To deter such a situation, I believe our efforts in that regard is most important.
In collaboration with the international community, we are engaged in strategic communication and coordinating independent sanctions.
These activities have exactly that situation.
It deterrence of that situation in mind as the top priority.
And once that's done, as to what kind of actions to be taken, I will have to repeat the principle that I've already told you about.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
And a live picture now from Lee's Family Forum in Henderson, Nevada, where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally this evening.
We'll have live coverage of that when it begins here on C-SPAN.
The sun is hot, the old clock is moving slow, and so am I. Nasses like molasses in wintertime, but it's July, and over about a minute, my boss just pushed me over the limit.
I'd like to call him something, I think I'll just call it a day.
I'd like to call him something tall and strong, make it a hurricane before I go insane.
We are back discussing now ballot initiatives.
And according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, there are 147 ballot measures on the ballots next Tuesday in 41 states.
Here to talk more about that is Reed Wilson, founder and editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.
Let's begin with abortion ballot measures.
How many states have them?
And what do most of them do?
Yeah, so there are 10 states that have abortion-related measures on the ballot.
In all 10 states, there is some version of a measure to protect abortion rights, to codify it either in state law or most of them in the state constitution.
There's one state, interestingly, that also has a ballot measure opposing, restricting abortion rights, and that's Nebraska.
So Nebraska has dueling initiatives there, one to codify abortion rights, one to restrict them further.
And the Secretary of State there has said that if they both pass, which is a distinct possibility, the one that gets the most affirmative votes will supersede the other one.
But these abortion measures are interesting because in the two years since Roe was struck down, every time abortion rights or restrictions have been on the ballot, the pro-abortion rights side of the question has won.
So I'm not just talking about blue states like California and Vermont.
We're also talking about formerly swing states like Ohio, which passed a measure to codify abortion rights.
And then even some very conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky that rejected initiatives last year that would have rolled back or restricted abortion rights.
This year, some of the key states could be our presidential battleground states, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.
Florida is sort of iffy on the battleground category, but those states all have abortion rights measures on the ballot.
Also, some bluer states, Colorado, Maryland, and then some red states, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, as I said, New York and South Dakota, New York on the blue state side.
Could when you have these ballot initiatives related to abortion as they've had since Roe, which party do they tend to help?
So there's not a lot of research about whether or not ballot measures actually pull people out to the polls.
There's really only one good example that we can look to historically, and that was in 2004 when I think it was 11 states had measures on the ballot to ban same-sex marriage across the country in George W. Bush's reelection term.
There's a political scientist at Western Washington University named Todd Donovan who studied that and found that those initiatives didn't pull out a ton of people who might have otherwise stayed home to vote, but they might have pulled out a few tens of thousands in some swing states like Ohio.
And remember that Ohio was the key to Bush's re-election, and he only won it by, I think it was 100,000 votes that year.
This year, though, we're going to have a lot of states that are closer than that 100,000 votes in Ohio.
And so if abortion rights measures pull out, say, 5,000 young women who might not have showed up to vote, or young men for that matter, who might not have showed up to vote, who are probably disposed to vote for a Democratic candidate, that 5,000 votes could very well make the difference in the presidency.
Well, here's an interesting article front page of the Washington Post related to this, the women backing abortion referendums and Trump splitting their ticket.
Yeah, there's some interesting sort of game theory happening here that, and that I know a few Democrats who are worried about it, that if you show up to the polls and you support abortion rights, well, one of these amendments is a great way to make sure that your elected official can't restrict abortion rights.
So it sort of offers a permission structure, if you will, to vote in favor of abortion rights, but also in favor of, say, a Republican candidate who might not favor abortion rights.
You're saving it in the Constitution, and then you can vote for whomever you like.
What about the prospects of this impacting the Senate race in Montana?
And explain the importance of this Montana Senate race.
Right.
So the U.S. Senate right now is split 51-49 for Democrats.
Democrats are likely to lose a seat in West Virginia, so make that a 50-50 Senate.
If Senator John Tester loses his reelection race in Montana, that's pretty much the ballgame.
That means Republicans would control the next U.S. Senate.
If this abortion rights measure is able to bring out a whole bunch of voters who might not have showed up otherwise, then it might help John Tester.
Tester, though, has never crossed 50% of the vote in any of his elections, and he's usually been helped by a third-party candidate, a Libertarian or something, siphoning votes from the Republican side.
There is no such third-party candidate this time around.
So he faces a really tough road to reelection, even with something like this, like an abortion rights measure on the ballot.
Because he's in a red state.
He is the Democrat in the reddest state, with the exception of Joe Manchin, who I guess is no longer a Democrat.
So now I can say that Tester is.
After the abortion initiatives, what other initiatives are high-profile that you're watching that could have an impact?
Yeah, well, let's start with marijuana.
That's been a prominent issue on ballots in a lot of the country over the years.
There are three states where it'll be up this year, Florida, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
And this is interesting because in a lot of the states where marijuana has been on the ballot, or marijuana legalization has been on the ballot, it's passed by a pretty substantial margin.
These three states are going to be a big challenge for legalization supporters.
First of all, in Florida, because state law requires a 60% threshold.
So if it gets 50 plus one, sorry, that's no good.
You didn't reach a 60% threshold and it fails.
North Dakota and South Dakota have both defeated prior legalization measures with more than 50% of the vote.
So in all three of these cases, it's a little questionable whether or not they can pass legalization.
Even if they do, though, the legalization supporters then have a further challenge in that they're pretty much running out of states where they can run a ballot initiative.
Not every state allows citizens to circulate a petition and get a measure on the ballot.
And so they would have to switch focus and pay attention to state legislatures.
Only a small handful of legislatures, New York, New Jersey, have passed legalization measures.
Politicians don't like voting in favor of marijuana.
In fact, the governors of Washington and Colorado, the first two states that legalized POT, were not in favor of it.
Both pretty liberal Democrats were not in favor of legalization.
So getting through the legislature can be tricky.
If the legalization folks have success in Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota, they're going to have to start looking to politicians to get the other states on board with legalization.
And Florida's interesting on the marijuana and the abortion ballot initiatives because the governor there, Ron DeSantis, is campaigning hard against those two ballot initiatives.
He's literally running the campaign against both of these measures.
The State Department of Health a few weeks ago warned television stations not to run advertisements for the pro-abortion rights measure, saying that they were inaccurate.
A federal judge told the State Department of Health to stop doing that.
But as I look at the campaign finance reports, the campaigns against the abortion rights measure and against the marijuana measure are predominantly being funded by Ron DeSantis' political campaign.
And they're being run by his chief of staff.
So he's weighing in.
Politico said he's, you know, that his political future is at stake here on these initiatives.
I don't know about that.
I mean, voters do things that their governors don't always like or enjoy.
I feel like if DeSantis signed an abortion restriction measure, if he wants to come back and run for president in 2028, he'll point to that rather than this ballot measure.
So I don't know that his political future is at stake.
Well, let's talk about non-citizen voting and the eight states that have that issue on the ballot.
Yeah, and those states are all led by Republican state legislatures.
And this is another way that measures can get to the ballot.
It's not just circulating a petition and asking voters to sign it.
Legislatures can refer a question to the ballot.
So in these states, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, Republican state legislatures have forwarded those measures to the ballot.
And what those measures would do would prevent non-citizen voting, and this is important, in state and local elections.
Non-citizen voting is already illegal at the federal level.
There are very few municipalities in places like California, Vermont, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. that allow non-citizens to vote on local issues, school boards, city councils, things like that.
No state allows non-citizens to vote in, say, gubernatorial elections or anything like that.
But these measures are effectively meant to prime voters, just like the abortion measures in some respect, to prime voters to be thinking about an issue that Republicans want them to think about.
They want these voters to be thinking about immigration as they go in and cast a ballot on the presidential race because that issue favors President Trump, former President Trump, by a wide margin.
Just again to reiterate, there is no non-citizen voting allowed in federal elections or statewide elections anywhere in the entire country.
So just want to be clear on that.
Well, let's turn our attention to our viewers and what they have to say about these ballot initiatives.
If you're in a state where you have voted or you plan to vote for one of the ballot initiatives we just talked about, or if there's another one that you want to bring up, we want to hear from you this morning.
Catherine in St. Joseph, Michigan, Republican.
Hi, Catherine.
Hi there.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, Mr. Walton.
Hi there.
I have a question for you, and I hope you can answer it or tell me where I can get an answer.
It's been brought to my attention most recently that our ballots are being taken off out of the polls and counted in another building.
I've had relatives, my father worked the polls, my aunts had worked the polls, and I can remember them staying to 12, 1 o'clock in the morning counting the ballots.
And now, you know, they're taking them off the premises, and they're counting the votes in other places.
Catherine, I think, Catherine, I think you should call your Secretary of State office to find out more about that.
Reed Wilson here to talk about ballot initiatives that folks like you and others will be voting on when you vote for candidates this election cycle.
Ava in Chicago, Democratic caller.
Ava in Chicago, Democratic caller, you're up.
All right, one last call for Ava.
Are you there?
All right, moving on.
Dave in Las Vegas, independent.
I got a question for him.
When Trump tried to overthrow the government and he wants to get rid of the Constitution, which is the highest law in the land, does that make he is definitely authoritarian communist?
He is definitely, people call other people communists, but he's definitely a communist.
And how can he get away with 34 thousands, sexually assault no moments, and all this stuff, and people are going to vote for him?
All right.
Dave there in Las Vegas.
I have a text here from a viewer, California independent voter.
Is Mr. Wilson familiar with Proposition 36 on the ballot here in California?
It's going to win by over 70 percent and recriminalizes some petty theft crimes.
Yeah, this is a really interesting conversation that's been happening in California for a long time now.
I should also say, by the way, California is the home of the most expensive ballot measures in every election.
Some of these measures can get up to, there was a sports betting measure in California a couple of years ago that cost all combined about half a billion dollars, and it failed miserably.
The campaign for it.
They spent that amount of money.
The campaigns, well, it was this complicated, there were several ballot initiatives all sponsored by different groups that backed sports betting that was run by themselves.
So the big guys, the draft kings and fan duel, the tribes, local governments all had their own initiatives.
They spent a total of half a billion dollars on it all combined, and everybody's initiative lost by a big margin.
So big money doesn't always win campaigns.
On the Prop 36, so Prop 36 would repeal a criminal justice reform measure passed close to a decade ago that lowered penalties for some crimes.
Now as the focus has returned to retail theft and you see these videos on local news about smash and grab invasions of luxury goods stores and things like that, California voters are being asked to repeal that and to reinstate some of the higher penalties.
Governor Gavin Newsom doesn't like this.
The legislature is working on its own plan to raise penalties for some of these crimes, but it's very popular in California and it's probably going to pass 70%.
I don't think he's terribly far off there.
And this underscores a point about ballot measures and how they're used.
The average voter does not conform neatly into the policy verticals of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
We pick and choose.
We're sort of naturally, we want maybe we favor this thing that Democrats like and this thing that Republicans like as individuals.
And so in a very red state or in a very blue state, ballot measures are a way that the minority party can get one of their issues on the ballot and pass it despite a reluctant legislature that's never going to bring it up.
The ballot initiative is the way Western states got out from under the control of the robber barons and the Timber Barons back in the progressive era.
So this is why I love talking about this stuff.
It shows the nuance of American politics in a way that we don't otherwise see.
And Reed Wilson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.
Here's another viewer in Diana, New Jersey.
The Florida marijuana bill was written by a private company and has restrictions for other growers.
I don't know that it has restrictions for other growers.
I'm not saying she's wrong in that assertion, but I will say that that initiative is being funded almost entirely by a company called True Leave, which is one of the largest pot producers in America.
They're based in Florida.
They've got a big part of the Florida medical marijuana market.
They would presumably have a big part of the recreational marijuana market.
And this underscores another point about ballot initiatives: yes, you, the citizen, can go put a ballot measure on the ballot that favors your position.
So can a big company, and so can an interest group pushing a ballot measure.
I'm reminded of a legalization, a marijuana legalization measure that came up in Ohio a number of years ago, eight or nine years ago now, that was largely backed by venture capitalist firms in New York who wanted basically a monopoly on the Ohio marijuana market, which would have been extremely lucrative for them.
And they ran it almost like a VC fund.
Like it was not a well-run campaign.
And at the very end, they debuted a mascot named Bud, who was actually a rolled-up joint, a guy in a rolled-up joint suit.
It was very bizarre.
They lost.
And Ohio subsequently passed a different marijuana legalization measure a couple years later.
But this underscores the point that, and I talk about the California betting measure, and now we've got this True Leave company in Florida.
Big corporations can use the ballot initiative just like everybody else, and they can do it in a way that benefits themselves financially.
Jones says, please address Florida's Amendment 12 regarding hunting and fishing.
So if I'm not mistaken, this is a hunting and fishing, the right to hunt and fish, a measure that's been on the ballot in a number of mostly red states, and they've passed by huge margins, 80 or 90 percent, in most states, especially with traditions of outdoors, outdoorsism, if you will.
Lawrenceville, Georgia, Charles Democratic Caller.
We're talking about ballot initiatives.
Charles, go ahead.
Good morning, Mr. Reed.
Good morning.
My question is: how is it that a convicted felon is able to legally run in a presidential election?
Well, I'll tell you, he was convicted of a felony at the state level, and beyond that, I am not a legal expert.
So I'm going to stick to these ballot measures.
Georgia, by the way, was one of the, I think I'm right in saying, the first state to hold a ballot measure back in something like 1789.
Ballot measures have been around for a long time.
Here is BC Venice.
Do any states have ballot measures relaxing regulations on child labor?
Right to work for less states have already lost children from this.
I'm not aware of relaxing standards on child labor.
That has been a thing that's made it through some state legislatures in recent years, especially in Ohio, Florida.
Oh, I'm going to blank on the rest of the states.
But that is relaxing some standards on child labor have made it through state legislatures.
I haven't seen any on the ballot this year.
Which states don't allow ballot initiatives and why?
It's about half the states, mostly on the East Coast, mostly in I think it's fair to say that the Midwest and the South, and I think a lot of it is history.
It's, you know, the progressive era ushered in basically the modern idea of ballot measures as ways to influence public policy.
You know, people like California Governor Hiram Johnson was a big supporter of direct democracy.
And so a lot of states adopted those rules early on.
Eastern states typically sort of solidified their political identities 100 years before that when voting on a ballot measure would have been, well, when voting on anything was a really big deal.
And we have elections on Tuesdays because that was market day and things like that.
So ballot measures are sort of a more modern but not terribly modern way of conducting public policy.
Anthony in Boston, thoughts on Massachusetts question number five regarding minimum wage for tipped workers.
Thoughts on how this has succeeded in other states?
So minimum wage is on the ballot in something to do with the minimum wage.
It's on the ballot in five states this year.
Alaska and Missouri would raise the minimum wage to $15, California to $18.
And in Massachusetts and Arizona, the measures have to do with how much you pay a tipped worker, that is, say, a restaurant server, who under the state law in most states can make less than minimum wage on the presumption that the tips will make up that difference on an hourly basis.
I haven't seen a measures specifically dealing with tipped workers in the past, but betting against a raise on the minimum wage is a very bad bet because since 2000, there are like 26 or 27 ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage in states across the country, in the reddest states and the bluest states.
Every single one has passed.
There is not a single minimum wage hike that has not passed since the turn of the century.
So that tells you that betting against minimum wage hikes, not a good place to put your wagers.
People want to dig into ballot initiatives.
Will they find that on Pluribus News?
What else will they find there?
Right.
We have a preview of all the ballot initiatives that are up this year on our site this morning, pluribusnews.com.
We also are the only nonpartisan independent outlet in America that covers state legislatures.
And at a time when Congress is so broken and so dysfunctional, the states are really stepping up and taking on public policy.
I mean, we talk about child labor laws.
That should be the purview of the feds, right?
Well, their feds aren't doing anything, so the states are stepping in.
Same thing on issues like artificial intelligence and data privacy and nuclear energy.
The federal government isn't doing things on this.
The states are stepping up.
That's why we think it's important to cover state legislatures.
You're tracking legislation at the state level.
How are you able to do that?
Well, we read a lot of newspapers every day, and we focus on a lot of bill filings that come through.
But our theory is that state legislatures are not silos.
You know, what happens in, we've had calls from Nevada today, so what happens in Carson City or from Georgia, what happens in Atlanta, they don't stay there.
These legislatures are looking across the country to their friends and colleagues in other states to get their next big ideas.
So if you see an issue that pops up in Sacramento or Albany or Austin today, it's going to show up in 25 states next year and federally the year after that.
Consider these bills over the last couple of years to restrict transgender rights in a lot of states.
You might recall that that bill came up in North Carolina about a decade ago, and the fur was incredible.
Everybody yelled and screamed about it, made a big deal, and eventually North Carolina repealed what they called their bathroom bill.
Well, when it comes up in 25 states, you can't focus that attention and that pressure on all of those states.
So what I think Democrats and Republicans have learned is that if they share ideas widely and pass them quickly, that a whole bunch of states can sort of set the direction for federal policy before Congress gets its act in gear to elect a speaker.
Here is a viewer, Scott, in Massachusetts, with the question.
There is a ballot initiative to not have a standardized test for graduate high schoolers.
How many states have a test requirement to graduate high school?
That is a very good question.
I know there has been a push lately to require passage of the American Civics Test, the test that any aspiring citizen would have to take to become a citizen.
There's a push in a lot of states to require that as a requirement for graduation.
I don't know about the Massachusetts one is called MCAS.
I think it's just a pretty standardized test.
The campaign to repeal it, excuse me, to take it out of the requirements is being funded largely by teachers unions.
The campaign to keep it in place, that is to reject this ballot measure, is being funded in part by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who just dropped, I think it was $2.5 million into the opposition campaign.
The campaign in Massachusetts that I'm more interested in is the ballot measure that would legalize psychedelics and mushrooms.
It's been tried in a few states already, Colorado, Oregon, here in Washington, D.C. We'll see how it does in Massachusetts.
Another one that you're watching is property taxes in Colorado.
Talk about that.
There are a lot of property taxes, property tax bills in Colorado, sorry, in states across the country.
And the specifics of the Colorado one are going to elude me, but the point is this is a way that a lot of those interest groups, as sort of anti-tax interest groups, can get measures on the ballot and create real havoc with state budgets.
There's one measure in North Dakota this year, I hope I'm not misspeaking, I hope it's not South Dakota, that would effectively repeal all property taxes.
And the hit, you can imagine, the hit to the state budget that that would do, even in a Republican state where they like to keep taxes low, eliminating something altogether, that's going to blow a hole in the budget.
And we'll see what legislators would do about that.
I mean, presumably they would have to raise other types of taxes.
But tax fights are common at the ballot box.
I'm from Washington state, and about 30 years ago, there was, kind of aging myself terribly, there was a ballot measure to set limits on car tabs at 30 bucks when car tabs were getting up to $500, $60,070 at $30 a year.
And it caused all kinds of havoc with the state budget.
And that's what these ballot measures can do.
It's interesting to note that the people who write these are the lawyers and supporters of whatever issue they're paying attention to.
It's not the legislators who might take, whose, you know, the Office of Legislative Services might take a lot more time to see how a measure interacts with other parts of existing state law.
Sometimes a measure passes and people realize they wrote it very badly.
And so now everybody's got to go back and fix it.
On election day, you'll also be watching legislatures and which party controls legislatures at the state level.
Where should our viewers be watching along with you?
You won't be surprised that there's a lot of overlap between the presidential battleground states and the state legislatures that are up for grabs.
Arizona is an example of a very narrow Republican majority.
They're trying to play defense there as Democrats make gains around Phoenix, around Tucson, and into Yuma, areas like that.
In Michigan and Minnesota, two states that flipped blue in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are trying to win back control in both of those states.
Minnesota only has one state Senate race up this year, and they control the state Senate by one seat.
That's probably going to stay in their control.
But the House in both chambers, or excuse me, both states, are up for grabs in Minnesota and Michigan.
Minnesota, not really a swing state, but still a narrowly divided legislature.
New Hampshire is another place where Republicans are playing defense.
They hold a narrow majority in the state Senate, 14 to 10.
And then they hold a majority in the state House.
But there are 400 seats in the New Hampshire State House.
Basically, you land at the Manchester Airport and you get a seat in the state legislature.
I'm only kind of joking about that.
But the state legislature in New Hampshire is so many people that we're not going to know who controls it for quite a long time.
The last state I'll point to is the one state in America where the legislative chambers are divided, and that's Pennsylvania.
Republicans control the state Senate.
Democrats control the state House by a single vote.
Both of those chambers are up for grabs.
I think the House is more vulnerable than the Senate.
But talking to Republicans and Democrats over the last couple of days, they sort of think that both sides are just going to hold serve, and we'll continue to have that Republican Senate and Democratic House in Pennsylvania.
Kristen, Superior, Wisconsin, Democratic caller.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I just have a general comment.
At least here in Wisconsin, the ballot initiatives are worded in such an intentionally misleading way.
I just would really like there to be some, if it could be standardized somehow to eliminate the confusing wording of those initiatives.
Yeah, and this is something that we've seen in a lot of states across the country this year where the ballot initiative process is a process.
It's a long one.
It starts with drafting a bill, and then that in some states, the Secretary of State has to approve that language, or the Attorney General has to run the traps and make sure it's not unconstitutional.
And then you collect all the signatures and it goes to a ballot board where there are all these different steps.
And what we've seen is that a lot of opponents of some of these measures have drafted or have sort of taken a section of that process and used it to put a thumb on the scale.
And the best example, I'm not up on any Wisconsin examples this year, but the best example this year is in Ohio, where issue one is on the ballot.
It would reform the way the state draws its political boundaries in the decennial redistricting process.
Right now, those lines are drawn by a panel of politicians, and because of who controls what office, Republicans control that process now.
The initiative would change that process to allow a citizen panel of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five Independents to draw new district lines and vote on them.
The state ballot board, which is headed by Secretary of State Frank Larose, a Republican, changed the wording of how that would, that what I just explained, would be presented to voters to say that the measure would require the new citizen panel to gerrymander.
Well, gerrymander is a really loaded word, right?
And it's something that I think supporters of this measure would say we're trying to eliminate gerrymandering.
But the ballot board wrote their ballot description.
It was challenged in court, sort of a mixed ruling from the state Supreme Court there.
But yes, this has been a complaint in a lot of states that somebody along the line is putting a thumb on the scale, whether it's an attorney general, whether it's a ballot board, whether it's a Secretary of State, putting their thumb on the scale to try to influence the way people see these initiatives.
Lynn in Oregon wants to know about Oregon's ballot measured for ranked choice voting.
First of all, what is explain ranked choice voting and where else is this an issue?
So ranked choice voting is the idea that when you go into a ballot box, you can pick multiple candidates.
I can pick Greta as my number one candidate and John McCartell as my number two.
And I should have actually reversed this because now I'm going to eliminate you from the process.
If my first choice finishes at the back of the pack, then my vote is reallocated to my second choice.
If my second choice is eliminated, my vote is reallocated to my third choice, on and on and on, until one candidate has 50% of the vote plus one.
The theory behind ranked choice voting is that it disincentivizes extremist candidates and it incentivizes candidates to build the broadest possible coalition.
To go out, if you're a Democrat, to go out and appeal to independents and to Republicans, moderate Republicans, because you need them to rank you high on their list.
And same thing if you're a Republican, appeal to Democrats.
The theory is that it creates a broader coalition and a more positive campaign, because if you're the negative guy, nobody's going to rank you high up, right?
So, on ranked choice voting, there are a few states that implement it already, Alaska and Maine.
And now it's on the ballot this year in a record number of states, in Oregon, in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada.
And I get to vote on it here in Washington, D.C. as well.
Interestingly enough, Alaska opponents are trying to repeal the ranked choice voting system that came up.
It's an intriguing sort of way that voters are trying to change the way their own elections take place.
And we can point to the Ohio issue one.
We can point to some other states, Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana, where they're trying to eliminate partisan primaries so that independent voters could walk in and vote for, say, a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and a Republican for House and a Libertarian for Secretary of State or whatever, however it may happen to be.
But this is an interesting way of voters taking control of their own voting system.
We'll see if it passes.
You know, there have been some pretty strong campaigns.
Interestingly enough, the people who run the strongest campaigns against ranked choice voting are the parties themselves.
So if you walk around Washington, D.C. Nice camera work.
I tell you what, if that music doesn't get you pumped, I don't know what will.
When I used to fight, I used to sparter that song all the time, and I got punched in the face a lot, and I still like it.
Hey, guys, just first of all, thank you for being here.
Can I say thank you to all of our veterans?
Can all of our veterans raise their hand for me?
All our veterans are in our men and women that are still serving, guys.
I just want to say thank you because if you didn't do your job and do it well, we wouldn't be here today.
So thank you so much for all you did for our country and continue to do for our country, right?
Now, listen, why are we here?
We're here because you and I and everybody else, we're fed up with the way the country is being handled right now, right?
The Harris Biden administration has failed America.
And we need a fighter.
Yeah, I agree, Boo.
We need a fighter.
And I think you guys know who I'm talking about when we need a fighter.
We need somebody that's willing to take on the Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
We need a guy that's willing to stand up and fight for us.
And I think we know who that guy is, right?
President Trump is our fighter, and he's somebody that can win the fight.
We need a winner.
We can't lose.
We're not in this to lose because you and I and our kids and our grandkids are all depending on someone that's going to be strong that can stand up underneath the pressure.
And my Lord, we can tell that that guy is able to stand up underneath the pressure, right?
Now, as only one, I'm one of one, a Native American in the Senate.
I'm actually Cherokee, unlike Elizabeth Warren, who tries to claim to be something.
And being Cherokee, my family knows a little bit about a heavy hand of a government and what they can do when they get too much power behind them.
We need somebody that's going to go up there and fight, someone that's going to push back, someone that's going to fight for you and I and all the tribal nations around the country.
Someone that's going to say, no, we understand what self-determination and sovereignty means.
We need someone that's going to go out there and put us in front of their own ambitions.
And President Trump is just that guy.
Now, as I mentioned before, I know a little bit about fighting.
And I know a guy and a fighter when I see one.
And our fighter, the guy who's fighting for our country, the people's fighter, the one that's on the mat every single day fighting for us, one that can bring down inflation, the one that can get our country back on track, the one that can bring down inflation, the one that can make us energy and independent again, the guy who can actually secure our borders.
The fighter I'm talking about is a man that showed true leadership and courage during an assassination attempt.
The man that stood up and raised his fists in the air and said to all Americans, fight, fight, fight.
That's my fighter.
That's the guy that I want.
And so, my friend, my president, and soon to be the 47th President of the United States, President Donald J. Trump, he's here to get you guys rallied, get you guys ready,
to get you to go out there and win this country back November 5th.
We cannot do it without you.
May God bless you.
May God bless America.
And may God bless Donald J. Trump.
Thank you, y'all.
See that you are the sun for away.
Why the sun flow iron to turn my face to the dawn?
I am waiting for the day.
Now, oh, Deuteronomy, just before dawn, through a silence you feel you could cut with a knife, announces the cat who can now be reborn and come back to a different jellical life.
Turn your face to the moonlight.
Let your memory do open up, enter in.
If you find there the meaning of what happened last year, 6.55 here on the East Coast, and we're live here in Henderson, Nevada, waiting for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Earlier, a number of Republican officials spoke at this event, including Florida Congressman Matt Gates.
Here is a look while we wait for this to get on the way.
People of this great country are an inspiration,
and the work you are doing here in Nevada to win this election is driving President Trump to victory.
It is driving our America First agenda to success, and it is driving the Democrats crazy.
They cannot imagine what you're doing.
I was talking to people just today who had registered five, ten voters who've texted their family members.
And if you're watching here in Nevada or anywhere around the world, know there is still something you can do to be a part of this campaign.
You've got to go to Trump Force 47 and sign up because there are still doors to be knocked on in North Carolina.
There are still text messages to send in Michigan.
There are church groups to reach in Pennsylvania.
And there are the working class of this country, retirees, and all the Americans we are bringing together here in Nevada to ensure the greatest victory on November 5th that this country has ever seen.
I want you and need you to do this.
Maybe you haven't been involved in the campaign to this date, but the most important moments are these remaining days where we've got to get people aware of the election and out to vote.
And that won't just make your life better, it'll make my life better a lot better in the United States Congress.
Because what I've seen from President Trump is that courage is contagious.
And when he gets back there, we're going to see folks start to stiffen their spine and actually fight for the American people because President Trump will fight for the reforms in Congress that we so desperately need.
He will back term limits.
He will back a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists or registered foreign agents.
And for the same reason, you don't let the referee bet on the football game.
President Trump will join me in ensuring that members of Congress are forever banned from trading individual stocks.
But he'll make your life better too here in Nevada, where we've got folks who live here as a reward for a life well lived, maybe in some other part of the country.
And President Trump will make sure that you have more money in your pocket because whether you are cleaning the rooms in Vegas, whether you are booking the rooms, whether you are driving the cars, whether you are counting that Social Security check, Your life will be better when there is no tax on Social Security and no tax on tips.
We can do these great things together and we can dream big again.
We remember Obama and Biden and Harris telling us that we would live in a diminished America.
We couldn't grow or make things.
But see, that's what brings us all together.
And what really we see is that if there's an anxiety in your life, if there's something going wrong, if you're concerned about streets that aren't safe or an economy that isn't growing, Kamala Harris broke it and Donald Trump will fix it.
He'll fix our economy and he'll fix our border as well.
Where we've learned that Kamala Harris has let in over 400,000 known criminals, not people that might commit crimes, people we know committed some of the most heinous crimes and they've moved them in to live next door to you while taking your guns away and defunding the police.
And that is no way to keep America safe.
President Trump will also keep the world safe.
President Trump even kept the dictators on their best behavior.
They weren't invading other countries.
They weren't doing all these things because there was American strength and there was American pride and we can have that again.
And so as you go out to talk to maybe that friend or brother or neighbor who might not be wearing the MAGA hat or fully aligned, know that voting with us is in their best interest.
Because we are the only political movement in this country actually fighting to make things better for the people who hate us.
We're not just for no tax on tips for Republicans.
We're for no tax on tips for everybody.
We're not just going to end tax on Social Security for the Republicans.
We're going to do that for everybody.
And when we have a strong economy and a secure border and a safe world, Americans will live better lives.
I'll leave you with this story.
I was campaigning for President Trump out in frosty New Hampshire, which this is way more temperate, I will tell you.
For a Florida man, going out there with like negative 18 degrees is like a human rights violation.
But I did it.
I was in New Hampshire, and I went into a coffee shop, and this barista came up to me and she said, Congressman Gates, my boyfriend will be so disappointed.
He wasn't here to meet you.
Could we take a photo and send it to him?
I said, sure, sure, but will you make sure to get out and vote for President Trump?
She said, oh, yeah, I will.
And I said, well, will you make sure your boyfriend who's not here today gets out and votes for President Trump?
And she looked at me and said, Congressman, I am so for President Trump.
I'm not just getting my boyfriend to vote for him.
I'm getting all of my ex-boyfriends to vote for him too.
And so I need you to go out in these next few days with the spirit of that barista, sign up for Trump Force 47, and let's go earn the greatest victory America has ever known.
God bless you all so much.
Thank you for having my back.
Let's go get him!
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Lieutenant Governor Stavros Anthony.
Well, thank you.
Again, my name is Stavros Anthony, and I am honored to be your Nevada Lieutenant Governor.
Thank you.
And I just want to thank all you patriots for coming out today to welcome the next President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Absolutely.
We're going to make America great again.
So, as you know, President Trump has been traveling all over the country holding massive rallies.
He was just here in Las Vegas last week at the Thomason Mack Center.
20,000 people were there.
He was at Madison Square Garden.
I don't know how many people were there, but that's a big building and it was full.
And this building is going to be full by the time he gets here.
And he has been talking to us, to Americans and us Nevadans, about what's important to us personally.
He's been talking about closing the border.
That's important to us, Nevadans.
He's talking about deporting illegal criminals.
That's important to us, Nevadans.
He's going to lower inflation so we have more money in our pockets.
That's important to Nevadans.
He's going to lower gas prices because that's important to us.
And when he says no taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, that's important to us, Nevadans.
We want that.
And he understands how expensive housing is getting here in Nevada.
And it's because of Kamala Harris.
She's driving up interest rates.
It costs too much to build a house, and it's getting unaffordable.
And Donald Trump is going to change that so we can make housing great again here in the state of Nevada.
And as some of you may know, I'm a 29-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metropal Police Department.
I retired as a captain.
And how about a nice round of applause for the men and women in uniform that protect our community here in Henderson and all over our country?
That's right.
We support law enforcement.
Absolutely.
We're not going to get that at a Kamala Walls rally.
They hate the police.
They want to defund the police.
You all remember in Minnesota some years back when Minnesota was burning down by Antifa and some local cities there?
And what did Walls do?
Nothing.
They asked him to call out the National Guard.
Nothing.
Police precincts were burning down.
He did nothing.
And Kamala Harris was raising money to bail out criminals.
That's what they think of public safety.
So what are Kamala Harrison Walls and all their surrogates campaigning on today?
They're calling us names.
And what's the last name they just called us?
That's right.
They think teachers in this room are garbage.
They think police officers in this room are garbage.
They think culinary union workers are garbage.
They think stay-at-home moms are garbage.
That's what they think of us.
They finally revealed themselves to us.
The Democrat Party, the swamp, and the elite.
That's what they think of us.
And we're not going to take it anymore.
We're not going to take it anymore.
And I just want to give an extra shout-out to the UNR Women's Volleyball Team.
These young student-athletes who are trying to learn, trying to play volleyball, have decided they're sick and tired of men and women's sports.
And we're sick and tired of men and women's sports.
And the Democrat Party supports that, and Donald Trump will reverse that, I believe, day one.
Absolutely.
So we have five days left.
And we are kicking ass.
We are kicking ass.
But we cannot let up on the pedal.
We have to keep going.
If you haven't voted, please vote tomorrow.
If you're going to vote Election Day, great.
We need to get early voting out.
And if you know a couple of people that have not voted yet, please drag them to the voting booth so we can get them to vote.
I know you're going to do that.
Let's get everybody to do that because our state depends on it.
Our country depends on it.
I believe Nevada is going to carry Donald J. Trump over the finish line and be the next president of the United States.
Thank you.
God bless all of you, and make America great again.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage retired U.S. Army Captain and candidate for the United States Senate, Sam Brown.
All right, Nevada!
Are you ready to rock and roll?
Are you ready to win?
Are you ready to prompt America first?
Are you ready to make America great again?
All right.
You guys know what's at stake.
This has been a battle.
has been a war against those who want to destroy this country and those who want to make our country great again.
I'll tell you what I've seen over these last 15 months is Nevadans who were fed up, Nevadans who were disappointed, Nevadans of all types.
I'm not just talking about Republicans.
We got any independents or former Democrats in the House?