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 will address the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
With just 61 days until the November election, early voting will be underway in at least four states by the end of September and a dozen more to follow by mid-October.
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Here’s the Latest:
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 back in 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.
Read more here.
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.