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Learn everything you need to know about voting in the upcoming election, including how to vote in person or through the mail as well as local candidates' positions on various issues.

Harris rallies with Beyoncé in Texas as Trump sits for hours with Joe Rogan

Beyonce, right, and Vice President Kamala Harris embrace on stage during a campaign rally Friday in Houston.
Annie Mulligan
/
AP
Beyonce, right, and Vice President Kamala Harris embrace on stage during a campaign rally Friday in Houston.

Texas is not a swing state that will decide the next president, but stops Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump will make there Friday could have an impact — or so they're hoping.

The Lonestar State may seem like an unusual stop with less than two weeks until voting closes, although it has a high-profile Senate race featuring incumbent Republican Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Rep. Collin Allred. But the messages and the mediums both campaigns have planned highlight the urgency of their closing messages.

Harris plans to focus on Texas' strict abortion ban at her rally in Houston, as Democrats have spent years hammering Republicans over unpopular crackdowns on reproductive rights — to great success at the ballot box. Trump's appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court and the subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade has been a key liability for him.

On the campaign trail, Harris has also featured the stories of several women who say their lives were endangered by abortion bans, including in Texas. A new ad unveiled by her campaign this week features a woman in Texas who was denied care when she had a miscarriage. She developed a septic infection which required emergency surgery, and because of what happened she may never be able to have children. The audio in the background is Trump from a recent rally saying he will be a “protector” of women.

The Houston rally will also feature hometown superstar Beyoncé, whose song "Freedom" has been Harris' campaign anthem. Harris has earned endorsements from a slew of entertainers like Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion and Bruce Springsteen, who performed several songs at a Thursday rally in Atlanta with former president Barack Obama.

"We here understand we have an opportunity before us to turn the page on the fear and divisiveness that have characterized our politics for a decade because of Donald Trump," Harris said Thursday. "We have the opportunity to turn the page and chart a new way and a joyful way forward."


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Trump will join Joe Rogan for an interview

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Mullett Arena on Thursday in Tempe, Arizona. Trump travels to Texas on Friday, where he is scheduled to tape an interview with Joe Rogan.
Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
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Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Mullett Arena on Thursday in Tempe, Arizona. Trump travels to Texas on Friday, where he is scheduled to tape an interview with Joe Rogan.

Meanwhile, Trump will deliver remarks on immigration and the border in Austin before taping a podcast with Joe Rogan, who has millions of followers and an audience overwhelmingly younger and more male — a key constituency for the former president.

Unlike other more friendly interviews Trump has sat for in recent weeks, Rogan has not always been uncritical of him. In an August podcast, Rogan appeared to offer praise for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who at the time was running for president as a third-party candidate. In the episode, Rogan said that politicians from both sides of the aisle "gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives."

That drew Trump's ire, and Rogan quickly tried to smooth things over.

"This is me saying that I like RFKjr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence," Rogan wrote on X. "I also think Trump raising his fist and saying 'fight!' after getting shot is one of the most American f****** things of all time. I’m not the guy to get political information from."

Trump's media strategy this election cycle has relied heavily on these social media-friendly, male-heavy podcasts and influencers that largely eschew probing policy questions and paint the former president as a friendly, accessible figure.

The two appearances in Texas also underscore what could potentially be the largest gender gap in a recent presidential election, with Harris increasing support among women and Trump among men.
Copyright 2024 NPR

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Stephen Fowler
Stephen Fowler is a political reporter with NPR's Washington Desk and will be covering the 2024 election based in the South. Before joining NPR, he spent more than seven years at Georgia Public Broadcasting as its political reporter and host of the Battleground: Ballot Box podcast, which covered voting rights and legal fallout from the 2020 presidential election, the evolution of the Republican Party and other changes driving Georgia's growing prominence in American politics. His reporting has appeared everywhere from the Center for Public Integrity and the Columbia Journalism Review to the PBS NewsHour and ProPublica.
Deepa Shivaram
Deepa Shivaram is a multi-platform political reporter on NPR's Washington Desk.