Pennsylvania
Harris campaign sees its path to victory in Pennsylvania running through the suburbs
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign laid out what it sees as her path to victory in Pennsylvania in a memo shared exclusively with NBC News ahead of Monday night’s rally in bellwether Erie County.
The Harris team pointed to polls showing Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, having made gains in the battleground state’s suburbs — which it dubbed “our own mini ‘blue wall’” in Pennsylvania — compared with President Joe Biden’s 2020 performance there.
The campaign also emphasized that a win involves boosting its popularity among educated suburbanites, including those who have voted for Republicans in recent elections. Nearly 160,000 voters in the state cast ballots for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary this year — with her numbers proving stronger among suburban voters — even after she had already dropped out of the race against former President Donald Trump.
“The Harris campaign’s path to win Pennsylvania capitalizes on Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs,” reads the memo, which also highlighted the campaign’s focus on Haley voters. “We have flipped the suburbs from red to blue since Trump won them in 2020, and we have also grown our support with women and tripled our support among white college educated voters in the state.”
The campaign cited surveys last month from The Philadelphia Inquirer/The New York Times/Siena College and Marist College that both showed Harris up 6 percentage points over Trump in the suburbs — a notable improvement from Trump’s 3-point victory over Biden among suburban Pennsylvanians in 2020, as exit polls showed. (The results in both of the surveys last month fell within their margins of error.)
Recent surveys have found the overall race in Pennsylvania to be within the margin of error for polls, with a survey from Quinnipiac University this month finding Harris up 3 points, an Inquirer/Times/Siena survey finding her up 4 points and The Wall Street Journal having Trump up 1 point.
It’s the most sought-after battleground on the map, offering the most Electoral College votes among the hotly contested states, and it is the most frequent campaign destination for both Harris and Trump.
Trump’s “weakness in the suburbs means that for him to actually win, he has to double and triple down on his base in the reddest counties in the state,” said Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to Harris’ Pennsylvania campaign. “And so we are going on offense and going to places where he thinks he has a strength and competing.”
The campaign highlighted events that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have held in red counties like Johnstown, Lancaster and Rochester. It also detailed investments made in red parts of the state to “cut margins and stop Trump’s only hope of victory,” noting that 16 of its 50 statewide campaign offices are in counties Trump won by more than 10 points in 2020.
Recent presidential elections in Pennsylvania have been exceptionally close. Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by just over 1 point. In 2016, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by an even slimmer margin.
“With most polls showing this to be a margin of error race, we are also going on offense with rural voters to cut into Trump’s margins — a critical advantage as Trump’s team lacks the ground game capacity to conduct persuasion and mobilization campaigns simultaneously,” the Harris campaign memo reads.
McPhillips said improving on Biden’s margins in those counties by just 1 to 2 points would effectively cut off Trump’s path to flipping the state red.
“We’re eating into his margins in a way that cannot sustain a victory,” he said. “And that is how we’re going to beat him, and it’s how we’re able to play offense on so many fronts.”
The campaign highlighted that as of Sunday it had knocked on more than 1 million doors across the state, including 250,000 over the weekend, since Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket. It also referred to its 50 offices and 450 on-the-ground staff members.
Harris has so far spent far more time in the western part of the state, including rural areas, than she has in the Philadelphia market, which McPhillips said is partly to help introduce her to voters who may be less familiar with her.
For Trump, billionaire mogul Elon Musk ramped up his political engagement in the state this month through his America PAC, which is working to turn out the vote for Trump.
McPhillips dismissed the potential impact of that effort.
“They can’t scale up to the level that we’re at,” he said. “Even with Elon Musk’s money, you can’t spend enough money to scale up an operation to match ours. It’s too late. You needed to start in March, February, January, and they’ve just been phoning it in for so long. It’s going to be close, for sure. We’ve always been planning for it to be so. But that planning manifests itself in the fact that we actually had a plan, not a concept of one.”
The Trump campaign said the Harris campaign is papering over a problem it faces in Pennsylvania cities — particularly Philadelphia, the most vote-rich locale for Democrats in the state.
“They can point to the suburbs, but they’re losing ground in places like Philadelphia,” a Trump campaign official said. “It’s exactly why [former President Barack] Obama was just pleading to African American men to vote for her. They’ve sounded the alarms, and they know they’re losing.”
The Trump campaign also pointed to Republicans’ having significantly cut into the Democratic voter registration advantage in the state while flipping Bucks, Luzerne and Beaver counties to Republican registration edges. It further highlighted reports that working-class voters in Philadelphia have embraced Trump.
Kush Desai, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania spokesperson, highlighted Obama’s visit as a sign the Harris team was scrambling. “An Obama visit isn’t going to convince Pennsylvanians to vote for another four years of open borders, rising prices, and disaster at home and abroad,” Desai said in a statement.
In its memo, the Harris campaign said it believes it will be able to “at least match” Biden’s support in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in his victory in those cities four years ago. It went into greater detail about its efforts to reach Black voters in the state, including the staff members it has dedicated to outreach and engagement and its events focused on Black voters.
Last week, Obama offered unscripted remarks during a Pittsburgh campaign stop in which he said his understanding of the race is that “we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. … [T]hat seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Seeking to speak directly to Black men, he pushed for undecideds to get behind Harris, saying her record deserves their support.
“This is excellence on display, and it needs to be rewarded,” Obama said.
State Sen. Vincent Hughes told NBC News he could “understand the frustration” Obama expressed.
“Maybe the tone should have been a little bit different,” he said. “But let’s be real clear about this. Let’s get to the substance of what he said. There’s nothing in Donald Trump’s background, career, anything that should lead any citizen, let alone Black men, to vote for him. He’s not a successful businessman. … He was sued for discrimination in housing.”
Hughes said the Harris campaign is going to hit its targets among both Black men and voters in Philadelphia, adding that he has seen a flood of campaign activity there recently that has outpaced what Democrats were doing in 2020 during the worst of the Covid pandemic.
“It’s going in the right way for the vice president,” he said. “Look, for a woman and for a Black woman, it’s always harder. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s always harder. Maybe if we break through with this election, we can finally smash that glass ceiling and not make it so hard for the next one.”
Pennsylvania
Federal government sues Pennsylvania, others over SNAP data
(WHTM) — Pennsylvania is one of four states facing a lawsuit from the federal government over SNAP applicant data.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan, and Minnesota. They are seeking the last five years of SNAP applicant data in the respective states.
The DOJ alleges that the four states refused to turn over data to the U.S. Department of Agriculture “so that USDA could ensure that states are properly administering and enforcing their determinations of residents’ eligibility.”
“The American people deserve a government that is transparent about how it spends their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “These four states are thwarting USDA’s efforts to ensure that the billions of dollars in SNAP benefits they distribute every year are not lost to fraud.”
“Stopping the rampant theft of taxpayer money demands a whole-of-government response, including strong participation at the state level,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “These states are happy to take hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars—much of which is exploited by fraudsters—but want zero transparency over how those tax dollars are spent.”
The Department of Justice said 28 states promptly provided data and such indicated “there are billions of dollars per year in SNAP funds going to overpayments and fraud.”
The USDA has been seeking data for the past year or so, leading to a legal battle over concerns about how the data would be used.
Pennsylvania
House Republicans stall activity, Pennsylvania Rep. Meuser calls tactics ‘foolish’ | Fox Business Video
Maria Bartiromo reports on House Speaker Mike Johnson sending representatives home early as Republican hardliners stall floor activities, refusing votes without action on the SAVE America Act.
House Speaker Mike Johnson sent representatives home early as hardline Republicans stalled floor activities, demanding action on the SAVE America Act. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, urging House Republicans to unify and avoid giving power to Democrats. Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) labels the stalling tactics ‘foolish,’ emphasizing the need for legislative progress and appropriations.
Pennsylvania
Measles detected in two more counties in Pennsylvania as health department recommends early vaccination
Pennsylvania health officials have now detected measles cases in York and Northumberland Counties as cases in Lancaster County, the center of an ongoing outbreak, continued to rise.
And the state health department is now recommending early measles vaccinations for infants beginning at 6 months in affected areas in an effort to protect them against the spread of the highly contagious disease, which is particularly risky for young children. The same precautions should be taken by families with infants traveling to these areas.
Six Pennsylvania counties have now seen measles cases since an outbreak was first confirmed in Lebanon County in April. In all, the state has reported 81 measles cases across eight counties in 2026, more than five times the cases reported in 2025.
State health officials said it was too early to tell how the latest cases in York and Northumberland Counties are connected to others in the region, but that contact tracing investigations are continuing. All cases were among people who had not received at least two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) or whose vaccination status was unclear.
As of Wednesday, six cases had been confirmed in Northumberland County, to the north of Dauphin County, and one case had been detected in York County, along Lancaster’s western border.
Lebanon County has reported 20 cases and Dauphin and Berks Counties have reported two cases each.
Lancaster County has seen 38 cases of measles since late April, with health officials confirming seven cases in the last two weeks. The area was at the center of a prior measles outbreak in January, when state health officials confirmed eight cases in Lancaster County and an additional four between Chester and Montgomery Counties.
Vaccination rates among kindergarteners have decreased across Pennsylvania in recent years, and some counties affected in the current outbreak have particularly low rates, including Lancaster, where about 88.5% of kindergarten students are vaccinated. Health experts say that 95% of a community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.
Health officials have been conducting contact tracing to detect as many cases as possible. In the current outbreak, they have twice warned Lancaster residents that they could have been exposed to measles.
Shoppers and employees at a local Kohl’s were potentially exposed to the virus over four days after a staffer tested positive in late May, LancasterOnline reported. And a person with measles visited the Lancaster County Courthouse on June 3.
But doctors in Lancaster County say they fear some measles cases are going unreported, either because patients don’t understand the importance of tracking measles cases or because they fear repercussions.
No cases have been confirmed in the Philadelphia region during this outbreak. But Delaware County health officials said last week that they had detected measles in two wastewater samples, indicating that someone with measles had used a bathroom connected to the county’s public water supply. It was unclear if that person lived in the county or was passing through.
Early vaccination recommended
On Wednesday, a statewide health alert urged physicians to accelerate vaccination schedules to protect children against measles. Officials had said they were considering the measure earlier this month as cases continued to rise.
Measles can infect nine in 10 unvaccinated people who are exposed to it, and can linger in the air for up to two hours and incubate in patients for three weeks. The disease typically presents with a fever and a rash but can cause brain inflammation and pneumonia in serious cases.
Typically, children receive the first of two MMR vaccines at 1 year old, then a second between 4 and 6 years old.
But children as young as 6 months can receive an additional “dose zero” to protect them from the disease amid an outbreak. In its alert, the state health department said parents should vaccinate infants between 6 and 11 months with the “dose zero” if they live in affected areas or if they’re planning to travel there.
Those children should then receive additional MMR doses at 12 to 15 months and 4 to 6 years.
This “dose zero” is less effective than doses given at 1 year old, officials cautioned. But it’s 58% effective against measles when given at 6 to 8 months, and 83% effective when administered at 9 to 11 months.
“Early MMR vaccination is safe and provides modest protection when measles is spreading,” officials wrote in the alert.
Children older than 12 months who haven’t been vaccinated should get an MMR dose immediately, and a second 28 days later, health officials said. Unvaccinated adults, or those without evidence of immunity, should also get two MMR doses.
And anyone who has received one dose of the MMR vaccine in the past should get a second at least 28 days after their first, officials said.
Usually, children who received a first dose at around 12 months wait to get their second dose until they’re 4 to 6 years old. But in an outbreak situation, those children should get their second doses early — at least 28 days after their first shot.
Adults born before 1957 are typically considered immune, but healthcare workers in that age group who don’t have lab evidence of immunity or prior infection should consider getting vaccinated, state officials said.
Adults who received an inactivated measles vaccine between 1963 and 1967 are considered unvaccinated during an outbreak, and should also get two doses of the current MMR vaccine.
Pregnant people, people with severely weakened immune systems, and people who have a history of experiencing severe allergic reactions, like anaphylaxis, to a vaccine ingredient or to a previous dose of MMR cannot receive the vaccine.
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