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Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris

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Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As Donald Trump adjusts to the reality of his new race against Kamala Harris, his campaign is counting on younger male voters to give him the edge in November in a presidential contest they insist is his to lose.

Trump and his Republican campaign now face a dramatically different race than the one just three weeks ago, before President Joe Biden abandoned his bid. While they acknowledge polls have tightened with Harris as the Democratic nominee, they maintain that the fundamentals of the race have not changed, with voters deeply sour over the direction of the country, and particularly the economy.

“What has happened is we are witnessing a kind of out-of-body experience where we have suspended reality for a couple of weeks,” Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio told reporters during a briefing in West Palm Beach on Thursday of the current state of the race.

It was a message echoed by Trump during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club.

“The honeymoon period’s gonna end,” he insisted while minimizing the size of the crowds Harris has been drawing and lashing out at his new opponent. “Let me tell you: We have the enthusiasm.”

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Campaign officials acknowledge that Harris had energized the Democratic base and that her team has taken the lead on fundraising. But they insist they have more than enough to do what they need to win. Trump’s campaign and its affiliates reported raising $138.7 million in July — far less than the eye-popping $310 million sum reported by Harris. Her campaign began August with more cash on hand.

With less than three months to go, senior campaign officials are focused on a group of persuadable voters that they believe is key to victory. The targets, which they say comprise about 11% of the electorate in key battleground states, skew younger and are disproportionately male and moderate. While more than half are white, they include more nonwhites, especially Asians and Hispanics, than the broader electorate.

They are especially frustrated by the economy, including their personal finances, and are pessimistic things will improve.

“It’s a very narrow band of people that we are trying to move,” Fabrizio said of the efforts. Since these voters don’t engage with traditional news outlets and have traded cable for streaming services, the campaign has been working to reach them in novel ways.

“There is a reason why we’re doing podcasts. There is a reason why we’re doing Adin Ross,” Fabrizio said, referring to the controversial internet personality who ended his interview with the former president earlier this week by giving him a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in images of Trump raising his fist after his assassination attempt.

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“There is a reason why we are doing all of those things. You know what these people pay attention to? MMA, Adin Ross,” he said. “MMA” refers to mixed martial arts.

Trump campaign officials acknowledge the Democratic base is now motivated in a way it wasn’t when Biden was the nominee. Harris, they say, will likely do better than Biden would have with Black voters, especially women and older men.

But they argue Harris is doing little to appeal to swing voters. And they intend to spend the next 80-plus days painting her as a radical liberal and as the incumbent rather than a change, tying her to the most unpopular Biden administration policies.

What to know about the 2024 Election

“There’s way more information about her that they don’t know that they’re going to hear. And we’re going to make sure they’re going to get,” Fabrizio said.

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By the end of the race, they believe, neither candidate will be liked, but voters will choose the candidate they feel will most improve their economic conditions.

They pointed to a line Harris has been using to refer to Trump’s presidency — “We are not going back” — as particularly ill conceived, given that some voters say things were better when Trump was in office than they are now.

Trump campaign aides said they now have staff on the ground in 18 states, ranging from critical battlegrounds to states like Virginia, where Democrats have been favored, that they hope they can put into play.

The campaign says it now has hundreds of paid staff and more than 300 Trump and GOP offices open across battleground states.

But much of their effort relies on volunteers and outside groups.

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They are trying to replicate a model they used successfully during the GOP primary in Iowa this winter, where volunteer “caucus captains” were given a list of 10 neighbors they pledged to get out to the polls. The campaign has credited that model with boosting turnout on a brutally cold and icy caucus night.

The “Trump Force 47” program is focused on targeting low- and medium-propensity voters. Volunteers will be canvassing, writing postcards, phone banking and organizing their neighbors.

So far, 12,000 captains have been trained and given voter target lists, according to officials. An additional 30,000 have volunteered, with more than 2,000 expected to be trained per week between now and Election Day.

A large part of the campaign’s outreach will also rely on outside groups, which will be running paid canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts thanks to new guidance from the Federal Election Commission that allow campaigns to coordinate with outside groups in ways that were previously not allowed.

The campaign said more than 1,000 paid canvassers are on the ground in battleground states, and they’re also working to register about 1.6 million targeted voters in those competitive places.

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Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

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Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

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A Russian man convicted of assaulting a woman in London in an attack witnessed by Barron Trump, President Donald Trump’s youngest son, on a video call was sentenced to four years in prison by a London court on Friday. 

Matvei Rumiantsev, 23, an MMA fighter, was convicted by a jury on Jan. 28 of assault with bodily harm but was acquitted of rape and choking charges. He was also convicted of perverting the course of justice stemming from a letter he sent the woman from jail asking her to retract her allegations.

After the assault, Rumiantsev admitted he was jealous of his girlfriend’s friendship with the 19-year-old son of President Donald Trump.

BARRON TRUMP REPORTEDLY SAVED WOMAN’S LIFE AFTER WITNESSING VIOLENT ASSAULT ON FACETIME CALL

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Barron Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool/Getty Images)

“Your lack of insight and empathy was apparent at trial,” Justice Joel Bennathan said. “You continue to try to blame the complainant for everything that has happened.”

Trump told investigators he had placed a late-night FaceTime call to the woman, whom he had met on social media, and had been startled when the call had been briefly answered by a shirtless man on Jan. 18, 2025.

“That view lasted maybe one second and I was racing with adrenaline,” Barron Trump said. “The camera was then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying, stating something in Russian.”

BARRON TRUMP SPOTTED ON NYU CAMPUS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE INAUGURATION

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Barron Trump looks on ahead of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2025. (KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Barron Trump called the police in London.

“It’s really an emergency … I’m calling from the U.S., uh, I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up,” he told an operator. 

Police responded to the address and arrested Rumiantsev, a London-based receptionist.

At his trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Rumiantsev was acquitted of rape and choking related to the attack, as well as a separate rape and assault allegation from November 2024.

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His attorney, Sasha Wass, said that Trump wasn’t aware the woman had a boyfriend and questioned how much he could have seen in just a few seconds of video. 

Barron Trump watches as his father, President Donald Trump attends an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event at Capital One Arena, in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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Trump never testified in the case. However, the judge praised him for his quick-thinking actions. 

“Mr, Trump properly and responsibly, despite being in the United States, made sure the emergency services here were called, and he told them what he had seen,” he said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

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EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

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EU lawmakers have overcome a key political hurdle in the negotiations of digital euro, making the project closer to approval, according to a draft text seen by Euronews.

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The Parliamentary rapporteurs involved in the legislation have found an agreement on the design of the digital euro, which will be able to function both online and offline.

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The digital euro would be an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks.

It has taken on new political weight as economic tensions between the EU and the US sharpen the debate over Europe’s reliance on American payment giants, such as Visa and Mastercard.

Under the European Commission’s proposal, digital euro users would have a wallet for both online and offline payments, with transactions designed so they are not trackable.

The situation in Parliament changed on Wednesday evening, when the centre-right politician Fernando Navarrete, who is the leading rapporteur on the file, announced the withdrawal of his position to reduce the scope of the digital euro to offline use only.

His position blocked the advancement of negotiations for months, jeopardising the whole legislative process, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations.

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The political deadlock has pushed EU leaders to accelerate progress on the digital euro. At the European Council meeting on 19 March, they set a goal to have the digital euro legislation approved by the end of 2026.

With the Council, representing EU countries, having already adopted its position, the European Parliament is now the only institution left to advance the law.

“Thanks to our amendments and firm stance, we have finally broken the political deadlock on the digital euro. The distinction between online and offline has been removed, and it is now established as a single payment system,” Pasquale Tridico, the rapporteur for The Left, told Euronews.

However, lawmakers still need to agree on two key aspects: the “hold limits” and the “compensation.”

The hold limits determine the maximum amount a user can store in a digital euro wallet, while compensation sets out a model for reimbursing commercial banks that provide digital euro services.

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Although negotiations are not yet complete, the text is expected to be voted on in the Parliament’s economy committee before the summer, according to a source familiar with the matter.

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Why Netflix Hiked Prices, Explained in One Chart

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Why Netflix Hiked Prices, Explained in One Chart

Why did Netflix just impose a price increase across U.S. plans? As the “KPop Demon Hunters” Oscar-winning hit song “Golden” says: “We’re goin’ up, up, up.”

It’s not rocket science. The formula is pretty simple: Invest in more content (Netflix is eyeing $20 billion in content cash spending in 2026, up 10%) to attract and retain streaming subscribers, and keep your profit margins ticking upward by increasing the retail price.

Under the new pricing, effective March 26 for new users and rolling out to current customers depending on their billing cycle, Netflix’s Standard plan (which has no ads and provides streaming on two devices simultaneously) is rising by $2, from $17.99 to $19.99/month. The ad-supported plan is going up a buck, from $7.99 to $8.99/month, and the top-tier Premium plan (no ads, streaming on up to four devices at once, Ultra HD and HDR) is increasing from $24.99 to $26.99/month..

But the question is: Why now?

First off, it would be difficult to imagine Netflix would have pulled this pricing lever — hiking fees for its approximately 86 million U.S. customers — if the deal to acquire Warner Bros. were still in play. That deal would have required approval by the Justice Department and other regulatory bodies, amid allegations by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance (the winning bidder for Warner Bros. Discovery) that the combo of Netflix + HBO Max would create a monopolistic entity in the streaming biz.

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Netflix strongly disputed that, asserting it would have had a roughly 21% share of the U.S. subscription-streaming market with the addition of HBO Max. However, the optics of a Netflix price hike as the WB deal was pending would be terrible, especially after co-CEO Ted Sarandos testified at a Senate hearing that “We will give consumers more content for less” through the Warner Bros. deal. (Sarandos meant Netflix would have bundled its service with HBO Max at a price discount.)

Without the need to worry about such appearances in the midst of a massive M&A deal, the reason Netflix feels confident in ratcheting up prices in its biggest market is illustrated by this chart from Wall Street analyst firm MoffettNathanson. It estimates revenue streamers generated in 2025 as a function of total number of hours viewed.

In a nutshell, it shows that Netflix delivers the best bang for the buck of this cohort — it pulls in 48 cents per hour viewed, lower than anyone else. That indicates Netflix not only has upside in ad revenue relative to the others but also that has room to raise its pricing from a competitive standpoint.

Even with the new price increases, Netflix will still have a sector-low revenue/hour viewed metric (call it in the 50-cents-per-hour range). As the MoffettNathanson analysts put it: “Netflix delivers significant value to its subscribers that has room to be better monetized over time.”

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Note that all of Netflix’s competitors have also recently hiked prices. Disney+ and Hulu, HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock upped pricing last year, and Paramount+ raised prices in January. Next month, Amazon’s ad-free Prime Video tier (now called “Ultra”) is going up to $5/month.

And Netflix’s new pricing, while higher, keeps it roughly in line with the rest of the field. Indeed, its ad-supported tier remains cheaper than those from Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max and Peacock (and is now the same as Paramount+ with ads):

Netflix’s launch of the cheaper, ad-supported option, first introduced in November 2022, gave it an important tool to mitigate churn as it raises the price on its Standard (no ads) plans. Instead of presenting customers a take-it-or-leave-it price hike, Netflix can now steer those on the Standard package toward the lower-cost package with ads. In theory, the company is agnostic about which plan someone chooses: The ad revenue should make up the difference in subscription fees.

Netflix execs once swore they wouldn’t implement an advertising model, asserting that it’s a subpar user experience. But it’s clear people are willing to sit through ad breaks if it means paying less — and in the U.S., Netflix’s Standard With Ads plan is half the cost of the no-ads tier.

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The streaming giant’s U.S. price increases reinforce its long-range strategy, according to MoffettNathanson’s Robert Fishman: It maintains a “wide gap between its highest and lowest tiers to simultaneously maximize monetization of its least price-sensitive subscribers while nudging more price-sensitive customers toward its still-nascent ad tier, driving engagement and, in turn, advertising revenue,” the analyst wrote in a research note Friday. “The result is a ‘best of both worlds’ approach that captures value across the full spectrum of its subscriber base and should drive even higher margins for the leading profitable streaming service.”

Will some Netflix customers cancel over the latest fee increases? Yes, of course. But the math indicates that overall, it will yield higher returns — letting the company dig an even wider moat against competitors.

Pictured top: Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield in Netflix’s “Stranger Things” Season 4

SEE ALSO: U.S. Household Spending on Streaming Video Services Remains Flat at $69 per Month, as 68% Now Pay for Ad-Supported Tiers

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