“It doesn’t have to be this way”

Vice President Harris closes with appeal to Trump-exhausted Americans at the scene where the former president incited the Jan. 6 attack four years ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the closing argument speech of her presidential campaign at the Ellipse in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Oct. 30.

👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. The election is in six days. Here’s what’s happening today:

• The House and Senate are out.

• President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing this morning before holding a meeting on his administration’s support for Hispanic-Serving Institutions. The president and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will host local area students, military-connected children, and neighborhood families for trick-or-treating this evening at the White House.

• Vice President Kamala Harris will host Get Out the Vote rallies in Raleigh, NC, and Harrisburg, PA, before traveling to Madison, WI, for a rally and concert featuring musical performances by Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons, Remi Wolf, and The National’s Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner.

• Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) will join Good Morning America and CBS Mornings this morning. He will speak at a campaign event this afternoon in Charlotte, NC before traveling to Greensboro, NC, to participate in an additional series of campaign events. The governor will travel to Asheville, NC, this evening to speak at a campaign event.

• Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will speak at an event with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and later at a volunteer phone bank in North Las Vegas.

• Mrs. Gwen Walz will appear on the CBS daytime talk show The Talk to discuss her experiences campaigning for the Harris-Walz ticket, her personal fertility journey and reproductive freedom.

Several congressional Democrats will campaign for the Harris-Walz ticket today in key battleground states. Here’s a handy guide to who will be where:

• Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ): The senator will be joined by former Rep. Gabby Giffords(D-AZ) and Rep. Ruben Gallego in Maryvale, AZ for a volunteer appreciation event.

• Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV): The senator will join Latino community members at the polls to cast her ballot in Las Vegas.

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): The congresswoman, filmmaker Spike Lee, state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-PA), Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and Business Manager of the Laborers’ District Council Ryan N. Boyer will rally Black Philadelphians around Vice President Harris’s economic agenda.

• Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA): Houlahan will join a Veterans for Harris-Walz press call on Zoom.

• Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI): Baldwin, who’s up for reelection in a must-win seat for Senate Democrats, will be in Outagamie, Fond du Lac, and Sauk County, WI, for early vote events.

---

Inside this edition:

• Harris closes with appeal to Trump-exhausted Americans

• House Democrats introduce bill to reinforce protections for reproductive health clinics

• The DNC launches a seven-figure ad campaign across nearly 50 lifestyle publications

• The Harris campaign activates the Sphere

---

● ○ ○ ○

When the Harris campaign announced last week that the vice president would hold a rally at the Ellipse—the location where Donald Trump delivered his marching orders to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol as part of the former president’s scheme to hold on to power—skepticism emerged online and in private conversations with Democratic sources on whether she should be in the nation’s capital a week before Election Day instead of one of the swing states critical to her path to victory.

But the visual of the White House behind Harris as she addressed 75,000 people—more than twice as many as attended a rally featuring Beyoncé in Houston days earlier—in what the campaign described as her closing argument spoke louder than any of the 2,814 words in her prepared remarks.

Harris looked the part: poised, presidential, purposeful. But in a coin-flip election less than a week away, she knew her words had to match the backdrop.