2024 election updates: Harris responds to Biden’s ‘garbage’ comments
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Six days until Election Day, much of the political debate is about “garbage” — first the backlash over those racist comments about Puerto Rico that former President Donald Trump has not apologized for — and now President Joe Biden appearing to call Trump’s supporters “garbage” — stepping on Vice President Kamala Harris’ message of unity — aimed at attracting disaffected Republicans.
More than 53 million Americans have voted early
As of 5:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday, more than 53 million Americans have voted early, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
Of the total number of early votes, 27,765,237 were cast in person and 25,686,627 were returned by mail.
Harris responds to Biden’s ‘garbage’ comments
On the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews about to depart for a day of campaigning, Harris was asked about President Joe Biden’s “garbage” comment seeming to refer to Trump supporters. The White House and Biden have said he was specifically referring to the racist remarks made by some speakers at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
“Listen I think that first of all, he clarified his comments,” Harris said. “But let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
“You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career, I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not,” she said. “And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”
Trump escalates baseless rhetoric on Pennsylvania’s election system
It’s a state that could tip the result of the 2024 election.
And Trump is ramping up rhetoric sowing doubt on the state’s voting process.
In a post on his social media site on Wednesday morning, Trump claimed there’s “cheating” happening at “large scale levels.” He did not elaborate or provide evidence for his claims.
Some isolated incidents have emerged, including approximately 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications being investigated in Lancaster County, though officials stressed the system worked and that voters can be confident in the election.
-ABC News’ Soorin Kim and Olivia Rubin
Harris hits the road with her closing pitch
Harris will take her closing argument to voters on the road after a big speech at the Ellipse in Washington on Tuesday night. She holds a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in North Carolina, a 4:35 ET event in Pennsylvania and a 9:30 p.m. ET rally in Wisconsin.
Trump will also be in North Carolina for a 1 p.m. ET rally before a 7 p.m. ET rally in Wisconsin.
Looming large over the campaign trail are President Joe Biden’s comments from a Vote Latino campaign call Tuesday night. His wording angered Republicans, who saw him as referring to the supporters of Trump as “garbage.” The White House and Biden himself, seeking to clarify the remark, argued he was referring to the racist rhetoric made by a speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House is touting its American Rescue Plan (ARP) COVID emergency funding program as a win for public education with nearly 90% of its funds exhausted by Monday’s deadline, according to senior Department of Education officials.
The final $122 billion phase of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund (ESSER), a part of the ARP law signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021, was distributed to state and local education agencies to reopen schools and promote physical health, safety and mental health and well-being.
In total, that funding and two prior installments of ESSER during the 2020 pandemic is roughly $190 billion. It has been obligated or used on school recovery projects that are wrapped up. Senior Department of Education officials said about 12% of ARP projects that are still underway are expected to be finished by the end of a January, 2025, liquidation extension window.
The ESSER package that was doled out to states as discretionary funding sparked controversy over how the funds were being spent. Many conservatives speculated whether it was being utilized at all, blaming the federal Education Department for a lack of academic recovery and low test scores on national assessments coming out of the pandemic.
Education finance expert Jess Gartner, who has been tracking school spending projects, told ABC News that school districts had planned for the window closing on ESSER funding.
“The reality is, the vast majority of school districts turned the page on Fiscal Year 25 on July 1: that means budgets for the year are done and dusted. They were approved in May or June,” Gartner said, adding, “It’s not like September 30 is going to catch CFOs by surprise. You know, they’ve been planning for this deadline for three, four years, and they have a budget for the whole year that’s already in motion and fully approved.”
What is ESSER?
ESSER was granted by the Department of Education’s Education Stabilization Fund. It was meant to meet the challenges of the pandemic and academic recovery, according to the COVID relief data website.
In ESSER I, Congress allotted about $13 billion through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act when the pandemic first closed schools for in-person learning in March 2020.
In ESSER II, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act provided an additional $54 billion in December 2020.
The final installment of nearly $122 billion, or ESSER III, came under the American Rescue Plan Act — the fund enabled states to reopen schools and for students to recover from the pandemic. ARP provided additional FY 2021 funding for the Department of Education to assist states with addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on elementary and secondary schools.
ESSER III brought the total to about $190 billion in emergency funding for state and local education departments.
How is ESSER III being used?
That $122 billion was tacked onto the roughly $68 billion in money in ESSER I and ESSER II the previous year. As discretionary funding, states could distribute the allotment however they chose. In the last 3 1/2 years, school districts have used it on infrastructure projects, school enrichment and summer programs, and staff positions where needed.
Baltimore City Superintendent Dr. Sonja Santelises said her district’s large projects — critical in supporting an urban school population — included building bathrooms, expanding summer programs and providing tutoring sessions.
“We didn’t want to leave money on the table,” Santelises said. “There was an intentional decision [in some urban school districts] to invest one-time money in building back what was already an under-resourced infrastructure in the school district — these are the districts that are least likely to have the funding to do the capital projects,” she added.
Despite critics ridiculing the spending practices in some states — leading to tense debates about learning loss — education experts told ABC News the summer programming and high-impact tutoring proved to be vital in academic recovery. Students who were socially isolated and fell behind used robust tutoring programs to not only catch up, but to also return to school if they were showing attendance issues, according to FutureEd Director Thomas Toch.
“Tutoring creates connections between students and adults and one of the things that we’ve learned in the wake of the pandemic is that kids are feeling more alienated, more isolated, than ever,” he said. “An important sort of antidote to these high levels of chronic absenteeism is connecting kids to adults more fully than they have in the past.”
A recent Pew Research Center survey of public K-12 teachers found more than 90% of teachers said their students are chronically absent. Of the teachers surveyed, about half of them said in five years the American education system will be worse than it is now.
Despite gains from the academic recovery programs ESSER provided during the pandemic, Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research Faculty Director Tom Kane said students are potentially facing permanent damage from the closures if learning loss ceases to improve.
What happens to ESSER now?
The obligation deadline for the last portion of ESSER funding is today — Sept. 30 — more than four years after the start of the pandemic and three years after ARP became law.
New emergency funding will not be granted to aid in the effort to help school communities recover from COVID. As U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona fights attacks on public education writ-large, he told ABC News “the recovery dollars were intended to prevent further exacerbation.”
Jess Gartner believes school districts, by and large, handled the lump sum money well. With FY 2025’s budget already in the books, school district leaders shouldn’t panic and should be prepared to rely on the funds they would have typically received before COVID, Gartner said.
“These budgets are planned years in advance,” Garner told ABC News. “It’s kind of like if you were planning to buy a house, right? You don’t show up at the closing, like, ‘Oh man, how am I gonna pay for this?'” she quipped.
Now school districts have to make due with the chunk of funding they annually receive from the federal government, which is on average about 10%. Similar to before the pandemic, they will be supported by state and local governments, which make up roughly 90% of public school funding.
But the COVID-19 emergency exposed infrastructure and workforce problems that public schools were dealing with before the pandemic and were exacerbated on a large scale during it, education experts said.
Some leaders like Santelises are calling for more help as the pandemic’s impact on students continues.
“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to champion looking at the long term impact and to not take the posture that somehow three years you wave a wand and all the kids are back, ” Santelises said. “The kids are not all back.”
(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams visited “The View” Friday to give his thoughts on President-elect Donald Trump’s presidency and what it will mean for the city.
Adams said both sides of the political aisle needed to turn down the rhetoric and name-calling that has perpetuated the discourse for years. The mayor implied that the toxic rhetoric was a reason behind Trump’s victory, especially in the city where the former president gained ground among the electorate.
“What you saw in this city and a city becoming redder is because we stopped talking about broken class issues,” Adams said.
“They’re not talking about fascism, they’re talking about finance. They’re not talking about Hitler, they’re talking about housing,” the mayor added, referencing the statements from Trump opponents that he was a fascist.
“The View” co-host Ana Navarro noted that Vice President-elect JD Vance once called Trump Hitler. Adams reiterated that everyone must tone down their rhetoric.
Adams was also asked about his opinions on Trump’s controversial cabinet appointees, specifically Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tapped to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
RFK Jr., who tried to run for president this year as a Democrat and Independent candidate before endorsing Trump, has pushed false claims about vaccine dangers and fluoride and promised to make massive cuts to health services if he is appointed by the Senate.
Adams pushed back against the fluoride claims but noted that the country needed to look at what is being put into food, which was another stance that RFK Jr. had taken in the past.
When pushed by “The View” hosts to respond to RFK Jr.’s proposals, Adams said he was confident that the people in place in the health agencies would do the right thing for the country.
“If we love our country, then no one individual should take us away from our mission,” he said.
“There are experts at this, they will look at his proposals and give analysis,” Adams added.
Adams said the city is prepared for various scenarios that Trump may inflict on them when it comes to his mass deportation proposal. The mayor said that New York has always welcomed immigrants and law-abiding immigrants and families will be protected, but stressed that the nation’s immigration system is broken.
He said the migrant crisis cost the city billions of dollars, and no one has provided it with the means or resources to deal with the over 200,000 migrants who were shipped to the city from other states.
“I’m not allowed to let them work (legally),” he said. “I’m not allowed to get them to participate in our tax system.”
In September, Adams became the first sitting New York City mayor to be indicted after federal prosecutors charged him with one count of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy, two counts of solicitation of a contribution from a foreign national and one count of bribery.
The indictment stems from alleged gifts, including upgraded airline flights and luxury hotel stays, given by Turkish businessmen and officials in exchange for preferential treatment by the mayor.
Adams has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. Federal investigators have probed several of his close confidants and officials over the last year, and many have resigned in the face of the ongoing investigations.
Trump has come to Adams’ defense, claiming that the mayor was unjustly charged because of his opposition to President Joe Biden’s migrant policies.
Adams dodged a question about a possible Trump pardon or dismissal of his charges and maintained that he would continue to work for New Yorkers as he fights the charges.
“My job is to do what I have been doing since Jan. 1, 2022,” he said.
Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — In a debate that often turned heated over key issues, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump were at odds over abortion, a top concern for voters heading into the election.
Harris tried to label Trump’s position as extreme, pointing to his role in ending Roe v. Wade and accusing him of supporting a national ban and surveillance of pregnant women — claims he denied.
Trump, who appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned federal protections for abortion rights under Roe v. Wade, has at times softened his stance on abortion and said the six-week ban in Florida is “too short,” in an interview with NBC News in August.
“I think the six weeks is too short, there has to be more time,” Trump said on Aug. 29. The next day, he reversed his position, saying he would vote to keep the six-week ban
In the debate, Trump reiterated that he returned the regulation of abortion care to state governments and said it should be up to the states to decide, but he would not commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban if it came to his desk as president. Instead, he said that situation would not arise.
He also said Tuesday he supports exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
During the debate, Harris accused Trump of supporting a national ban on abortion and said he plans to monitor pregnant women under the conservative plan known as Project 2025.
Harris said during the debate the plan “would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages,” adding, “I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.”
Trump has denied any association with Project 2025, which he reiterated at Tuesday’s debate. Project 2025 is a 900-page policy blueprint published by conservative allies and former advisers to Trump looking to help a new Republican administration transition to power. Several former cabinet secretaries under Trump are among the notable authors.
Project 2025 was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank.
The document proposes the next conservative president act with Congress to protect life starting at conception and work to ban federal funding of abortion.
Among its proposals, the project recommends the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “eliminate” programs and projects that are not anti-abortion and ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care.
The project doesn’t use the term “monitoring,” but it does state that CDC’s collection of abortion data is “woefully inadequate,” pointing to some states reporting data on a voluntary basis. It also says the Department of Health and Human Services should mandate states report how many abortions are provided, the stage of pregnancy, the pregnant woman’s state of residence and the method of termination.
Project 2025 also calls for the ending of federal funding for Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers. Planned Parenthood provides a range of services, including testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, cancer screenings, prevention services and contraception services. However, federal funding is already withheld for abortion services at Planned Parenthood, with limited exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, due to the Hyde Amendment.
After Democrats began attacking Trump over the document, he publicly denounced its substance as “seriously extreme” and developed by the “severe right.”
“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” Trump posted on social media.
At least 22 states currently have bans or restrictions in place on abortion care. Of those states, 14 states have ceased nearly all abortion services and four states prohibit abortions after six-weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant.
Trump has said it’s “irrelevant” whether he supports prosecuting women who have abortions.
“It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not,” Trump said in April. “It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”
