Politics

The abortion debate is giving Kamala Harris a moment. But voters still aren't sold

Published

9 months ago

April 16, 2024

The abortion debate is giving Kamala Harris a moment. But voters still aren't sold

PHOENIX —

When a group of crossover voters was asked during a focus group about Vice President Kamala Harris, their assessments were brutal: If she is helping Biden, you don’t see it. She rubs me the wrong way. She was picked because she is a demographic. The big things she had, she failed.

The comments, fair or not, represent a problem for President Biden and for Harris, echoed in interviews with voters here in Arizona, a key swing state where Harris spoke on Friday. More than three years into the oldest president in history’s first term, his understudy has failed to win over a majority of voters or convince them that she is ready to step in if Biden falters, according to polls.

“Swing voters don’t like her,” said Gunner Ramer, political director for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, which allowed The Times to view videos from three focus groups, including the crossover group that featured people who voted for former President Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

It wasn’t just former Trump voters who were negative about Harris. In a focus group of Black voters who were disappointed with Biden, none raised their hand in support of Harris, with one participant calling her “the bad news bear.” A focus group of California Democrats, while they liked Harris, had to be prompted to discuss her and said she needed more influence and exposure.

Many of Harris’ allies and supporters say the judgments are influenced by racism and sexism, pointing out that other vice presidents stayed in the background with less scrutiny and saw their popularity tied to the top of the ticket. Some people in focus groups criticized her clothes or compared her to Hillary Clinton in comments that seemed to validate those concerns.

But her low popularity could pose a political problem that her predecessors have not faced, given the focus on Trump’s and Biden’s ages, 77 and 81 respectively. More than half of voters, 54%, said she is not qualified to serve as president in a March USA Today/Suffolk poll, compared with 38% who said she is.

“If there was a health event for either nominee, the VP is front and center in terms of people who may be on the fence, people who may dislike both candidates,” said David Paleologos, who conducted a USA Today/Suffolk poll that asked voters their assessment of Harris. “And there are a lot whose decision may hinge on a comfort level with the vice presidential choice.”

Harris has heard the criticism since she entered the White House to historic triumph in 2021. While she seldom responds directly, she has stepped up her appearances with core Democratic groups, often keeping a more robust campaign and travel schedule than Biden. Many allies believe her role as the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights will boost her and the Democratic ticket on an issue that helped carry the party to unexpected success in the 2022 midterm elections.

She spoke Friday in Tucson, three days after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that an1864 ban on abortion can be enforced in the coming weeks. She framed the Democrats’ case against Trump, who has claimed credit for shifting the Supreme Court against abortion rights and last week said each state should decide on the issue.

“Just like he did in Arizona, he basically wants to take America back to the 1800s,” Harris said.

Several voters said in interviews in Phoenix on Monday that they were not aware Harris was in their state just a few days ago, underscoring the challenge of getting attention as a vice president in an era of information overload.

“If she is coming for us, she doesn’t show it,” said Tracey Sayles, a 52-year-old Black Democrat.

Sayles voted in prior elections for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Biden but now says her choice is 50-50 in the coming election, despite calling Trump “vulgar,” because Biden “looks like he’s ill.” She would have driven to see Harris in Tucson if she’d known she was in the state, she said, but feels the vice president has been hiding.

Another voter who dislikes both Trump and Biden, Jeff Garland, said he has not seen much of Harris either.

“But from what I have seen of her, she doesn’t look like someone I want running my country,” said Garland, a 57-year-old retired member of the military who said he voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and planned to sit out 2024.

Kellie Hoverson, a 31-year-old Democrat, said she “was not thrilled about Biden” but was more bullish on Harris, despite hearing concerns from younger friends and relatives about her history as a prosecutor in California.

“I just want a woman president,” she said. “I just want to see it in my lifetime.”

Studies by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which works to advance women’s equality in politics, suggest women face an “imagination barrier” when they run for the highest executive offices, because voters have a harder time picturing them in the job than they do white men, who have historically held the posts.

“Men can tell and women have to show,” said Amanda Hunter, the foundation’s executive director.

Polls suggest Harris, who dropped out early in the 2020 presidential primary, has made strides with the Democratic base. Three quarters of Democrats had a favorable view of her in the USA Today/Suffolk poll, which showed a little more than a quarter of independents view her favorably.

Brian Fallon, who serves as her campaign communications director, said she “has proven to be a highly effective messenger on issues from reproductive freedom to gun violence prevention” and said she is “uniquely positioned to mobilize critical groups across the Biden-Harris coalition, including both progressives and independents.”

The fact that many voters say they remain unfamiliar with Harris is something her allies and advisors see as an opening, because it leaves room for persuasion when more voters focus in on the race in the early fall.

“This is not a one-speech or two-speech thing, this is four or five months of just putting in the work,” said Cornell Belcher, who served as one of former President Obama’s pollsters.

Belcher argued that the small slice of persuadable voters who give Harris her lowest marks won’t decide the race; it will instead be a question of whether Democrats can rebuild their coalition of young voters, women and people of color that delivered Obama his 2012 reelection and formed the backbone of Biden’s 2020 victory.

“I’m more worried about these younger voters taking the off-ramp, like they did in 2016,” he said, crediting Harris with her work reaching them in college campus tours and other outreach.

But there are questions there, too, with inconsistencies in polls of voters age 18-29, given the small sample sizes of subgroups. One poll conducted in early April by Emerson College showed Harris with pretty high favorable marks among those younger voters, nearly 49%, while another poll by the Economist taken a few days later showed only 34% of that age group viewed her favorably.

It’s unclear whether Trump, who has not targeted the vice president often, will pick up his attacks on Harris, who is unsurprisingly toxic among Republican base voters. “If they cheat on the election, it might be Kamala,” Trump said during a March rally in North Carolina, echoing his false claims of widespread election fraud.

He fairly quickly pivoted back to Biden: “We got enough problems with this guy.”

A senior advisor to the Trump campaign, Danielle Alvarez, called Harris irrelevant. “Political reality is that Biden’s under water and he is a failed president,” she said. ”She is certainly probably equal to him in those failures, but he is the target.”

Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster, agrees that running mates do not generally impact votes but points to Sarah Palin in 2008 as an exception, in large part because polls showed dual concerns about John McCain’s health and Palin’s fitness for office. He argues that Harris, whom he characterizes as a walking gaffe, presents a similar problem.

“There may be plenty of time, but if you don’t have the ability to be more articulate and look like you’re ready to be leader of the free world, it’s going to be difficult to accomplish that,” Ayres said.

Harris is counting on that time. She is fairly busy with public events, but vice presidents, by design, don’t tend to draw much attention compared with the president.

As the campaign heats up, and Trump picks a running mate, they are likely to see more of her, and, potentially, in a different light.

“For people who have misgivings about her, ultimately the question for them is going to be how does she look as opposed to X?” said Joel Goldstein, a historian who studies the vice presidency. “Now, she’s measured against an ideal figure.”

Politics

The Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban. Here's what happens now

Published

10 minutes ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

The Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban. Here's what happens now

The Supreme Court has paved the way for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. on Sunday.

The high court on Friday upheld a new law that requires the social media app’s Chinese owner to sell off TikTok’s U.S. business or face a nationwide ban.

“Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote. “All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional.”

The future of the popular short-form video app has been precarious since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut it down because of national security concerns. Trump and others raised the prospect that TikTok owner ByteDance could assist the Chinese government by sharing the data it collects from its roughly 170 million American users, embedding malicious software in the app or helping to spread disinformation.

After President Biden signed the law in April, which set a Jan. 19 deadline for the ban to take effect, TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government. The company said a ban would violate 1st Amendment rights and argued that there was “no support for the idea” that its Chinese ownership posed national security risks.

What will happen over the next few days is unclear. On Thursday the Associated Press, citing an unnamed government official, reported that Biden won’t enforce the ban and would leave the app’s fate to Trump, who takes office Monday.

Was the decision expected?

Pretty much. The Supreme Court justices sounded highly skeptical of TikTok’s free-speech defense during oral arguments on Jan. 10, signaling they were not likely to strike down the law.

The justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress was concerned about the threat to national security because TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is headquartered in China. They said the law in question was not an effort to restrict freedom of speech.

“Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. “Congress is not fine with a foreign adversary gathering all this data on 170 million Americans.”

Can I still download the app?

No, as of Sunday, it will be illegal for app stores such as Apple and Google Play to distribute TikTok or issue updates to the social media app. Companies that don’t abide face civil penalties of $5,000 per user.

You won’t be able to access TikTok from your browser, either.

What if I already have TikTok?

You’ll still have the app on your mobile device, but ByteDance might immediately shut it down in the U.S. on Sunday. Even if it doesn’t go dark right away, TikTok is expected to lose utility over time as users leave and updates aren’t rolled out.

What is Trump’s position now?

Trump has reversed course on TikTok since his first term, joining the social media app in June during his presidential election and posting, “Those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.”

In recent weeks, the president-elect has been trying to prevent the app from being banned in the U.S., submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court and asking it to delay the Jan. 19 deadline. He also met with TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago last month.

Shortly after the Supreme Court decision was released, Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

In a TikTok video posted Friday morning, Chew said: “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States. This is a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”

Could Trump stop the ban from going into effect?

The timing of the ban — the day before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — makes things tricky. Only the sitting president can issue a 90-day stay on the ban and can do so only if a buyer has taken concrete steps toward a purchase.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Chew is planning to attend Trump’s inauguration and will be seated on the dais.

Is a last-minute sale of TikTok possible?

It could happen, but ByteDance’s priority had been to get the law struck down and maintain ownership of the app. The company has signaled that it does not want to sell.

Are there any serious bidders out there for TikTok’s U.S. business?

On Jan. 8, an investor group spearheaded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt submitted an offer to ByteDance, the group said. The group is calling itself the People’s Bid for TikTok and includes Kevin O’Leary, one of the investors from the reality television show “Shark Tank.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

What is the People’s Bid for TikTok pledging to do with the app?

If its offer is successful, the group would rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of TikTok users, said Tomicah Tillemann, president of Project Liberty, a New York-based organization that assembled the bid.

“What we are focused on is providing a clear path forward that will allow for the preservation of the dynamic, vibrant community that is TikTok under American ownership,” he said.

“Our vision for TikTok is grounded in the idea that people should have a choice in how their data is used, a voice in the way platforms operate and a stake in the economic value that they create online.”

Anyone else?

On Monday, social media personality MrBeast wrote on X: “Okay fine, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned.” He later followed up and said he’d had “so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”

The same day, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government was considering selling the U.S. arm of TikTok to Elon Musk. But in a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for TikTok called the report “pure fiction.”

How are TikTok influencers feeling?

Los Angeles is a major hub for content creators, who say they’ve been preparing for this moment for years.

Nathan Kehn, 35, joined TikTok about four years ago, posting cat videos and other funny content. He said he was disappointed that the government could “just come through and wipe out people’s livelihoods like that.”

“It’s super unfair,” he said of the ban. “A lot of my friends are all TikTok and this is about to ruin a lot of people’s lives.”

Kehn, who lives in Sherman Oaks and has about 800,000 TikTok followers, started planning ahead by growing his Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat accounts just in case TikTok was forced to shut down.

“Part of being a social media content creator is I’ve never put my eggs in one basket because I don’t know how long any of it’s ever going to last,” he said. “I learned a long time ago, you can’t trust one platform.”

What would happen to TikTok’s employees locally?

TikTok has a significant presence in Culver City, employing roughly 440 people there, according to city estimates. The company has been an important tool for video creators, small businesses, music artists and Hollywood studios.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge this week, employees were told that TikTok’s offices would stay open regardless.

“The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience [of TikTok],” the memo said.

Politics

U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry

Published

7 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry

The Biden administration declassified one last piece of information about how it has helped Ukraine: an account of its once-secret support for the country’s military drone industry.

U.S. officials said on Thursday that they had made big investments that helped Ukraine start and expand its production of drones as it battled Russia’s larger and better-equipped army.

Much of the U.S. assistance to the Ukrainian military, including billions of dollars in missiles, air defense systems, tanks, artillery and training, has been announced to the public. But other support has largely gone on in the shadows.

That included helping Ukraine develop a new generation of drones and revolutionize how wars are fought, according to U.S. officials.

The innovations in Ukraine’s drone industry have been hailed as transformative, but the U.S. support has been less well understood. In addition to technical support, the U.S. has spent significant money, including $1.5 billion sent last September, to boost Ukraine’s drone production, officials said.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said the support had “a real strategic impact” on the war.

“We saw how UAVs were becoming increasingly central to the fight in Ukraine and will be central to all future fights,” Mr. Sullivan said in a statement on Thursday, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.

The U.S. effort included money to support drone makers and to purchase parts. The United States also sent intelligence officials to Ukraine to help build its program, according to people who know about the effort.

In an interview this week, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, referred indirectly to his agency’s support for the drone program in Ukraine.

“I think our intelligence support has helped the Ukrainians to defend themselves,” Mr. Burns said. “Not just in the sharing of intelligence, but support for some of the systems that have been so effective.”

The White House declassified information about Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine ahead of the invasion. During the war, officials have regularly declassified information about Iranian and North Korean arms shipments to Russia.

Mr. Sullivan said the drone effort began after the Ukrainians’ first counteroffensive in the fall of 2022 as the limits of Ukraine’s conventional capabilities became clear.

The efforts accelerated, Mr. Sullivan said, in the preparation for Ukraine’s second counteroffensive. That push, in 2023, was ultimately less successful. Ukraine did not gain as much ground as it had wanted, in part because of Russia’s use of drones.

That 2023 counteroffensive was a hard lesson, U.S. officials said. Russian drones attacked U.S.- and European-provided tanks and armored vehicles as they tried to navigate minefields.

After the counteroffensive, U.S. officials said they rapidly increased support to Ukrainian drone makers, building on Kyiv’s efforts to grow its own industry. In addition to financial aid, the Biden administration worked to build ties between American technology companies and Ukrainian drone makers.

Last fall, the Pentagon allocated $800 million to Ukraine’s drone production, which was used to purchase drone components and finance drone makers. When President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the White House in September, President Biden said another $1.5 billion would be directed to Ukraine’s drone industry.

American officials said on Thursday that they believe the investments have made Ukraine’s drones more effective and deadly. They noted that Ukraine’s sea drones had destroyed a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and that drones deployed on the front lines had helped slow Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Sullivan said the drive to build Ukraine’s drone industry had provided “invaluable lessons” that the Biden administration had started to integrate into America’s own defense industry.

Politics

DeSantis' chosen Rubio replacement Moody wants to tackle inflation, spending, border: 'Audit the Fed!'

Published

8 hours ago

January 17, 2025

Press Room

DeSantis' chosen Rubio replacement Moody wants to tackle inflation, spending, border: 'Audit the Fed!'

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who is slated to become a U.S. senator, is calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, pledging to vocally oppose government spending, and declaring that she will fight to bolster the border and remove individuals who enter the U.S. illegally.

With Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., poised to soon leave office to serve as Secretary of State in the new Trump administration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Moody as his pick to replace Rubio in the U.S. Senate.

And with even some Democrats planning to support confirmation, Rubio is likely to sail through the confirmation vote.

“Here’s a priority of mine in the Senate: our inflation has been fueled by the Federal Reserve. We must audit the Fed!” Moody declared in a post on X.

DESANTIS ANNOUNCES CHOICE FOR SENATE APPOINTMENT AFTER RUBIO’S EXPECTED RESIGNATION

“As Florida’s next U.S. Senator, I will work tirelessly to reduce the bloat of Washington and speak out loudly against government spending,” she noted in another post. “Like we’ve done in Florida, this country needs to cut spending and get fiscally responsible. I look forward to working with DOGE, and I will work hard to leave the next generation of our country on a much stronger financial footing.”

When discussing her role in confirming judges and justices, she specifically mentioned Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

“As a former judge, I will take my role confirming judges and justices seriously to ensure that, like Justices Thomas and Alito, they share the values and concepts of law as our Founding Fathers understood them,” she said in a tweet. “I will work through the Senate confirmation process to ensure those who get confirmed are strong nominees and know that it is their duty to interpret the Constitution as it is written.”

WHO IS ASHLEY MOODY? MEET THE SENATE’S NEWEST MEMBER FROM FLORIDA

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody responds to cheering supporters after Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, announced her appointment as U.S. senator to replace Marco Rubio, during a news conference at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, Fla., on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Sharing Moody’s post, DeSantis called Alito and Thomas “the gold standard.”

“In the U.S. Senate, I will support President @realDonaldTrump and fight for legislation that strengthens the border, builds the wall, and removes those who entered unlawfully,” Moody noted in a tweet.

DESANTIS TOUTS FLORIDA’S ‘FUTURE WAY OF THINKING,’ VOWS STATE WILL ‘DO OUR DUTY’ TO HELP INCOMING TRUMP ADMIN

DeSantis responded, declaring, “Make Illegal Immigration Illegal Again.”

Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.