Politics and views in the United States.

Longtime GOP members are supporting Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. Israel has killed the top Hamas leader in Gaza. And farmers debate how the election could impact agriculture.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2024 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States it very self.

We are here today because we share a core belief that we must put country before party.

As early voting starts, Vice President Kamala Harris continues to campaign for votes from Republicans concerned about protecting democracy.

A New York Times-Siena College poll shows fewer than one in ten Republicans might vote for her, but that's twice the number from September.

Meanwhile, after repeatedly dodging the question, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has clearly said he thinks former President Donald Trump won in 2020.

The Republican VP nominee has long said the election was unfair, as when he told a crowd in North Carolina that social media companies were biased.

In 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story, and that had a major, major consequence on the election.

Vance's Democratic opponent Tim Walz says denying the 2020 results means Vance is more loyal to Trump than to America.

And the Minnesota governor points to Trump swaying to music for 40 minutes at a town hall instead of taking questions as more evidence that he's unqualified.

It would be funny if this guy were not running for president of the United States.

And it would be funny if you knew that this guy, if he shuts down like he did last night, you know he's doing that when he's sitting in the Situation Room.

Hamas leader Yair Sinwar was killed by Israeli defense forces in Gaza.

Sinwar was the mastermind behind the October 7th attack.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says he was also a main obstacle to a ceasefire.

The path that Sinwar wanted for the region, death, destruction, instability, chaos, is a path that we know the people of the region reject.

The horrors of the past year cannot be the future, and they do not need to be the future.

Some Wisconsin college students report getting threatening text messages that warn of fines or jail if they vote when not eligible.

Molly Carmichael with the League of Women Voters in Wisconsin herself just graduated and got one of the messages.

She says the first thing she noticed was the harsh language.

Right off the bat, I was pretty upset because I figured this was also going out to other people, maybe people who have never voted before and are excited to vote this November.

And so getting a text like that would certainly be really alarming.

Congress is overdue to pass a new farm bill, with some observers saying it's waiting for the election.

Nebraska's Farmers Union President John Hanson says they broadly support Trump's eagerness to impose tariffs, but in cases like trade with China, President Joe Biden has been more effective by being more selective.

If you're going to turn the use of a tool that has this kind of impact loose, you really do need to have an informed set of public officials that help discuss these things and help calibrate what we're doing so that we're doing things in a thoughtful and coherent way.

Hanson says they will work with whoever wins.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.