‘We owe it to voters’: Harris calls for another debate at North Carolina rallies

Kamala Harris held rallies Thursday in North Carolina, first in Charlotte and then in Greensboro, calling for another round of debate with Donald Trump, two days after her strong showing in Philadelphia against the former president.

“I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” she said to applause, “because this election and what is at stake could not be more important. On Tuesday night, I talked about issues that I know matter to families across America, like bringing down the cost of living … but that’s not what we heard from Donald Trump.”

Related: Trump says he won’t participate in future debates as Harris says ‘we owe it to the voters to have another’ – live

Holding rallies in two of North Carolina’s largest cities highlights the importance of the state as a national battleground that the campaign now sees as winnable.

In Charlotte, Harris laughed and mocked Trump’s answer during the debate when he was asked about his plan to replace Obamacare. “He has no plan to replace it. He said ‘concepts of a plan’ – no actual plan. Concepts. And understand what’s at stake with that: 45 million Americans are insured under the Affordable Care Act, and he’s going to end it based on a concept.”

Harris touched on familiar themes in her campaign, calling for an “opportunity economy” with support for small businesses and first-time homebuyers, and a renewed child tax credit. She noted the support of the former Republican representative Liz Cheney and her father, the former vice-president Dick Cheney. “I will always put country above party and be a president for all Americans,” Harris said.

She also called on voters to look up on Google “Project 2025”, a transition plan for a second Trump administration created by former Trump advisers through the Heritage Foundation. “It is a detailed and dangerous blueprint for what he would do if he was elected president,” she said.

Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document. “I have nothing to do – as you know and as she knows better than anyone – I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference.”

Harris has ignored Trump’s rejections. “Donald Trump will give billionaires and big corporations massive tax cuts and cut corporate taxes by a trillion dollars even as they pull in record profits,” she said in Charlotte. “He will add more than $5tn to the national debt.”

She said that one out of three women now live in states with abortion access restricted by the end of Roe v Wade protections, which she described as a “Trump abortion ban”.

Abortion is legal in North Carolina, but is banned after 12 weeks and six days of pregnancy. It is, however, the closest state with any meaningful abortion access for most women living in the American south.

Harris also talked about the potential increase in taxes on households implied by Trump’s proposals to shift to a national sales tax and the imposition of tariffs on imports, describing it as a “Trump sales tax” that “would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year”.

The Harris campaign has been pressing that point in blanket advertising on television, cable and social media in North Carolina. The campaign had $50m in ad buys in the state reserved through the end of the race, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

In Greensboro, protesters intermittently shouted at the vice-president to call attention to the administration’s actions with regard to the war in Gaza. A man stood up near the end of Harris’s address to shout “war criminal” at Harris, while holding a sign that said “17,000 Children”. A rally staffer escorted him from the event, while another attendee tore the sign to pieces. The crowd booed the man as he shouted his protest.