NATIONAL NEWS

Kamala Harris says Trump’s comments on women ‘are offensive to everybody’

Oct 31, 2024, 8:48 AM | Updated: Nov 1, 2024, 1:18 am

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign ral...

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Trump appointed three of the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, Trump has taken to boasting at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion.”

At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”

He told the crowd that he told aides: “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.’”

Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump. “This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, particularly as women nationwide face abortion restrictions that have gone far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Trump has given contradictory answers, saying that women should be punished for having abortions and bragging about appointing the justices. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters if elected he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”

But he’s also in recent weeks promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He’s said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough.”

National News

A pumpjack operates in the foreground as wind turbines at the Buckeye Wind Energy wind farm rise in...

Associated Press

Trump 2.0 will alter global climate fighting efforts. Will others step up?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global efforts to fight climate change stumbled but survived the last time Donald Trump was elected president and withdrew the United States from an international climate agreement. Other countries, states, cities and businesses picked up some of the slack. But numerous experts worry that a second Trump term will be more damaging, […]

41 minutes ago

FILE - A voter deposits his voting machine activation card into a box after casting his ballot at a...

Associated Press

AP VoteCast: How Donald Trump built a winning 2024 coalition

WASHINGTON (AP) — Big shifts within small groups and small shifts within big groups helped propel Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The Republican candidate won by holding onto his traditional coalition — white voters, voters without a college degree and older voters — while making crucial gains among younger voters and Black and […]

1 hour ago

Associated Press

Southern California wildfire destroys 132 structures as officials look for fierce winds to subside

CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — Southern California firefighters working to contain a wildfire that has destroyed 132 structures in two days could be assisted by a forecast of fierce wind gusts easing early Friday, officials said. The Mountain Fire started Wednesday morning in Ventura County and had grown to 32 square miles (about 83 square kilometers) […]

3 hours ago

FILE - President Joe Biden talks with the U.S. Border Patrol and local officials, as he looks over ...

Associated Press

Judge strikes down Biden administration program shielding immigrant spouses from deportation

A federal judge on Thursday struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to apply […]

4 hours ago

Associated Press

Llamas on the loose on Utah train tracks after escaping owner

PROVO, Utah (AP) — A small herd of domestic llamas was spotted taking an evening stroll on the train tracks in Provo, Utah, on Thursday after the woolen creatures escaped from their owner, according to the Utah Transit Authority. Several emergency responders were dispatched to round up the five llamas after transit officials received reports […]

7 hours ago

FILE - A hearse and debris can be seen at the rear of the Return to Nature Funeral Home, Oct. 5, 20...

Associated Press

The Colorado funeral home owners accused of letting 190 bodies decompose are set to plead guilty

DENVER (AP) — The husband and wife owners of a funeral home accused of piling 190 bodies inside a room-temperature building in Colorado while giving grieving families fake ashes were expected to plead guilty Friday, charged with hundreds of counts of corpse abuse. The discovery last year shattered families’ grieving processes. The milestones of mourning […]

7 hours ago

Kamala Harris says Trump’s comments on women ‘are offensive to everybody’