The Democratic Party Nominates…Kamala Harris
Name: Kamala Harris
Age: 60
Party: Democratic
Registered in: California
Kamala Harris declared her Democratic-Party presidential candidacy after Joe Biden withdrew from his candidacy, recommending the presidential candidate nomination of Harris on July 21, 2024. After the Democratic ticket won the presidential election against the Republican ticket of former President Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, Harris has been serving as the 49th U.S. Vice President since 2021.
Harris started her political career as a U.S. Senator of California in 2017 and she was the first South Asian American in U.S. Senate history. Previously, she had a long legal career where she served as San Francisco district attorney and California’s first African-American and first woman attorney general.
Harris prioritizes bringing Roe v. Wade into law in Congress to restore the right to get an abortion for women. She voiced her contention with the decision of Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allows each state to set its own abortion policies in 2022. Harris also aims to pass the Equality Act to provide protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and other areas.
Her economic key policy targets include cutting taxes for middle and low-income families with the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit projects while increasing low-income government through billionaire minimum tax and quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks. She also promises to decrease drug costs by expanding the Affordable Care Act.
As the Vice President, Harris targeted getting illegal guns away, supporting the delivery of a 15 billion USD investment to fund local law enforcement and community safety programs across the United States. She wants to continue her efforts by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines along with tightening background checks. For border security, she also focuses on bringing the bipartisan border security bill back into law to increase resources to disrupt illegal drug transportation.
Harris is known for her prosecutorial questioning style during interviews with Trump administration officials and nominees, quoting American military generals and national security officials who describe Trump as “dangerous” and “unfit for role” in her speeches. She opposes Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda, saying that Trump should not be trusted for turning his back on the United States’ allies in the past and “cozying up to dictators.”
The Republican Party Nominates…Donald Trump
Name: Donald J. Trump
Age: 78
Party: Republican
Registered-in: Florida
The Republican nominee for the U.S. Presidential election, former President Donald Trump, launched his bid for the White House on November 15, 2022. This will be the third time since he has run for the presidency, having previously defeated Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton in 2016, and the incumbent President Joe Biden during his first bid for re-election in 2020. Before holding public office for the first time in 2016, he was known as a billionaire real-estate mogul and the host of the reality television show The Apprentice on NBC. He positions himself as the candidate to “Make America Great Again,” citing the United States’ need to dominate the world-stage once again.
During his time at the Oval Office, Trump’s policies focused on achieving the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, eliminating 112 environmental regulations, immigration restrictions, and establishing the Space Force as an independent military branch. His key foreign policy initiatives included the United States withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, imposing tariffs on China as part of his America First policy, and reducing the size of the ISIS caliphate. He also holds the record among first-term presidents serving between 1981 and 2021 for the highest number of federal judicial appointments, with a tally of 234 that included three U.S. Supreme Court justices.
His Key Campaign Positions for 2024 include providing legislation that further reduced taxes, hardline border and immigration laws such as mass deportations, and retribution against political opponents. He has also promised to sign an executive order instructing federal agencies to “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age” and penalise doctors providing gender-affirmative care to minors and stated that he would “get something done” on abortion.
Former President Trump is the first president to be impeached twice during his time at the Oval Office. He is also the first president to be indicted on and convicted of criminal charges since leaving office. He denies the results of the 2020 Presidential Election and contends that the vote was stolen from him. A key campaign promise made by him is to pardon “large portion” of people convicted of federal offenses for participating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Despite his controversies, Trump remains popular among large sections of the U.S. electorate for positioning himself as the populist, anti-establishment political candidate. He and Vice President Harris are closely-tied in national polls according to all major outlets and intend to face off with one another for one last time on November 5, 2024.