Former President Trump is scheduled to return to California next week for a pair of high-dollar fundraisers, one notably hosted by relatives of the wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to invitations obtained by The Times.

On Sept. 13, donors are being asked to pony up as much as $500,000 per couple for an afternoon fundraiser in Woodside hosted by Tom and Stacey Siebel. Tom Siebel, a billionaire software developer and businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign, is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the Democratic governor’s wife.

Newsom’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Siebel Newsom’s family has a well-reported history of Republican activism, including by her father, Ken Siebel. But after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose presidential bid Ken Siebel supported financially, misstated the motivation for Siebel and his wife moving to Florida during a debate with the governor, the first partner’s father described DeSantis as a “lying slimeball,” according to the Daily Mail.

Trump will also headline an evening fundraiser in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, with top tickets going for $250,000 per person. The location and hosts have not been revealed.

The gatherings take place at a critical moment in the campaign, in the window between the first debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday, and Sept. 18, when Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that could have affected his 2016 bid.

Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Ohio‘s Sen. JD Vance, will raise money in Los Angeles on Sunday, as Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff did on Thursday. Several Italian Americans, including Hollywood stars, will host a virtual dinner fundraiser for Harris on Sunday. Among the participants of “Paisans for Kamala” are actors Steve Buscemi, Alyssa Milano, Lorraine Bracco, Marisa Tomei and John Turturro, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The amount of attention being showered on Californians in the waning weeks of the presidential campaign is due to its outsized role in fueling campaigns of both parties. Despite the state’s cobalt-blue tilt, it is home to an enormous number of Republican as well as Democratic donors and is typically among the largest sources of donations to candidates of both parties.

As of Aug. 8, Harris had raised $65.5 million for her presidential campaign from Californians, more than any other state’s residents had donated, according to Federal Election Commission fundraising disclosures of donors who contributed more than $200 to a candidate committee.

Trump had raised $24.8 million from California donors, the second-most from any state. (These figures reflect donations to the candidates’ committees, not to outside groups or independent expenditure committees.)

PHOENIX (AP) — Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.

“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”

Vance said he doesn’t like the idea of his own kids going to a school with hardened security, “but that’s increasingly the reality that we live in.”

He called the shooting in Georgia an “awful tragedy,” and said the families in Winder, Georgia, need prayers and sympathy.

Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, toured the bloodstained Florida classroom building where the 2018 Parkland high school massacre happened. She then announced a program to assist states that have laws allowing police to temporarily seize guns from people judges have found to be dangerous.

Harris, who leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, has supported both stronger gun controls, such as banning sales of AR-15 and similar rifles, and better school security, like making sure classroom doors don’t lock from the outside as they did in Parkland.