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. His plans are angering swaths of the Republican Party.

The former president, eager to deflect attacks that his election would threaten fertility care, has gone so far as to pledge free IVF treatments to all Americans, paid for either by insurance companies or the federal government.

It’s a pitch designed to win back the moderate women who have moved away from Trump and neutralize Democratic attacks on his record on reproductive health that have dogged the GOP since the fall of Roe v. Wade more than two years ago. Harris, during Tuesday’s debate, said that “couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments” because of state restrictions that she frequently refers to as “Trump abortion bans.”

But heading into the final weeks of the election, the proposal is alienating two pillars of the Republican Party: small-government deficit hawks outraged by the idea of a sweeping new federal mandate and religious conservatives who oppose IVF as commonly practiced in the U.S.

“Though we share his desire for Americans to have more babies, Trump's plan to fund in vitro fertilization for all American women is in direct contradiction with that hope,” said Pro-Life Action League President Ann Scheidler. “Hundreds of thousands of embryos — each of them as fully human as you or me — are created and then destroyed or frozen in IVF procedures.”

Trump and the GOP have been on the defensive ever since the Alabama Supreme Court thrust IVF into the spotlight earlier this year with a ruling that frozen embryos should be considered people, citing the Dobbs decision — causing some fertility clinics in the state to suspend treatments until the legislature passed a bill restoring access nearly two weeks later. Trump immediately came out against the Alabama decision, to the dismay of many conservatives.

Trump’s campaign is defending the universal IVF policy as a necessary long-term investment given the country’s record-low birth rate. And aides credit the policy for an increase in support from independents in some battleground states while arguing it has not caused a decline in support from anti-abortion voters.

“We want more babies, to put it very nicely. And for the same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes,” Trump said in a statement.

The former president’s embrace of IVF comes as he and other Republicans grapple with an issue that has plagued them since the fall of Roe two years ago. He has tried to pitch himself as moderate by arguing that abortion should be decided by states — leaving the procedure accessible in some of the country, and banned in other parts — while stressing his support for rape and incest exceptions, IVF and, more broadly, “reproductive rights.”

“I've been a leader on it. They know that and everybody else knows it. I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF,” he said during the debate.

Many conservatives are outraged — or at least highly skeptical — of his free IVF plan because of its potential cost to taxpayers, what it would mean for the expansion of government involvement in health care, and what they see as an implicit endorsement of practices like the disposal of embryos that they see as morally abhorrent. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, wrote the forward to a 2017 collection of essays from the Heritage Foundation that, among other things, raised concerns about IVF. He also joined earlier this year with nearly all Senate Republicans in blocking consideration of a bill to federally protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments.

The Pro-Life Action League and other anti-abortion groups are calling on Trump “to walk back this IVF funding scheme,” while the editor of National Review Online is arguing that it’s hypocritical for the party that went after the Affordable Care Act to now support additional federal health care mandates. Some conservatives liken Trump’s IVF proposal to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 contraceptive mandate, which was broadly panned by the same conservatives and repeatedly challenged in court.

“There are still bona fide limited-government conservatives in the Republican Party who look at this and say: ‘Think about how expensive IVF is!’” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “This could be billions of dollars for something that we think has significant moral complications. What is conservative about that?”

The proposal, which would need congressional approval, has divided Republicans on Capitol Hill, nearly all of whom support Trump. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has said that he is open to the idea, while Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the House GOP conference chair, has said the former president’s IVF proposal should be “applauded by the pro-life community as it will further promote the culture of life.”

Other GOP lawmakers have met the idea with a mixture of uncertainty about what Trump is proposing and skepticism about whether he’s serious — and, if so, how much it will cost. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who is running to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate Republican caucus, told Axios he was unsure “whether or not that's something that you would want to mandate on insurance companies.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was blunter, telling ABC “there's no end” to the cost of the policy, and pitching a means-tested tax credit as an alternative.

According to a person familiar with the plans, Senate Democrats plan to highlight these divisions in the coming weeks by holding another vote on legislation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who had two children through IVF, that would federally protect access to fertility treatments and guarantee public and private insurance coverage.

Nearly all Senate Republicans voted to block the bill when it first came to the floor in June, arguing that it was too sweeping in its scope. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) drafted an alternative bill that would strip federal Medicaid funding from states that ban IVF services but allow restrictions on how embryos are stored, implanted and disposed, but it has yet to move forward.

Despite the party's struggles to unify around a position on IVF, GOP pollsters and strategists believe that with the upcoming election likely to be decided by a relatively small group of people in a half-dozen battleground states, Trump's policy pitch could help him peel off enough votes to make a difference.

Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, who remains in close contact with the campaign, has also urged Republicans to support IVF, pointing to polling her firm conducted, which found broad support, including among GOP voters, for “candidates who prioritize increasing the availability of contraceptives and fertility-related treatments.” That survey found that IVF had 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among evangelical Christians.

“Look, he’s never going to win on this issue but if he can chip away at the margins, that’s a potential path for him,” said Stephen Lawson, a Republican strategist in Georgia, a key swing state President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 where Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck. “For swing voters who are genuinely undecided or going back and forth, it’s another potential policy tool in the toolkit for them to get comfortable pulling the lever for him.”

Democrats, sensing an opportunity to paint the GOP as extreme, have honed in on the Alabama decision, arguing that IVF access everywhere could come under threat if Trump is elected. That’s prompted Republicans to try to shore up their pro-IVF bona fides — much to the chagrin of many anti-abortion advocates.

Duckworth, who was in the debate spin room Tuesday night in Philadelphia, argued Trump, by helping bring about the fall of Roe, is the only reason IVF access is in jeopardy. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has also made his own use of fertility treatments a regular part of his stump speech.

Trump’s attempt to neutralize the attacks from Harris, Walz, Duckworth and others with his own pro-IVF plan may, however, undercut his support with some white evangelicals who were already uneasy about voting for Trump this year. Though many of them see the former president as far better on abortion than Harris, some have expressed substantial frustration at Trump’s shifting rhetoricin recent weeks, including his criticism of Florida’s six-week ban on the procedure.

While evangelicals and self-identified “pro-life advocates” remain overwhelmingly supportive of IVF, the tide may be starting to turn, as many social conservatives see opposing the procedure as the next frontier of the “pro-life movement.” The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination, voted at their convention in June to oppose IVF, a move that could open the door for other denominations to follow suit.

“Listen, I’m a realist here. I know my position is so unpopular. … But what I found myself just scratching my head at was this idea that there would now be an IVF mandate required by insurers,” said Andrew Walker, a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who opposes IVF and co-authored the resolution Southern Baptists voted on. “I mean, that’s basically somewhat of a facsimile from what Obama was doing with the HHS mandate. You’re going to require faith-based organizations to carry insurance that covers IVF against their conscience?”

“Even if you are for IVF, you ought to be able to say you shouldn’t force an organization to carry insurance coverage that they don’t want to carry,” he added.

Strategists from both parties estimate Trump can’t win without the support of 80 percent of white evangelicals nationally. In 2020, Biden won the second-highest percentage of white evangelicals of any Democrat of this century, behind only Obama in 2008, according to CNN exit polls — and in a close race, those votes could be the difference.

Prominent evangelical leaders have warned that despite Trump’s seeming course corrections after his recent abortion stumbles — particularly his declaration that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would expand access — he remains on thin ice with many rank-and-file voters as the Republican Party increasingly abandons socially conservative issues, like abortion and gay marriage. While white evangelicals have for decades been a core Republican constituency, those leaders argue there’s no guarantee that Christians will remain as engaged in politics as they have been in the past.

“Maybe he pays a political price for November,” Brown said. “It's going to be a tight election, and even a handful of demotivated pro-lifers in key swing states can make a difference.”

Liz Cheney is hitting the campaign trail with millions of dollars at her disposal to defeat Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans, aggressively taking on the MAGA movement that dominates a party where she, and her father, are no longer welcome.

Cheney has pledged to do anything she can to help Kamala Harris, and has resources to back that up — including a PAC that raised more than $3 million in the first six months of the year, according to FEC records.

It’s part of an unprecedented effort by one of the party’s former highest-ranking leaders to not only take down Trump but purge any trace of him from the Republican Party. GOP strategists and elected officials who share her opposition to the former president say Cheney’s campaign — including her and her father’s endorsement of Harris — could pave the way for members of their party to join their cause. A critical mass could be enough to move the needle in a tight election.

“It’s a true reflection of how bad Donald Trump is — to think about a Dick Cheney, who is as time-tested of a conservative Republican as anybody in the roster, to come out and take a stance to support, like myself, Kamala Harris,” said former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican Harris supporter. “Look, the Republican Party loses no matter what. If Donald Trump gets beat by Kamala Harris — like I think is going to happen — the Republican Party loses. But if Donald Trump wins, the Republican Party loses even more: We’ll lose any and all credibility that we’ve got.”

Broadly, there doesn’t appear to be a deluge of Republicans flocking to Harris. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 93 percent of likely Republican voters still prefer Trump over Harris — similar margins to where Trump stood in 2020. Yet the campaigns are chasing any movement at the margins in what promises to be among the closest elections in modern political history.

“I think Dick Cheney’s voice is incredibly important, because I think it will draw some more traditional conservatives to pause for a second and kind of take that in,” said former Trump national security official Olivia Troye, a Republican surrogate for Harris who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She will also be near Mesa, Arizona, Thursday, leading a phone banking operation with Republican Mesa Mayor John Giles.

Cheney, who emerged as a prominent Trump critic in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and served as the vice chair of the House select committee that probed the riot, has in recent days renewed her war against Trump, saying that he “represents unrecoverable catastrophe” and promising in a series of high-profile interviews to do whatever it takes to defeat the former president in order to stamp out the fires of Trumpism. It’s also a bit of payback after Trump and his political operation helped orchestrate the primary that led to Cheney’s ouster from Congress.

In an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival last week, Cheney endorsed Democratic Texas Rep. Colin Allred, and said she would be “in many key battleground states very much focused on how important it is that we defeat him in this cycle,” though she said she wouldn’t be an official Harris campaign surrogate.

“I will continue to be doing everything I can over the course of the next two months here to make sure that people realize, understand, recognize who Donald Trump is and what he did and why he’s so dangerous,” Cheney said.

Her PAC in 2022 spent hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem.

Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio talk show host in Wisconsin who is now anti-Trump, said the “one-two punch” of Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement gives conservatives wavering on Trump consent to back Harris. And while others in Trump’s administration who have broken with the former president have been reluctant to endorse a liberal Democrat, including former Vice President Mike Pence, the endorsement of someone like Dick Cheney carries significant weight.

“Both living Republican ex-vice presidents are now saying they’re not going to vote for Donald Trump. And one of them, a two-term Republican vice president, is saying he’s going to vote for Kamala Harris,” Sykes added. “That clearly creates this permission dynamic.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Other Republicans are more skeptical of the impact someone like Cheney could have on the election. The Cheneys’ support is, for instance, unlikely to move the needle with social conservatives for whom abortion remains one of the top issues — if not the top issue — in the election. While Trump has wavered on his views on abortion rights, anti-abortion advocates and their voters still see the former president as better on the issue than Harris, who they fear would uphold the status quo or possibly do more to expand abortion access in the U.S.

Pence, for instance, has said he won’t endorse Trump but hasn’t ruled out voting for him. But even if he does, Republicans who oppose Trump think it’s unlikely that he would make the leap to voting for Harris. (Pence previously said he would “never” vote for President Joe Biden.)

“She certainly appeals to the Never Trumpers,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. “But they are already in the column.”

The Cheneys’ support for Harris comes as Trump continues to rebuff the support of those who have previously rejected him. Earlier this year, Trump threatened to blacklist donors to Nikki Haley’s campaign, and he said he didn’t want the support of voters who “came back to” him during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity last week.

“They say you should take everybody, but that’s not the way I’m built,” he said during the town hall.

The Harris campaign isn’t claiming that the Cheneys’ endorsements — or the support of any one Republican — will make a significant difference in the election. But the campaign has been making a concerted appeal to Republicans.

The campaign in August launched a “Republicans for Harris” organizing program, hired a former GOP congressional staffer as its national Republican engagement director and has been targeting anti-Trump Republicans, as well as other conservatives and independents, through paid media and a grassroots digital campaign. The Democratic National Convention also prominently featured several GOP officials, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and Duncan.

And a group of 10 retired top military officials endorsed Harris on Monday, calling Trump a “danger to our national security and democracy,” criticizing his previous comments on the military and deriding his “chaotic approach” in Afghanistan before the U.S. withdrawal.

Her campaign has used that support — or at least, opposition to Trump — to get under the former president’s skin. A new ad released in the run-up to Tuesday’s debate features clips of former Trump administration officials — including Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their concerns about a second Trump term or their decisions not to endorse him. The ad specifically aired in Palm Beach, the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

There have long been signs throughout the cycle that Trump’s GOP support could be softer than advertised. Nikki Haley consistently attracted upwards of a third of Republicans in various primaries weeks and months after she dropped out. In Maryland, Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan even ran an ad hitting Trump on his involvement in Jan. 6.

Cheney is giving these kinds of Republicans a permission structure to back Harris, said pollster Sarah Longwell, the publisher of the anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark and CEO of Longwell Partners.

“They are people who want to vote for a different Republican, and so they’re always frustrated they don’t have a different Republican to vote for. And so they know they don’t want to vote for Trump, but the question is, can they affirmatively get there on Kamala Harris?” Longwell said. “And that’s where Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney are helpful, because they set the stakes.”

Still, Republicans working to oppose Trump acknowledge that Harris — who tacked to the left on several issues during her 2020 presidential bid — is a harder sell for many Republicans than Joe Biden was. But they say the positions she is taking on a number of economic issues and her backtracking from progressive policies is giving many on the right the comfort they need to consider voting for her.

“Positive messaging on Kamala, not just negative messaging on Trump, showing people how neoconservative she sounded in her acceptance speech, sharing her talking points about small business tax breaks and getting rid of red tape — you can’t argue with that,” said Emily Matthews, co-chair of the Haley Voters Working Group, which has met multiple times with the Harris campaign to talk about how to get Republicans’ support. “It’s on paper.”

Former President Donald Trump would not commit to vetoing a national abortion ban. Vice President Kamala Harris would not say which restrictions she would support on the procedure.

Tuesday night’s debate offered a sharp contrast between the two candidates and their approaches on abortion. But what both had in common — a fear of alienating their bases.

The exchange highlighted the tightrope both candidates feel they must walk — appearing moderate so as not to alienate middle-of-the-road voters who support abortion access with some restrictions, without saying anything that could cause their most ardent supporters’ enthusiasm to wane. It’s been a particular problem for Trump, who has angered anti-abortion-rights advocates on several occasions by suggesting that the federal government has no more role to play in legislating abortion.

Harris used her time to excoriate Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices key to overturning Roe v. Wade. And she tried to undercut one of Trump’s most-used arguments — that ending Roe and returning it to the states is what most people wanted.

“You want to talk about, this is what people wanted?” Harris said. “A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. They don't want that.”

It was the starkest and clearest answer Harris has given on the implications of the fall of Roe and emblematic of the way her campaign has used the stories of women — including at the Democratic National Convention last month — to make that argument.

Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his support for his leave-abortion-to-the-states approach, which he said was only possible because of the “great courage” of the Supreme Court. But he wouldn’t weigh in on a veto of a national abortion ban — something Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has said that the former president would do — saying that he “didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness.”

“They can never get this approved so it doesn’t matter,” Trump said. “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”

The two also had a back and forth on abortions later in pregnancy, with Trump suggesting incorrectly that Harris favors allowing abortion in the “8th or 9th” month of pregnancy. The vice president, who declined to say what limits she would favor on abortion, supports restoring Roe, which would protect abortion access until fetal viability, which is around the 22nd week of pregnancy. States could still restrict abortion beyond that point, though not all do so.

“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris said. “That’s not happening, that’s insulting to the women of America.”

Harris also highlighted the ripple effects of the fall of Roe, nodding to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that said that frozen embryos are people, briefly halting some IVF services in the state. She said women were being denied such services because of “Donald Trump’s abortion bans.”

“Another lie, it’s another lie,” Trump said, calling himself “a leader on IVF.”

Trump has expressed support for IVF, and announced late last month that he would make IVF treatments free, paid for by the government or health insurance companies.