Harris and Trump offer worlds-apart contrasts on top issues in presidential race

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced President Joe Biden atop the presidential ticket, but his “finish the job” campaign mantra can still largely apply to her top policy goals. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, is itching to get back to the White House and accomplish what he didn’t during his first term. Since Biden stepped down last month, the vice president has announced few major policy proposals beyond a new push to prevent price gouging by food producers and grocers and plans to cut taxes for families, attempt to bring down homebuying and rental prices and reduce medical debt. Harris also used a recent rally in Las Vegas, where the economy runs on the hospitality industry, to call for ending taxes on tips paid to restaurant, hotel and other service employees. Despite her lack of specifics on policy, the vice president has committed generally to some major policy positions on various matters, promising to sign sweeping legislation that’s unlikely to clear Congress. Here’s where each candidate stands on 10 top issues: Abortion HARRIS: The vice president has called on Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing in federal law abortion access, a right that stood for nearly 50 years before being overturned by the Supreme Court. Like Biden, Harris has criticized bans on abortion in Republican-controlled states and promised as president to block any potential nationwide ban should one clear a future GOP-run Congress. TRUMP: The former president often brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. Climate/Energy HARRIS: As a senator from California, the vice president was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal, a sweeping series of proposals meant to swiftly move the U.S. to fully green energy that is championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing. But during her three and a half years as vice president, Harris has adopted more moderate positions, focusing instead on implementing the climate provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Biden administration has also enlisted more than 20,000 young people in a national “Climate Corps,” a Peace Corps-like program to promote conservation through tasks such as weatherizing homes and repairing wetlands. Despite that, it’s unlikely that the U.S. will be on track to meet Biden’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 — a benchmark that Harris hasn’t talked about in the early part of her own White House bid. What to know about the 2024 Election Today’s news: Follow live updates Ground Game: Sign up for AP’s weekly politics newsletter AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. TRUMP: His mantra for one of his top policy priorities: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Trump, who in the past cast climate change as a “hoax” and harbors a particular disdain for wind power, says it’s his goal for the U.S. to have the cheapest energy and electricity in the world. He’d increase oil drilling on public lands, offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers, speed the approval of natural gas pipelines and roll back the Biden administration’s aggressive efforts to get people to switch to electric cars, which he argues have a place but shouldn’t be forced on consumers. He has also pledged to re-exit the Paris Climate Accords, end wind subsidies and eliminate regulations imposed and proposed by the Biden administration targeting energy-inefficient kinds of lightbulbs, stoves, dishwashers and shower heads. Democracy/Rule of Law HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has decried Trump as a threat to the nation’s democracy. But, in attacking her opponent, the vice president has leaned more heavily into her personal background as a prosecutor and contrasted that with Trump being found guilty of 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case and in being found liable for fraudulent business practices and sexual abuse in civil court. The vice president has also talked less frequently than Biden did about Trump’s denial that he lost the 2020 presidential election and his spurring on the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. When she’s interrupted during rallies with supporters’ “lock him up” chants directed at Trump, Harris responds that the courts can “handle that” and “our job is to beat him in November.” TRUMP: After refusing to accept his loss to Biden in 2020, Trump hasn’t committed to accepting the results this time. Federal government HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has campaigned hard against “Project 2025,” a plan authored by leading conservatives to move as swiftly as possible to dramatically remake the federal government and push it to the right if Trump wins back the White House. TRUMP: The former president has sought to distance himself from “Project 2025,” despite his close ties to many of its key architects. He has nonetheless vowed an overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, which he has long blamed for blocking his first term agenda, saying: “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” The former president plans to reissue the Schedule F order stripping civil service protections. He says he’d then move to fire “rogue bureaucrats,” including those who ”weaponized our justice system,” and the “warmongers and America-Last globalists in the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex.” Trump has also pledged to terminate the Education Department and wants to curtail the independence of regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. Immigration HARRIS: Attempting to defuse a GOP line of political attack, the vice president has talked up her experience as California attorney general, saying she walked drug smuggler tunnels and successfully prosecuted gangs that moved narcotics and people across the border. Early in his term, Biden made Harris his administration’s point person on the root causes of migration. Harris has attempted to counter that by arguing that a bipartisan Senate compromise that would have included tougher asylum standards and hiring more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers was poised to clear Congress before Trump came out in opposition to it. Harris now says that Trump “talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk” on immigration. The vice president has endorsed comprehensive immigration reform, seeking pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, with a faster track for young immigrants living in the country illegally who arrived as children. He’d bring back policies he put in place during his first term, like the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42, which placed curbs on migrants on public health grounds. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, he pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs.” He’d also try to deport people who are in the U.S. legally but harbor “jihadist sympathies.” He’d seek to end birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are both in the country illegally. Israel/Gaza HARRIS: Harris says Israel has a right to defend itself, and she’s repeatedly decried Hamas as a terrorist organization. Like Biden, Harris supports a proposed hostage for extended cease-fire deal that aims to bring all remaining hostages and Israeli dead home. Biden and Harris say the deal could lead to a permanent end to the grinding nine-month war and they have endorsed a two-state solution, which would have Israel existing alongside an independent Palestinian state. TRUMP: The former president has expressed support for Israel’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas, but he’s also been critical of some of Israel’s tactics. LGBTQ+ issues HARRIS: During her rallies, Harris accuses Trump and his party of seeking to roll back a long list of freedoms including the ability “to love who you love openly and with pride.” She leads audiences in chants of “We’re not going back.” While her campaign has yet to produce specifics on its plans, she’s been part of a Biden administration that regularly denounces discrimination and attacks against the LGBTQ+ community. Early in Biden’s term, his administration reversed an executive order from Trump that had largely banned transgender people from military service, and his Education Department issued a rule that says Title IX, the 1972 law that was passed to protect women’s rights, also bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. TRUMP: The former president has pledged to keep transgender women out of women’s sports and says he will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that “only two genders,” as determined at birth, are recognized by the United States. He promises to “defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology.” As part of his crackdown on gender-affirming care, he would declare that any health care provider that participates in the “chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth” no longer meets federal health and safety standards and won’t get federal money. He’d take similarly punitive steps in schools against any teacher or school official who “suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.” Trump would support a national prohibition of hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors and bar transgender people from military service. NATO/Ukraine HARRIS: The vice president has yet to specify how her positions on Russia’s war with Ukraine might differ from Biden’s, other than to praise the president’s efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, particularly NATO, a critical bulwark against Russian aggression. Harris has said previously that it would be foolish to risk global alliances the U.S. has established and decried Putin’s “brutality.” TRUMP: The former president has repeatedly taken issue with U.S. aid to Ukraine and says he will continue to “fundamentally reevaluate” the mission and purpose of the NATO alliance if he returns to office. Trump drew alarms this year when he said that, as president, he had warned leaders that he would not only refuse to defend nations that don’t hit those targets, but “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.” Tariffs/Trade HARRIS: Though she was critical of free trade deals before becoming vice president, Harris has more recently offered no signs that she’ll oppose Biden’s policies. In May, the Biden-Harris administration said it would raise the tariff rate on steel and aluminum to 25% from 7.5%. Biden has also said he opposes the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, because it is “vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.” TRUMP: The former president wants a dramatic expansion of tariffs on nearly all imported foreign goods, saying that “we’re going to have 10% to 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.” Penalties would increase if trade partners manipulate their currencies or engage in other unfair trading practices. Whether higher tariffs come from a Biden administration or a Trump one, they are likely to raise prices for consumers who have already faced higher costs from inflation. Taxes HARRIS: The vice president has promised to work with state entities to cancel $7 billion of medical debt for up to 3 million qualifying Americans and plans to push Congress to make permanent a $3,600 per child tax credit approved through 2025 for eligible families. She also wants to offer a new $6,000 tax credit for those with newborn children, and cut taxes for frontline workers and on healthcare plans offered on the marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. Harris says her administration will expand tax credits for first-time homebuyers and push to build 3 million new housing units in four years, while wiping out taxes on tips and endorsing steeper taxes on corporations. That last part mirrors Biden, who proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% and the corporate minimum tax to 21% as a matter of “fundamental fairness” that will bring in more money to invest in Americans. Those elements will remain until and unless a new law changes them, but many other tax cuts in Trump’s package will lapse without further action by Congress. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://apnews.com/3f80a342c790da64e3de92a4f5760991