Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her rival, former President Donald Trump, have held duelling rallies only a few miles apart in the city of Milwaukee – the conclusion to a day of events that served as one of the last pushes for support before the November 5 election.

Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, is vote-rich territory for Democrats, but Republicans are focused on the surrounding conservative suburbs. Trump won the state in 2016 but lost in 2020.

“We know who Donald Trump is,” Harris said on Friday evening. “This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge. He is consumed with grievance, and the man is out for unchecked power.”

Less than 10 miles away in a different part of the city, Trump said: “My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: You can’t lead America if you don’t love America, and you can’t be the president if you hate the American people.”

Democrats know they must turn out voters in Milwaukee, also home to the state’s largest Black population. Harris is hoping to replicate, and exceed, turnout from 2020 in the city, which voted 79 percent for Biden that year.

Harris’s campaign warmed up the youthful crowd with appearances from music artists GloRilla, Flo Milli, MC Lyte, The Isley Brothers and DJ Gemini Gilly.

Also supporting Harris was rapper Rapper Cardi B. “Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?” she said, referring to Trump’s promise to protect women “whether they like it or not”.

“Donny, don’t,” she said. “Please.”

Need to turn the page

Harris’s message, as it has increasingly been at all her rallies, is that Americans are exhausted with Trump’s negative presence in the political scene and that it is time to move forward.

“We have an opportunity to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We are done with it, we are exhausted with it, we are turning the page,” she said.

Harris also emphasised the need to find common ground and compromise in the country’s deeply divided politics.

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said.

“He wants to put them in jail. I will give them a seat at the table.”

Everybody wants a job

Trump told his supporters he had asked his staff not to speculate about who might work for him when he wins.

“I don’t want to talk about any people. First, I want to win. We don’t want to talk about people. Don’t tell me about people. Everybody wants a job,” he said

“Remember this – there was a moment where they were saying, ‘Oh, nobody wants to work for Trump. He’s too difficult’. Let me tell you a little secret: They died to work for us. You know why? Because they all want to be this glamour deal. They want to be in this beautiful administration.”

Trump’s rallies have taken on a note of nostalgia in the last week before the election, and Friday was no exception.

At an afternoon rally in Warren, Michigan, he told supporters that he felt “energised” from the campaign trail.

“This has been a thrill of a lifetime for me and for you and everybody,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, Harris had left Las Vegas for Wisconsin, where she spoke at a union hall in Janesville, then held an event in Little Chute, before her third stop in the Milwaukee neighbourhood of West Allis.

Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Rhys Hoskins has exercised his player option and will return to the team in 2025.

Per Adam McCalvy, who covers the Brewers on social media:

Rhys Hoskins has exercised his $18 million player option to come back to the Brewers in 2025.

The 31-year-old signed a three-year deal with the Brewers last offseason. The second year included this player option and next offseason there will be a mutual option.

Coming off a torn ACL suffered in 2023, Hoskins helped lead the Brewers to the National League Central title in 2024. He hit just .214 but had 26 homers and 82 RBI. Those are solid numbers for sure, but Hoskins still posted just a 98 OPS+ for the year, suggesting he was a slightly below average player.

Now that the Brewers have a resolution on his status for next year, they’ll need to figure out a way to make him even more productive. The assumption is that Willy Adames is going to leave in free agency this offseason, meaning that Hoskins and Christian Yelich will need to pick up the slack and help carry the offense.

Hoskins is a seven-year veteran of the Philadelphia Phillies and Brewers. Lifetime, he’s a .238 hitter with 174 home runs. He hit a career-high 34 homers back in 2018 and has topped the 30-homer mark one other time (2022).

The Brewers were beaten by the New York Mets in the wild card series in these playoffs. The Brewers lost a crushing Game 3 as the Mets ultimately went to the NLCS.

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Milwaukee Pretzel went from an idea to a successful business in just a few short years. The story starts when owners Matt and Katie Wessel spent time in Germany for Katie’s job in 2012.

“We were traveling a lot of places in Bavaria, and we were eating these pretzels day in and day out. And it just hit us that America—and Milwaukee in particular, a very Germanic city—needed these pretzels as a part of its identity,” Matt Wessel says.

Once they returned to the U.S., Katie, a self-described foodie, started playing around with recipes, mixing styles of pretzels they enjoyed during their travels.

“It was only once we were back and we talked about it and made a few batches, and friends tried them, that we thought we had something that was fairly viable,” Matt said.

Those same friends helped Matt and Katie with their first big order. After meeting with the German Fest board in 2013, Matt thought he could get the pretzel into the next year’s festival.

Watch: Milwaukee Pretzel Company started by husband and wife duo.

Made In Wisconsin: Milwaukee Pretzel Company expands as demand grows

The organizers had another thought. Matt says, “They tried them and were very straight-faced; we didn’t know what they thought. Well, they called us later that afternoon and said, ‘We actually have a vendor spot open for this festival. Can you do it?’ I’m like, ‘No, that’s three weeks away, we can’t do it. But thank you.’ But Katie is like, ‘We can do it.’” They made 2,000 pretzels for the festival and sold out.

Pretzels were made in three different locations as the company continued to outgrow each space. Eventually, they settled in Milwaukee’s Granville Woods, where they can make more than 2,000 pretzels an hour, and are currently expanding. Doubling their square footage will increase output tremendously.

Matt says, “Probably about 10,000 an hour. Twelve thousand pretzels an hour.” This will likely mean the company will have to add to their 105 employees and their current amount of equipment. Some of the company’s products are made by machines, while others are still made by hand and likely always will be.

Wessel believes the reason the pretzels are so popular is the ingredients—or really, the lack thereof. They don’t use preservatives or sugar when making their pretzels, making their pretzels fresh to order before they are shipped to customers.

Wessel says, “It’s really gratifying to see people start to talk about Milwaukee as a region for pretzels. We’ve even had people outside of the Midwest refer to ‘Milwaukee pretzels,’ referring to our style, and that means a lot to us.”

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