On July 21 President Joe Biden Formally dropped out of the presidential race causing former president Donald Trump to be running against Vice President Kamala Harris for the 2024 election and the results have made history for many reasons.
Harris only had 107 days to run her campaign after the unexpected announcement. Her campaign was full of rallies and countless marketing strategies highlighting Harris’ very different plan compared to her opponent. Her main focuses were women rights, affordable health care and prescriptions, LGBTQ+ rights, expanding gun control to provide safety in schools, and helping the middle class with financial aid. Harris’ main quote was “We are not going back” referring to going back to the times where Americans didn’t have the same rights as they do now.
Trump, despite having more time, seemed to angle his campaign on his slogan “Make America Great Again” referring to his slogan in 2016 “Make America Great.” His main policies were the plans for immigration, the economy, dismantling the Affordable Healthcare act, rolling back environmental protections, ending the Gaza war, attacking Biden’s student loan protections, removing gender affirming care, and the well known Project 2025. In comparison to Harris’ strong stance on abortion and other women’s rights, Trump had a very inconsistent message. The presidential debate on Sept. 10 caused Trump a lot of backfire with his continuous interruptions and later was reported by CNN to have said at least 33 lies during the debate.
Between the two of them there were more than 300 presidential events for this election. And what was supposed to be a close race ended up being a complete landside. The morning after the votes were counted it was announced that Trump won the election with 312 electoral college votes and won in all seven swing states. Trump’s election win will go down in history for many reasons. He is the second president to win non consecutive terms, the first being Grover Cleveland in 1885 and again in 1893. Despite being the second for non consecutive, Trump is our first president for many things. He is America’s first convicted felon put in office. Trump has 34 felony counts, one conviction, two pending cases, two impeachments, six bankruptcies, and now a second term as president.
Heritage students have very mixed reactions to this election especially with Arkansas 64.23% votes for Trump. Since these are personal political beliefs the Talon staff has decided to leave these quotes anonymous for the students who shared.
“Trump is the greatest thing that ever happened to the United States,” said Student 2.
Other students seem to be more worried and angry than happy about these results.
“People would really rather vote for a 34-count felon over a woman. He’s only won over women and he lost against men. It makes me pissed and it makes me wanna leave this place. It makes me angry that our democracy is so sexist. Donald Trump is a racist and should not be in office,” said Student 2.
One of the biggest concerns within schools is whether or not Trump will shut down the Department of Education. Throughout his campaign he made it very clear that he wanted to give the education decisions to the states and dismantle the Department itself.
“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work,” said Trump in a 2023 address. “One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states.”
One thing is for sure, for better or for worse, Trump’s second term will be vastly different from his first.
