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    Harris Came for a Fox News Interview, but Got a Debate With Bret Baier

    Vice President Kamala Harris may not get another debate with former President Donald J. Trump, but on Wednesday, she got one with Bret Baier.In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Mr. Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery and other areas that closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s regular attacks against her.At one point, Mr. Baier wondered if the vice president considered Mr. Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump because two recent Venezuelan migrants were charged with the crime.Mr. Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent with the kind of tough coverage of Ms. Harris that blankets Fox News’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers after a few seconds. His first interruption came within the first half-minute of their exchange.“May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”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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    Under Trump, U.S. Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care

    The Trump administration’s approach is notable in light of a campaign ad that slams Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants.A campaign ad released by former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states slams Vice President Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants, concluding: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”But the Trump administration’s record on providing services for transgender people in the sprawling federal prison system, which houses thousands of undocumented immigrants awaiting trial or deportation, is more nuanced than the 30-second spot suggests.Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary. Still, legal wrangling delayed the first such operation until 2022, long after Mr. Trump left office.“Transgender offenders may require individual counseling and emotional support,” officials wrote. “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).”The statement, in part, reflected guidelines that officials in the Obama administration released shortly before they left office in January 2017, which were geared at ensuring “transgender inmates can access programs and services that meet their needs.”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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    Harris Will Air Ad Hitting Trump on Abortion During His Fox News Event

    Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign will air a television advertisement slamming former President Donald J. Trump’s record on abortion during a Fox News town-hall event on Wednesday in which he will take questions from an all-female audience.The ad features Hadley Duvall, a woman from Kentucky, telling a harrowing story of being sexually assaulted and impregnated by her stepfather at the age of 12. She later miscarried.“I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options,” Ms. Duvall says in the ad. “Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest.”She adds: “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”Abortion has been one of the most potent electoral issues for Democrats since Supreme Court justices appointed by Mr. Trump helped overturn Roe. Polling shows the issue is a strength for Ms. Harris, who has built a commanding lead with female voters: A recent New York Times/Siena College national poll of likely voters showed her ahead by 56 percent to 40 percent. Mr. Trump is doing better with men.Mr. Trump’s town hall airs at 11 a.m. and will be moderated by the Fox News host Harris Faulkner. More

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    Music Activism Gets Back on the Road

    Bands were sidelined by the Covid-19 pandemic during the 2020 campaign. This year, with increasing sophistication, they are encouraging political activism.Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania could not believe their good fortune.Looking down from their sky box at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, they saw more than 20,000 die-hard fans in the biggest city in the swingiest of swing states, responding with deafening cheers to a speech by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam on one of Ms. Harris’s signature campaign issues: abortion.“We find ourselves reaching out to ladies, young women, whose lives are at risk,” Mr. Vedder said. “And we’re reaching out to moms who want their daughters to have the same reproductive freedoms that they had and they fought for, and also men too, who don’t want government dictating the path of our daughters, our sisters or even our partners.”After the Covid-19 pandemic forced musicians off the road during the 2020 presidential cycle, rock activism is back, with new sophistication. Tours are prioritizing swing states. Artists are making their pitch before live audiences and on their significant online platforms. And bands are leveraging voter targeting methods once used exclusively by the political class.“Being at a rock show, it’s one of those things where you feel so connected to your community,” Jeff Ament, the bass player for Pearl Jam, said in an interview. “And if you’re not the person that goes to City Council meetings and is involved with your community that way, voting is the one time every year where you get to go out and voice your opinion on equal terms to everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re a millionaire or a 20-year-old going to school and working at the coffee shop. It should be the great equalizer.”Jeff Ament, the bassist of Pearl Jam, is using his platform to encourage fans to vote in the November election. Jim Bennett/Getty ImagesWe 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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    Michelle Obama to Host a Rally to Encourage Voter Turnout in Georgia

    Michelle Obama, the former first lady, plans to host a rally in Atlanta a week before Election Day, aiming to encourage young and nonwhite voters to head to the polls.Mrs. Obama is one of the Democratic Party’s most popular figures but is also one of its most elusive surrogates. She delivered an impactful speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, encouraging viewers to “do something” to help Vice President Kamala Harris defeat her Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, and delivering an emphatic takedown of Mr. Trump in the process.Unlike her husband, former President Barack Obama, she has not been involved in events since.The Oct. 29 rally, announced on Wednesday by Mrs. Obama’s nonpartisan voting-rights organization When We All Vote, is not expected to be the only event she participates in. The organization’s executive director, Beth Lynk, said in a statement that the event will “set the tone for the entire country — especially first-time voters — to vote early.”Mrs. Obama’s appearance will be aimed at bolstering activity in a state where officials have already reported record turnout for early voting. Nearly five million Georgians voted in 2020, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. carried the state by 12,670 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential nominee to win there since Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, in 1992.Mrs. Obama remains one of the best-known public figures in America, ranking third on a list of prominent people compiled by YouGov, a market research firm. (Her husband ranks sixth.) Since leaving the White House, Mrs. Obama has balanced a well-known distaste for politics with constant demands to be on the public stage stumping for Democrats.In 2016, Mrs. Obama made her first campaign appearance in support of Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, in mid-September. After that, she delivered a handful of speeches, including an appearance on the eve of Election Day. During the pandemic election season in 2020, she released her last speech in support of Mr. Biden in a video message on Oct. 6. More

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    Trump Renews ‘Enemy Within’ Talk at Fox News Town Hall on Women’s Issues

    Former President Donald J. Trump reiterated his belief that Democrats are “the enemy from within” during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday billed as a conversation about women’s issues.Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to highlight Mr. Trump’s recent inflammatory comments, arguing that he has grown “increasingly unstable and unhinged” in the final weeks of the campaign. During a stump speech on Monday in Erie, Pa., Ms. Harris played footage of an earlier interview he had conducted with Fox News in which he called the Democratic Party and individual lawmakers an “enemy from within” and said they were more dangerous than foreign adversaries.But if Mr. Trump was fazed by these attacks, he did not show it on Tuesday after the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner replayed the footage of his Fox News interview. Ms. Faulkner noted Ms. Harris’s use of the video in her campaign and her descriptions of his language as authoritarian. Mr. Trump in response called her campaign rally video “a nice presentation,” before rebuffing Democrats as “a party of sound bites.”Still, he did not disavow his comments.“It is the enemy from within,” Mr. Trump told Ms. Faulkner during the event, which is set to be broadcast at 11 a.m. on Wednesday. And he repeated insults concerning his belief that Democrats are loyal to Marxists and communists. He added of the party, “They’re the threat to democracy.”Mr. Trump fielded questions from an audience of all women in Cumming, Ga., an Atlanta exurb an hour north of the city. Roughly 110 women from local churches and mothers’ groups attended, according to a spokeswoman for Fox News.The women who asked him questions introduced themselves as Georgia residents and posed questions about his plans for the economy, public safety and immigration. Mr. Trump responded with a range of promises about what he would do if sent back to the White House, including pledges to lower energy prices by 50 percent, expand the child tax credit and outlaw sanctuary cities.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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    Tim Walz Blasts Trump and Vance at Pennsylvania Event

    Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, wearing a camouflage baseball cap and red-and-black plaid flannel, took the stage on Tuesday as the skies cleared on a muddy farm in Lawrence County, Pa.He opened with tender talk of his rural roots. Then, he painted the kind of haunting picture frequently evoked by the Republicans opposing him and his running mate atop the Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris: of a rural America under attack.“Been a lot of talk about outsiders coming in, coming into rural communities, stealing our jobs, making life worse for the people who are living there,” he said, alluding to the hostile remarks about immigrants.But Mr. Walz — speaking pointedly before a couple hundred people, with barns, bins and tractors as his backdrop — paused for dramatic effect.“Those outsiders have names. They’re Donald Trump and JD Vance,” he said, eliciting laughter and a few whistles from the audience.The event on Tuesday was part of a Wisconsin and Pennsylvania swing that Mr. Walz used to unveil his ticket’s plans to address the needs of rural voters. And Mr. Walz, who has been on a quest in recent days to reclaim male voters and football from the Republican Party, sought to make the most of the moment as a born and bred Nebraskan.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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    Biden Takes On Campaign Duty in Pennsylvania, Celebrating Unions

    As Jill Biden and JD Vance also made stops around Philadelphia, the president’s visit highlighted the intense struggle to persuade voters in what may be the most critical swing state.President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, joined the pitched electoral struggle over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, fanning out with three appearances across the Philadelphia area intended to aid Vice President Kamala Harris in what may be the most consequential swing state.While his wife helped staff a phone bank across town, Mr. Biden joined a dinner held by the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee at the local sheet metal workers’ union hall, where he revved up attendees with a punchy speech and unleashed a long list of attacks against former President Donald J. Trump.“He has the same ideas on race as the 1930s. Trump’s ideas on the economy are from the ’20s. Trump’s ideas on women are from the ’50s,” he said. “Folks, this is 2024. We can’t go back.”But as often as Mr. Biden sought to contrast his record with Mr. Trump’s, he carefully tacked back several times to express support for Ms. Harris. He compared her to himself in growing out of his role as former President Barack Obama’s running mate, seeking to support her without defining her in his own unpopular image.“I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president,” he said. “That’s what Kamala is going to do. She’s been loyal so far, but she’s going to cut her own path.”Mr. Biden’s visit was a reminder that just three weeks before the election, even when the presidential candidates are not in Pennsylvania, they are well aware of the need to maintain a presence in the state. With 19 electoral votes, it is the largest of the battleground prizes, and both campaigns would face narrow paths to victory without it.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