Since changing President Joe Biden because the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to blaze her personal path ahead. However most of the vp’s concepts are nicely trod by Biden: middle-class tax cuts, tax will increase on the rich and companies, a restoration of abortion rights, a authorities that aggressively addresses local weather change. and a dedication to uphold democratic values and the rule of legislation.
Trump has pledged retaliation towards rivals as he pushes to satisfy an agenda sidetracked throughout his earlier time period by the worldwide pandemic. The previous president needs to undertake a mass deportation of migrants who’re residing in the USA illegally, lengthen and develop his 2017 tax cuts, tremendously enhance tariffs and provide extra assist for fossil fuels and fewer assist for renewable power. He has attacked transgender rights and pledged to finish Russia’s warfare with Ukraine whereas suggesting Ukraine should make territorial concessions. He is also in search of to pay attention extra authorities energy inside the White Home.
The candidates have spelled out their concepts in speeches, commercials and different venues. Each say that their strategy would do extra to carry up staff, the center class and the guarantees which have outlined America. Whereas Trump and Harris agree on not taxing staff’ ideas, the similarities largely cease there – an extra signal of how the election’s consequence might reshape the nation.
A have a look at the place every candidate stands on 10 prime points:
Abortion
HARRIS: She has known as on Congress to cross laws guaranteeing abortion entry in federal legislation, a proper that stood for almost 50 years earlier than being overturned by the Supreme Courtroom in 2022. She has campaigned on how the patchwork of state legal guidelines limiting abortion have harm girls’s entry to medical care, in a single distinguished case resulting in the dying in Georgia of Amber Nicole Thurman.
Harris has promoted the administration’s efforts wanting federal legislation, together with steps to guard girls who journey to entry the process and restrict how legislation enforcement collects medical information. Her argument to the general public is rooted within the idea of freedom, saying “the liberty to make selections about one’s personal physique shouldn’t be made by the federal government.”
TRUMP: He usually brags about nominating the Supreme Courtroom justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. After dodging questions on when in being pregnant he believed abortion ought to be restricted, Trump introduced final spring that selections on entry and cutoffs ought to be left to the states. He has praised the patchwork of restrictions which have emerged throughout Republican-led states, saying the persons are deciding.
He has stated he wouldn’t signal a nationwide abortion ban into legislation and wouldn’t attempt to block entry to abortion treatment, after initially waffling. He informed Time journal that it also needs to be left as much as states to find out whether or not to prosecute girls for abortions or to watch their pregnancies, however he has not rejected the concept outright. He has stated that, if he wins, he needs to make in vitro fertilization remedy free for ladies. He has even claimed that he’s the “father” of the remedy, first utilized in 1978, regardless that it has solely come below risk due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Local weather and power
HARRIS: She has completed one thing of an about-face, saying in her marketing campaign that it is doable to proceed hydraulic fracturing for fossil fuels at the same time as she embraces insurance policies that favor renewable power sources. Republicans are fast to level out that Harris opposed offshore drilling and fracking throughout her short-lived marketing campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination.
As a senator from California, Harris was an early sponsor of the Inexperienced New Deal, a sweeping sequence of proposals meant to swiftly transfer the U.S. to totally inexperienced power. It was a plan championed by the Democratic Occasion’s most progressive wing. However throughout her tenure as vp, Harris has adopted extra reasonable positions, specializing in implementing the local weather provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Discount Act. That offered almost $375 billion for issues reminiscent of monetary incentives for electrical automobiles and clear power initiatives.
The Biden administration has additionally enlisted greater than 20,000 younger individuals in a nationwide Local weather Corps, a Peace Corps-like program to advertise conservation by initiatives reminiscent of weatherizing houses and repairing wetlands. Regardless of that, it is unlikely that the U.S. will likely be on observe to satisfy Biden’s purpose of slicing greenhouse gasoline emissions in half by 2030.
TRUMP: His mantra for one among his prime coverage priorities: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Trump, who up to now stated local weather change was a “hoax” and harbors a specific disdain for wind energy, says it is his purpose for the U.S. to have the most cost effective power and electrical energy on the earth. He has claimed he’ll reduce costs in half inside a yr of his potential return to workplace. Whereas he usually criticizes the Biden administration for its insurance policies, home oil manufacturing has already been at near-record highs since late 2023, in response to the Power Info Administration.
Trump needs to push that greater by rising oil drilling on public lands, providing tax breaks to grease, gasoline and coal producers, dashing the approval of pure gasoline pipelines, opening dozens of latest energy vegetation, together with nuclear amenities, and rolling again the Biden administration’s aggressive efforts to get individuals to change to electrical automobiles, which he argues have a spot however should not be pressured on customers. He has additionally pledged to re-exit the Paris local weather settlement, finish wind subsidies and eradicate rules imposed and proposed by the Biden administration concentrating on energy-inefficient sorts of lightbulbs, stoves, dishwashers and bathe heads.
Democracy and the rule of legislation
HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has decried Trump as a risk to the nation’s democracy. She has agreed with former Trump administration officers who labeled him a “fascist.”
Harris has leaned extra closely into her private background as a prosecutor and contrasted that with Trump being discovered responsible of 34 felony counts in a New York hush cash case and being discovered chargeable for fraudulent enterprise practices and sexual abuse in civil courtroom. Harris initially talked much less ceaselessly than Biden did about Trump’s denial of his 2020 loss and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. However within the closing weeks of the 2024 marketing campaign, she more and more has framed the prospect of one other Trump time period as “harmful.”
TRUMP: After refusing to simply accept that Biden received, Trump hasn’t dedicated to accepting the 2024 outcomes. He is repeatedly promised to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants jailed for assaulting cops and different crimes in the course of the assault on the Capitol, and just lately threatened to jail legal professionals, election officers, donors and others “concerned in unscrupulous habits” surrounding November’s vote. He has lashed out at media organizations, threatening their broadcast licenses in response to debate questions and protection he is deemed unfair.
Trump has known as his Democratic rivals the “enemy inside” who’re “extra harmful than China, Russia and all these international locations.” He pledges to overtake the Justice Division and FBI “from the bottom up,” aggrieved by the prison costs the division has introduced towards him. He guarantees to deploy the Nationwide Guard to cities reminiscent of Chicago which are combating violent crime and in response to protests, and has additionally pledged to nominate a particular prosecutor to go after Biden.
Federal authorities
HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has campaigned arduous towards “Challenge 2025” – a plan that Trump has denounced however that was written by main conservatives and plenty of of his former administration officers.
The plan lays out the way to transfer as swiftly as doable to dramatically remake the federal authorities and push it to the correct if Trump wins the White Home. She can also be a part of an administration that’s taking steps to make it tougher for any mass firings of civil servants to occur. In April, the Workplace of Personnel Administration issued a brand new rule that will ban federal staff from being reclassified as political appointees or different at-will workers, thus making them simpler to dismiss. That was in response to Schedule F, a 2020 govt order from Trump that reclassified tens of hundreds of federal staff to make firing them simpler.
TRUMP: The previous president has tried to distance himself from Challenge 2025, regardless of his shut ties to lots of its key architects. He has nonetheless pledged to undertake his personal overhaul of the federal forms, which he has lengthy blamed for blocking his first-term agenda, saying: “I’ll completely obliterate the deep state.” He plans to reissue the Schedule F order stripping civil service protections. He says he would then act to fireside “rogue bureaucrats,” together with those that “weaponized our justice system,” and the “warmongers and America-Final globalists within the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Division, and the nationwide safety industrial advanced.”
Trump has pledged to terminate the Schooling Division and needs to curtail the independence of regulatory companies such because the Federal Communications Fee. As a part of his effort to chop authorities waste and crimson tape, he has promised to eradicate at the very least 10 federal rules for each new one imposed.
Immigration
HARRIS: Making an attempt to defuse GOP criticism, Harris has stated she would signal into legislation a bipartisan Senate compromise killed by Republican lawmakers at Trump’s request. It might have toughened asylum requirements and meant extra border brokers, immigration judges and asylum officers. She stated she would convey again that invoice and signal it, saying that Trump “talks the speak, however would not stroll the stroll” on immigration.
Harris likes to speak up her expertise as California legal professional basic, saying she walked drug smuggler tunnels and efficiently prosecuted gangs that moved narcotics and folks throughout the U.S.-Mexico border. Early in his time period, Biden made Harris his administration’s level individual on the foundation causes of migration. Trump and prime Republicans now blame Harris for a scenario at that border, which they are saying is uncontrolled as a result of insurance policies that had been too lenient. Harris has endorsed a complete immigration overhaul, in search of paths to citizenship for immigrants within the U.S. with out authorized standing, with a quicker observe for younger immigrants residing within the nation illegally who arrived as kids.
TRUMP: He has returned to the cruel immigration rhetoric that marked his earlier campaigns. He guarantees to mount the most important home deportation in U.S. historical past, an operation that might contain detention camps and the Nationwide Guard. He would convey again insurance policies he put in place throughout his first time period, just like the Stay in Mexico program and Title 42, which positioned curbs on migrants on public well being grounds. He has known as for the dying penalty for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen.
Trump would revive and develop the journey ban that initially focused residents from seven Muslim-majority international locations. After the Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas on Israel, Trump pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “harmful lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs.” He would attempt to deport people who find themselves within the U.S. legally however harbor “jihadist sympathies.” He would search to finish birthright citizenship for individuals born within the U.S. whose mother and father are each within the nation illegally.
Israel and Gaza
HARRIS: Harris says Israel has a proper to defend itself, and she or he’s repeatedly decried Hamas as a terrorist group. However the vp might need helped defuse some backlash from progressives by being extra vocal about the necessity to higher shield civilians throughout preventing in Gaza.
Greater than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed within the warfare in Gaza, in response to the Well being Ministry within the Hamas-ruled territory. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants in its depend, however says that girls and kids make up simply over half of the useless. Israel says it has killed greater than 17,000 militants within the warfare.
Like Biden, Harris helps a proposed hostage-for-extended cease-fire deal that goals to convey all remaining hostages and Israeli useless house. Biden and Harris say the deal might result in a everlasting finish to the warfare they usually have endorsed a two-state answer, which might have Israel current alongside an impartial Palestinian state. However Biden can also be confronting the prospect of a widening battle in Lebanon and assaults by Iran at the same time as they each see Israel’s current killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar as a motive for a cease-fire to be extra possible.
TRUMP: He has expressed assist for Israel’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas, however he is additionally been vital of a few of Israel’s ways. He says the nation should end the job shortly and get again to peace. He has known as for extra aggressive responses to pro-Palestinian protests in school campuses and applauded police efforts to clear encampments. Trump additionally proposes to revoke the scholar visas of those that espouse antisemitic or anti-American views and deport those that assist Hamas.
LGBTQ+ points
HARRIS: Throughout her rallies, Harris accuses Trump and his get together of in search of to roll again an extended record of freedoms, together with the power “to like who you like overtly and with pleasure.” She leads audiences in chants of “We’re not going again.”
Whereas her marketing campaign has but to supply specifics on its plans, she has been a part of a Biden administration that commonly denounces discrimination and assaults towards the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Early in Biden’s time period, his administration reversed an govt order from Trump that had largely banned transgender individuals from navy service. His Schooling Division issued a rule that claims Title IX, the 1972 legislation defending girls’s rights, additionally bars discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation or gender id. That rule was silent on the problem of transgender athletes.
TRUMP: He has pledged to maintain transgender girls out of ladies’s sports activities and says he’ll ask Congress to cross a invoice establishing that “solely two genders,” as decided at start, are acknowledged by the USA. He guarantees to “defeat the poisonous poison of gender ideology.”
As a part of his crackdown on gender-affirming care, he would declare that any well being care supplier collaborating within the “chemical or bodily mutilation of minor youth” not meets federal well being and security requirements and is barred from receiving federal cash. He would take equally punitive steps in faculties towards any trainer or faculty official who “suggests to a baby that they could possibly be trapped within the mistaken physique.”
Trump would assist a nationwide prohibition of hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors and bar transgender individuals from navy service.
NATO and Ukraine
HARRIS: The vp has but to specify how her positions on Russia’s warfare with Ukraine would possibly differ from Biden’s, apart from to reward his efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, significantly NATO, the navy alliance that may be a vital bulwark towards Russian aggression.
The Biden administration has pledged unceasing assist for Ukraine towards Russia’s invasion. Washington has despatched tens of billions of {dollars} in navy and different assist to Ukraine, together with $61 billion in weapons, ammunition and different help that’s anticipated to final by the top of this yr. The federal government has additionally reached an settlement with allies to supply Ukraine with a $50 billion mortgage – with $20 billion from the USA – that will be backed by frozen Russian monetary belongings.
The administration has maintained that persevering with U.S. help is vital as a result of Russian chief Vladimir Putin is not going to cease at invading Ukraine. Harris has stated beforehand that it might be silly to threat world alliances the U.S. has established and decried Putin’s “brutality.”
TRUMP: The previous president has repeatedly taken challenge with U.S. assist to Ukraine and says he’ll proceed to “basically reevaluate” the mission and goal of the NATO alliance if he returns to workplace. He has claimed, with out clarification, that he’ll be capable of finish the warfare earlier than his inauguration by bringing each side to the negotiating desk. (His strategy appears to hinge on Ukraine giving up at the very least a few of its Russian-occupied territory in trade for a cease-fire.)
On NATO, he has assailed member nations for years for failing to satisfy agreed-upon navy spending targets. Trump drew alarms this yr when he stated that, as president, he had warned leaders that he wouldn’t solely refuse to defend nations that do not hit these targets, however that he additionally “would encourage” Russia “to do regardless of the hell they need” to international locations which are “delinquent.”
Tariffs and commerce
HARRIS: The Biden-Harris administration has tried to spice up commerce with allies in Europe, Asia and North America, whereas utilizing tariffs and different focused instruments to go after rivals reminiscent of China. The Democratic administration stored Trump’s tariffs on China in place, whereas including a ban on exporting superior laptop chips to that nation and offering incentives to spice up U.S. industries.
In Could, the administration particularly focused China with elevated tariffs on electrical autos and metal and aluminum, amongst different merchandise.
TRUMP: He needs a dramatic growth of tariffs on almost all imported overseas items, saying that “we will have 10% to twenty% tariffs on overseas international locations which were ripping us off for years.” He has instructed tariffs of 100% or extra on Chinese language items. He treats these taxes as a strategy to fund different tax cuts, decrease the deficit and probably fund baby care – although economists say the tariffs might elevate costs for customers with out producing the revenues Trump guarantees.
Trump would urge Congress to cross laws giving the president authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any nation that imposes one on the U.S. A lot of his commerce agenda has targeted on China. Trump has proposed phasing out Chinese language imports of important items together with electronics, metal and prescription drugs and needs to ban Chinese language corporations from proudly owning U.S. infrastructure in sectors reminiscent of power, know-how and farmland.
Taxes
HARRIS: With a lot of the 2017 tax overhaul expiring at finish of subsequent yr, Harris is pledging tax cuts for greater than 100 million working and center class households. Along with preserving a number of the expiring cuts, she needs to make everlasting a tax credit score of as a lot as $3,600 per baby and provide a particular $6,000 tax credit score for brand spanking new mother and father.
Harris says her administration would develop tax credit for first-time homebuyers and would push to construct 3 million new housing items in 4 years, whereas wiping out taxes on ideas and endorsing tax breaks for entrepreneurs. Like Biden, she needs to lift the company tax fee to twenty-eight% and the company minimal tax to 21%. The present company fee is 21% and the company minimal, raised below the Inflation Discount Act, is at 15% for corporations making greater than $1 billion a yr. However Harris wouldn’t enhance the capital positive aspects tax as a lot as Biden had proposed on traders with greater than $1 million in revenue.
TRUMP: Trump has promised a slew of latest tax cuts geared toward teams he has been attempting to win over this election, together with eliminating taxes on ideas obtained by staff – a coverage later embraced by Harris, who would additionally elevate the minimal wage for tipped staff. Trump needs to eradicate taxes on Social Safety advantages and taxes on additional time pay, and has pledged to make curiosity on automotive loans tax-deductible like mortgage funds — however just for automobiles constructed within the U.S.
The previous president has promised to increase and even develop the entire 2017 tax cuts that he signed into legislation, whereas additionally paying down the debt. He has proposed slicing the general company tax fee to fifteen% from 21%, however just for corporations that make their merchandise within the U.S. He would repeal any tax will increase signed into legislation by Biden. He additionally goals to intestine a number of the tax breaks that Biden put into legislation to encourage the event of renewable power and EVs.
He needs to decrease the price of housing by opening up federal land to improvement. Exterior analyses recommend that Trump’s concepts would do far more to extend funds deficits than what Harris would do, with out delivering the expansion wanted to attenuate any further debt.
