Harris Hits GOP on Chips; Trump Leans Into Race, Gender Divides

Kamala Harris lambasted House Speaker Mike Johnson’s call to roll back a $280 billion package to boost research and domestic manufacturing for semiconductors, heightening a clash between the vice president and her opponent Donald Trump as they seek to woo blue-collar voters in the campaign’s final days.

The flap over funding for chips manufacturing, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, unfolded Friday when Johnson said he’d support a repeal of the bill, while campaigning with a vulnerable House Republican whose upstate New York district is poised to receive as much as $100 billion in investment from Micron Technology Inc.

Johnson quickly issued a statement, saying he misheard a question and instead supports efforts to “streamline and improve” the bill. Trump has also panned the chips deal, saying he could entice investment with the threat of tariffs.

“Let’s be clear about why he walked it back: Because it’s not popular, and their agenda is not popular,” Harris told reporters Saturday. “It is my plan and intention to continue to invest in American manufacturing, the work being done by American workers upholding and lifting up good union jobs.”

It’s the second time this week that Johnson has found himself in the middle of a policy controversy. The House speaker said there would be “no Obamacare” if Trump won the White House, prompting the Trump campaign to issue a statement that repealing the Affordable Care Act isn’t part of the former president’s policy position.

Harris and Trump are criss-crossing the US Southeast Saturday for a final weekend of frenetic campaigning before Election Day. Harris has been quick to pounce on Republican gaffes to try to sway undecided moderate voters, while Trump leaned into divisive rhetoric about migrants, women and people of color as he made his final argument to the electorate.

The campaigns’ strategies involve targeting different groups of potential supporters: Harris is looking to motivate women and disaffected Republicans, while Trump is seeking to persuade low-propensity voters, including young men, to cast ballots this year. Polls show the race is tight, with many results within the margin of error.

Despite the different target audiences, the electoral map means that the candidates can end up nearly bumping into each other as they focus on the seven battleground states. Harris’ mode of transport — Air Force Two — and Trump’s plane — which the campaign calls Trump Force One — both began Saturday a few hundred feet apart from each other at the Milwaukee airport.

Here’s the latest from the campaign trail:

Race, Gender

Trump pitted Black voters against migrants on Saturday, repeatedly making false claims that immigrants are stealing jobs from Black workers — an assertion economists have refuted.

Trump made the baseless argument twice on Saturday, in an interview with Fox News and at a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, saying that Black workers are being fired and their positions are being given to migrants, adding that it was also happening to a “lesser extent” to Latino workers.

The remarks — part of Trump’s closing argument to voters in a razor-thin race — included references to “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” phrases that critics have said are racist in implying that some work is reserved for a specific racial or ethnic group. 

Trump also defended his remarks that women should be protected “whether the women like it or not,” a line Harris and Democrats have said is insulting. 

“Women have to be protected when they’re at home in suburbia,” Trump told the crowd in Gastonia.

Trump, who has been found liable for sexual abuse, says his own allies have called the remarks about protecting women “self-serving” and “inappropriate.” The former president said he dismissed their advice, derogatorily referring to his aides as “my geniuses backstage.”

On Fox News, he touted his record with women, saying he’s “given women chances, too,” including Kellyanne Conway, a senior official on his 2016 campaign, and Susie Wiles, his current co-campaign manager, noting that the latter has “good genetics.” Trump has increasingly commented on people’s genes in recent weeks, including a remark last month disparaging migrants for having “bad genes.”

FBI Warning

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning that fake videos purporting to be from the agency are circulating on social media.

One video claims that the FBI apprehended groups committing ballot fraud, and another is related to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the FBI said in a statement Saturday.

“These videos are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false,” the agency said. “Election integrity is among our highest priorities, and the FBI is working closely with state and local law enforcement partners to respond to election threats.”

Earlier: Rumors, Lies and Disinformation: ‘A Lot of Crazy’ in US Election

Southern Blitz

Harris returned to Georgia for her last major rally in Atlanta, encouraging supporters to help get out the vote in a battleground state that Biden won by less than half a percentage point in 2020.

Harris drew a roar from the crowd outside the Atlanta Civic Center when she asked, “Anybody here already voted?” But, she added, “now please just talk to your friends and your neighbors and your co-workers and your classmates and your family and share your perspective on why this election is so important.”

Harris recalled growing up “as a child of the civil rights movement,” promised to work for “common-sense solutions” and attacked Trump as a divisive force whose years in US politics “have not been in the best interests of our nation.”

Harris’ Atlanta event featured remarks from film director Spike Lee and musical performances by 2 Chainz, Big Tigger and Pastor Troy. She next heads to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she will be joined by actress Kerry Washington and performers including Brittney Spencer, Jon Bon Jovi, Khalid and The War and Treaty.

Packers-Lions Audience

Harris’ team is making an expensive play to push its closing argument: a two-minute ad, dubbed “Brighter Future,” that will air during Sunday-afternoon National Football League games on CBS and Fox, including the game between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions. 

The last-minute appeal will be broadcast to millions of NFL viewers and reach a large audience of voters in swing states Wisconsin and Michigan.

The ad is a montage of the vice president interacting with Americans across the country, talking about her pledges to tackle price gouging and protect health-care access. It closes with Harris making a direct-to-camera appeal asking viewers to vote for her.

“We are going to do everything in our power to make sure that we’re reaching people in each of those places for mobilization, but also still for persuasion as we’ve seen these undecided voters, we believe, over the course of the last week have been breaking in our direction,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley-Dillon said in a call with reporters on Saturday.

Scranton Joe

President Joe Biden visited his birth city of Scranton in battleground Pennsylvania, leaning on local ties to stump for Harris in arguably the election’s biggest prize. 

Speaking at a union hall, he said Trump and his allies are “the kinds of guys you like to smack” and urged supporters to back Harris and stop Trump from implementing what Biden warned would be cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“It’s not hyperbole to suggest this is the most important election any of us have ever voted in. More is at stake in the direction of this country,” Biden said. 

He said while some people may have “difficulty” with the Harris-Walz ticket or its proposals, “I wouldn’t have picked her if I didn’t think she had the exact view I do about hard-working people. I’m serious. And so, look, folks, we need to elect Kamala as president.”

With assistance from Billy House and Josh Wingrove.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.