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      Harris reveals ‘opportunity agenda for Black men’ in efforts to shore up support

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      Kamala Harris has revealed a plan to give Black men more economic opportunities, as anxiety mounts among her supporters that some in the Black community are less enthused by the Democratic presidential ticket than in recent elections, and may sit this one out – or support Donald Trump.The vice-president’s plan includes forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships, and studying sickle cell and other diseases that disproportionately affect African American men. It also includes ensuring that Black men have more access to shaping a national cannabis industry and to invest in cryptocurrency.Harris presented the so-called “opportunity agenda for Black men” on Monday, before speaking in the north-west corner of Erie, Pennsylvania, the country’s largest battleground state. It will be Harris’s 10th visit to Pennsylvania this election season.Political support among Black men for the Harris-Walz campaign has been wavering somewhat. Last week, Barack Obama suggested that some Black men “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president”.The former president’s comments were later condemned by the Florida Republican representative Byron Donalds and Texas’s Wesley Hunt, members of Black Men for Trump, which posted a letter accusing Obama of being “insulting” and “demeaning”.“President Obama’s recent call for Black men to support Kamala Harris based solely on her skin color, rather than her policies, is deeply insulting,” the letter states. “Black Americans are not a monolith, and we don’t owe our votes to any candidate just because they ‘look like us’.”Over the weekend, the former president Bill Clinton was drafted in to speak to worshippers at a Zion Baptist church in Albany, Georgia, in support of Harris.“Uniting people and building, being repairers of the breach, as Isaiah says, those are the things that work,” Clinton said. “Blaming, dividing, demeaning – they get you a bunch of votes at election time, but they don’t work.”A poll in the New York Times placed Harris slightly behind Joe Biden among Black likely voters and showed one in five Black men support Trump. Despite alarm at the poll, the figures still show strong Black support for Democrats – but while the president won 87% of the Black vote in 2020, Harris’s numbers are lower. Seventy-eight per cent of Black voters in key battleground states polled in September said they would support the Democrat.Raphael Warnock, a Democratic senator from Georgia, warned against overestimating the shift. “Black men are not going to vote for Donald Trump in any significant numbers,” he told CNN on Sunday. “There will be some. We’re not a monolith.”Warnock predicted Black voters would remember that Trump had personally taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the state to bring back the death penalty and to strengthen policing after the brutal beating and rape of a female jogger in Central Park.The so-called “Central Park Five” – five Black teenagers – were falsely accused of the crime and imprisoned for several years, before finally being exonerated in 2002. “Donald Trump has shown no deal of concern about what they went through, no deal, no bit of contrition about it,” Warnock added.But the South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn, who helped secure Biden’s Democratic nomination in 2020, told the network he is “concerned about the Black men staying home or voting for Trump”.“Black men, like everybody else, want to know exactly what I can expect from a Harris administration. And I have been very direct with them. And I have also contrasted that with what they can expect from a Trump administration,” Clyburn said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have previously been accused of taking the Black vote for granted. In 2020, Biden was forced to apologize for telling the popular radio host Charlamagne Tha God that if African Americans “have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black”.Trump has sought to capitalize on wavering Black male support for Democrats who may sympathize with his “America First” policies around employment and immigration.As well as Harris’s new policy outreach to Black men, she is also reaching out to Hispanic men who might also be cool to her candidacy, via an “Hombres con Harris” outreach featuring ad buys and Hispanic celebrity events in battleground states.Three weeks out from polling day, there is some Democratic concern that Harris’s support among men broadly needs attention. Polls have found that there is roughly a 60-40 split between men and women, with men favoring Republicans and women Democrats.A Pew Research Center study released last year asked Americans how important it is to them that a woman be elected president in their lifetime. It found that only 18% of US adults said this is extremely or very important to them, with some 64% saying it was not too important or not at all, or that the president’s gender did not matter. More

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      Harris Campaign to Fly Ads Over N.F.L. Games in Swing States

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      As the Harris campaign continues to court male voters, it is dialing up a deep shot, targeting a venue where it thinks it will reach quite a few of them: professional football.The campaign is spending six figures on flyover advertisements knocking former President Donald J. Trump and promoting Vice President Kamala Harris at four N.F.L. games that are taking place on Sunday in swing states, with teams in those matchups collectively accounting for six of the seven main presidential battlegrounds.The four games are in Wisconsin, where the Green Bay Packers will host the Arizona Cardinals; Nevada, where the Las Vegas Raiders will host the Pittsburgh Steelers; North Carolina, where the Carolina Panthers will host the Atlanta Falcons; and Pennsylvania, where the Philadelphia Eagles will host the Cleveland Browns. (Michigan is the only swing state left out, with its Detroit Lions playing in Dallas on Sunday.)In Las Vegas, fans will see skytyping planes fly over the stadium to draw a simple message in white: “Vote Kamala.” In the other venues, a plane with a banner will deliver a slightly longer plea: “Sack Trump’s Project 2025! Vote Kamala!” In Philadelphia, that message will include a nod to the home team: “Go Birds!”The campaign is part of an effort to attract hard-to-reach voters, especially men, said Abhi Rahman, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.“Our goal is to meet people where they are, and there is only a sliver of the electorate that is still undecided,” Mr. Rahman said. “What we know about these undecided people — majority male — is they don’t like to read political publications. They aren’t in the 24-7 world of policy and politics, so what we are trying to do is reach them in a different way.”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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      Trump mantiene ventaja en Arizona y Harris en Pensilvania, según una encuesta

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      Las últimas encuestas del Times/Inquirer/Siena sitúan a Donald Trump con seis puntos de ventaja en Arizona y a Kamala Harris con cuatro puntos en Pensilvania.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Dos de los estados más disputados del país —Pennsylvania y Arizona— ilustran las dificultades a las que se enfrentan ambas campañas para obtener una clara ventaja en la recta final de la contienda para 2024, en la que Kamala Harris mantiene una estrecha ventaja en Pensilvania, pero Donald Trump sigue manteniendo una ventaja en Arizona, según un nuevo par de encuestas del New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College.Las encuestas, realizadas en dos estados separados por más de 3000 kilómetros, muestran el reto al que se enfrentan ambos partidos al intentar cerrar sus campañas ante un conjunto diverso de votantes que, en ocasiones, tienen prioridades contrapuestas.Tanto en Arizona como en Pensilvania, Harris ha consolidado el apoyo entre los demócratas desde que sustituyó al presidente Biden como candidata del partido. Pero la fuerza de Trump sigue siendo la economía, el tema principal responsable de su potencia política en Arizona y otros estados disputados este año.En Pensilvania, la ventaja de Harris en las encuestas ha sido constante, aunque el estado sigue siendo reñido. Su ventaja, 50 por ciento a 47 por ciento, entra dentro del margen de error. Pero esta es la tercera encuesta Times/Siena en dos meses que muestra el apoyo a Harris de al menos la mitad del estado. (Su ventaja en la encuesta fue de cuatro puntos porcentuales si se calculan sin redondear las cifras).Lo que impulsa a Harris en el estado es su ventaja de casi 20 puntos porcentuales en lo que se refiere al aborto, su mejor tema en los estados disputados y la segunda preocupación más importante para los votantes de Pensilvania.How the polls compare More

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      A Mystery Repeats: Harris Up 4 in Pennsylvania, and Trump Up 6 in Arizona

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      Being uncertain about our earlier poll results but finding almost the same numbers the next time around.A recent rally for Kamala Harris in Pittsburgh. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesAt the end of our last wave of post-debate battleground polls, there were two state poll results that didn’t seem to fit the rest.One was Pennsylvania: Kamala Harris led by four percentage points, making it her best result in the battlegrounds. It was our only state poll conducted immediately after the debate, when her supporters might have been especially excited to respond to a poll.The other was Arizona: Donald J. Trump led by five points, making it his best result among the battlegrounds. Even stranger, it was a huge swing from our previous poll of the state, which Vice President Harris had led by five points.In both cases, it seemed possible that another New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll would yield a significantly different result. With that in mind, we decided to take an additional measure of Arizona and Pennsylvania before our final polls at the end of the month.The result? Essentially the same as our prior polls.Ms. Harris leads by four points in Pennsylvania, just as she did immediately after the final debate.Mr. Trump leads by six points in Arizona, about the same as the five-point lead he held three weeks ago.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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      Pennsylvania swing county to keep ballot drop boxes after controversy

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      A battleground county in north-eastern Pennsylvania will have ballot drop boxes this fall after its county manager faced pressure and reversed her decision to eliminate them.The announcement on Friday came less than a month after Romilda Crocamo, the county manager in Luzerne county, said she was getting rid of the county’s four drop boxes over concerns the county could not secure them. “I cannot secure the drop boxes. And, you know, sometimes I have to make difficult decisions,” she said in an interview last month.But voting rights groups sued Crocamo last week, saying she could not unilaterally get rid of the drop boxes.Elections in the county are jointly overseen by a five-member board of elections who are responsible for setting election policies, and the county manager, who is responsible for personnel. A hearing in the case had been scheduled for Monday. Voters in the state – a critical one for both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden – have already begun receiving and returning mail-in ballots.Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Michelle Henry, sent a letter to Crocamo advising her that county board of elections had the power to set policies over drop boxes.An agreement filed on Sunday in the Luzerne county court of common pleas says Crocamo does not concede she is under a legal obligation to deploy drop boxes, but that she won’t block their deployment this election cycle.“This is a huge victory for Luzerne county voters,” said Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich, the executive director of In This Together NEPA, which sued the county over drop boxes.View image in fullscreen“All Pennsylvanians have the freedom to choose how they cast their ballots – in person on Election Day, by mail-in ballot, or by using a drop box. We applaud the Luzerne County Board of Elections for making drop boxes accessible in Luzerne County since 2020, and we applaud the County Manager for reversing course in the best interest of voters throughout the county,” Hoffman-Mirilovich said in a statement.Crocamo said in a statement that drop boxes at two county facilities were deployed “and under video surveillance”. She said the county was still waiting on approval from two private locations.“While Ms Crocamo remains quite concerned about security, manpower, and fiscal issues associated with deployment of ballot drop boxes in Luzerne County, she agrees that given the importance of the November 5th election, the residents of Luzerne County should have every opportunity to attend to their important civic duty and vote in the upcoming election,” Mark Cedrone, her lawyer, said in a statement. More

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      Trump to attend rally at site of July assassination attempt in Pennsylvania

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      Donald Trump plans to return on Saturday to the site where a gunman tried to assassinate him in July, as the former president sets aside what are now near-constant worries for his physical safety in order to fulfill a promise – “really an obligation”, he said recently – to the people of Butler, Pennsylvania.“I’ll probably start off by saying, ‘As I was saying … ’,” the Republican presidential nominee has joked, in a bit of black humor about a speech cut short when a bullet struck Trump’s ear and he was whisked off stage – fist aloft – with blood dripping across his face.Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, also will be on hand at the Butler Farm Show grounds, as will billionaire Elon Musk, as the campaign elevates the headline-generating potential of his return with just 30 days to go in their the campaign against the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.The campaign is predicting tens of thousands of people will attend what is being pitched as a “tribute to the American spirit”. Local hotels, motels and inns are reportedly full and some eager rallygoers were already arriving on Friday, according to a local Facebook page.Hundreds of people were lined up as the sun rose on Saturday. A memorial for firefighter Corey Comperatore, who died as he shielded family members from gunfire, was set up in the bleachers, featuring his firefighter’s jacket surrounded by flowers.“President Trump looks forward to returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, to honor the victims from that tragic day,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “The willingness of Pennsylvanians to join President Trump in his return to Butler represents the strength and resiliency of the American people.”Trump will use the 5pm ET event to remember Comperatore and to recognize the two other rallygoers injured during the assassination attempt, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They and Trump were struck when the 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire from an unsecured rooftop nearby before he was fatally shot by sharpshooters.How Crooks managed to outmaneuver law enforcement that day and scramble on top of a building within easy shooting distance of the ex-president is among myriad questions that remain unanswered about the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. Another is his motive, which has never been determined.The Butler county district attorney, Rich Goldinger, told WPXI-TV this week that “everyone is doubling down on their efforts to make sure this is done safely and correctly”.Mike Slupe, the county sheriff, told the station he estimates the Secret Service – which has undergone a painful reckoning over its handling of two attempts on Trump’s life – is deploying ”quadruple the assets” it did in July.Butler county, on the western edge of a coveted presidential swing state, is a Trump stronghold. He won the county – where turnout hovers around an impressive 80% – with about 66% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. About 57% of Butler county’s 139,000 registered voters are Republicans, compared with about 29% who are Democrats.Three months after the shooting, townspeople are divided over the value of Trump’s return. Heidi Priest, a Butler resident who started a Facebook group supporting Harris, said Trump’s last visit fanned political tensions in the city.“Whenever you see people supporting him and getting excited about him being here, it scares the people who don’t want to see him re-elected,” she said.But Trump needs to drive up voter turnout in conservative strongholds such as Butler county, an overwhelmingly white, rural-suburban community, if he wants to win Pennsylvania in November. Harris, too, has targeted her campaign efforts at Pennsylvania, rallying there repeatedly as part of her aggressive outreach in critical swing states. More

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      Elon Musk says he will attend Trump rally at Pennsylvania shooting site

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      Elon Musk plans to attend Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at the site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the former president narrowly avoided assassination in July.“I will be there to support!” the tech billionaire replied to a post by Trump on Musk’s social media platform, X, saying he was returning to the Butler Farm show grounds.Trump’s decision to hold the rally in the same open-air venue came after a series of harsh reports into Secret Service security failures that allowed a gunman to open fire from a rooftop on the outskirts of the fairgrounds.Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, injured the former president, killed rally attender Corey Comperatore and severely wounded two others as he got off clear shots with an assault rifle before he was killed by federal snipers.Trump and his campaign have indicated they will turn the rally into a triumphant return for the former president, as well as a way to honor those who were killed or injured.Comperatore’s family will attend, along with those injured in the gunfire, Trump and his campaign have said.“What you’re going to see in Butler … tomorrow is the kind of strength and leadership that we are desperate for back in that White House. I think it’s going to be an emotional rally,” Lara Trump told Fox News.The Pittsburgh Gazette said crowd estimates for Saturday’s planned event ranged from 15,000 to as high as 100,000. The Secret Service is expecting as many as 60,000 people.“There is a pilgrimage sense at all the rallies, but this is going to be the one,” said Jen Golbeck, a University of Maryland professor, told the newspaper. “There are definitely people who feel like – and say to me – the hand of God has touched Trump.”Trump said, “I had God on my side” in surviving the shooting and the “providential” moment, which also produced one of the 2024 presidential campaign’s – and any election in US history – most potent images, with Trump rising from a Secret Service huddle, blood streaked across his face, raising his fist and shouting “Fight!”Religious interpretations aside, the assassination attempt was the first of two Trump has now faced. Last month, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh allegedly aspired to shoot the former president on Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.Trump has also faced ongoing death threats from Iran, which is also blamed for hacking into his campaign.Trump has accused the Biden administration of intentionally denying security resources to help Kamala Harris, the US vice-president and his Democratic opponent in the November election, by preventing him from addressing large crowds, a signature of his political life.“They couldn’t give me any help. And I’m so angry about it because what they’re doing is interfering in the election,” he said in a Fox News interview.Changes have been made to what he can do on the campaign trail and Trump staffers are on edge, the Associated Press reported. There have been death threats directed at his aides, and his team isn’t as able to quickly organize the mass rallies he prefers.View image in fullscreenArmed security officers stand guard at the campaign’s Florida headquarters, and staff have been told to remain vigilant and alert.Events have been canceled and moved around because the Secret Service lacked the resources to safely secure them. Even with the use of glass barricades to protect Trump on stage, there are concerns about holding additional rallies outdoors due to fears about drones.Trump also now travels with a larger security footprint, with new traffic restrictions outside his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, and a line of dump trucks and big guns on display outside Trump Tower in New York when he is staying there.The Secret Service spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, said that Trump “is receiving heightened levels of US Secret Service protection” and that “our top priority is mitigating risks to ensure his continued safety at all times.”Leslie Osche, Butler county commissioners chair, told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 that officials were “confident” about security at Saturday’s event.Musk has endorsedTrump for another term in the White House. On Friday, the tech billionaire also retweeted a post calling Saturday’s event “HISTORIC!” More