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How a migrant aid group got caught up in a right-wing social media thread : Consider This from NPR

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How a migrant aid group got caught up in a right-wing social media thread : Consider This from NPR

The offices of Resource Center Matamoros. The nonprofit works with asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR


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Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR


The offices of Resource Center Matamoros. The nonprofit works with asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR

April 15 started off as a typical day for Gabriela Zavala. She was juggling the demands of her busy family life in Texas, with running Resource Center Matamoros, a small NGO that helps asylum seekers in Mexico, on the other side of the border from Brownsville.

By the evening, her world would be flipped upside down, as her inbox was inundated with threats.

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Zavala soon realized she and her NGO, RCM, had been featured prominently in a social media thread showing flyers purportedly found in Matamoros, Mexico, that were urging migrants to illegally vote for Joe Biden in the upcoming election. The thread was posted by an arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation called the Oversight Project. It showed an image of a Spanish-language flyer with RCM’s logo and that of President Biden’s campaign.

A video in the thread showed the flyers hanging in portable toilets at a migrant encampment in Matamoros, with a message reminding migrants to vote for Biden to keep him in office. The flyers are signed with Zavala’s name.

The issue? Zavala says she had nothing to do with the flyers.

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Clumsy translations, defunct phone numbers

Mike Howell, the executive director of the Oversight Project, says the thread did not accuse Zavala of authoring the flyer. He also told The New York Times he condemns death threats. He told NPR the flyer is “very real.”

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The flyers were composed in error-riddled Spanish. The text includes an outdated description of RCM from its website that hasn’t been updated in years. That part appears to have been run through Google Translate. The flyer also lists a very old phone number – which also appears on the outdated website.

“Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open,” the flyer reads.

Zavala says she doesn’t support the flyer’s message, “I would never sit there and tell somebody that can’t vote, that I know can’t vote, ‘Hey. Go vote.’”

Zavala doesn’t know who wrote or who posted the flyers that were found in the portable toilets.

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Andrea Rudnik, with the migrant aid group Team Brownsville says she didn’t see the flyers at the encampment, or hear from any volunteers or migrants who did.

“Those port-o-potties are pretty filthy, If we wanted people to know something, it would be put in a different place,” Rudnik said.

A social media backlash

By the time Zavala realized why she had been receiving so many hateful messages, the viral storm had already exploded.

The thread about the flyers spread quickly and racked up more than 9 million views on the social media platform X.

The social media thread posted by the Oversight Project credited Muckraker, a right-wing website, with discovering the flyers. Muckraker is headed by Anthony Rubin, who often uses undercover tactics in his videos.

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Rubin spoke with NPR, and said that the video of the flyers was shot by an anonymous source with a “close connection” to his team.

On April 15th, in the hours before the thread about the flyers appeared online, Rubin and his brother rang the bell at Resource Center Matamoros saying they wanted to volunteer. Rubin confirmed that in an interview with NPR.

RCM’s staff called Zavala so she could speak to Rubin about volunteering. And later on, a clip from that phone call wound up as part of the thread about the flyers, with a caption saying Zavala had implied that she, “wants to help as many illegals as possible before President Trump is reelected.”

NPR’s Jude Joffe-Block delves into the full story on today’s episode. Tap the play button at the top of the screen to listen.

This episode was produced by Audrey Nguyen and Brianna Scott. Additional reporting from Mexico was contributed by Texas Public Radio’s Gaige Davila and independent journalist Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas. It was edited by Brett Neely and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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Harris says Trump 'devalues' women's ability to make their own choices

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Harris says Trump 'devalues' women's ability to make their own choices

PHOENIX — Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that former President Donald Trump’s remarks this week about protecting women whether they “like it or not” is another sign of how he “devalues” women.

“His latest comment is just the most recent in a series of examples that we have seen from him in his words and deeds about how he devalues the ability of women to have the choice and the freedom to make decisions about their own body,” Harris told NBC News in an exclusive interview.

The vice president also argued that most Americans “believe that women are intelligent enough and should have and be respected for their agency to make decisions for themselves about what is in their best interest,” rather than the government or Trump “telling them what to do.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately provide a comment on Harris’ remarks.

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Trump on Wednesday said that his “people” had instructed him not to say that he wanted to “protect the women.”

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not.’ I’m going to protect them,” Trump said during his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt was asked if she can see how Trump’s comments about doing something “whether the women like it or not” might make women uncomfortable.

“No, I can’t. Because if you look at the full context of President Trump’s remarks, he brought this up in the context of illegal immigration and protecting women from the illegal immigrant criminals,” Leavitt said Thursday.

Harris on Thursday also talked about President Joe Biden’s “garbage” remark from earlier this week, in which he appeared to criticize either Trump supporters or a comedian who delivered racist jokes at Trump’s rally in New York, and reiterated her view that “we should never criticize people based on who they vote for.”

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In addressing Biden’s comments, Harris pointed to Trump’s rhetoric about “the enemy from within” and comparing the U.S. to a “garbage can.”

“He does not understand that most people are exhausted with his rhetoric, exhausted with that approach, exhausted with an approach that Donald Trump has that’s trying to divide our country and have Americans point fingers at each other,” she said. “They’re done with it, and they’re ready to turn the page.”

Harris’ comments came before her rally in Phoenix. Her next campaign stops on Thursday are in Nevada, where she will hold rallies in Reno and Las Vegas.

The Sun Belt blitz comes as polling indicates a neck-and-neck presidential race less than a week before Election Day.

When asked by NBC News what Harris thinks her late mother would say to her in the final days before the election, Harris smiled.

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“‘Just go beat him,’” she said, laughing. “That’s probably what she’d say. Yeah, that’s my mother.”

Yamiche Alcindor reported from Phoenix, and Megan Lebowitz from Washington, D.C.

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Election 2024 Polls: Senate Races

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Election 2024 Polls: Senate Races

About our polling averages

Our averages include polls collected by The New York Times and by FiveThirtyEight. The estimates adjust for a variety of factors, including the recency and sample size of a poll, whether a poll represents likely voters, and whether other polls have shifted since a poll was conducted.

We also evaluate whether each pollster: Has a track record of accuracy in recent electionsIs a member of a professional polling organizationConducts probability-based sampling

These elements factor into how much weight each poll gets in the average. And we consider pollsters that meet at least two of the three criteria to be “select pollsters,” so long as they are conducting polls for nonpartisan sponsors. Read more about our methodology.

The Times conducts its own national and state polls in partnership with Siena College. Those polls are included in the averages. Follow Times/Siena polling here.

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Maine and Nebraska award two electoral votes to the statewide winner and a single electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. (Maine has two congressional districts, and Nebraska has three.) Historical election results for these districts are calculated based on votes cast within the current boundaries of the district.

Sources: Polling averages by The New York Times. Individual polls collected by FiveThirtyEight and The Times.

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Estée Lauder shares plunge as China sales slump prompts dividend cut

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Estée Lauder shares plunge as China sales slump prompts dividend cut

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Estée Lauder, the beauty company that owns Clinique and MAC Cosmetics, has cut its dividend and ditched its profit forecast as a sales slump in China deepens, prompting a 25 per cent plunge in its shares as trading opened in New York.

The New York-listed beauty group, which is in the midst of a turnaround and leadership transition, said on Thursday that a recovery in Chinese demand had proved slower than expected, with sales in the country falling by a double-digit percentage in the three months to the end of September.

As a result of the difficulty in forecasting when the Chinese market will recover, Estée Lauder said it was withdrawing its outlook for the rest of the year and reducing its dividend to a “more appropriate” level.

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Fabrizio Freda, who will retire as chief executive in January after 16 years at the company, said Estée Lauder expected “still-strong declines” in demand in China as well as in tourist shopping in Asia in the near term, and “ongoing normalisation of growth in prestige beauty, most notably in North America”.

The beauty industry has taken a hit from the economic slowdown in China, which has been a major profit engine for Estée Lauder and its larger rival L’Oréal in recent years.

The dour outlook will be another challenge incoming chief executive Stéphane de La Faverie will have to contend with when he takes the reins at a time when the Lauder family that controls the beauty group is stepping back from day-to-day management.

The company is implementing a turnaround programme designed to cut costs and overheads while reinvesting in its brands and innovation. Freda said the reset had “delivered promising initial results”.

After underperforming peers during two years of falling sales and profits, Thursday’s outlook cut is another blow for a company whose shares are now down 55 per cent this year, reducing its market value to $23bn.

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L’Oréal, the world’s biggest beauty company, last week missed quarterly sales expectations and flagged ongoing weakness in China and in travel retail. Its shares are down 23 per cent this year.

Estée Lauder reported a 4 per cent year-on-year drop in sales to $3.36bn in the three months to the end of September. It expects the rate of decline to accelerate to 6 to 8 per cent in the current quarter.

All of Estée Lauder’s divisions had falling sales this quarter, with skincare — its biggest by sales — down 8 per cent on a like-for-like basis. Losses in make-up, its second biggest, deepened in the quarter compared with the same period a year ago.

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