Election 2024 Latest: Trump and Harris focus on tax policy ahead of next week’s debate
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will debate for the first time next Tuesday as the presidential candidates fight to sway voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics. The meeting comes just 75 days after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance triggered a political earthquake that ultimately forced him from the race.
Ahead of that, Trump and Harris are discussing tax policy plans with voters. Harris touted a small- business tax plan during a campaign visit to New Hampshire on Wednesday, while Trump on Thursday promised to cut the corporate tax from 21% to 15% for companies producing in the U.S.
There are 61 days until the November election. Early voting will be underway in at least four states by the end of this month and a dozen more to follow by mid-October.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the Latest:
Harris arrives in the battleground state of Pennsylvania to prepare for next week’s debate
Vice President Kamala Harris is in Pittsburgh, a key part of the battleground state of Pennsylvania where she will spend the next several days preparing for next week’s presidential debate.
The Democratic presidential nominee intentionally chose the city to hone her ideas ahead of Tuesday’s showdown with former President Donald Trump. The debate will require both candidates to distill their ideas into two-minute answers as they vie for public support.
The 90-minute debate begins at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday inside Philadelphia’s National Constitutional Center. It will be moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. Per rules negotiated by both campaigns, there will be no live audience.
Trump promises to drastically increase domestic energy production
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is promising to drastically increase the United States’ domestic energy supply.
In a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Trump said if elected in November, he would immediately issue a “National Emergency Declaration” to “blast through every bureaucratic hurdle to issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, and new power plants and reactors.”
Trump accused Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris of conducting an “anti-energy crusade,” citing what he said was an 80% reduction in the amount of land available for oil drilling under President Joe Biden’s administration. He also said that a plan to shutter coal-fired plants in the next few years would cause a “catastrophic energy shortfall that will make inflation far worse.”
The former president also vowed to “rescind all unspent funds” in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark climate law that was approved with only Democratic support.
Trump says he’ll ask Congress for law banning spending tax dollars on people in the country illegally
Former President Donald Trump says that if he’s elected in November, he will ask Congress to pass legislation that would ban the spending of taxpayer money on people who have entered the country illegally.
Trump also told executives and industry leaders at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday that he would bar such migrants from obtaining mortgages in California.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has railed against the economic impact of the influx of migrants in recent years and what he says is their strain on some government services.
Trump promises to cut 10 government regulations for every 1 new regulation
Former President Donald Trump is promising to cut 10 government regulations for every new regulation implemented if he is elected in November.
Trump also told executives and industry leaders at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday that he would create a “Government Efficiency Commission” to conduct a financial audit of the entire federal government. Trump said the idea was the suggestion of billionaire Elon Musk and that Musk might lead the commission.
The Republican presidential nominee claimed that in 2022, “fraud and improper payments alone cost taxpayers an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars.”
He said the commission would develop an action plan “to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”
Trump also promised to cut the current 21% corporate tax rate to 15%, an idea he has floated previously. On Thursday, he clarified that would be solely for companies that produce in the U.S.
Harris to meet with the Teamsters, 1 of the last unions to endorse a presidential candidate
Vice President Kamala Harris and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have agreed to meet on Sept. 16 as the Democratic presidential nominee courts the powerful union’s endorsement.
The union said in a statement Thursday that the meeting with union members and officers will take place at the Teamsters headquarters in Washington.
Harris has already been endorsed by most major labor unions, including the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of Teachers. She is now seeking support of the 1.3 million-member Teamsters, one of the last unions to make a choice.
The statement said the meeting will give Harris a chance to discuss how she and the Teamsters “can work together to empower and protect workers, promote high labor standards and strengthen the American economy while expanding the middle class.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met with the Teamsters members and leaders in January.
No matter who the Teamsters endorse, it won’t guarantee support of all the union’s members. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, President Sean O’Brien noted that the union is different from most because its membership is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
Trump touts past economic accomplishments as president
Former President Donald Trump is touting his past accomplishments on the economy before a group of executives and industry leaders.
In a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Trump said he “took care of our economy like I would take care of my own company.”
The Republican presidential nominee also blasted Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plans, saying the Democratic presidential nominee “wants four more years to enforce the radical left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself.”
Trump said he was promising “low taxes, low regulation, low interest rates, low, low, low crime, and surging incomes for all.”
Trump, Harris lay out starkly different economic plans
Days before their first debate, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are laying out starkly different visions for the U.S. economy.
Trump has floated the idea of chopping the 21% corporate tax rate to 15%, a proposal liked by companies, in addition to no taxes on tips and Social Security income. The corporate rate had been 35% when he became president in 2017, and he later signed a bill lowering it.
Harris has called for raising the corporate tax rate to 28%. In New Hampshire on Wednesday, she also called for expanding tax deductions tied to the expenses of starting a business and set a goal of 25 million applications to form new companies over the next four years.
Economists have warned about Trump’s plans to impose tariffs that he says would return manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Some have said such taxes on imports could worsen inflation, though he is vowing to cut down costs. Inflation peaked in 2022 at 9.1% but has since eased to 2.9% as of last month.
Trump was scheduled to appear before the Economic Club of New York on Thursday to make his case.
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Voting and entertainment groups announce HBCU voter registration contest
A coalition of education, entertainment and political groups is launching an HBCU voter registration drive aimed at getting students from historically Black colleges to the polls.
Initiated Thursday, The Vote Loud: HBCU Voter Registration Challenge allows current students, alumni, professors and extended family members of historically Black colleges and universities to register to vote, logging a point for their school. Special prizes will be announced soon and may include special performances, organizers said.
The competition is open until Oct. 5. It was launched by BET, HBCU Buzz, Live Nation Urban, and former first lady Michelle Obama’s nonpartisan voting initiative When We All Vote.
Luke Lawal Jr. is founder and CEO of HBCU Buzz. He says the effort is not just about voting, but about “shaping policies that impact our education, our communities and our future.”
Trump election subversion case goes back to court
A judge is hearing arguments in Washington, D.C., Thursday about the potential next steps in the federal election subversion prosecution of Donald Trump in the first hearing since the Supreme Court narrowed the case by ruling that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers submitted dueling proposals late Friday before the status conference. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is presiding over the case that charges Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
As the hearing opened, the judge noted that it had been almost a year since she saw the lawyers in her courtroom. The case has been frozen since last December as Trump pursued his appeal.
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GOP lawsuits set the stage for state challenges if Trump loses the election
Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over how the 2024 election will be run — a series of court disputes that could even run past Election Day if the outcome is close.
Both parties have bulked up their legal teams for the fight. Republicans have filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.
After Donald Trump has made “ election integrity ” a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls in November.
Democrats are countering with what they are calling “voter protection,” rushing to court to fight back against the GOP cases and building their own team with over 100 staffers, several hundred lawyers and what they say are thousands of volunteers for November.
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Key questions ahead of first Trump-Harris presidential debate
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will debate for the first — and perhaps, last — time on Tuesday night as the presidential candidates fight to sway voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics.
The meeting comes just 75 days after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance triggered a political earthquake that ultimately forced him from the race. Few expect such a transformative result this time, but Trump is on a mission to end Harris’ “honeymoon” as polls suggest the Democratic vice president is now even — or slightly ahead — of the Republican former president in some swing states.
Harris, a former courtroom prosecutor, will enter the night with relatively high expectations against a Republican opponent with 34 felony convictions and a penchant for false statements. The question is whether Harris, who did not particularly stand out during primary debates in her 2020 presidential campaign, can prosecute Trump’s glaring liabilities in a face-to-face meeting on live television with the world watching.
The 90-minute meeting begins at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday inside Philadelphia’s National Constitutional Center. It will be moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. Per rules negotiated by both campaigns, there will be no live audience.
▶ Here’s what we’re watching for on a historic night.
Harris accepts rules for Sept. 10 debate with Trump on ABC, including microphone muting
Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the rules for next week’s debate with former President Donald Trump, although the Democratic nominee says the decision not to keep both candidates’ microphones live throughout the matchup will be to her disadvantage.
The development, which came Wednesday via a letter from Harris’ campaign to host network ABC News, seemed to mark a conclusion to the debate over microphone muting, which had for a time threatened to derail the Sept. 10 presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
By The Associated Press
