July 30 (UPI) — Vice President Kamala Harris promised to lower prescription drug costs and enable more Americans to enjoy freedoms during a campaign rally in Georgia on Tuesday.
Harris told a highly receptive crowd in Atlanta that she will “take on big pharma to lower costs and save families thousands of dollars per year.”
“Ours is a fight for the future and it is a fight for freedom,” Harris told the energized crowd. “Freedom to vote; freedom to be safe from gun violence; freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate.”
She said the “baton is in our hands” and told the audience “it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.”
“We’re not going back,” Harris said, which the audience loudly chanted several times afterward to loud applause.
Harris promised to pass a freedom to vote act, an assault weapons ban, universal background checks for firearms purchases and a federal red flag law.
Harris also urged former President Donald Trump to commit to debating her.
“If you got something to say,” she said, “say it to my face!”
Harris told the crowd Trump banned abortion, although there was no abortion ban while Trump was president. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, which affirmed the matter is not a federal issue and remanded it to respective states during the current presidential administration.
Harris also declared the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is “Trump’s,” although Trump and Heritage Foundation leaders have denied he has had any part in its creation. Trump has said he doesn’t know anything about it and never read it.
Project 2025 director Paul Dans resigned Tuesday after Trump repeatedly criticized the endeavor, the Heritage Foundation confirmed.
Georgia is a historically red state that voted Democrat in the 2020 presidential election. President Joe Biden won the state by 12,000 votes over Trump, with Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock elected to the Senate to keep party control of the chamber.
Since Biden announced that he would leave the race, Harris’ campaign has raised more than $200 million and signed up more than 170,000 volunteers.
“The vice president is energizing and mobilizing our base,” Dan Kanninen, Harris’s battleground state director, said. “Having a candidate who can mobilize our key Biden-Harris coalition, talking about the issues that resonate with Georgians … make that state in play.”
Kanninen said because of the closeness of the race in 2020, he expects Georgia to be even more competitive and the campaigning there more intense.
“I continue to be very clear with our partners and with our own staff,” Kanninen said. “This campaign will not get comfortable. We jumped in just 100 days ago against an opponent who has shown he’s willing to do anything to win.”
“This is going to be an incredibly close race just like it was in 2020. But just like four years ago, we are going to win this thing.”