Wednesday Briefing

“When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list,” Kamala Harris said.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Kamala Harris made her closing arguments

Appearing in Washington a week before the U.S. election, Vice President Kamala Harris urged the nation to move beyond violent division and “to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms” for a future of shared responsibility.

In the final days of the campaign, Harris has focused her message on stressing the dangers Donald Trump presents to American democracy. Voters, she said last night, would not “submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”

She also outlined her plans to lower housing, health care and other costs. “On Day 1, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list,” she said.

Location: The park where Harris addressed an audience of 75,000 people was the same place where Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 exhorted his followers to “fight like hell.”

Your questions: We asked Theodore Schleifer, who covers campaign finance, this question from a reader.

Theodore: Elon Musk is arguing that he is not offering money to register to vote — only to sign the petition. The catch, though, is that the petition is open only to registered voters, and so some legal critics think that it is effectively an inducement to register to vote.

The precise purpose of the petition is not totally clear, to be honest. Musk is collecting data on hard-core supporters of his political agenda, perhaps giving him a refined universe of voters to target for Trump on Election Day. Is this all just to get some earned media? Or maybe he’d want to use that data in a future operation? We don’t totally know.