Voters on this yr’s presidential election are selecting between two conflicting visions of the United States provided by Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. The final result will have an effect on how the nation sees itself and the way it’s considered internationally, with repercussions that would echo for many years.
Since changing President Joe Biden because the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to blaze her personal path ahead. But most of the vice chairman’s concepts are nicely trod by Biden: middle-class tax cuts, tax will increase on the rich and firms, a restoration of abortion rights, a authorities that aggressively addresses local weather change. and a dedication to uphold democratic values and the rule of regulation.
Trump has pledged retaliation in opposition to rivals as he pushes to meet an agenda sidetracked throughout his earlier time period by the worldwide pandemic. The former president needs to undertake a mass deportation of migrants who’re dwelling within the United States illegally, lengthen and increase his 2017 tax cuts, tremendously enhance tariffs and provide extra assist for fossil fuels and fewer assist for renewable vitality. He has attacked transgender rights and pledged to finish Russia’s battle with Ukraine whereas suggesting Ukraine should make territorial concessions. He is also looking for to pay attention extra authorities energy throughout the White House.
The candidates have spelled out their concepts in speeches, ads and different venues. Both say that their strategy would do extra to elevate up staff, the center class and the guarantees which have outlined America. While Trump and Harris agree on not taxing staff’ ideas, the similarities largely cease there — an additional signal of how the election’s final result might reshape the nation.
A take 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 regulation, a proper that stood for almost 50 years earlier than being overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022. She has campaigned on how the patchwork of state legal guidelines limiting abortion have damage girls’s entry to medical care, in a single outstanding case resulting in the demise in Georgia of Amber Nicole Thurman.
Harris has promoted the administration’s efforts wanting federal regulation, together with steps to guard girls who journey to entry the process and restrict how regulation enforcement collects medical data. Her argument to the general public is rooted within the idea of freedom, saying “the liberty to make choices about one’s personal physique shouldn’t be made by the federal government.”
TRUMP: He usually brags about nominating the Supreme Court 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 choices 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 regulation and wouldn’t attempt to block entry to abortion treatment, after initially waffling. He instructed 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 thought outright. He has stated that, if he wins, he needs to make in vitro fertilization therapy free for ladies. He has even claimed that he’s the “father” of the therapy, first utilized in 1978, regardless that it has solely come below risk due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Climate and vitality
HARRIS: She has performed one thing of an about-face, saying in her marketing campaign that it is potential to proceed hydraulic fracturing for fossil fuels whilst she embraces insurance policies that favor renewable vitality 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 Green New Deal, a sweeping sequence of proposals meant to swiftly transfer the U.S. to totally inexperienced vitality. It was a plan championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing. But throughout her tenure as vice chairman, Harris has adopted extra reasonable positions, specializing in implementing the local weather provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. That supplied almost $375 billion for issues similar to monetary incentives for electrical vehicles and clear vitality tasks.
The Biden administration has additionally enlisted greater than 20,000 younger folks in a nationwide Climate Corps, a Peace Corps-like program to advertise conservation via tasks similar to weatherizing properties and repairing wetlands. Despite that, it’s unlikely that the U.S. shall be on observe to fulfill Biden’s objective of chopping 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 selected disdain for wind energy, says it’s his objective for the U.S. to have the most affordable vitality and electrical energy on the earth. He has claimed he’ll lower costs in half inside a yr of his potential return to workplace. While he usually criticizes the Biden administration for its insurance policies, home oil manufacturing has already been at near-record highs since late 2023, in keeping with the Energy Information Administration.
Trump needs to push that larger by rising oil drilling on public lands, providing tax breaks to grease, gasoline and coal producers, rushing the approval of pure gasoline pipelines, opening dozens of latest energy crops, together with nuclear amenities, and rolling again the Biden administration’s aggressive efforts to get folks to modify to electrical vehicles, which he argues have a spot however shouldn’t 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 regulation
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 continuously than Biden did about Trump’s denial of his 2020 loss and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. But 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 gained, Trump hasn’t dedicated to accepting the 2024 outcomes. He’s repeatedly promised to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants jailed for assaulting cops and different crimes through the assault on the Capitol, and just lately threatened to jail attorneys, election officers, donors and others “concerned in unscrupulous conduct” 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 Department and FBI “from the bottom up,” aggrieved by the prison costs the division has introduced in opposition to him. He guarantees to deploy the National Guard to cities similar to Chicago which might be battling 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 laborious in opposition to “Project 2025″ — a plan that Trump has denounced however that was written by main conservatives and lots of of his former administration officers.
The plan lays out the best way to transfer as swiftly as potential to dramatically remake the federal authorities and push it to the precise if Trump wins the White House. 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 Office of Personnel Management issued a brand new rule that might ban federal staff from being reclassified as political appointees or different at-will staff, 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 former president has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, regardless of his shut ties to lots of its key architects. He has nonetheless pledged to undertake his personal overhaul of the federal paperwork, 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-Last globalists within the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the nationwide safety industrial complicated.”
Trump has pledged to terminate the Education Department and needs to curtail the independence of regulatory businesses such because the Federal Communications Commission. As a part of his effort to chop authorities waste and purple tape, he has promised to eradicate at the very least 10 federal rules for each new one imposed.
Immigration
HARRIS: Trying to defuse GOP criticism, Harris has stated she would signal into regulation a bipartisan Senate compromise killed by Republican lawmakers at Trump’s request. It would have toughened asylum requirements and meant extra border brokers, immigration judges and asylum officers. She stated she would deliver again that invoice and signal it, saying that Trump “talks the speak, however doesn’t stroll the stroll” on immigration.
Harris likes to speak up her expertise as California lawyer normal, 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 basis causes of migration. Trump and prime Republicans now blame Harris for a state of affairs at that border, which they are saying is uncontrolled on account of insurance policies that have been too lenient. Harris has endorsed a complete immigration overhaul, looking for paths to citizenship for immigrants within the U.S. with out authorized standing, with a quicker observe for younger immigrants dwelling within the nation illegally who arrived as youngsters.
TRUMP: He has returned to the tough immigration rhetoric that marked his earlier campaigns. He guarantees to mount the biggest home deportation in U.S. historical past, an operation that would contain detention camps and the National Guard. He would deliver again insurance policies he put in place throughout his first time period, just like the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42, which positioned curbs on migrants on public well being grounds. He has known as for the demise penalty for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen.
Trump would revive and increase 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 folks born within the U.S. whose dad and mom 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. But the vice chairman may need helped defuse some backlash from progressives by being extra vocal about the necessity to higher defend civilians throughout combating in Gaza.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed within the battle in Gaza, in keeping with the Health Ministry within the Hamas-ruled territory. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants in its rely, however says that ladies and kids make up simply over half of the lifeless. Israel says it has killed greater than 17,000 militants within the battle.
Like Biden, Harris helps a proposed hostage-for-extended cease-fire deal that goals to deliver all remaining hostages and Israeli lifeless house. Biden and Harris say the deal might result in a everlasting finish to the battle and so they have endorsed a two-state resolution, which might have Israel present alongside an unbiased Palestinian state. But Biden can also be confronting the prospect of a widening battle in Lebanon and assaults by Iran whilst they each see Israel’s latest killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar as a cause for a cease-fire to be extra probably.
TRUMP: He has expressed assist for Israel’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas, however he’s additionally been essential of a few of Israel’s techniques. He says the nation should end the job rapidly and get again to peace. He has known as for extra aggressive responses to pro-Palestinian protests at 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: During her rallies, Harris accuses Trump and his social gathering of looking for to roll again an extended checklist of freedoms, together with the flexibility “to like who you like brazenly and with pleasure.” She leads audiences in chants of “We’re not going again.”
While her marketing campaign has but to supply specifics on its plans, she has been a part of a Biden administration that recurrently denounces discrimination and assaults in opposition to the LGBTQ neighborhood. Early in Biden’s time period, his administration reversed an govt order from Trump that had largely banned transgender folks from army service. His Education Department issued a rule that claims Title IX, the 1972 regulation defending girls’s rights, additionally bars discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation or gender id. That rule was silent on the difficulty 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 delivery, are acknowledged by the United States. 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 taking part within the “chemical or bodily mutilation of minor youth” now not meets federal well being and security requirements and is barred from receiving federal cash. He would take equally punitive steps in faculties in opposition to any trainer or college official who “suggests to a toddler 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 folks from army service.
NATO and Ukraine
HARRIS: The vice chairman has but to specify how her positions on Russia’s battle with Ukraine may differ from Biden’s, aside from to reward his efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, notably NATO, the army alliance that could be a essential bulwark in opposition to Russian aggression.
The Biden administration has pledged unceasing assist for Ukraine in opposition to Russia’s invasion. Washington has despatched tens of billions of {dollars} in army and different help to Ukraine, together with 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 similar to 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 May, 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’re going to 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 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. Much of his commerce agenda has targeted on China. Trump has proposed phasing out Chinese imports of important items together with electronics, metal and prescribed drugs and needs to ban Chinese firms from proudly owning U.S. infrastructure in sectors similar to vitality, 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. In addition to preserving a few 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 new dad and mom.
Harris says her administration would increase 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 price to twenty-eight% and the company minimal tax to 21%. The present company price is 21% and the company minimal, raised below the Inflation Reduction Act, is at 15% for firms making greater than $1 billion a yr. But Harris wouldn’t enhance the capital beneficial properties tax as a lot as Biden had proposed on traders with greater than $1 million in earnings.
TRUMP: Trump has promised a slew of latest tax cuts aimed toward teams he has been making an attempt to win over this election, together with eliminating taxes on ideas acquired 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 Security advantages and taxes on time beyond regulation pay, and has pledged to make curiosity on automotive loans tax-deductible like mortgage funds -– however just for vehicles constructed within the U.S.
The former president has promised to increase and even increase the entire 2017 tax cuts that he signed into regulation, whereas additionally paying down the debt. He has proposed chopping the general company tax price to fifteen% from 21%, however just for firms that make their merchandise within the U.S. He would repeal any tax will increase signed into regulation by Biden. He additionally goals to intestine a few of the tax breaks that Biden put into regulation to encourage the event of renewable vitality and EVs.
He needs to decrease the price of housing by opening up federal land to growth. Outside analyses counsel that Trump’s concepts would do way more to extend price range deficits than what Harris would do, with out delivering the expansion wanted to reduce any further debt.