It’s officially election month. In a few short days, polls will close and it will be the end of the 2024 election.

After holding back-to-back events in the southwest Thursday, Donald Trump is headed to the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan for a rally on Friday afternoon, followed by an evening rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Running mate JD Vance has scheduled rallies in Portage, Michigan, and Selma, North Carolina. Surrogate Eric Trump is scheduled to appear at an event in Georgia.

Here is what to know heading into the weekend.

See the most recent polls: New presidential polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina

Vance appears on Joe Rogan podcast

Vance made an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience, on Thursday. The episode, which lasts more than three hours and is on Spotify, was also uploaded to the show’s YouTube channel.

Trump was on Rogan’s podcast last week, and Kamala Harris was in talks to be on it, but Rogan said he declined because he wouldn’t travel to her. The podcast is taped in Austin, Texas. Rogan said he would still like to meet with Harris “to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being.”

Rogan’s show is its top podcast with 14.5 million followers, according to Spotify.

Controversy over Puerto Rico joke continues

Facing ongoing backlash to a comedian’s joke about Puerto Rico being “an island of garbage” at a Madison Square Garden rally, Trump asked a New Mexico rally crowd on Thursday if they prefer to be called “Hispanics” or “Latinos.” The crowd cheered louder for “Hispanic.”

“First of all, Hispanics love Trump,” he said. “I like them. They’re smart.”

Meanwhile Harris said she disagreed with President Joe Biden’s comments when he appeared to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage,” saying that while the president clarified his remarks, she does not agree with criticisms of voters based on whom they’re supporting.

Polls continue to show an incredibly close race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Contributing: Savannah Kuchar, Victoria Moorwood, David Jackson, Natalie Neysa Alund, Rebecca Morin

Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com, and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley.

Brenden Anes has ditched the Big Ten for the SEC and Rocky Top.

Anes, a standout Page linebacker, announced on his X account that he has decommitted from Wisconsin and committed to Tennessee on Thursday.

“After a lot of prayer and conversations with my family, I will be stepping away from my commitment to The University of Tennessee,” Anes wrote. “Thank you Coach Inge and Coach Heupel for this opportunity to stay HOME and protect the checkerboards. Let’s Work!”

Anes is a 6-foot-3, 220-pound linebacker with 32 total tackles through the Patriots’ first eight games. He also has two interceptions and two forced fumbles. He is a three-star linebacker and No. 20 recruit in the state in the 247Sports Composite.

More: TSSAA football playoff possibilities released prior to Week 11 games

Anes is a member of The Tennessean’s 2024 Dandy Dozen, a collection of the top college football recruits in the Nashville area. He had been committed to Wisconsin since January.

Reach Tom Kreager at 615-259-8089 or tkreager@tennessean.com and on the X platform @Kreager.

While attending the University of Madison-Wisconsin as a journalism and marketing major from 2003-2006, Rick Stoner fondly remembers roaming the aisles of Strictly Discs — the Monroe Street record store he acquired from longtime owners Ron and Angie Roloff last fall — just as the world was on the cusp of the digital music explosion.  

“Strictly Discs is where I bought CDs before I had an iPod,” Stoner says. “That’s another way of saying that I’m 40 years old.” 

Buying the beloved local business, which Ron opened in 1988 as a single-level, 800-square-foot shop (he later expanded it by converting the store’s 1,700-square-foot basement level into a retail space) was a full circle moment for Stoner — albeit not one he actively sought out. “I was not looking for a record store,” he says. “I was looking for a business at a certain price point. And the fact that I saw this listing was a very happy coincidence.” 

The relatively quick five-month acquisition process concluded exactly one year ago, on Halloween 2023. And in January, after serving in advisory roles for three months during the handoff, the Roloffs fully exited the business (which was a subject of Billboard‘s “In a Pandemic” series from 2020 to 2021) to officially embark on their retirement, leaving Stoner to pilot the future of a store that has been a part of Madison’s cultural heart for 36 years. It’s a legacy he doesn’t take lightly, and, to foster a sense of continuity, he felt it was important to keep as many of the store’s existing staffers on board as possible. 

“Retaining the team has been really my number one priority,” Stoner says. “Maintaining the business, maintaining the customers — to me, all those things are achievable if you’re retaining the brain trust and knowledge and vibe that comes with the team that has been there for a long time.” The store’s entire staff stayed on after the acquisition, including longtime employees Evan Woodward — who now serves as GM and runs the shop on a day-to-day basis — and Mark Chaney, who fills the role of assistant GM. “Everyone’s worked together really well,” Stoner adds. “I think they appreciate maybe a different approach to things, a little more structure, and I certainly appreciate the knowledge of music that they bring.” 

Stoner’s 18-year background as a high-level advertising executive focused on management and new business development at companies including Brado, Derse, BBN and Bader Rutter makes him well-equipped to expand into new areas and supercharge what the store was already doing well. One of the first changes under his purview was instituting a new inventory management system that would be capable of handling the shop’s roughly 500,000 used vinyl records in addition to new product (he chose a system that was originally designed for grocery stores). 

Another major item on Stoner’s to-do list was already in motion prior to his acquisition of the business: the conversion of 1,000 square feet of the 5,000 square foot Strictly Discs warehouse in neighboring Cambridge, Wis., into a second retail location, which officially opened Oct. 19 on a Wednesday-Sunday schedule (a grand opening is slated for sometime in November after the store’s permanent exterior sign is installed). “We have plenty of customers that aren’t in downtown Madison, and it takes them a while to drive downtown through traffic, find parking,” he says of opening the new storefront. “Now those people will be able to come here. And I also think we’ll be serving a rural customer that maybe just isn’t exposed to the cultural curiosities that come with a record store.” 

Stoner is currently looking at creative strategies to build interest and excitement in the new location, including giving customers access to the music lover’s paradise contained in the back 4,000 square feet of the building, which boasts the majority of the business’ used product. Though Stoner has yet to settle on what that would look like, some ideas include quarterly bin-picking days and a “buy a crate and fill the crate” promotion. 

Strictly Discs’ mountain of used product is one of the business’ key strengths. Beginning in 2010, Ron Roloff focused his energies on acquiring large private music collections in Wisconsin and beyond, leading the store to become known as the home of a treasure trove of hard-to-find records in all different genres. “I think what sets us apart is the volume and quality of more niche genres: jazz, classical,” says Stoner. “We have an extensive soundtrack collection that, before buying the business, I never could have imagined or guessed how well that does for us.” 

Those used records are key to another major initiative Stoner has in mind: creating a subscription model that would allow customers to choose a certain number of new or used records per month — which would require integrating the store’s website with the Shopify platform — and either pick up their chosen product in-store or have it delivered to their homes. The idea was partially inspired by similar plans offered by the likes of Vinyl Moon and Vinyl Me, Please — though, as Stoner points out, those companies don’t allow customers the kind of choice Strictly Discs can offer. “If you’re paying $50 or $100 a month, especially if you live in a rural area, the record store is coming to you,” he says. “And I don’t see a lot of shops doing that.” 

With a goal of launching some iteration of the subscription model during this year’s holiday shopping season, Stoner and his employees are currently focused on what he calls “the Herculean effort” of cataloging the store’s warehouse inventory. Stoner aims to initially target customers within Wisconsin but outside of Dane County (where Madison is located), drawing interest through targeted ads online and via the store’s email newsletter. “I think my main concern about it is that it doesn’t cannibalize our store,” he says. “So my hope is someone could subscribe to that, pick up things in store, they would get a discount in store for being a member, and it would allow us some growth and customer loyalty.” 

The focus on getting the subscription plans off the ground ties in with Stoner’s overarching goal of beefing up Strictly Disc’s e-commerce efforts. On that front, the Roloffs were already ahead of the game, with a sales mix of 70% in-store and 30% online (within that, the mix is 90% vinyl and 10% CDs; while 65% of vinyl sales are new product.) “I’ve learned that that’s pretty atypical,” he says. I think [we have] the highest online [sales percentage], at least of record stores in our coalition [the Coalition of Independent Music Stores].” And in the long term, he’s looking to flip those stats on their head: “I want that 70-30 to look like 20-80 without hampering the growth of the store,” adds Stoner, who’s hoping to triple the store’s business through online sales. 

The plans don’t end there. In addition to supersizing the store’s Record Store Day activities — this year, the store closed down part of Monroe Street with the city’s permission and threw a block party for the event — he’s looking to launch pop-up record shops at music festivals and other events outside of Madison to extend the physical store’s geographic reach. 

For all of his ambitious plans, the store’s longtime customers probably won’t notice much of a difference. Like Ron, Stoner is currently intent on keeping Strictly Discs a pure music shop, steering clear of merch sales and other non-music items — which would be difficult to institute in any event, he says, given the shop’s relatively small footprint — and keeping intact what people loved about it in the first place. 

“[In] our main record shop in Madison … almost nothing has changed, and that’s been intentional,” Stoner says. “It’ll be a staple of the community for the next 36 years, just like it has been the last 36 years.” 

More in this series:
Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.
Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.
Home Rule in Washington, D.C.
Sweat Records in Miami, Fla.