WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris worked to fire up college-age supporters at a rally and concert in battleground Michigan on Monday featuring singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers, who told the crowd that doing something like voting is “greater than fear” at a time when “the future feels so uncertain.”
Michigan had the highest youth voter turnout rate nationwide in 2022, with long lines stretching outside polling locations on college campuses. Democrats hope they can recreate that enthusiasm this year, with rallies such as the one Harris held in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, featuring Rogers.
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“You can vote early now through Sunday, Nov. 3, and we need you to vote early, Michigan, because we have just eight days to go,” the Democratic presidential nominee said at an outdoor rally in 50-degree weather. “Eight days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”
“And we will win,” she said. “We have an opportunity to turn the page and chart a new and joyful way forward.”
Thousands packed into Burns Park for the event featuring Rogers, who sang “Love You for a Long Time” and some of her other hits. The event also reunited Harris with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The two had not appeared together since a campaign bus tour of Georgia in August.
In between sets, Rogers said the headlines she's been seeing on her phone are “terrifying.”
“The future feels so uncertain and I don’t always know what to do with that feeling,” she said. Rogers said taking action is greater than fear. “Voting is the key to the future.”
Early in her remarks, Harris was interrupted by over a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters. Hearing the chants of "Israel bombs, Kamala pays, how many kids have you killed today?' she said, “Hey, guys, I hear you.”
“On the subject of Gaza, we all want this war to end as soon as possible and to get the hostages out and I will do everything in my power to make it so,” Harris said. The group was escorted out of the event shortly after their chants were drowned out by counter-chants of “Kamala.”
Michigan, because of its sizable Arab American population and progressive cities like Ann Arbor, has become the epicenter of activism against Harris and Democrats because of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Throughout her speech, Harris sought to draw contrasts between herself and Republican nominee Donald Trump, describing him as unstable and unhinged, and criticizing him on women's reproductive rights and other issues.
During earlier stops in the Michigan cities of Saginaw and Warren, Harris courted working-class voters, highlighting the administration's efforts to bring more factory jobs to the state and her support for labor unions.
“I'm here, I'm here for you,” she told workers after touring an International Union of Painters and Allied Trades training facility in Warren. She said Trump isn't concerned about working and middle-class people and specifically called out the way he filled the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor laws in the United States, with anti-union figures, a frequent criticism levied against Trump by union members. She also hit Trump for lauding Elon Musk, the businessman and owner of the social media platform X, for discussing firing striking workers.
In Saginaw, she toured a semiconductor factory to emphasize how government funding for computer chip manufacturers could create factory jobs in Michigan. She visited days after Trump criticized the bipartisan 2022 law that provides the federal money and said he would rather just charge tariffs.
Last week, the Commerce Department said Hemlock Semiconductor would receive up to $325 million in direct support to build a new factory making hyper-pure polysilicon, a building block for electronics and solar panels, among other technologies. The new facility would add 180 factory jobs in Michigan.
As of August, the CHIPS and Science Act had provided $30 billion in support for 23 projects in 15 states that would add 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs, according to the Commerce Department. That funding helped to draw in private capital and would enable the United States to produce 30% of the world's most advanced computer chips, up from 0% when the Biden-Harris administration succeeded Trump's presidency.
Still, Trump attacked the policy in a Friday night interview recorded for “The Joe Rogan Experience," a popular podcast.
“We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here, and they’re not going to give us the good companies anyway," the Republican nominee told the podcast. In fact, the money has gone to industry leaders such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung, Micron, Intel and GlobalFoundries to open factories in the U.S.
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Superville reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Dan Merica in Washington and Joey Cappelletti in Ann Arbor, Michigan, contributed to this report.