The Beyoncé tune “Freedom” has develop into Kamala Harris’ anthem – and it was a message the vp took to the marketing campaign path, as CBS Information traveled with Harris over two days for a behind-the-scenes look in the course of the remaining stretch of the 2024 election.
Requested by “CBS Night Information” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell why she selected to marketing campaign that evening in Texas (a reliably crimson state), Harris replied, “Texas is floor zero on this most extraordinary subject, which is that we’re combating for a girl’s proper to make choices about her personal physique.”
CBS Information
On Friday, at Houston’s Shell Power Stadium – the vp’s largest rally but – 30,000 individuals endured 90-degree warmth to listen to her scorching new assault on Texas’ strict abortion ban, which has develop into a lightning rod for girls’s rights.
In an assault on Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton’s lawsuit geared toward accessing girls’s medical information in the event that they cross state strains to hunt an abortion the place it’s authorized, Harris mentioned, “On the one hand, Donald Trump will not let anybody see his medical information. And alternatively, they wish to get their arms on your medical information. Merely put: They’re out of their minds.”
It was a message underscored by Beyoncé, who advised the gang, “I am not right here as a celeb; I am not right here as a politician. I am right here as a mom, a mom who cares deeply concerning the world my youngsters and all of our kids dwell in, a world the place we now have the liberty to manage our our bodies, a world the place we’re not divided.”
Marco Bello/REUTERS
On Saturday, within the battleground state of Michigan, former first woman Michelle Obama campaigned with Harris for the primary time, difficult males to see girls’s well being care as a life-or-death matter. “If we do not get this election proper,” Obama mentioned, “your spouse, your daughter, your mom, we as girls, will develop into collateral harm to your rage.”
Harris then advised the viewers, “I pledge to you, when Congress passes a invoice to revive reproductive freedom nationwide, as President of the US, I’ll proudly signal it into regulation.”
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP by way of Getty Photos
When questioned concerning the means of restoring the precise to an abortion that the Supreme Court docket’s Dobbs choice overturned in 2022, Harris mentioned, “Let’s put again in place Roe vs. Wade. …
“When Roe v. Wade was intact, for 50 years, half a century, girls, along with their physicians, we’re right here in a medical workplace speaking with physicians. Ladies, in session, in the event that they selected, with their priest, their pastor, their rabbi, their imam have been capable of make these [decisions].”
Requested if she additionally supported abortion restrictions after viability, Harris replied, “I assist Roe v. Wade being put again into regulation by Congress, and to revive the basic proper of ladies to make choices about their very own physique. It’s that primary.”
O’Donnell mentioned, “However you recognize there have been, there are restrictions – with Roe v. Wade there have been restrictions after viability.”
“We might not be debating this if Donald Trump had not hand-selected three members of the US Supreme Court docket with the intention they might undo the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris continued. “And what we now have seen, as demonstrated final evening [when women at the Houston rally spoke of the effects of the Texas abortion ban], and on daily basis these final two years, is extraordinary hurt that has occurred in America, the place girls have died due to Trump abortion bans; the place girls who’ve survived rape and women incest, and no exception for somebody whose physique has been violated, to decide about what occurs to their physique subsequent.
“We now have seen girls who’re experiencing a miscarriage round a being pregnant they prayed for, and being denied healthcare as a result of medical doctors are afraid they’re gonna go to jail, and people girls growing sepsis. We now have seen extraordinary hurt and ache and struggling occur due to what Donald Trump did in intending and effectuating and overturning of Roe v. Wade. Sure, my first precedence is to place again in place these protections and to cease this ache, and to cease this injustice that’s occurring round our nation.”
O’Donnell requested, “So then, why not say what restrictions you’ll assist as a part of that?”
“I’ve advised you: Let’s put again in place Roe v. Wade,” Harris replied.
“And whenever you argue that Donald Trump, if elected, would put ahead a nationwide abortion ban?”
“Simply learn Venture 2025,” Harris mentioned. [Project 2025 includes dozens of proposals for further restricting abortion, including outlawing abortion drugs and criminalizing shipping them through the mail.]
“The previous president mentioned that is not true, he would veto [it],” O’Donnell mentioned.
“He says all the pieces – come on, are we actually taking his phrase for it?” Harris replied. “He mentioned that ladies needs to be punished. He has been in every single place on this. However I am too busy watching what he is doing to see what he has mentioned.”
Harris is on the path in Pennsylvania in the present day, and plans to make a serious handle this coming Tuesday – one week forward of Election Day. Her speech can be not in a battleground state, however in Washington, D.C., on the similar place the place Trump spoke to his supporters earlier than they attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“I’d, and do, take into consideration that place extra within the context of what’s going to be behind me, which is the White Home,” Harris mentioned. “And I am doing it there as a result of I feel it is vitally vital for the American individuals to see and take into consideration who can be occupying that house on January twentieth. And the fact of it’s that almost all Individuals can visualize the Oval Workplace; we have seen it on tv. And it is a actual state of affairs. It is both gonna be Donald Trump, or it is gonna be me sitting behind the Resolute Desk within the Oval Workplace.”
With 9 days left to go earlier than Election Day, the vp mentioned there is no doubt about what her closing arguments can be: Drawing a distinction between her plans, and people of her opponent.
She says that Trump’s first precedence can be “individuals like him – not individuals just like the people who find themselves watching this proper now, individuals who work exhausting, seniors, for instance, who’re relying on that Social Safety examine as the one supply of their revenue, when Donald Trump is saying we must always increase the age of Social Safety to 70 earlier than you are eligible.”
O’Donnell mentioned, “He says he will minimize taxes on their advantages.”
“He has been constant [on that issue],” Harris mentioned. “Once more, Google Venture 2025 about what he thinks about Social Safety, and why he thinks it’s nothing that needs to be supported. His intention’s to chop Medicare and Medicare advantages. His intention [is] – look, once more, at Venture 2025 – to repeal the $35 a month cap on insulin that we now have put in place.”
“Donald Trump has disavowed Venture 2025,” mentioned O’Donnell. “He says that’s not his marketing campaign plan.”
Harris replied, “As you recognize, I’m a former prosecutor. His DNA is throughout it. Throughout it. His working mate wrote the foreword to the guide of the writer of Venture 2025. I imagine Donald Trump’s identify seems not less than 300 occasions in Venture 2025. And it’s a blueprint, an in depth blueprint, that’s concerning the hazard and the element of what Donald Trump and his allies plan if he’s within the White Home once more.”
Extra excerpts from Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Kamala Harris will seem Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”; on Monday on “CBS Mornings” and the “CBS Night Information”; and on the CBS Information 24/7 Streaming Community.
Story produced by Ed Forgotson and Julie Morse. Editor: George Pozderec.
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