Beyoncé lent her star power to Kamala Harris at a high-octane rally in Texas on Friday, declaring that the America was on the “brink of history” as the vice-president warned the state’s near-total abortion ban could become the law of the land if Donald Trump is elected.
“For all the men and women in this room, and watching around the country, we need you,” Beyoncé told a roaring crowd of 30,000 people at the open-air Shell Energy stadium in her native Houston.
With the presidential race effectively deadlocked, Harris detoured briefly from the seven battleground states to appear in deep-red Texas. Here in a place she called “ground zero for the fight for reproductive freedom”, Harris sought to lay out the stakes in November for voters who have yet to make up their minds about the candidates – or whether to cast a ballot at all.
“Let us be clear: If Donald Trump wins again, he will ban abortion nationwide,” Harris told the audience, her largest to date. She walked on to the stage, as she has ever since she became the presumptive nominee roughly 100 days ago, to Beyoncé’s hard-charging anthem, Freedom.
Harris has framed her campaign on the theme of freedom, painting Trump as a threat to hard-won progress advancing personal liberties and to American democracy itself. Earlier this week, Harris agreed that Trump was a “fascist”.
The crowd that turned out for Harris on Friday night was exuberant. Thousands lined up for hours in the sticky Houston heat to attend. Rally-goers wore flashing wristbands in all different colors added to the concert-like atmosphere. A group of women in cowboy hats and boots danced and sang as a DJ spun pop ballads before the event began.
But the message Harris came to deliver was sobering. In her remarks, she detailed the cascading effects of abortion bans like the one in Texas, which prohibits physicians from performing abortions after cardiac activity is detected, as early as six weeks. Doctors were being driven out of states, leaving women, particularly in the south, with fewer healthcare options. But it wasn’t just Republican-led states at risk, she said, warning that a second Trump administration would seek to outlaw abortion in every state, even New York, Michigan and California, where it legal.
“All that to say, elections matter,” she said.
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Despite the speculation, the megastar did not perform, but she did offer her endorsement of Harris, a woman “standing in her power”.
“I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children, and all of our children, live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”
In the final days before the election, the Harris campaign is tapping the star power of the party’s most popular figures and celebrity supporters. On Friday night, Willie Nelson, the country music star who was introduced as a “Texas voter”, performed a handful of his best-known songs, including On the Road Again and actor Jessica Alba urged women to vote. Beyoncé was joined by her mother, Tina Knowles, and her former bandmate Kelly Rowland, who gave a rousing call to action on Harris’s behalf.
“We are grabbing back the pen from those who are trying to write an American story that would deny the right for women to make our own decisions about our bodies,” Rowland said. “Today that means grabbing that pen and casting my vote for Kamala Harris.”
The night before, Harris held her first campaign event with Barack Obama. They were joined onstage in Atlanta by rocker Bruce Springsteen, who played a three-song set and branded Trump an “American tyrant.” On Saturday, Harris will rally with Michelle Obama in Michigan.
Trump was also in Texas on Friday, where he taped a lengthy podcast interview with Joe Rogan. And, at an earlier stop, he repeated his assertion that migration had turned the US into a “garbage can for the world”. Before sitting for her own podcast interview with vulnerability researcher Brené Brown, Harris responded to Trump’s remark, calling it “another example of how he really belittles our country”.
Harris does not expect to win Texas. But Democrats here are suddenly hopeful after polls suggest an unexpectedly close senate race between the Republican incumbent, Ted Cruz, and the Democrat, Dallas-area congressman Colin Allred.
Senate Democrats face a daunting map this cycle. With a loss in West Virginia all but certain, and Montana slipping away, their hopes of maintaining narrow-control of the chamber increasingly rest on an upset in the Lone Star state.
In his remarks, Allred taunted his opponent for supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which led to the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, and for fleeing to Cancún, Mexico, during a winter storm that devastated the state.
“Everything is bigger in Texas. But Ted Cruz is too small for Texas,” Allred said, holding his hand low for emphasis.
The emotional heart of the evening was the personal stories of Texas women who had nearly died from pregnancy-related complications because they did not receive proper care.
Ondrea Cummings, a Texas woman who appeared in a new Harris campaign, became emotional as she shared her harrowing experience after a miscarriage at 16 weeks and needing an emergency abortion that she was denied under the state’s law. A video played before her remarks showed her with a wound and scars that stretched down her body, from her breast to her pelvis, after a six-hour surgery in which she said doctors had to cut open her torso in order to save her life.
“Texas’ abortion bans unleashed by Donald Trump almost cost me my life and have left me with physical and emotional scars,” she said.
Amanda and Josh Zurawski, residents of Austin, Texas, also shared their story. At 18 weeks pregnant with a girl she planned to name Willow, Amanda Zurawski began to suffer complications and needed an abortion. There was no chance the fetus would survive, but doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy until she eventually developed sepsis, days later.
“I was finally close enough to death to deserve healthcare in Texas,” said Amanda Zurawski, who has been a powerful surrogate for Harris on the campaign trail.
Todd Ivey, an OB-GYN in Houston, addressed the crowd surrounded by a team of doctors and medical professionals in white coats. He emphasized the challenges of administering care to patients under a law that threatens physicians with jail time for performing abortions. Since the Texas’s abortion law took effect the state’s infant mortality has risen.
“These laws are designed to handcuff me – literally,” he said, declaring: “There is no place for Donald Trump in my exam room.”
Among those in the crowd was Sara Gonzales, of Splendora, Texas, who rescheduled her work schedule so that she could drive straight to the stadium after finishing an early-morning shift at Starbucks. The 32-year-old said she considers herself an independent and in 2020, wrote in a candidate for president. But the political stakes changed, Gonzales said, the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, and Texas enacted its near-total ban on abortion. She plans to vote for Harris in the 5 November election.
“Being a woman in Texas right now, it’s not OK,” she said. “I should have freedom over my own body.”
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