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

• October 27, 2024

By Josh Boak, Jill Colvin and Seung Min Kim | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Voters in this year’s presidential election are choosing between two conflicting visions of the United States offered by Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. The outcome will affect how the country sees itself and how it’s viewed across the world, with repercussions that could echo for decades.

Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to blaze her own path forward. But many of the vice president’s ideas are well trod by Biden: middle-class tax cuts, tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, a restoration of abortion rights, a government that aggressively addresses climate change. and a commitment to uphold democratic values and the rule of law.

Trump has pledged retaliation against rivals as he pushes to fulfill an agenda sidetracked during his previous term by the global pandemic. The former president wants to undertake a mass deportation of migrants who are living in the United States illegally, extend and expand his 2017 tax cuts, greatly increase tariffs and offer more support for fossil fuels and less support for renewable energy. He has attacked transgender rights and pledged to end Russia’s war with Ukraine while suggesting Ukraine must make territorial concessions. He also is seeking to concentrate more government power within the White House.

The candidates have spelled out their ideas in speeches, advertisements and other venues. Both say that their approach would do more to lift up workers, the middle class and the promises that have defined America. While Trump and Harris agree on not taxing workers’ tips, the similarities largely stop there — a further sign of how the election’s outcome could reshape the country.

A look at where each candidate stands on 10 top issues:

Abortion

HARRIS: She has called on Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing abortion access in federal law, a right that stood for nearly 50 years before being overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022. She has campaigned on how the patchwork of state laws limiting abortion have hurt women’s access to medical care, in one prominent case leading to the death in Georgia of Amber Nicole Thurman.

Harris has promoted the administration’s efforts short of federal law, including steps to protect women who travel to access the procedure and limit how law enforcement collects medical records. Her argument to the public is rooted in the concept of freedom, saying “the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body should not be made by the government.”

TRUMP: He often brags about nominating the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. After dodging questions about when in pregnancy he believed abortion should be restricted, Trump announced last spring that decisions on access and cutoffs should be left to the states. He has praised the patchwork of restrictions that have emerged across Republican-led states, saying the people are deciding.

He has said he would not sign a national abortion ban into law and would not try to block access to abortion medication, after initially waffling. He told Time magazine that it should also be left up to states to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies, but he has not rejected the idea outright. He has said that, if he wins, he wants to make in vitro fertilization treatment free for women. He has even claimed that he is the “father” of the treatment, first used in 1978, even though it has only come under threat because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Climate and energy

HARRIS: She has done something of an about-face, saying in her campaign that it’s possible to continue hydraulic fracturing for fossil fuels even as she embraces policies that favor renewable energy resources. Republicans are quick to point out that Harris opposed offshore drilling and fracking during her short-lived campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination.

As a senator from California, Harris 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. It was a plan championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing. But during her tenure as vice president, Harris has adopted more moderate positions, focusing on implementing the climate provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. That provided nearly $375 billion for things such as financial incentives for electric cars and clean energy projects.

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 projects 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.

TRUMP: His mantra for one of his top policy priorities: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Trump, who in the past said climate change was 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 has claimed he will cut prices in half within a year of his potential return to office. While he often criticizes the Biden administration for its policies, domestic oil production has already been at near-record highs since late 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Trump wants to push that higher by increasing oil drilling on public lands, offering tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers, speeding the approval of natural gas pipelines, opening dozens of new power plants, including nuclear facilities, and rolling 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 agreement, 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 and the rule of law

HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has decried Trump as a threat to the nation’s democracy. She has agreed with former Trump administration officials who labeled him a “fascist.”

Harris 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 being found liable for fraudulent business practices and sexual abuse in civil court. Harris initially talked less frequently than Biden did about Trump’s denial of his 2020 loss and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. But in the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, she increasingly has framed the prospect of another Trump term as “dangerous.”

TRUMP: After refusing to accept that Biden won, Trump hasn’t committed to accepting the 2024 results. He’s repeatedly promised to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants jailed for assaulting police officers and other crimes during the attack on the Capitol, and recently threatened to jail lawyers, election officials, donors and others “involved in unscrupulous behavior” surrounding November’s vote. He has lashed out at media organizations, threatening their broadcast licenses in response to debate questions and coverage he’s deemed unfair.

Trump has called his Democratic rivals the “enemy within” who are “more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.” He pledges to overhaul the Justice Department and FBI “from the ground up,” aggrieved by the criminal charges the department has brought against him. He promises to deploy the National Guard to cities such as Chicago that are struggling with violent crime and in response to protests, and has also pledged to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Biden.

Federal government

HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has campaigned hard against “Project 2025″ — a plan that Trump has denounced but that was written by leading conservatives and many of his former administration officials.

The plan lays out how to move as swiftly as possible to dramatically remake the federal government and push it to the right if Trump wins the White House. She is also part of an administration that is taking steps to make it harder for any mass firings of civil servants to happen. In April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a new rule that would ban federal workers from being reclassified as political appointees or other at-will employees, thus making them easier to dismiss. That was in response to Schedule F, a 2020 executive order from Trump that reclassified tens of thousands of federal workers to make firing them easier.

TRUMP: The former president has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, despite his close ties to many of its key architects. He has nonetheless pledged to undertake his own overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, which he has long blamed for blocking his first-term agenda, saying: “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” He plans to reissue the Schedule F order stripping civil service protections. He says he would then act 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 pledged to terminate the Education Department and wants to curtail the independence of regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission. As part of his effort to cut government waste and red tape, he has promised to eliminate at least 10 federal regulations for every new one imposed.

Immigration

HARRIS: Trying to defuse GOP criticism, Harris has said she would sign into law a bipartisan Senate compromise killed by Republican lawmakers at Trump’s request. It would have toughened asylum standards and meant more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers. She said she would bring back that bill and sign it, saying that Trump “talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk” on immigration.

Harris likes to talk up her experience as California attorney general, saying she walked drug smuggler tunnels and successfully prosecuted gangs that moved narcotics and people across the U.S.-Mexico border. Early in his term, Biden made Harris his administration’s point person on the root causes of migration. Trump and top Republicans now blame Harris for a situation at that border, which they say is out of control due to policies that were too lenient. Harris has endorsed a comprehensive immigration overhaul, seeking paths 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.

TRUMP: He has returned to the harsh immigration rhetoric that marked his previous campaigns. He promises to mount the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history, an operation that could involve detention camps and the National Guard. He would 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. He has called for the death penalty for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen.

Trump would revive and expand the travel ban that originally targeted citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, Trump pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs.” He would try to deport people who are in the U.S. legally but harbor “jihadist sympathies.” He would seek to end birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are both in the country illegally.

Israel and Gaza

HARRIS: Harris says Israel has a right to defend itself, and she’s repeatedly decried Hamas as a terrorist organization. But the vice president might have helped defuse some backlash from progressives by being more vocal about the need to better protect civilians during fighting in Gaza.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count, but says that women and children make up just over half of the dead. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants in the war.

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 war and they have endorsed a two-state solution, which would have Israel existing alongside an independent Palestinian state. But Biden is also confronting the prospect of a widening conflict in Lebanon and attacks by Iran even as they both see Israel’s recent killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as a reason for a cease-fire to be more likely.

TRUMP: He has expressed support for Israel’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas, but he’s also been critical of some of Israel’s tactics. He says the country must finish the job quickly and get back to peace. He has called for more aggressive responses to pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses and applauded police efforts to clear encampments. Trump also proposes to revoke the student visas of those who espouse antisemitic or anti-American views and deport those who support Hamas.

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 has 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. His Education Department issued a rule that says Title IX, the 1972 law protecting women’s rights, also bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That rule was silent on the issue of transgender athletes.

TRUMP: He 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 participating in the “chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth” no longer meets federal health and safety standards and is barred from receiving federal money. He would 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 and 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 his efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, particularly NATO, the military alliance that is a critical bulwark against Russian aggression.

The Biden administration has pledged unceasing support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. Washington has sent tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine, including $61 billion in weapons, ammunition and other assistance that is expected to last through the end of this year. The government has also reached an agreement with allies to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan — with $20 billion from the United States — that would be backed by frozen Russian financial assets.

The administration has maintained that continuing U.S. assistance is critical because Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not stop at invading Ukraine. 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. He has claimed, without explanation, that he will be able to end the war before his inauguration by bringing both sides to the negotiating table. (His approach seems to hinge on Ukraine giving up at least some of its Russian-occupied territory in exchange for a cease-fire.)

On NATO, he has assailed member nations for years for failing to meet agreed-upon military spending targets. 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 that he also “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.”

Tariffs and trade

HARRIS: The Biden-Harris administration has tried to boost trade with allies in Europe, Asia and North America, while using tariffs and other targeted tools to go after rivals such as China. The Democratic administration kept Trump’s tariffs on China in place, while adding a ban on exporting advanced computer chips to that country and providing incentives to boost U.S. industries.

In May, the administration specifically targeted China with increased tariffs on electric vehicles and steel and aluminum, among other products.

TRUMP: He 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.” He has suggested tariffs of 100% or more on Chinese goods. He treats these taxes as a way to fund other tax cuts, lower the deficit and possibly fund child care — though economists say the tariffs could raise prices for consumers without generating the revenues Trump promises.

Trump would urge Congress to pass legislation giving the president authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any country that imposes one on the U.S. Much of his trade agenda has focused on China. Trump has proposed phasing out Chinese imports of essential goods including electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals and wants to ban Chinese companies from owning U.S. infrastructure in sectors such as energy, technology and farmland.

Taxes

HARRIS: With much of the 2017 tax overhaul expiring at end of next year, Harris is pledging tax cuts for more than 100 million working and middle class households. In addition to preserving some of the expiring cuts, she wants to make permanent a tax credit of as much as $3,600 per child and offer a special $6,000 tax credit for new parents.

Harris says her administration would expand tax credits for first-time homebuyers and would push to build 3 million new housing units in four years, while wiping out taxes on tips and endorsing tax breaks for entrepreneurs. Like Biden, she wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% and the corporate minimum tax to 21%. The current corporate rate is 21% and the corporate minimum, raised under the Inflation Reduction Act, is at 15% for companies making more than $1 billion a year. But Harris would not increase the capital gains tax as much as Biden had proposed on investors with more than $1 million in income.

TRUMP: Trump has promised a slew of new tax cuts aimed at groups he has been trying to win over this election, including eliminating taxes on tips received by workers — a policy later embraced by Harris, who would also raise the minimum wage for tipped workers. Trump wants to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits and taxes on overtime pay, and has pledged to make interest on car loans tax-deductible like mortgage payments -– but only for cars built in the U.S.

The former president has promised to extend and even expand all of the 2017 tax cuts that he signed into law, while also paying down the debt. He has proposed cutting the overall corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%, but only for companies that make their products in the U.S. He would repeal any tax increases signed into law by Biden. He also aims to gut some of the tax breaks that Biden put into law to encourage the development of renewable energy and EVs.

He wants to lower the cost of housing by opening up federal land to development. Outside analyses suggest that Trump’s ideas would do much more to increase budget deficits than what Harris would do, without delivering the growth needed to minimize any additional debt.

​ Orange County Register 

Analysis: Iran faces tough choices in deciding how to respond to Israeli strikes

• October 27, 2024

By Adam Schreck | Associated Press

JERUSALEM — It’s Iran’s move now.

How the Islamic Republic chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli aerial assault on its homeland could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.

In the coldly calculating realm of Middle East geopolitics, a strike of the kind that Israel delivered before dawn Saturday would typically be met with a forceful response.

Retaliating militarily would allow Iran’s clerical leadership to show strength not only to its own citizens but also to Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the militant groups battling Israel that are the vanguard of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance.

It is too soon to say whether Iran’s leadership will follow that path.

Tehran may opt to hold back from forcefully retaliating directly for now, not least because doing so might reveal its weaknesses and invite a more potent Israeli response, analysts say.

“Iran will play down the impact of the strikes, which are in fact quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

She said Iran is “boxed in” by military and economic constraints, and the uncertainty caused by the U.S. election and its impact on American policy in the region.

Even while the Mideast wars rage, Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signaling his nation wants a new nuclear deal with the U.S. to ease crushing international sanctions.

A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military issued Saturday night appeared to offer some wiggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ultimate decision-maker, was also measured in his first comments on the strike Sunday. He said the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” and he stopped short of calling for an immediate military response.

Saturday’s strikes targeted Iranian air defense missile batteries and missile production facilities, according to the Israeli military.

With that, Israel has exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and can still step up its attacks, analysts say.

Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press indicate Israel’s raid damaged facilities at the Parchin military base southeast of Tehran that experts previously linked to Iran’s onetime nuclear weapons program and another base tied to its ballistic missile program.

Current nuclear facilities were not struck, however. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that on X, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been impacted.”

Israel has been aggressively bringing the fight to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, killing its leader and targeting operatives in an audacious exploding pager attack.

“Any Iranian attempt to retaliate will have to contend with the fact that Hezbollah, its most important ally against Israel, has been significantly degraded and its conventional weapons systems have twice been largely repelled,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, who expects Iran to hold its fire for now.

That’s true even if Israel held back, as appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks didn’t go far enough.

Regional experts suggested that Israel’s relatively limited target list was intentionally calibrated to make it easier for Iran to back away from escalation.

As Yoel Guzansky, who formerly worked for Israel’s National Security Council and is now a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, put it: Israel’s decision to focus on purely military targets “allows them to save face.”

Israel’s target choices may also be a reflection at least in part of its capabilities. It is unlikely able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own and would require help from the United States, Guzansky said.

Besides, Israel still has leverage to go after higher-value targets should Iran retaliate — particularly now that nodes in its air defenses have been destroyed.

“You preserve for yourself all kinds of contingency plans,” Guzansky said.

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor focused on Iran and the wider Middle East, wrote on X that the fact that Iranian media initially downplayed the strikes suggests Tehran may want to avoid further escalation. Yet it faces a dilemma.

“If it retaliates, it risks an escalation in which its weakness means it loses more,” he wrote. “If it does not retaliate, it projects a signal of weakness.”

Vakil agreed that Iran’s response was likely to be muted and that the strikes were designed to minimize the potential for escalation

“Israel has yet again shown its military precision and capabilities are far superior to that of Iran,” she said.

One thing is certain: The Mideast is in uncharted territory.

For decades, leaders and strategists in the Middle East leaders have speculated about if and how Israel might one day openly strike Iran, just as they wondered what direct attacks by Iran, rather than by its proxy militant groups, would look like.

Today, it’s a reality. Yet the playbook on either side isn’t clear, and may still be being written.

Related Articles

“There appears to be a major mismatch both in terms of the sword each side wields and the shield it can deploy,” Vaez said.

“While both sides have calibrated and calculated how quickly they climb the escalation ladder, they are in an entirely new territory now, where the new red lines are nebulous and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Adam Schreck, the Asia-Pacific news director for The Associated Press, spent years covering the Mideast and has reported from countries across the region, including both Iran and Israel.

​ Orange County Register 

Lakers’ strong start to be tested on 5-game trip after putting ‘the league on notice’

• October 27, 2024

LOS ANGELES — The Lakers haven’t started a season this well in more than a decade.

Their early-season momentum will be tested with their longest out-of-state trip of the season (a six-game trek this winter includes road games against Golden State and the Clippers), starting with Monday’s matchup against the Phoenix Suns at Footprint Center.

After the game against the Suns, the Lakers will play the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday, the Toronto Raptors on Friday and the Detroit Pistons on Nov. 4 before closing the trip against the Memphis Grizzlies on Nov. 6.

“I like where our team is,” Anthony Davis said. “Obviously, there’s a lot that we can clean up on both ends of the floor. But we’ll take the wins. I’d rather be able to clean up things with the win than over a loss.

“It’s been a tough three games, obviously, with three premier teams in the West. And we’ve been able to hold our own and put the league on notice that we’re a different team.”

Davis has been at the center of the Lakers’ early success, with home victories over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday, the Suns on Friday and the Sacramento Kings on Saturday.

The 31-year-old All-Star big man is averaging 34 points on 57.1% shooting from the field to go with 11 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 2.3 blocked shots and 1.7 steals, taking advantage of Coach JJ Redick making him a consistent focal point of the team’s offensive attack. He is getting to the free-throw line 15 times per game and shooting 80% there.

With his 31-point performance against the Kings, Davis became the fourth Laker to start a season with three consecutive 30-point performances, joining Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Kobe Bryant.

“He is the main focal point for us offensively and defensively,” teammate LeBron James said. “And we got to make sure we continue to get him involved. He coaching staff and JJ, they do a great job of always putting him in positions where him being a recipient of the offense.

“And when A.D. has it going, it’s our job as the ball handlers to continue to feed [him], find [him].”

The Lakers’ start is a dramatic shift from recent seasons in which they struggled through slow starts.

They didn’t pick up their third win last season until their fifth game then lost the following three. The Lakers’ third win in 2022-23 didn’t come until their 13th game. Their third win in 2021-22 didn’t come until their sixth game of that season.

The Lakers’ 3-0 record is their best start since 2010-11, when they started 8-0.

“I told you guys before the season [started], last year we kind of messed around like you guys saw,” forward Rui Hachimura said. “Just the lineup, everything like injuries and all that. And we didn’t have the mindset of ‘OK, let’s take No. 1 in West.’ We didn’t have the mindset. But I think [we’ve had] that since we started training camp.”

Even though their record is unblemished, the Lakers’ on-court performances can be crisper.

Related Articles

They had to erase a 22-point deficit to beat the Suns in their first matchup and relinquished a 15-point lead against the Kings before James and Davis spearheaded a comeback in the fourth.

“It’s a process still for us,” James said. “We’re still learning. We want to continue to get better and better every night and I think through three games we did that.

“But it’s going to be a tough road trip for us coming in. Eleven days, five games. There are some tough opponents. So, it will be a test for us.”

LAKERS at SUNS

When: Monday, 7 p.m.

Where: Footprint Center, Phoenix

TV/radio: NBA TV, Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers’ Ohtani expected to play in World Series Game 3

• October 27, 2024

NEW YORK — The Dodgers have hoped for the best on injuries all season only to be disappointed many times.Maybe not this time.

Sources with the team confirmed that Shohei Ohtani recovered well Sunday — “shockingly well,” one source said — from the partial dislocation of his left shoulder suffered during Game 2 of the World Series on Saturday night.

Ohtani was examined by doctors Sunday morning before heading to New York.

With an off day Sunday, it’s possible Ohtani could be in the Dodgers’ lineup for Game 3 on Monday at Yankee Stadium. According to one report, the Dodgers’ slugger has been cleared to play, manager Dave Roberts told ESPN in a text message Sunday. Roberts was set to speak to media at Yankee Stadium later Sunday.

Ohtani was injured sliding into second base when he was caught stealing to end the seventh inning of Saturday night’s 4-2 victory in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium.

Ohtani clutched his left forearm after being tagged by shortstop Anthony Volpe for the final out in the seventh on a feetfirst slide. He laid near the bag for a couple minutes before being tended to by trainers and leaving the field.

Roberts said on Saturday night that Ohtani “had a little left shoulder subluxation” and would get image testing either Saturday night or Sunday. Roberts said after the game he was encouraged that Ohtani had good strength and range of motion in the shoulder, but the team needed to see the results of his scans before knowing his status.

The Dodgers hold a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Series and is two wins shy of its second championship in five years.

The Japanese slugger — and presumptive National League MVP — was 0 for 3 with a walk in Game 2. He is 1 for 8 in the first two games of the Fall Classic and is batting .260 with three home runs and 10 RBIs in his first postseason in the majors.

Ohtani had been one of the few players on the Dodgers roster who got through the season without a major injury. The pitching staff has been beset by injuries, with nearly every member of the starting rotation spending time on the injured list.

Among the position players, Mookie Betts was out for nearly two months due to a broken left hand, and Max Muncy was out nearly half the season due to a right oblique strain. Freddie Freeman is playing in the postseason with a badly sprained right ankle.

Ohani has not pitched this year but became the first player in major league history with at least 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in a season.

Content from The Associated Press is included in this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Anaheim Halloween Parade marks 100 years

• October 27, 2024

For 100 years, the Anaheim Halloween Parade has put residents in the spirit.

The parade marched through downtown on Saturday night marking its centennial year, with crowds cheering and waiving from where they lined the route. Community groups and dignitaries, local schools and law enforcement all participated.

Many of the floats are throwbacks to earlier entries, recreated by volunteers who have helped in the last several years return the parade to showcase event.

The parade Saturday followed the annual Fall Festival on Center Street Promenade, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Tariffs should only be used sparingly and constitutionally

• October 26, 2024

Tariffs have become a huge issue in the presidential campaign. Last week, former President Trump recounted a phone conversation he had with French President Macron in 2019.  France had just passed a digital tax—imposed on those companies (mostly American like Amazon) that sold to customers in France through the internet. As President Trump told it, he called President Macron to say that in retaliation, he, President Trump, would impose a 100% tariff on imported French wines—and Macron immediately backed down.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden asked Congress for authority to impose a tariff on all goods imported from Russia. Congress overwhelmingly approved granting Biden that power; he used it, and Russian imports dropped 50% in a single year.

Tariffs certainly can work as a valuable threat in nations’  bilateral negotiations, though it was improbable that the threat of selling less caviar to Americans would dampen Putin’s expansionary designs on Ukraine. (The loss of sales by French wine exporters caused by a doubling of the price of each bottle, however, was politically insufferable to Macron.)

Nevertheless, each instance broke America’s promises under the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) treaty. The U.S., France, and Russia are all members of the WTO. As a member, America has agreed not to increase tariffs on another WTO member except in specific narrow circumstances, none of which applied. The one that came closest allows a tariff when imports challenge the survival of an industry important to American national security. However, punishing Russia, not protecting a domestic industry vital for America’s security, was clearly the purpose of Biden’s action.

Is it ever permissible for America knowingly to break its international trade agreements?  If so, should Congress or the president make the decision?

The whole idea of the WTO was to take away the tactic of threatening tariffs that could lead to trade wars. Trade wars do the greatest damage to a country that is targeted and does not retaliate. They do the next most damage to both countries who participate in imposing ever-higher tariffs on each other. They do least damage when they are constrained to a proportionate response, after a hearing before a WTO panel. President Trump, and President Biden, however, each felt he had to act quickly, to forestall a trade war (precipitated by the threatened French digital tax) or to stop a real war from continuing (Ukraine).

France could appeal Trump’s wine tariff to the WTO, and would likely eventually win, but Trump knew the pressure Macron would feel in the interim. So he ignored the WTO. Biden probably didn’t care if Russia chose to appeal to the WTO. Such a hearing on the world stage would allow the US to present evidence of how Russia’s massive human rights violations constituted a threat to our own national security. We might eventually lose that argument to Russia, but Putin had no percentage in raising it.

Related Articles

The second question focuses on the fact that Biden had Congress behind him and, while Trump might have, he  didn’t ask. The US Constitution unambiguously gives Congress the authority to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”  In the case of a declared emergency, Congress has given the president the right to block imports entirely, but Congress has not conceded its general tariff power to the president. However, a threat by Trump to block the importation of all French wine in order to help Amazon would not have been credible (American oenophiles would have risen in revolt); but doubling the price of a bottle of French wine might actually have won Trump votes (at least in Temecula), while making French wine even more of a luxury. Still, he should have asked for Congress’ approval.

All nations sometimes break commitments they make to other nations. America should do so sparingly and constitutionally, in order to preserve the credibility of our word and encourage resort to international dispute resolution.

Tom Campbell is a professor of law and of economics at Chapman University. He has taught international trade law at Stanford Law School, where he was a tenured professor. He served in the US Congress for five terms, including on the international relations, joint economic, and judiciary committees.

​ Orange County Register 

For some OC congressional candidates, the abortion debate’s pivot to IVF treatment is personal

• October 26, 2024

Turn on a TV, and you’re sure to be instantaneously hit with a campaign ad. And chances are, it’s about abortion.

But this election cycle, the conversation — and attack ads as well — has pivoted. It’s not just abortion that candidates are being asked to address, but reproductive health care more broadly, particularly access to fertility treatments.

Related links

Orange County Register’s November 5, 2024 General Election Voter Guide
In the race for Rep. Michelle Steel’s seat, how abortion is shaping up to be a key issue
Republicans are trying a new approach to abortion in the race for Congress
Southern California responds to Supreme Court dismantling Roe v. Wade

“We’ve certainly been wanting candidates to talk about their positions on sexual and reproductive health care and the full scope of what that means,” said Jennifer Wonnacott, with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

Across the six congressional races in Orange County, nearly every candidate said they would work to protect access to in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments if elected, when asked in a questionnaire by the Register.

And for some, it’s a deeply personal issue.

Rep. Michelle Steel is the Republican incumbent in California’s 45th congressional district, one of the most closely watched races in the nation this cycle — and she’s also a mother of two. She turned to IVF, she said in a campaign ad, when she and her husband struggled to start a family.

“For us, it was a miracle,” Steel said in the 30-second spot. “And today, we are blessed with two wonderful daughters.”

For Joe Kerr, it was IVF that brought him his son, Joey.

“Without access to fertility treatments and conception alternatives like IVF, I would not have my son,” Kerr, a Democrat vying for California’s 40th congressional district, said. “I would not have a family.”

“I am a grandma because of IVF,” said Rep. Young Kim, the incumbent in CA-40.

There are myriad reasons why access to fertility treatments — as opposed to just abortion — has become somewhat of a flashpoint this election cycle: the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to ban abortion; the Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that caused hospitals to halt IVF treatments until a new law could be passed; both presidential candidates weighing in on access to fertility treatments, particularly IVF.

“No issue exists on an island,” said Dan Schnur, a former campaign consultant who teaches about political messaging at UC Berkeley and USC. “Once a discussion starts about how to handle a particular policy matter, it naturally grows to encompass other related policy areas, too.”

“If a candidate is talking about the economy, it’s difficult for them to limit the conversation to just jobs or taxes or inflation because they’re all moving pieces of a broader whole,” he added. “The same thing exists in this issue area.”

For women younger than 30, abortion has emerged as a top issue, according to a recent survey by KFF, a health policy organization that surveyed voters across the country last month.

It was an important topic for voters, too, in the 2022 midterm elections, but this is the first presidential race since the Supreme Court issued its ruling changing the landscape for abortion access. And in those two years, just how that ruling has impacted other health care decisions, like fertility treatments, has been on full display.

“Two years ago, congressional candidates in both parties were talking about these issues, but they weren’t being asked to out-shout (former President Donald) Trump or (Vice President Kamala) Harris,” said Schnur. “A candidate running in a competitive House district is going to be trying to appeal to much different voters than Harris or Trump at the national level. Sometimes their messages are the same, but often they’re not, especially on issues like these.”

Trump has said he supports access to fertility treatments and has vowed that the government would either pay for treatments like IVF or mandate that insurance companies cover them.

Orange County’s Republican congressional candidates, too, particularly in tight races, have promised to support access to treatments.

“I support access to IVF and believe this should be an issue left to each state to determine appropriate guidelines for health and safety,” said Scott Baugh, a candidate in California’s 47th congressional district, one of the most closely watched races in the nation.

Matt Gunderson, in the 49th congressional district, has campaigned as a pro-choice Republican. He said he believes abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” and women should be able to make their own health care choices.

“I am strongly opposed to any federal ban on IVF or abortion, as I believe that these decisions should remain in the hands of individuals, not the government,” Gunderson said. “It is essential to safeguard the rights and freedoms of women in making deeply personal choices about their own bodies and futures.”

And Steel, who has been in Congress since 2020, noted that she has co-sponsored legislation that would require private insurance plans to cover IVF and lead a resolution expressing support for the fertility treatment.

But her critics note that she had signed on to co-sponsor a bill that “declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being” and defines that as “including the moment of fertilization, cloning or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” She faced backlash for adding her name to the bill, that could threaten access to IVF, and she ultimately withdrew her name from it.

Derek Tran, the Democratic contender in the race for CA-45, said he believes Congress should ensure “necessary medical services are accessible and protected, allowing every woman to make decisions about her body and her family’s future without facing prohibitive barriers or inequities.”

“Right now, there are extremists in Congress who want politicians to make these kinds of personal medical decisions for women,” he said.

Rep. Mike Levin, the incumbent in the CA-49 race, noted that he brought an IVF doctor to the State of the Union earlier this year.

“I’m doing everything I can to draw attention to the anti-choice threat to IVF and fight that threat,” Levin said.

“Women deserve every right to determine what’s best for themselves, their bodies and their families, not the government,” said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana. “Fundamentally, these decisions, and a woman’s right to choose, are best left to a woman, her doctor and her God.”

Parmis Khatibi, a conservative voter and president of the California Women’s Leadership Association, said she’s looking for candidates to advocate for both women and children — throughout pregnancy and after birth. For her, that includes things like childcare assistance, mental health support fertility treatments.

“Financial concerns should not be the reason a woman decides to end the life of their unborn child,” Khatibi said. “I think we want (to see) a plan to restore hope in America’s promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.”

Find all 12 candidates’ answers to our question about protections for fertility treatment — and how they weighed in on other issues like immigration, cost of living and artificial intelligence – on our Voter Guide.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Susan Shelley: Democrats are back to crying ‘Hitler’

• October 26, 2024

This week, Kamala Harris stepped outside the door of the Naval Observatory, the official residence of the Vice president of the United States, to announce that she knows “who Donald Trump really is.”

There is “further evidence for the American people,” she said, “from the people who know him best.”

His family? His longtime business associates? The New York tabloids?

No. According to the vice president, the people who know him best are “the people who worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room.”

That seems unlikely.

This new evidence of “who Donald Trump really is” comes from John Kelly. He joined the Trump administration in 2017 as secretary of Homeland Security, then a few months later was named White House chief of staff. On Dec. 8, 2018, Trump announced that Kelly was out.

But Kelly certainly doesn’t hold a grudge over being fired. Not at all. It’s just that he happened to remember, two weeks before the 2024 election, that Trump admires Hitler.

“He said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had,” Kamala Harris intoned in her most serious voice.

Harris was repeating the story that Kelly told The Atlantic. One of the major investors in that publication is billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who happens to be Harris’s longtime friend and donor.

Kelly also told the story to The New York Times, a newspaper that won’t return the Pulitzer it won for reporting the completely false story that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. In actuality, that story was cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign, which was later fined by the Federal Election Commission for falsely reporting the fees it was charged for fabricating the story as if those bills were legal expenses.

Hillary was back at it this week, telling CNN that Trump’s upcoming New York rally, to be held at Madison Square Garden, is exactly like a pro-Nazi rally that was held at that venue by the German-American Bund on Feb. 20, 1939.

In mid-October, longtime Clinton family confidante and campaign advisor James Carville told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if he was advising the Harris campaign, he’d “have a flood of people say,” that Trump is “holding a rally in Madison Square Garden that, I’m sorry, is a mimic of a rally held on February 20, 1939, by the American Nazi Party. And we’ve got to quit being timid about making these connections that he is going out of his way to make.”

That’s exactly what happened. A week later, there was Kamala Harris in front of the official residence of the vice president of the United States, reading aloud, “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Harris called it “a window into who Donald Trump really is.”

“It gives us a window into how Donald Trump thinks,” former President Barack Obama said at a Harris campaign rally in Atlanta on Thursday, after repeating the John Kelly story about Trump wanting Hitler’s generals. Obama went on to list other former officials who worked for Trump (and were fired) and who now are happy to tell MSNBC that Trump is a “fascist.”

Trump flatly denied making the comments Kelly attributed to him, posting online that Kelly had “made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred!” The former president wrote, “This guy had two qualities, which don’t work well together. He was tough and dumb.”

Let me take you back to the spring of 2016, when first-time candidate Donald Trump was chosen by GOP primary voters over a busload of candidates with years or decades of government experience. Then in September, in the first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, Trump called Clinton’s endorsers “political hacks that I see that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years with their knowledge,” adding, “Look at the mess that we’re in.”

So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that Trump didn’t always take the advice of the bipartisan “so brilliantly” crowd when he was in the White House, or that they want the former president to lose this election. If he’s re-elected on Nov. 5, many of those people will not have jobs in the government for at least another four years, and that’s their best-case scenario. For anyone who has been cashing in with corrupt or sketchy dealings, unemployment could be the least of their problems if Trump returns as the nation’s chief executive on Jan. 20.

Considering how little credibility these national security names had back in 2016, it’s not likely they’ll persuade many voters by becoming part of James Carville’s “flood of people” repeating the absurd talking point that Trump is copying Hitler. Trump was president for four years and the total absence of death camps, world wars and round-ups of political enemies was hard to miss.

Related Articles

Apparently Trump was so busy moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and negotiating the Abraham Accords to bring normalized relations to Israel and its Arab neighbors that he completely forgot to invade Poland.

This all leaves one important question unanswered.

When the Democrats discover that calling Trump “Hitler” doesn’t convince anyone to vote for Kamala Harris, what next?

They could try calling him Lord Voldemort. Or Lex Luthor.

How about Professor Moriarty?

Snidely Whiplash? O.J. Simpson? Alan Brady from “The Dick Van Dyke Show”?

Face it, Hitler is a hard act to follow. Once a campaign starts calling its opponent and his supporters Nazis, it’s time to ring down the curtain. If the latest polls in the battleground states are correct, this show is over.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register