ICYMI: Here’s Where Harris & Trump Stand On Key Election Issues

It’s clear that the 2024 election is a choice between two opposing visions of America: Donald Trump, a convicted felon who openly admires autocrats, seeks to divide through fear and hate; Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, stresses the need for empathy in politics. These two potential futures balance on the edge of a knife: With only a month until Election Day, the two candidates remain deadlocked in the polls.

Election anxiety makes it hard to think past November 5. Regardless of who wins the election, however, communities across the country will be hard at work, fighting to stabilize an eroded democracy. We’ll need a plan to move forward. And to do that, we need to know how each candidate plans to address major issues, including abortion access, immigration, the cost of living, the climate crisis, and the crisis in Gaza. As you come up with a voting plan, get to know where each candidate stands on the major issues: 

So far, we know that two women in Georgia have died after the state’s draconian six-week abortion ban prevented them from accessing lifesaving healthcare. The 2019 state law was one of the most extreme in the country, making it a felony to perform an abortion after the first flutter of what becomes a heartbeat, which happens around six weeks into pregnancy. A Georgia federal judge has since deemed the law unconstitutional but with 20 states having fully or partially banned abortion, it’s likely that more pregnant people have died in these preventable situations across the country — and more will be endangered.

Of course, Trump helped America get to this place. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court upended reproductive rights by overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that had given people the federal right to an abortion since 1973. Trump planted the seeds for that blow when he appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court: Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Overturning Roe gave states the authority to make their own decisions on abortion, which is now on the ballot in 10 states this November: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota. “However, it’s important to remember that if Donald Trump wins a second term and signs a federal abortion ban, it will supersede any state law and will effectively ban abortion nationwide,” Silvina Alarcón, political director at Reproductive Freedom for All, told Refinery29.

Despite his record, Trump — who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 18 women — recently called himself “a protector” of women. At a rally in North Carolina, he framed the reversal of Roe v. Wade as positive, telling women that they “will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be with the states and with the vote of the people.” And then there’s Project 2025, a wide-ranging conservative manifesto which argues that abortion is the murder of “the unborn.” The document does not call for an outright federal ban on abortion but comes close through some legal maneuvering. While Trump has said he has “nothing to do with” Project 2025, he has echoed a lot of what is outlined in the nearly 1,000-page “playbook.”

Trump’s running mate JD Vance’s comments towards women have been no less disparaging. He called women like Harris, who have not given birth to children (whether by choice or infertility), “childless cat ladies.” He later backtracked on the comment, saying it was “sarcasm,” but he has repeatedly made derogatory or condescending comments about women and their choices about families.

Meanwhile, restoring abortion access is a cornerstone of Harris’ platform. She has vowed to reinstate Roe by eliminating the filibuster in the U.S. Senate — a rule that requires a 60-vote majority to pass legislation — thereby enabling its passage with a simple majority of 51 votes. Access to abortion for pregnant people has never just been about abortions; it’s about a right to privacy, control over one’s body, and access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

Reproductive rights were also front and center at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), where couples and women spoke about abortion access and IVF. Vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz and wife Gwen are open about their struggles with fertility. The couple underwent intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatments to conceive, and in an emotional moment at the DNC, when Walz spoke about the family’s struggles on stage, he gestured towards his family, saying, “When our daughter was born, we named her Hope.”

Days after ProPublica reported on the pregnancy-related deaths of two Georgia women, Harris addressed the dire consequences of abortion bans in a speech in Atlanta, saying, “The reality is for every story here of the suffering under Trump abortion bans, there are so many of the stories we're not hearing where suffering is happening every day in our country.”

While the country has managed to avoid a full-blown recession, it’s no secret that life in America is getting more expensive. Due to inflation, Americans have been spending a little over 21% more on basics like groceries and tuition than they did before the pandemic — for housing, they’re spending 50% more. Interest rate adjustments and a relatively low unemployment rate have helped, but Americans need a long-term plan, and the job market is getting tough to navigate.

The Harris-Walz ticket, which calls its plan the “opportunity economy,” is trying to walk the line between stopping companies price gouging on groceries, forgiving medical debt and offering bigger tax credits for people with children while also supporting the growth of small businesses. It helps to have Walz on the ticket, a former schoolteacher who in his state of Minnesota gave children free school lunches, created a paid family and medical leave program, and made college tuition free at state schools for low-income residents. Walz’s policies have also supported growth for large companies — and employers — like agricultural cooperative Land O’Lakes, making Minnesota a consistently top-ranked state for doing business and for living.

Trump, by contrast, is a pretty classic Republican when it comes to the economy with his “America First” approach. He wants to lower taxes for the wealthy and corporations and remove some of the regulations on big business, with the idea that this will help them grow and provide more jobs. Beyond that, he hasn’t been clear on much except bringing down the cost of prescription drugs. But some economists have said Trump’s plan would actually make the cost of living go up. 

Climate change has not gotten much attention from either campaign in recent months — but that doesn’t mean it's not an increasingly important issue for young voters: In a recent poll by the Environmental Voter Project, 40% of voters under 35 called a candidate’s stance on climate change a “deal breaker”. The reasons are clear: Scientists say that to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change, average global temperatures must not rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels — but we are already dangerously close to that level. 

Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil is the main driver of climate change. Denae Ávila-Dickson, spokesperson for the national climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, told Refinery29 that this election is “about our future, and it is about our freedoms.” Climate change is not just an environmental issue; it is tied to young voters’ future job security, access to clean air and water, and is a security issue as people are displaced and compete over dwindling natural resources.

Despite warnings from scientists over the catastrophic effects of global warming, Trump has persistently called climate change “a hoax.” Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back more than 100 environmental protection rules and policies, approving drilling in wildlife refuges, loosening standards on car emissions and removing regulations to maintain clean air and water. The U.S. also exited the Paris Agreement on climate change, a United Nations treaty signed by 180 countries in 2015 which would have committed the U.S. to reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the following decade.

Ávila-Dickson said another Trump presidency would result in the appointment of “climate-denying extremists” and giving ”handouts to the fossil fuel industry,” which would expand the oil and gas industry’s influence over the federal government. 

Unlike Trump, Harris does not deny the reality of climate change. As Attorney General of California, Harris investigated Exxon Mobil for lying to the public about the risks of climate change, forced Volkswagen to pay hefty fines for cheating on emissions tests, and prosecuted Plains All-American Pipeline over a 2015 oil spill in Santa Barbara County. As a senator, she was an early co-sponsor on the Green New Deal, an economic reform proposal to address climate change while creating jobs and tackling income inequality.

As Vice President, Harris has continued to support climate change initiatives: She cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, the government’s largest-ever investment in addressing climate change. Walz, too, has a solid track record on climate change: Under Walz, Minnesota was the first state in the Midwest to adopt California’s car standards on emissions, and in 2023 he signed a law requiring all Minnesota power plants to use green energy by 2040. Walz recently told NPR, “We can’t move too fast when it comes to addressing climate change.” 

Despite framing the fight for the climate as a fight for freedom at the Democratic National Convention, in the presidential debate Harris spoke out in favor of fracking, one of the ways oil and gas are extracted from the ground. It was a stark reversal from 2019 when she supported an all-out ban. She also boasted that the Biden administration has overseen the “largest increase in domestic oil production in history.” The Sunrise Movement called it a “missed opportunity," criticizing Harris for spending “more time promoting fracking than laying out a bold vision for a clean energy future.”

During his time in office, Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric turned into policy: After months of making Islamophobic comments on the campaign trail, one of Trump’s first presidential acts was to implement a travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries — which he has said he would bring back if elected again. He cast Mexican migrants as “rapists” then implemented a “zero-tolerance” policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, which prosecuted adults entering the United States illegally and forcibly separated parents from their children.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies have also incited violence: In 2019, a mass shooter killed 23 people and injured 22 more — most of whom were Latine — in an El Paso, TX grocery store. The shooter had written online that the attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” an ideology popularized by Trump.

Remaining in line with Trump, Vance has perpetuated anti-immigrant rhetoric, too, by spreading dangerous misinformation about newer Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH. The VP nominee said Haitian residents were “eating the pets” of his constituents — a false claim that Vance defended, then later walked back, and whichTrump repeated during the presidential debate and again on the campaign trail. The comments put the Haitian community in Springfield at risk, leading to school closures and threats. Both Trump and Vance have repeatedly used immigrants as scapegoats for issues like access to housing, jobs and crime rates, and, if elected, have pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Harris, on the other hand, is the daughter of immigrants — her mother came from India and her father hails from Jamaica. She has shared her personal story of being raised by a single mother, and calls existing immigration policies “broken.” Harris also supports continuing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era legislation which gives children brought into the country illegally a way to get authorization to work. At the DNC she also said she believes in “creating an earned pathway to citizenship” for the approximately 11 million undocumented people already in the U.S. 

While Harris and the Democrats aren’t making xenophobic comments, Lindsay Messoline, director of Collaborative Voices, a New York-based organization working in migrant education spaces, told Refinery29 there are only “subtle differences” between the two parties when it comes to policies involving the U.S.-Mexico border in particular. Messoline said “the main line both parties use often is ‘secure the border,’ but it’s unclear what exactly that looks like under a Harris administration.” Messoline also noted there was an unprecedented number of deportations under the Obama-Biden administration. 

In a recent visit to the southern border in Arizona, Harris said: “I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly, and humane.” Conversely, in 2021 Harris told those looking to enter the U.S. illegally from Central America “do not come” and recently pledged to continue building the border wall, a Trump project she called “un-American” in 2018. 

By far the most important foreign policy issue for young voters is the Biden administration's continuing support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. When it comes to Trump and Harris, while the campaigns radically differ on reproductive rights, climate change, and the economy, there isn’t much separating them on Israel and Palestine.  

The ‘Uncommitted’ movement, an affiliation of Democrats and third party supporters who oppose the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s attacks against Palestinians, recently announced that it would not endorse the Harris-Walz ticket. In a statement, the group explained, however, that it also “opposes a Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing.” 

Palestinian American writer Y.L. Al-Sheikh, an organizer with the Uncommitted movement, told Refinery29 that the group is aware of the threat another Trump administration poses to the safety of Palestinians but feels Harris “has not demonstrated a meaningful enough break” from Biden’s policy of continuing to supply arms to Israel — a deal now under investigation by the inspectors general of the Pentagon and State Department. Al-Sheikh explained that the movement’s stance also stems from a lack of a ceasefire deal, rising Islamophobia and the DNC’s refusal to allow a Palestinian American speaker on stage during the party’s convention in August.

In her DNC speech, Harris reiterated the talking points made by Biden in his commitment to supporting “Israel's right to defend itself” after 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The Israeli government has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians and displaced 90% of Gazans, causing widespread famine and prompting allegations of genocide from a UN expert — a claim that Israel denies. Harris went on to acknowledge the devastation in Gaza, and added that she is working on a ceasefire deal to halt Israel’s attacks so “Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self determination.” As of October 2024, however, there hasn’t been any public progress on a ceasefire deal.

The Uncommitted movement, which aims to pressure Harris and Biden to implement an arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire deal, is playing an influential role in the election. In Michigan, a key swing state that is home to America’s largest Arab American population, nearly 13% of registered Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the primaries to protest the Biden administration’s policies on Israel and Palestine. For some, Gaza is the single most important issue. Others — even those within the Uncommitted movement — who have reservations about Harris will still vote for her, given Trump’s hardline stance. (In March, Trump told Fox News that Israel should “finish the problem.”) Al-Sheikh said they “imagine that there will be a plethora of choices made by those who cast an Uncommitted ballot earlier this year when it comes to the general election this fall, with some voting for Harris and some staying home.”