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Rival campaign merchandise sellers try lowering political temperature

In the U.S. presidential campaign, there is little to agree on between supporters of Kamala Harris and supporters of Donald Trump. From California, Genia Dulot brings us the story of two people selling rival campaign merchandise who are trying to lower the political temperature of their customers.
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Harris, Trump head to political battleground states

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump headed to political battleground states on Wednesday in search of any edge they could find six days before the presidential election that may be the closest in decades.

Harris, the Democratic candidate, and Trump, her Republican challenger, both appeared in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina before heading to the Upper Midwest state of Wisconsin, with Harris also campaigning in another key state, Pennsylvania in the East.

The three states are among seven, along with Michigan in the Midwest, Georgia in the Southeast and Nevada and Arizona in the Southwest, that both candidates consider crucial to their chances of winning next Tuesday’s election.

Polls show the outcome in the election in the seven states and nationally as too close to call. Nearly 57 million people have already voted at polling stations or by mail, and tens of thousands are continuing to cast early ballots, even as a sliver of voters remains undecided.

Retired Green Bay Packers football quarterback Brett Favre, a popular figure in Wisconsin, is scheduled to join Trump at his rally in Green Bay. Downstate, several musicians popular with younger audiences — Mumford & Sons, Gracie Abrams, Remi Wolf and members of the rock band The National — are scheduled to appear with Harris at her rally in the state capital, Madison.

During a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Harris repeated her promise to be “a president for all Americans.”

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” the vice president said, echoing themes from the speech she gave Tuesday night near the White House in what her campaign described as the “closing argument” for her campaign.

Trump rallied with supporters in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, pledging to end inflation in consumer prices, while vowing, “I will stop the massive invasion of criminals into our country,” his favored description for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“And I will bring back the American dream,” he said. “Isn’t that nice?”

Tens of thousands of supporters watched Harris on Tuesday night on the Ellipse in Washington, while Trump held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Harris pledged to work to improve people’s lives and said she would show up to work at the White House with a to-do list, while saying Trump is focused only on himself and would begin a new term starting in January with an enemies list.

Her speech was given in the same area where Trump addressed his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to in an attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” Harris said.

Polls show the contest in a virtual dead heat.

Before heading to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a Latino-majority population, Trump spoke Tuesday at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He described Harris as “grossly incompetent … a total trainwreck.”

On the campaign trail, Harris and Trump have traded frequent insults.

Trump has described Harris as someone with a “low IQ” and said she would be like “a play toy” for other world leaders. “They’re going to walk all over her,” he said.

Some of Trump’s former top aides from his 2017-2021 term in the White House described him as a fascist with the intent to govern in a second term as an authoritarian. Harris said she agreed with the characterization.

Trump returned the taunt to describe Harris the same way.

The importance of the seven battleground states cannot be overstated.

U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but rather through the Electoral College, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the 50 states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in their states. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency.

Polls show either Harris or Trump holds substantial or comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, that leaves the outcome to the remaining seven battleground states, where both Harris and Trump have staged frequent rallies, all but ignoring the rest of the country for campaign stops.

Polling in the seven states is easily within the margins of statistical error, leaving the outcome in doubt in all seven.
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Harris promises to ‘represent all Americans’ after Biden ‘garbage’ remark

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris said she disagrees “with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” reacting after U.S. President Joe Biden’s reference to Donald Trump’s supporters and “garbage.”

“I will represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me,” the vice president said.

Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, made the comment to reporters as she prepared to campaign in three states. Her words were an attempt to blunt the controversy over Biden’s rhetoric with less than a week until the end of the campaign.

The tumult began Tuesday night around the time that Harris was delivering a unifying message in a speech near the White House. Inside the building, Biden was criticizing Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally, where a comedian described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.”

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden said in a campaign call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino. “It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”

Biden and the White House rushed to explain that the president was talking about the rhetoric on stage, not Trump’s supporters themselves. But Republicans seized on Biden’s comments, claiming they were an echo of the time when Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic nominee against Trump in 2016, said half of Trump’s supporters belong to a “basket of deplorables.”

In attacking Biden, and by extension, Harris, Republicans are glossing over Trump’s own history of insulting and demonizing rhetoric, such as calling the United States a “garbage can for the world” or describing political opponents as “the enemy within.” Trump has also described Harris as a “stupid person” and “lazy as hell,” and he’s questioned whether she was on drugs.

Trump has also refused demands to apologize for the comment about Puerto Rico at his rally, acknowledging “somebody said some bad things” but “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal.”

Political attack lines have a history of occasionally boomeranging back on people who use them. For example, Ohio Senantor JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate, once described Democrats as beholden to “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.”

Vance’s three-year-old comments were resurfaced once he became the vice presidential nominee, energizing Harris supporters who repurposed the label as a point of pride on shirts and bumper stickers — much like Trump’s supporters once cheerfully branded themselves as “deplorables.”

On Wednesday morning, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, downplayed Biden’s comments in television interviews.

He told “CBS Mornings” that Biden “was very clear that he’s speaking about the rhetoric we heard,” not the supporters themselves.

Walz made a similar comment on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where he emphasized that Democrats’ inclusive message.

“Let’s be very clear, the vice president and I have made it absolutely clear that we want everyone as a part of this,” he said. “Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric is what needs to end.”
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Some of the most bizarre moments from US political history

The run-up to the 2024 U.S. election has been full of twists and turns but, believe it or not, stranger things have happened in U.S. election history. From incarcerated candidates to electoral mayhem, America has seen it all.
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Presidential candidates: Final pitches before US election

The two candidates for U.S. president are making what they call their “closing arguments” to voters in this final week before the election. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti brings us the sights and sounds from two rallies.
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US court declines RFK Jr’s request to order 2 states to drop him from ballot

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a bid Tuesday by former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be removed from the ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan for the Nov. 5 election. Kennedy has said he wants voters who would have backed him to cast ballots for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. 

The court declined Kennedy’s emergency requests to order the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to take him off the ballot in those states. Michigan and Wisconsin are among a handful of closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of the race between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.  

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision concerning the Michigan ballot only. No other justice publicly dissented. 

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist known by his initials RFK Jr., has sought the Supreme Court’s intervention in his attempts to stay on the ballot in some states while dropping off others. In September, the Supreme Court rejected his bid to be restored to the ballot in New York. 

Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed the former president’s candidacy. Kennedy has urged his supporters everywhere to back Trump and has withdrawn from the ballot in a number of Republican-leaning states.  
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For expats in Ukraine, election back in US hits home

The outcome of the U.S. election and the possible changes in Washington’s foreign policy are of special significance to the 3 million American expatriates eligible to vote in next week’s U.S. presidential elections. In few places is that outcome more tangible than in Ukraine, where a few thousand Americans have, for various reasons, chosen to live after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Lesia Bakalets speaks to several expatriates in Ukraine and sends this report from Kyiv.
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With a week to go, Harris, Trump trade insults

The highly contentious, tightly contested U.S. presidential election is now a week away.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, is set to deliver her so-called “closing argument” to voters in a Tuesday evening speech near the White House. Republican former President Donald Trump is campaigning in Pennsylvania, one of the seven political battleground states likely to determine the overall national outcome.

Both candidates, each disparaging the other as unfit to lead the country for a new four-year term, are looking for any small advantage to woo the sliver of voters who have not made up their minds in what could be one of the country’s closest votes in decades.  

Polls show the contest in a virtual dead heat, with Harris and Trump tied in some crucial states or only narrowly ahead or behind, all within the statistical margin of error. A few thousand votes in each of the seven key states could prove crucial.

Last-minute speeches by Harris and Trump could sway some undecided voters to finally make a choice, but the campaigns’ get-out-the-vote efforts targeting their already likely committed supporters to cast their ballots in the last days of the campaign or on Election Day could prove even more decisive.

Nearly 49 million people have voted early, either at polling stations or by mail, ahead of next Tuesday’s official Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. More than 155 million voted in the 2020 election.

Before heading to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a Latino-majority population, Trump spoke at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He described Harris as “grossly incompetent … a total trainwreck.”

But Trump took no questions from reporters and did not mention comic Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke at a Trump rally Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden, claiming the Hispanic U.S. territory of Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.”

Trump’s campaign has distanced itself from the joke. Trump has not publicly commented about the remarks but told ABC News he does not know Hinchcliffe, saying, “Someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”

Trump also maintained he didn’t hear the joke, even as it has been played on television and written about extensively. When asked what he made of the joke, he did not take the opportunity to denounce it, repeating that he didn’t hear it.

He called the New York rally “an absolute lovefest.”

Puerto Ricans living on the island are Americans but cannot vote in the election because only people living in U.S. states, not territories, can vote in presidential elections. But hundreds of thousands of people who grew up on the island have moved to the U.S. mainland, as have their relatives, and they can vote in whatever state they live in.

With hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican votes critical to the outcome in some of the battleground states, the Harris campaign quickly produced a digital ad saying Latino voters “deserve better” than what the former president represents.

A Harris campaign official told NBC News that the 30-second spot will run online in battleground states on platforms like YouTube TV, Hulu and Snapchat, where Latinos consume a lot of their media.   

Pennsylvania alone, which both candidates see as crucial to winning the presidency, is home to more than 300,000 eligible Puerto Rican voters, according to the Latino Data Hub at the University of California Los Angeles.  

There are also sizable Puerto Rican populations in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, three other battleground states.  

On the campaign trail, Harris and Trump have traded frequent insults.

Trump has described Harris as someone with a low IQ and said she would be like “a play toy” for other world leaders. “They’re going to walk all over her,” he has said.  

Some of Trump’s former top aides from his 2017-2021 term in the White House described him as a fascist with the intent to govern in a second term as an authoritarian. Harris said she agreed with the characterization.  

Trump returned the taunt to describe Harris the same way.

Harris is doing five interviews ahead of her speech on the Ellipse where she plans to portray Trump as a threat to American democracy. Local police are anticipating a crowd of about 50,000 people.

The Ellipse is the same site where Trump exhorted his supporters on January 6, 2021, to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to try to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him in the 2020 election.  

More than 1,500 protesters were arrested for their roles in the ensuing riot at the American seat of government, where 140 law enforcement personnel were injured. The demonstrators caused $2.9 million in property damage to the Capitol as they smashed windows and doors and rampaged through congressional offices.  

More than 1,000 rioters have been convicted of an array of offenses, with some of the most serious offenders sentenced to years of imprisonment.

Trump says if he wins the election, he might pardon them.  

The Harris camp says that in her speech she will contrast what she says her presidency would encompass compared to a second Trump tenure, contending that Trump will be focused “on himself and his ‘enemies list’ instead of the American people,” while she will be “waking up every day focused on a ‘to-do list’ of priorities to lower costs and help Americans’ lives.”  

Harris has often said it is time to “turn the page” on the Trump era.

U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but rather through the Electoral College vote, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the 50 states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in their states, either Harris or Trump. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.   

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency.   

Polls show either Harris or Trump holds substantial or somewhat comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, that leaves the outcome to the remaining seven states – a northern tier of three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), two states in the Southeast (Georgia and North Carolina) and two in the Southwest (Arizona and Nevada).   

Polling in the seven states is easily within the margins of statistical error, leaving the outcome in doubt in all seven. 
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US farmers weigh tariffs, farm bill as Election Day nears

U.S. farmers are facing economic headwinds as they head to the polls this election year. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Illinois
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Unpacking the difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote

Americans go to the polls November 5 to choose the next U.S. president. However, the national vote tally does not determine which candidate wins the White House. The Electoral College has the final say. But how does this work?
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The potential impact of Trump’s tariff proposal

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed sweeping tariffs if elected for a second term: a 20% universal tax and 60% tax on goods from China. He argues that the policy will help create jobs, shrink the national debt and boost government revenue for public services, such as child care. Most economists, however, agree that it is ultimately U.S. consumers who will pay more. Economists also warn of unintended ripple effects that could do more harm than good to the U.S. economy. This explainer video explores how increased tariffs might affect U.S. buyers, domestic and foreign producers, and the budget.
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