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      in US Politics

      Was Kamala Harris’s big interview a success? Sort of | Moira Donegan

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      How much of an incentive does Kamala Harris really have to lay out a thorough policy agenda? With fewer than 70 days until the general election, the newly official Democratic presidential nominee has exited her party’s Chicago convention riding a a wave of tight but improving poll numbers and tremendous party goodwill.Her move to the top of the ticket has prompted waves of enthusiasm and barely concealed relief, as young voters and weary Democrats greeted the happy prospect of an election campaign that was, at last, not between Biden and Trump. The shift of candidates initiated a new shift in the campaign’s voice, with a more playful, irreverent and optimistic turn coming to characterize the Democrats’ public messaging. When the vibes are this good, few people ask about specifics.There are pitfalls, too, for a politician who is too precise about what they aim to do in office. After all, much of the Democrats’ 2024 campaigning has featured deep dives into Project 2025, the 900-plus-page policy prescription for a second Trump term that was compiled by conservative thinktanks under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation. Democrats, including Harris herself, have used the document as a near-depthless well of possible attacks, making each one of the plan’s copious number of proposals into an attack that they can make Republicans answer for. As Harris heads into the final weeks of the campaign, one can see a certain cynical logic to her imprecise policy positions: why would she bother painting a target on her own back?So maybe it’s not surprising that on Thursday night, in her first major interview since ascending to the presidential nomination, the vice-president did not seem interested in making any news. She was competent, personable and a forceful defender of the Biden administration; she was attentive to issues where her campaign believes her to be vulnerable, such as on immigration and energy policy; and she was deliberate in depicting herself as a hawkish advocate for stricter border controls.She did not talk much about her opponent, Donald Trump, brushing off a question from CNN’s Dana Bash about his recent slanderous claim that Harris had only recently “turned Black”. She did not endorse an arms embargo to Israel, whose genocidal war in Gaza has killed upwards of 40,000 Palestinians with the aid of American weapons. And with the exception of a few economic proposals – like for an expansion of the child tax credit, a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and a repeat of her promise to punish price gauging – she was light on specifics.The interview seemed to be less about presenting a policy vision for the American people than about presenting them with a character. The character that emerged in the form of Vice-President Harris was one who is confident, intelligent and at ease with her authority; one who was unfazed by Bash’s sometimes pointed questioning, in part because she has mastered the art of the dodge.Among the interview’s surprising omissions was abortion, the issue that has redefined the status, health and civil rights of half of Americans as a result of the presidency of her opponent. The word was only mentioned once over the course of the interview, when the vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, mentioned the issue as something that voters were more interested in than his own previous verbal gaffes. He’s probably right that voters care more about it, but both he and Harris declined to address the issue further.Harris, historically a forceful advocate for abortion rights who was largely tasked with campaigning on the issue while Biden was still in the race, seemed to demur from the historical nature of her candidacy more broadly. When Bash asked her about a viral photo from the Democratic national convention – which pictured Harris at the podium, being gazed up at by her great-niece, a pigtailed young girl – she avoided the question’s implicit inquiry into how she feels about the prospect of becoming the nation’s first female president. Harris said only that she was running because she believed herself to be the best person for the job, and that she aimed to be a president for Americans of all races and genders.It was a nice sentiment, and probably even true. But her words avoided the gender issue that has come to shape the campaign, and left aside an opportunity to rally voters in the 10 states that will have abortion rights measures on the ballot in November. If anyone in the Harris campaign feels that electing a woman president now, in this post-Dobbs era, could be a righteous rebuke to the backward and bigoted misogyny that has come to define the Trump-Vance ticket, then that is not an argument they are interested in having their candidate make.Harris will be criticized on the left for her refusal to endorse an arms embargo to Israel, whose war has become a generational moral catastrophe that threatens to destabilize the region. When asked about the conflict, Harris spoke of the atrocities of 7 October in lurid terms; of the unfathomable human cost that has been imposed on Palestinians, she said only that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”. (An unfortunate phrase that implies that there is an acceptable number of innocents that Israel can murder.) Her unwillingness to speak with more empathy and commitment about this issue threatens to alienate young voters, a disorganized but growing left, and the large cohorts of Muslim and Arab voters she needs to win over in places like Minnesota and Michigan.That unwillingness also threatens to give more credence to other leftwing suspicions of Harris, such as the marginal but noticeable suspicion among activists over whether she will maintain Biden’s enthusiasm for antitrust enforcement.Maybe Harris is calculating that these voters have nowhere else to go; maybe she just doesn’t really share their values on these issues. But the central argument for her candidacy is about values: that she is a more moral, more principled, more trustworthy candidate than Donald Trump; that she will bring less bigotry, less selfishness, less recklessness and less tedious narcissism to the White House. It’s a low bar, but she still has to clear it. If Harris’s campaign is about values, but she is unwilling to more forcefully champion women’s rights and the value of Palestinian lives, she risks making some wonder just what those values are.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Ilona Maher, US rugby and social media star, endorses Kamala Harris

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      The Democratic nominee for US president, Kamala Harris, picked up an endorsement from a key social media influencer: the Olympic rugby star Ilona Maher.“I think it’s going to be cool because there is an opportunity to have female representation and to change this country in a way that I think will benefit us,” Maher told Sports Illustrated, in an interview accompanying a swimwear shoot which saw the 28-year-old center praised as “a feminist trailblazer”.“That’s a Kamala Harris endorsement,” Maher told the magazine, which said she cited abortion rights and access to contraception as key concerns as the presidential election looms.Harris, the current vice-president, has made protecting such rights a central part of her campaign against Donald Trump. As president, the Republican nominee appointed three hardline rightwingers to the US supreme court, which then removed the federal right to abortion and suggested contraception access could also be brought into question.“I have enough money that if I didn’t need an abortion, I could raise a baby myself,” Maher said. “If I wanted to get abortion, I could do that. So I have that privilege [but] it scares me about the other girls. I have options and I want to remember that my followers don’t all have that. And so it’s like, for me, but also mostly for them.”Maher took up rugby in high school in Vermont then won three national collegiate titles with Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. She built a significant social media following in the first phase of her international career, which began in sevens in 2018 and has also brought her two 15-a-side caps. The recent Paris Games saw her rocket to global fame.Maher is now the most-followed rugby player in the world, eclipsing giants such as Siya Kolisi, the South Africa captain and double World Cup winner, and the former New Zealand fly-half Dan Carter.Speaking to SI, Maher said men “get to play rugby and they get paid millions of dollars while we make minimum wage and this won’t be a career for us. I have teammates going into the workforce now, whereas these guys are down there and rugby’s it” for them.Nonetheless, Maher has achieved fame (and endorsement deals) with a message based on body positivity and irreverent humor but also the sort of dynamic and aggressive play that helped the US win bronze in Paris. This week, Maher told followers she wanted to win a place on the US squad for the 15-a-side World Cup, to be held in England next summer.Such has been Maher’s impact since Paris, her Sports Illustrated shoot followed an appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers in which she called rugby “a sport that just really encourages you to be physical and show what your body’s capable of”.“I know what it’s done for me,” Maher said, “and how it’s changed my body confidence by making me feel so good about myself, and I know it can do it for so many other girls.”Speaking to Sports Illustrated, Maher said she “was a big girl growing up so I didn’t love being in pictures” and “was always … called masculine or whatever. But I never felt that way. But I don’t think you’re going to bully the girl who could probably beat you up in a rage. I love that [rugby] showed me what I can do. It showed me how capable my body is and it’s not just like a tool to be looked at and objectified.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe also said: “If my cellulite was lower in that perfect range, I wouldn’t be doing what I could do. I wouldn’t be that powerful for it [so] I just really think sports have been so helpful.”MJ Day, editor in chief of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, called Maher a “revolutionary athlete and feminist trailblazer… a modern-day role model of strength, conviction and authenticity”.Maher expressed unease with being seen as a role model, saying: “I just try to really stress like I am human. But I think I do really care a lot. And I do want people to like me.”Harris, 59, has no known ties to rugby. But her current boss, Joe Biden, has often spoken of his love for the game, having played at college in New York and through following the Irish national team, two recent members of which, Rob and Dave Kearney, are the president’s distant cousins.The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      in Elections

      Montana Certifies Signatures for November Abortion Question

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      Also on Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a similar ballot measure. That means at least nine states will vote on whether to establish a constitutional right to abortion.Voters in Montana will decide in November whether to enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution, joining eight other states with similar citizen-sponsored questions on their ballots.Montana’s secretary of state sent an email late Tuesday to the coalition of abortion rights groups sponsoring the measure, certifying that they had collected enough valid signatures to place it on the ballot. The coalition had submitted more than 117,000 signatures, nearly double the 60,039 required and the most submitted for a ballot measure in Montana history.And in Arizona — which, like Montana, was facing a Thursday deadline to certify its ballots — the state’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal late Tuesday from anti-abortion groups trying to strike a similar measure that the secretary of state there had approved last week. The justices, all appointed by Republicans, said that their decision did not signal support for the measure, only that they did not agree with the technical objection raised by the anti-abortion groups about the language used on ballot petitions.National Democrats and abortion rights groups are pouring money into ballot measures in both states in the hopes that they can drive turnout to help the Democrats running for the Senate, where the party holds a razor-thin majority. In Montana, Senator Jon Tester is perhaps the party’s most endangered incumbent.Abortion remains legal in Montana until viability — the point when a fetus can survive outside the uterus, generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy — because of a 1999 state Supreme Court decision that said the right to privacy in the state Constitution included a right to “procreative autonomy.”Advocates say the measure is necessary to prevent future members of the court, who are elected, from reversing that decision. And the state’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, and the Republican-controlled Legislature have repeatedly tried to ban or restrict abortion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Guys go where their buddies are’: the young men recruiting each other to fight for abortion rights

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      View image in fullscreen“Oh, no, no, I think you’re trying to get in contact with my wife.”That’s what a man in Florida recently told an activist who knocked on his door to talk about abortion rights. But the man was wrong. The activist, who represented a group called Men4Choice, was there to talk to him, because the group is dedicated to getting more men who support abortion rights involved in the fight for them.“They have to get off the sidelines,” said Dewayne Martin, the youth organizing director for Men4Choice, who relayed the activist’s account to the Guardian. “They have to become the foot soldiers of this movement.”Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men “passively pro-choice”.Young women still support abortion rights at higher rates than their male peers – and young men are just not as motivated to take a public stand on the issue. Just 43% of gen Z men say that abortion rights are a “critical issue”, compared with 68% of gen Z women, the political scientist Melissa Deckman found in her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z. This indifference has consequences: compared with women, men between the ages of 18 and 44 are less likely to say that abortion is motivating them to vote in the 2024 elections, according to polling from the firm PerryUndem. They are also less likely to say that the state of abortion rights will affect whom they vote for.Men4Choice’s goal is to get these young men to vote, canvass and otherwise act on their beliefs – instead of leaving the work to women.“When we think about our organizing strategy, it’s: help men see the harm,” said Oren Jacobson, a Men4Choice co-founder. “Help men understand how this issue is not just a woman’s issue. It’s not just about abortion. It’s about freedom, it’s about power, it’s about control. It is an issue that impacts all of us, our families, our loved ones.”View image in fullscreenIt affects young men’s futures, too. Compared with young men whose partners got pregnant and gave birth, young men whose partners had abortions are almost four times more likely to graduate college. Young men who have been involved in an abortion are also more likely to make more money than those whose partners gave birth. Overall, an estimated one in five men has impregnated somebody who has had an abortion.Democrats have made abortion rights one of their central issues in the 2024 elections, while Republicans – wary of how outrage over Roe’s downfall probably lost them a much heralded “red wave” in the 2022 midterms – have tried to downplay the issue and their own role in overturning Roe. However, as they’ve backed away, rightwing commentators and politicians have become far more adept at discussing masculinity than their leftwing counterparts, experts have told the Guardian. These rightwing public figures are not only willing to acknowledge that young men are struggling – with getting into college, with their finances, with their mental health – but also to portray these struggles as the result of women’s growing social and political power.This kind of talk – which is so popular it has essentially spawned a cottage industry – is believed to be a major reason why, despite their past support for liberal causes, so many young men are now pivoting towards conservatism (and potentially towards supporting Donald Trump).“It feels good. It’s telling men: ‘You’re the priority. You’re the superior being,’” said Davan’te Jennings, a Men4Choice fellow who lives in Georgia. “‘You act like this, this is when you get all the cars, the women, the mansion. Grind 24/7. Don’t think about mental health. Depression isn’t real.’”In Jennings’ view, such “toxic masculinity” is part of the reason why young men don’t feel like they can be openly passionate about abortion rights. He hears references to it all the time: when Jennings talks to men through Men4Choice, the men often use phrases like “to be a man” and “the manly thing to do”. Expressing emotions – including caring about abortion rights – doesn’t fit into that mold of masculinity.View image in fullscreenMen4Choice, then, aims to reframe how abortion fits into antiquated and restrictive notions of masculinity. “Masculinity is taking action,” Martin said. “Masculinity is caring for the people that you love. Masculinity is ensuring that you are building a pathway towards freedom for you and your people, and realizing that those two things are not separate.”Christian Shephard, a 26-year-old Men4Choice fellow who serves as an organizer for the group in central Florida, tries to open up conversations about abortion rights with men by discussing how some men treat women, including how they may objectify or sexualize women.“It may sound like that has nothing to do with reproductive justice, but it certainly does,” Shephard said. “There is a clear connection between how people talk about women and how these [anti-abortion] laws are being created to deprive them of fundamental rights.”In a recent Men4Choice “community conversation” – virtual and in-person discussions where fellows are expected to bring male friends – one man claimed he didn’t have to take any responsibility for abortion because “women should keep their legs closed”, Jennings recalled.“That was literally the words he used,” Jennings said. “Most of us who are pro-choice on the call are like: ‘Now we see why it’s important to dismantle that way of thinking.’”Jacobson launched Men4Choice in 2015, but the group has exploded in the years since Roe’s demise. The Men4Choice fellowship program, which runs three times a year and is training 70 men between the ages of 18 and 28 this summer, has almost tripled in size since the summer of 2022. Many Men4Choice fellows are based in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina – all states with abortion bans.Though he was raised in a Democratic area of Miami, Martin, 22, said he hadn’t acted on his support for abortion rights until 2020. He was a high school senior working on organizing around school boards when a friend told him about Men4Choice.“It was in that moment that I realized, despite my being raised by a community of women who have served as my village and have made my life possible in several ways, I’ve never taken a direct action to support them on this issue,” recalled Martin, who became a Men4Choice fellow that year.View image in fullscreenIn the months before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, Men4Choice partnered with Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband and the second gentleman of the United States, to host events centered on energizing men to fight for abortion rights. (“This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying,” Emhoff told NBC in May. “It’s affecting men’s ability to plan their lives.”) Now, the group is trying to mobilize male volunteers and funnel them towards partner organizations working on the ground.“Guys go where their buddies are,” Jacobson said. “You have to create an ecosystem of men to get them to show up.”Men4Choice is also heavily focusing on Florida, which has banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy – before many people even know they’re pregnant – and where voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights.Abortion-rights ballot measures previously have succeeded in Republican strongholds, such as Ohio and Kentucky. Exit polls found that 73% of male voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in favor of the Ohio measure – a significant share of voters, but still less than the 81% of young female voters who supported it.The Florida amendment must garner 60% of the vote to pass. This fall, Men4Choice wants to reach 400,000 voters through phone and text banking, according to Martin. The group also wants to hold 100 community conversations with men.There is, however, a limit to the organization’s activism. Men4Choice focuses on men who already support abortion rights or are at least open to having a discussion about it – not men who are adamantly opposed to the procedure. “If there’s not an understanding or a clear line of wanting to understand,” Jennings said, “and we’re just going to sit here and get into a debate – it’s pointless.” More

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      Abortion Rights Advocates Hit the D.N.C.: Free Vasectomies and an Inflatable IUD

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      This convention is likely to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.While delegates are in Chicago for next week’s Democratic National Convention, they will engage in the typical pageantry and traditions: They’ll vote for their nominee, pose for photos with elected officials, and show off their state with cool buttons or themed hats.They will also have the option of getting a free vasectomy or a medication abortion just blocks away.A mobile health center run by Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, which serves much of Missouri and part of southern Illinois, plans to park itself near the convention and offer those services early next week to anybody who makes an appointment, delegate or not. (There is so much interest in the vasectomy appointments, I’m told, there is already a waiting list.)It’s a way of showcasing how reproductive health care providers have had to get creative when operating in or near states like Missouri, which borders Illinois and has a near-total abortion ban.But it also underscores the way this convention, more than any other, is going to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.For years, many Democrats believed too much talk about abortion rights might drive away moderate or religious voters. Four years ago, at the Covid-dampened convention of 2020, President Biden did not utter the word abortion in his speech. Neither did Vice President Kamala Harris (although she did refer briefly to racial injustice in “reproductive and maternal health care.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Christian Conservatives Are Planning for the Next Battle, on I.V.F.

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      Republicans may be backing away from abortion, but these activists have a strategy, with or without Trump.The pivot seems clear. The Republican Party of the post-Roe era is sidelining anti-abortion activists. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint with innovative abortion bans, has been disavowed by Donald Trump. And the new G.O.P. party platform even promises to advance access to in vitro fertilization.But as Mr. Trump distances himself from the anti-abortion revolution his own administration ushered in, a powerful battalion of conservative Christians has pushed ahead. In recent months, they have quietly laid the groundwork for their fight to restrict not only access to abortion but also to I.V.F.They are planting seeds for their ultimate goal of ending abortion from conception, both within the Republican Party and beyond it. They face a tough political battle since their positions are largely unpopular and do not reflect majority opinion, particularly on I.V.F.As they see it, their challenge spans generations, not simply a single political cycle. And their approach — including controlling regulatory language, state party platforms and the definition of when life begins — reflects an incremental strategy similar to the one activists used for decades to eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.“I expect there will be steps backwards as well as what we are working toward, which are long strikes forward,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., who has been newly mobilizing evangelicals against I.V.F.The fall of Roe itself was far from linear, he noted. “It was nearly a half century of work, a half century of frustration, a half century of setbacks as well as advances,” Mr. Mohler said. “It will be a hard uphill climb, but that’s what we are called to.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arizona to vote on enshrining abortion rights in state constitution in November

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      Arizona voters will decide this November whether to add abortion rights into their state constitution, a prospect that could turbocharge voter turnout in a critical battleground state in the 2024 election.Late Monday, the Arizona secretary of state’s office announced that it had validated an estimated 577,971 signatures in support of a ballot measure, the Arizona For Abortion Access Act, to establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state.On X, the office called the measure “the largest petition effort in Arizona history”. The measure will be listed on the ballot as Proposition 139.Arizona is not the only state to face the prospect of an abortion-related ballot measure this November. So far, states including Colorado, Florida and Nevada – another key battleground state – are also set to hold similar ballot measures. Tuesday also marks the deadline for the state of Missouri to determine whether to add its own abortion-related measure to its ballots.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ballot measures that protect or preserve abortion rights have successfully passed even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. However, they have never been tested during a presidential election. Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base, especially since the vice-president, Kamala Harris, one of the Democrats’ most effective messengers on abortion rights, became the party’s nominee.Abortion is currently legal up until 15 weeks in Arizona. Earlier this year, the state supreme court ruled that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 – enacted before Arizona even became a state – could take effect. That ruling unleashed weeks of nationwide outrage and ultimately led a handful of Republicans to break with their party to vote in favor of a bill to repeal the 1864 ban.If passed, Arizona for Abortion Access Act would establish that Arizonans have “a fundamental right to abortion”. It would protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, which is typically dated to around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and allow for abortions past that point if a medical provider deems them necessary to protect a pregnant individual’s life, physical health or mental health.In May, a CBS poll found that 66% of Arizona adults want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. More

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      W.N.B.A.’s Nneka Ogwumike Takes Over More Than a Vote From LeBron James

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      Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time All-Star, will lead More Than a Vote, which will focus on women’s reproductive rights this election cycle.More Than a Vote, a nonprofit organization founded by LeBron James in 2020, is rebooting this fall with a new focus on women’s issues and reproductive rights.Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time W.N.B.A. All-Star with the Seattle Storm and president of the players union, will take over James’s role in leading the organization, and has recruited a group of female athletes to her cause.“It’s more than just abortion,” Ogwumike said in an interview. “It’s all about educating people about all the different roles that exist in society that support and protect the freedoms of women when it comes to family planning, I.V.F., birth control, everything. There’s just a lot that’s at stake.”More Than a Vote was founded when, motivated by nationwide protest movements after the killing by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, athletes like James said they were starting to think more deeply about how they could use their platforms.The organization was focused on protecting voting access for Black voters, including collaborating with NAACP Legal Defense Fund on a multimillion-dollar initiative to recruit poll workers. It partnered with teams to open sports arenas and stadiums as polling locations and created television ads and digital content designed to encourage voting. The organization raised about $4.2 million in 2020, twice the amount it expected. However, it has been essentially dormant for the past few years.Ogwumike, who volunteered as a poll worker in 2020, began speaking with James this year. At that point, James and his associates had been discussing the prominence of discussions about reproductive rights, as well as the increased attention around women’s sports. (Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to make abortion rights a focus of her campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More