Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump in a combination photo.Matt Rourke/The Associated Press
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took a detour from barnstorming the battleground states that will decide November’s election with Friday stops in Texas, a conservative state that was the first to implement a near-total abortion ban.
Texas hasn’t backed a Democratic president since 1976, and Republican Trump is almost certain to win the state’s 40 electoral college votes.
But Democrats are betting it will provide a powerful backdrop for Vice President Harris to talk about abortion rights in the final days before the Nov. 5 election.
Superstar singer Beyoncé, who was born in Houston, fired up the crowd by introducing Harris, who came on stage to a recording of Beyoncé’s song “Freedom,” which has made her campaign anthem. She did not sing however.
Harris spoke about the danger former President Trump and Republicans could present to abortion rights across the country if he’s elected, a campaign source said, and be joined by women who have suffered after Texas’ anti-abortion regulations were passed and their family members.
“Texas, what is happening across this state and our country is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of it,” Harris said.
Rhetoric heats up as Trump, Harris enter final weeks of tight election race
Singer Beyoncé speaks as she attends a campaign rally of Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, in Houston, Texas, on Oct. 25.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Earlier Friday, Trump tried to turn the event into an attack line tied to one of his favourite subjects, immigration, when he made his own stop in Texas and accused Harris of hanging out with “woke celebrities” but not with the families of people who have been killed by migrants.
Trump’s trip to Texas, his second stop in a border state in two days, comes as the former president escalates his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration.
“We’re like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want,” Trump told supporters Friday in Austin. Trump has continued to push the unfounded idea that foreign governments actively send criminals to the U.S.
Harris said the remark is “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”
“The president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are, and invests in the best of who we are, not someone like Donald Trump, who is constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are,” Harris told reporters in Houston.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has routinely appeared with grieving relatives of people who were hurt or killed by people living in the country illegally. On Friday, he ceded the microphone to the mother of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors have charged two Venezuelan men in the U.S. illegally with capital murder.
“She was just being a child, and due to the Biden-Harris policies we have here ... she’s not here anymore,” Alexis Nungaray said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Alexis Nungaray speaks at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Oct. 25, in Austin, Texas.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
While migrants have been charged with some high-profile crimes that Trump repeatedly highlights, research has shown that immigrants – including those who entered the country illegally – are charged with fewer violent crimes than American citizens.
He has also spread false theories that Democrats are registering immigrants without legal status to vote.
While in Austin, Trump also sat down with Joe Rogan, the nation’s most listened-to podcaster, creating another opportunity for the Republican nominee to highlight the hypermasculine tone that has defined much of his 2024 White House bid. The interview is expected to be released Saturday.
Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan had previously said that he declined to host Trump on his podcast before because he did not want to help him.
Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only person running for president who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, endorsed Trump and joined him on the campaign trail.
“It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring???” Trump wrote on his social media site in August, referring to Rogan’s experience as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The podcaster is known for his hours-long interviews on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which is listed as No. 1 in the United States, according to Spotify’s charts. He calls women “chicks” and once laughed as a comedian friend described repeatedly coercing young women comics into sex.
Harris’ team had been in touch with Rogan’s program about a possible appearance, but scheduling did not line up, spokesperson Ian Sams said on MSNBC on Thursday.
With 11 days until the election, Trump and Harris are both using Texas as a backdrop to drive a message about the issues they hope voters will have front of mind when they cast ballots. For Trump, that’s border security. For Harris, it’s abortion rights.
Texas implemented a first-of-its kind law in September 2021 that banned abortion after six weeks and allowed anyone to sue abortion patients in violation and those who assisted them.
The U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative majority formed by Trump’s judicial appointments, allowed the law to stand, and then gutted federal abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
In between personal stories of abortion-related tragedy, and before Beyoncé took the stage, the rally took on the air of a dance party, with people swaying and singing along to a DJ.
While Beyoncé appealed to a younger crowd, 91-year-old Willie Nelson showed earlier in the event that he still has cachet in his native Texas.
“Are we ready to say Madam President?” Nelson asked the crowd before launching into “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” to which the audience sang along.
He closed with “On the Road Again.”
After a three-hour interview with Rogan in Texas, Trump arrived late to a rally in battleground state Michigan.
“We’ve got a war going and she’s out partying,” Trump said Friday night, a reference to Israel’s attacks on Iran.
In his interview with Rogan, Trump again suggested he favoured eliminating income tax and replacing the lost revenue with tariffs.
“Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs? Are we serious about that,” Rogan asked.
“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Trump replied.
Harris’ team had been in touch with Rogan’s program about a possible appearance, but scheduling did not line up, spokesperson Ian Sams said on MSNBC on Thursday.
Trump has lost ground with women voters since Harris became the Democratic candidate, polls show, although the two are in a tight race in the battleground states.
Harris led Trump by 49% to 36%, or 13 percentage points, among women voters in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published late in August, compared to her 9-point lead in polls conducted in July.
Trump has taken credit for appointing the justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
Since winning the Republican primary earlier this year however, he has sought the support of moderate and independent voters, saying he would not support a national ban on abortions and that individual states should be free to restrict abortion as they choose.
He called for exceptions on any ban to include incidents of rape and incest or to protect the health of the mother. However, Trump said in August he would vote against an amendment in his home state of Florida to protect abortion rights that would lift a six week abortion ban, before many women know they are pregnant.
The majority of Americans disagreed with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, which fuelled a wave of Democratic wins in the 2022 midterm elections and left Republicans scrambling to find a winning message on the issue.
Texas Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred also attended Harris’ rally, as Democrats sought to give him a boost in his bid to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Harris led the Biden administration’s reproductive rights initiatives and has made the issue a cornerstone of her presidential campaign.
Democrats have highlighted personal stories to show the impact of abortion being almost entirely banned in 16 states.
Ahead of the Houston trip, her campaign released an ad featuring a Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion when her water broke at 16 weeks in 2022 and who then almost died of sepsis.
An analysis by JAMA Pediatrics, a medical journal, found that Texas saw a larger increase in infant mortality than the rest of the U.S. after enforcing the abortion ban, and early reports indicate that Texas has also seen a significant increase in maternal deaths.
With files from the Associated Press