With less than one week left until November 5, Election Day, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made unexpected stops during this most vital, late-game segment of their campaigns. Last Friday, each candidate hosted a rally in the Lone Star State, with Harris in Houston and Trump in Austin. With razor thin margins expected in the presidential race as well as for Congressman Colin Allred’s bid for Senate, against Ted Cruz, Republicans are trying to defend a nearly three decade long, one-party rule, while Democrats see a new battleground on the horizon and a potential for surprises at the ballot box. But is Texas a new national marker for progressive change? Here’s a review of the dueling messages in the final week of this highest stakes election and what you can do to move Texas forward.

What Happened at the Kamala Harris Rally in Houston?

October 25 marked one of the largest campaign rallies yet with 30,000 attendees for Harris in Houston, then within a week, she broke her own record, nearly doubling turnout with 75,000 people attending her Ellipse Speech in Washington, D.C. The Texas rally was brimming with excitement, maintained by DJ Tryfe, and full of emotion, ramped up by Harris campaign advertisements demonstrating the real-life, devastating impacts of our near total-abortion ban. Harris did not relent, emphasizing that “Republican lawmakers in Texas have made the state ‘ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body.’”

This abortion rights rally, in one of the deadliest states to be a mother, featured everyday- women as event speakers like Ondrea Lintz from San Antonio, Yesenia Gamez from Tucson, and Amanda and Josh Zurawski from Austin — all of whom shared graphic details of their preventable, life-endangering pregnancies which resulted in physical and emotional trauma that will be with each of them for the rest of their lives. 

AP Photo, Susan Walsh via Queen City News

Harris’ race also inspired many celebrities, including the most-anticipated speaker, coming back to her hometown, Beyoncé Knowles. “I’m not here as a celebrity,” Beyoncé said. “I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother—a mother who cares deeply about the world my children, and all of our children, live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”

Other notable supporters who lent their fame to VP Kamala Harris were country music star and Texas legend, Willie Nelson, another Destiny’s Child member, Kelly Rowland, Beyonce’s mom, Tina Knowles, movie star, Jessica Alba, and of course, the other top political name in this rally’s game, candidate for Texas’ U.S. Senate seat, Colin Allred. This rally proved that support for the Harris campaign and their commitment to protecting our families against authoritarian limits on our reproductive freedoms is wide-reaching and ranges from the mom next door to Beyoncé herself.

What Happened at the Donald Trump Hate Rally?

While VP Harris broke records and inspired tens of thousands to vote for reproductive rights on their ballots, Trump arrived in Austin for a quick air hangar rally and to speak on the Joe Rogan podcast. He didn’t care to stay long, and the podcast really got more attention for its lack of bipartisan reporting, with Rogan refusing to accommodate his schedule to the VP’s. 

In contrast to the quiet Texas pitstop, Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden only two days later on October 27 made major news — with many comparing it to one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history, the February 1939 Nazi rally held in the same space. One Austin-based comedian in particular, Tony Hinchcliffe, left no race or ethnic group undisparaged, telling stereotyped and bigoted “jokes” about Palestinian, Jewish, Black, and Mexican people. He said, “these Latinos, they love making babies too, just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.” That’s reprehensible enough, but Hinchcliffe went too far for one other targeted group, Puerto Ricans, when he referred to their home as, “literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” 

This remark sparked international backlash and endorsements for VP Kamala Harris from Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Marc Anthony, Luis Fonsi, Aubrey Plaza, and Ricky Martin — collectively reaching more than 340 million people through their combined follower counts and adding to the growing big tent for Kamala. Despite scattered support and applause at the rally, and broad backlash after the fact, Trump has condemned only the remarks on Puerto Rico and later released an almost comical, last-ditch attempt to appeal to Latino voters with a Cuban band in the backtrack.

NYC: 1939 Nazi rally (left) and 2024 Trump rally (right) via Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid

Trump’s Bigotry is Not a Fluke, It’s the Heart of His Campaign

To be clear, one of the major throughlines of Trump’s time as a politician is his blatant racism, especially targeted against Latinos — starting all the way back in 2016 with his wall, and present still in this election in the form of Hinchcliffe-inspired “jokes” about a “migrant league of fighters” and constant badgering about immigration. This election, and time and time again, we’ve seen his character, and the policies that come with it (remember his Muslim ban, too?). Ask yourself: how much power do we want to give to white supremacists? 

Said best in The Daily Beast, “The Trump campaign is about retribution and revenge. It is about the white supremacist desire to purge America of all their neighbors of different colors and beliefs. It is about Trump’s desire to seek out his enemies and punish them. . . From a political perspective the strategy is pure suicide. The rally will almost certainly alienate more voters who might have voted for Trump and it is hard to imagine it has earned him one single new vote."  

Go Vote Texas!

Early voting lasts until this Friday, November 1st. After that, your last chance to squash bigotry and vote for abortion and our freedoms is Election Day on November 5th! VP Harris and Trump have already demonstrated that our state has national importance, from abortion to immigration and so much more, and that’s why it’s so crucial that we turn out this election.

NBC News

If you’re wondering exactly how Texas is turning out to vote, raw numbers for early voting show Harris County leading the way with more than 691,000 votes, followed by Dallas County at more than 397,000 votes cast. Of the top five urban counties, only Travis County has surpassed 30% turnout. Other stats for your review include votes by gender, with women significantly outpacing men at the polls (that’s 54% to 46%, your reproductive freedoms at stake make for a motivating reason to show up at the polls, it seems). Meanwhile votes by age show a striking absence of younger voters at 20% of Texans 39 or younger that have voted yet. Young folks, don’t let your grandparents beat you to the polls. 

For every Texan, don’t wait and if you still have any questions, visit GoVoteTexas.org for answers to common voting FAQS — you’re the last line of defense against a wannabe tyrant who is proud to have overturned Roe v. Wade and put yours, your family’s, your neighbor’s, lives in danger.