America is faced with a stark choice on November 5th. We must choose between a woman who will bring the United States into the future and a man who wants to drag us back into the past. A Kamala Harris administration will do everything in its power to protect abortion rights, bolster the economy, improve the immigration system, and strengthen American democracy. Kamala Harris will always stand for American values like freedom and democracy. A Donald Trump administration, on the other hand, will curtail abortion rights, impose disastrous sales taxes, carry out inhumane militarized deportations, and further undermine American democracy. A second Trump administration, unrestrained by the far-right Supreme Court that he stacked, would be able to do all of this and more through executive action.
In 2021, the largely Trump-appointed Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade. This is the only time in American history that the Supreme Court has taken away a freedom it had previously given. Since then, 17 states have instituted six-week or near-total abortion bans. Even when these laws contain exceptions for rape, incest, or the life or health of the mother, these provisions are vague, leaving doctors unsure whether they can perform the procedure. This has led to harrowing stories of women bleeding out in hospital parking lots because doctors are afraid to go to jail. Trump has said he wants to leave abortion up to the states, which means the best-case scenario from a Trump presidency is continued suffering for pregnant women in half of the country. And that’s if Trump is telling the truth. Project 2025, which was written by former Trump Administration officials, calls for enforcing an archaic law called the Comstock Act, which would make ordering or sending abortion medications (the most common form of abortion) across state lines a criminal offense. If Harris becomes president, she will push to codify Roe v. Wade nationwide.
Kamala Harris is committed to a tax system and economic policies that will support families and entrepreneurs. She wants to re-enact the Child Tax Credit, giving parents of newborns $6,000 and parents of older children $1,800 in tax credit. She also wants to roll back Trump’s $2.3 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires and rebalance the tax code so that wealthy, large corporations no longer pay lower tax rates than working-class Americans. She will also increase the small business tax deduction to $50,000 to help Americans get on their feet and take on the price-gouging of Big Pharma, keeping healthcare costs down. Trump, on the contrary, would enact a second $2.3 trillion tax cut and impose ten to twenty percent tariffs on US trading partners to make up for the lost revenue, increasing costs for the average American family by $3,900 a year. Additionally, Trump proposed cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security in his first term, and recently floated the idea of abolishing the Department of Education.
Barack Obama has often said that “we are a nation of immigrants and a nation of law,” and he is right. It is not mutually exclusive that we can increase border security and establish a fair immigration system with a pathway to citizenship. Kamala Harris will make that vision a reality. Trump, on the other hand, instructed Republicans in Congress to block a bipartisan border bill that was drafted by James Lankford, one of the most conservative senators in the country, just so that he could run on the issue. Trump wants to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in history,” using the military to expel millions of undocumented immigrants who have been living in the US for years, even if they have citizen children! He will also deport the legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (no doubt related to his insane, false, and racist tirade from the debate). In Trump’s term as president, he separated migrant children from their parents without recording whose child was whose. He will do it again.
Finally, Kamala Harris will always respect the Constitution and democratic norms. It is unprecedented to have to assert this, but Trump tried to throw out votes and overturn Biden’s victory in 2020. When the courts reaffirmed Trump’s defeat, he incited a mob to storm the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. Since then, Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th rioters and refused to say he would accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses. Donald Trump does not believe in the Constitution or free and fair elections.
If there is any doubt in your mind that Kamala Harris is the correct option in this election, a second Trump term would have no guardrails. The Supreme Court granted him presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts.” Project 2025 has curated a list of radical right-wing ideologues to add to Trump’s staff in his second administration. Not to mention that he can criminalize abortion, impose reckless tariffs, and carry out militarized deportations without the approval of Congress. Harris will protect Americans’ freedoms and expand their opportunities. I know who I’m voting for. Do you?
Photo by Gage Skidmore (August 10th, 2019)