Harris targets North Carolina; Trump speaks in Arizona

Harris seeks to build on debate momentum with push to flip North Carolina

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Riding a fresh wave of momentum after her debate performance, Harris is ramping up her campaign today by holding two rallies in North Carolina as she tries to wrestle back the key battleground state and close off one of Trump’s main paths to victory.

Both campaigns see the state as playing a key role in November. Trump narrowly won it in 2020, and no Democrat has prevailed in the presidential race here since Barack Obama in 2008. There’s also a hard-fought battle for governor, in which Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein faces Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.

“Voters across North Carolina are building a powerful coalition to elect Vice President Harris and to defeat Donald Trump and his allies like Mark Robinson, who are pushing an extreme Project 2025 agenda to rip away our freedoms, raise costs on our families and undo the Medicaid expansion we fought so hard to deliver,” said Dory MacMillan, the Harris campaign’s North Carolina communications director. “This is going to be a close race — but we have built a campaign ready to win close races and to reach voters across the political spectrum in our cities and in rural areas.”

According to a Quinnipiac University poll out this week, Harris leads Trump 49% to 46% in North Carolina, within the survey’s margin of error. It’s still an extremely tight race, but it’s an improvement for Democrats from where President Joe Biden stood in the spring. A Quinnipiac University poll in April found Trump leading Biden 48% to 46%, again within the margin of error.

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Biden to announce new efforts to curb gender-based violence

President Joe Biden today will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act by announcing new efforts to curb gender-based violence, senior administration officials said.

Biden will address survivors, advocates and allies on the South Lawn at an event commemorating the law, senior administration officials said on a call with reporters.

Jennifer Klein, a Biden aide and director of the White House’s Gender Policy Council, which Biden established in 2021 to advance gender equality, said the Justice Department will announce a series of efforts to support survivors of gender-based violence, including $690 million in grant funding for this year, and plans for a new national resource center to tackle cyber crimes.

The resource center will be aimed at helping law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and victim services groups tackle cybercrimes against people, including cyber stalking and the sharing of intimate images without consent, Klein said.

The Justice Department also plans to bolster federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies, said Klein, who said it will expand funding opportunities to strengthen programs that remove firearms from people who face misdemeanor convictions for domestic abuse or are subject to protective orders.

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Florida is disappearing from the national political map

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The nation’s largest swing state is — for now, at least — turning into one of its most unseen.

Florida has historically been held up as a massively important state for any White House aspirant, and as a result has been on the receiving end of large candidate rallies, surrogate events and huge sums of national money fueling wall-to-wall campaign ads across the state’s 10 expensive media markets.

But for the first time in recent political memory, the 2024 presidential race has left Florida as a comparative afterthought. Democrats here have tried to maintain momentum and voter intensity, but nearly every measurable factor indicates that Florida is not realistically in play for them in this year’s presidential contest.

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Trump to head to Arizona to deliver remarks

Trump will travel to Arizona today, where he will speak at an evening event in Tucson.

Biden won the state in 2020 with about 49.4% of the vote, narrowly beating out Trump, who got 49.1% of the vote. Polling indicates the race remains tight in the state this year.

Harris to speak at campaign events in North Carolina

Harris will travel today to North Carolina, where she will speak at campaign events in Charlotte and Greensboro.

Trump narrowly won the state in 2020, and Democrats hop e to flip it blue in November.

Walz will head to Michigan, where he will speak at a rally in Grand Rapids. Biden flipped Michigan blue in 2020.

Bob Casey to launch mobile billboard targeting David McCormick as a ‘candidate of special interests’

Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s campaign is launching a mobile billboard in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, highlighting comments Trump has made during Republican Senate nominee Dave McCormick’s 2022 campaign calling him a “candidate of special interests and globalists” who “managed money for communist China.”

The billboard will arrive in Lancaster at 1:30 p.m. and circle the area through the evening.

Back in 2022 when McCormick was running for Senate the first time, Trump endorsed his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who lost to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.

This cycle, Trump endorsed McCormick, who often makes speaking appearances at Trump rallies across Pennsylvania.

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