Election Updates: Harris visits abortion clinic in historic first; Biden campaigns in Michigan.
Donald J. Trump is continuing to voice his opposition to a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the app or risk it being banned in the United States, a reversal of his earlier stance. He tried to paint Meta, which owns Facebook, as a bigger danger and suggested Congress should ban it as well, writing “do them both?" The social media network has long been the subject of G.O.P. ire.
In a statement, President Biden said Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student in Oklahoma whose recent death was ruled a suicide, was a “kid who just wanted to be accepted,” adding, “We must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children.” No one, Biden said, “should face the bullying that Nex did.”
President Biden is meeting with campaign supporters at the home of a city council member in Saginaw, Mich. The city is part of Michigan’s Tri-Cities, a region in the northeastern part of the state.
Vice President Kamala Harris just made the first-ever visit to an abortion clinic by a vice president. Abortion is a potent political issue for Democrats. Harris described Republicans passing abortion restrictions as “extremists” and their actions as “immoral.” And she said: “We are facing a very serious health care crisis.”
Former President Donald Trump leads President Biden 41 percent to 36 percent in the battleground state of Michigan, with the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drawing 10 percent, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. In a head-to-head matchup, Trump’s lead over Biden was three percentage points among registered voters.
Aaron Rodgers, the star N.F.L. quarterback who has emerged as a favorite to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate on an independent ticket, on Thursday denied reporting by CNN that he had amplified conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real. “I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place,” he wrote on X.
The League of Women Voters and three New Hampshire voters are suing Steve Kramer, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom, the person and companies behind robocalls that used an A.I. impersonation of President Biden to urge Democrats not to vote in the state’s primary. The lawsuit is seeking damages and a national injunction against similar calls.
President Biden’s campaign manager on Thursday assailed Donald Trump after Republican lawmakers in Arizona blocked a measure that would enshrine access to contraception in state law. “These attacks on women’s freedoms are a direct result of Trump, who Americans rejected in 2020, and it’s why they’ll reject him again,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to clarify the comments he made earlier this week that appeared to suggest he was open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. In an interview with Breitbart News, he said he would “never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt” either program. The Biden campaign seized on his previous remarks.
President Biden said on X that while in Milwaukee, he met with a young man who has a stutter and had written him a letter last year. “My message to Harry was simple: don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do,” Biden said late on Wednesday. Last week, Donald Trump mocked Mr. Biden’s lifelong stutter during a campaign speech, slurring his words in a derisive imitation.
Vice President Kamala Harris described the flood of laws restricting abortion access as a “health care crisis” as she visited with abortion providers and staff members on Thursday at a clinic in St. Paul, Minn.
The stop by Ms. Harris at the Planned Parenthood clinic was believed to be the first official visit by a vice president to an abortion clinic. No presidents are known to have made such visits, either.
Speaking to reporters in the lobby of the clinic, which was open and seeing patients, Ms. Harris assailed conservative “extremists” for passing laws that restrict abortion, resulting in the denial of emergency care for pregnant women and the shuttering of clinics that provide reproductive health care beyond abortion.
“These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous and, in many instances, just plain old immoral,” she said. “How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need, to tell women what is in their best interest. We have to be a nation that trusts women.”
The image alone of the nation’s second-ranking leader walking into an abortion clinic provided a vivid illustration of how the politics of abortion rights have transformed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. In the lobby was a map showing Planned Parenthood clinics in Minnesota and neighboring states. Minnesota had by far the most, with a few in Iowa. Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota were almost bare — all have restricted abortion access since the overturning of Roe.
For decades, many Democrats viewed affirmative support for abortion rights as a political risk, fearing such a position could alienate more moderate voters who were uncomfortable with open discussion of the procedure. The party embraced cautious slogans like “safe, legal and rare” and policies like banning taxpayer funding of abortions.
But the fall of Roe upended those politics, energizing a new generation of voters energized by their support for abortion rights. The issue has become one of the Democrats’ biggest strengths, party strategists say. In campaign speeches, as he did in his State of the Union address, President Biden casts the issue of abortion rights as one of personal freedom and the right to make private health care decisions.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has been surveying voters about abortion for more than four decades, said she could not recall a time when abortion rights were as motivating for their voters.
“It’s the No. 1 issue working for Democrats at every level in office,” Ms. Lake said. “Everything from county commissioners to presidents are being elected around this issue.”
The issue is firmer ground for Democrats. Ms. Harris was visiting Minnesota a week after 19 percent of voters in the Democratic primary voted for “uncommitted,” as many of them treated it as a protest against the administration’s policies in Gaza.
After little discussion of abortion during Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, his strategists are embracing the issue. They’ve run ads featuring the testimonials of women denied access to the procedure in conservative states and attacked former President Donald J. Trump for appointing three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe.
Democrats’ efforts have been helped by a steady drumbeat of litigation, legislation and court decisions in conservative states that restrict not only abortion but also other aspects of reproductive health, including contraception and fertility treatments.
Tresa Undem, a pollster who tracks public opinion about abortion, said those actions had changed how voters — particularly women — view the role of government in their reproductive health care.
Recent polling from KFF, a nonprofit group focused on health policy, found that 86 percent of female voters of reproductive age say decisions about abortions should be made by a woman, in consultation with her doctor. Broad majorities also want laws guaranteeing a national right to abortion, access to abortion for women facing pregnancy-related emergencies and the right to travel to get an abortion.
“They are scared about their own mortality,” Ms. Undem said. “And they don’t want politicians or the government to have any say in the circumstances and the reasons, the why and the when.”
Mr. Biden has promised to restore federal abortion rights and preserve access to medication abortion, which faces new threats from a case set to be argued before the Supreme Court this month. Those assurances represent a notable escalation for Mr. Biden, an observant Catholic who spent decades caught between his religious opposition to the procedure and the policy of his party.
But Mr. Biden has still expressed some uneasiness with the procedure itself, often avoiding uttering the word “abortion.”
It is Ms. Harris who has emerged as the administration’s most forceful champion of abortion rights, touring the country to highlight the actions taken by the administration to preserve abortion access. She has taken a far more assertive approach than the president, holding meetings about the topic with hundreds of state lawmakers, meeting with abortion doctors and patients and speaking about the once-taboo issue in plain language.
“Please do understand that when we talk about a clinic such as this, it is absolutely about health care and reproductive health care. So everyone get ready for the language: uterus,” she said, speaking outside the clinic in St. Paul. “Issues like fibroids. We can handle this.”
Nearly all of her stops have been in Democratic-led states that have become havens for abortion seekers, as broad swaths of the South and the Midwest have ushered in more restrictive laws.
On Thursday, at St. Paul Health Center, Vandalia, where Ms. Harris was speaking, about two dozen anti-abortion protesters stood in the street outside holding signs that read “Planned Parenthood = Abortion” and “Abortion is not healthcare.”
A doctor at the clinic said it had experienced a 25 percent increase in abortions and a 100 percent increase in out-of-state patients since Roe was overturned.
“Minnesota has become a bastion of access for abortion care,” said Dr. Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States. “Our new abortion landscape is difficult. It is dangerous. And it is putting my patients and health care providers at severe risk.”
White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights. Legislation codifying federal abortion rights has failed twice and has no chance of passage, given the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate and disagreements within the president’s own party over the scope of such a bill.
Administration officials have encouraged Democratic state legislators to take a proactive role on the issue. Last year, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota signed legislation enshrining abortion rights into state law, an effort to ensure the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state.
The Society of Family Planning, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court decision.
“What happened here in Minnesota with the re-election of the governor and the turning of the State Legislature, is what has led to ensuring that these fundamental rights are intact and are protected,” said Ms. Harris, before leaving the clinic for a Women for Biden-Harris rally in St. Paul. “Elections matter.”
At the campaign rally later in the afternoon, Ms. Harris put the blame for what has happened post-Roe on Mr. Trump, calling him “the architect of a health care crisis.”
The former president, she said, was “proud that women across our nation are suffering, proud that doctors and nurses could be thrown in prison for administering care.”
What was meant to be a significant meeting between senior White House officials and the Arab American and Muslim community in Chicago on Thursday dwindled to a smaller-than-expected gathering of the willing, after many of the Palestinian rights activists who had been invited instead opted to boycott.
In a sharply worded letter to the White House, activists said administration officials knew what they wanted and had no plans to give it.
“The White House has not only refused to call for a cease-fire, but also enabled this blatant campaign of ethnic cleansing to take place,” the activists wrote, pointing out the thousands of people, including children, who have died in Gaza.
A statement from the White House said senior officials were in Chicago for a series of meetings with community leaders, engaging with communities affected by the Mideast conflict.
The meetings in Chicago’s Loop did move forward, with elected officials, Muslim and Palestinian Americans and a broader group of activists meeting with White House aides, including Tom Perez, the director of intergovernmental affairs, Steve Benjamin, the director of public engagement, and Mazen Basrawi, a liaison to Muslim American communities.
But many of those who were invited met separately last week and decided the time for such listening sessions had passed.
“They know abundantly what our stance is,” Tarek Khalil, a Chicago board member of American Muslims for Palestine, which was founded in the city. “They know the reality on the ground, and they know our demands.” He added, “the time to act is now.”
The Illinois presidential primary is next week, but ballots in the state don’t list “uncommitted,” as an option, which made it easier to register protest votes in Michigan and Minnesota. Palestinian rights activists in the state are instead urging Democrats to leave the presidential choice blank. But President Biden is expected to have a large base of support in the heavily Democratic state.
Chicago activists do hold leverage with the Democratic National Convention coming to the city this August, as they plan protests to coincide with the national spotlight being on Chicago.
Dilara Sayeed, a Muslim educator in the South Loop who is of South Asian descent, said Mr. Basrawi reached out to her about a week ago about Thursday’s planned meetings. After informally gathering with other invitees last week, Ms. Sayeed, a member of the Muslim civic group Coalition-Activate, said all who attended opted out, instead writing a collective letter and agreeing to send personal emails explaining their decisions not to attend.
She said she saw some progress after having read a recent speech by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, in which he called Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, an obstacle blocking peace.
“At the same time we’re disappointed in our government, we know our pressure is moving our government,” she said.
Michael Whatley, an ally of Donald J. Trump who took over the Republican National Committee last week, celebrated a series of major changes at the committee in a memo on Thursday and declared that the party would be “a united operation, and a united front” with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Whatley was unanimously elected on Friday as the committee’s chair, along with Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, as his co-chair. A whirlwind of changes soon followed, remaking much of the party apparatus from top to bottom.
On Monday, the new leadership team gutted the committee, severing ties with more than 60 officials, including senior staff members. On Tuesday, Christina Bobb, a self-described 2020 election denier and conspiracy theorist on Mr. Trump’s legal team, said she was joining as senior counsel for election integrity.
“I am very pleased to say that my first week as the chairman of the Republican National Committee has been a great week,” Mr. Whatley began the memo, which was sent out to the membership of the R.N.C., and obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Whatley also announced that the R.N.C. “is merging operations with the Trump campaign,” adding that James Blair, a Trump campaign aide, would wear two hats, as the political director for both the committee and the Trump campaign.
That announcement formalized a merger that had been playing out since Monday, when it was reported that much of the party’s operations would be relocated to Palm Beach, Fla., the base of operations for the Trump campaign.
Charlie Spies, a Republican lawyer and a chief fund-raiser for Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign, will also take over as the R.N.C.’s chief counsel, according to the memo.
As some Republicans have expressed concerns that Mr. Trump would use committee money to pay his legal bills, Mr. Whatley said the R.N.C. needed “to make sure that every penny of every dollar is spent towards one thing: winning. Winning House seats, winning Senate seats, and winning the presidency.” Before taking over as co-chair, Ms. Trump had said she would be open to the idea of the committee paying Mr. Trump’s legal bills.
Mr. Whatley’s memo also set a goal of building “the most effective election integrity program that has ever existed to safeguard our elections.” Ms. Bobb, who is now heading that effort, has for years relentlessly promoted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, first as a host at the far-right One America News Network and continuing after she became a lawyer for Mr. Trump. Bill McGinley, who served as cabinet secretary during the Trump administration, will also join the team as outside counsel for election integrity.
One of the goals for the election integrity team, according to Mr. Whatley’s memo, will be an “aggressive, proactive effort to ensure that it will be easy to vote and hard to cheat.” The memo mentions challenging some of the voting rules that were instituted for the 2020 election, suggesting that the national party may add to conservative efforts to tighten voting laws, as well as efforts by Trump allies to challenge large numbers of voter registrations in critical battleground states, ahead of the 2024 election.
The R.N.C. sued Michigan on Wednesday to make cuts to the state’s voter rolls, arguing that they are “bloated with ineligible voters.” Mr. Whatley highlighted that lawsuit in the memo, and said “many more” are coming.
Reporting from Milwaukee
Hillary Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda are scheduled to host a fund-raiser for President Biden next month at a production of “Suffs: The Musical,” according to an invitation reviewed by The New York Times.
Mrs. Clinton is a producer of the Broadway musical, which is about the early-20th-century women’s suffrage movement. The addition of Mr. Miranda, the creator and star of “Hamilton,” lends Broadway royalty to the fund-raiser.
The event, which will be held on April 3, is part of a significant ramp-up for the Biden campaign’s fund-raising operation. Just days beforehand, on March 28, Mr. Biden is set to appear with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at a fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Mr. Biden will also appear at fund-raisers next week in Dallas and Houston, according to invitations viewed by The Times, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan will appear at events for the campaign in Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area in early April.
Jill Biden, the first lady, is scheduled to attend fund-raising events next weekend in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, Calif.
The Biden campaign’s fund-raising operation has outpaced that of former President Donald J. Trump, though figures are not yet available for the period since they both formally wrapped up their parties’ presidential nominations on Tuesday.
Mr. Biden’s campaign said it raised $10 million in the 24 hours following his State of the Union address last week.
When Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota showcased her new teeth in a sleekly produced video posted to social media on Tuesday, it seemed like a baffling move: to advertise that she, the head of one state, had flown to another for a cosmetic procedure that was documented in detail for her followers.
Now, Ms. Noem has more to chew on.
A nonpartisan consumer group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Ms. Noem in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., claiming the social media post was an undisclosed advertisement for the cosmetic dentistry practice in Houston that is featured prominently in the nearly 5-minute post — a violation of the district’s consumer protection law, which prohibits deceptive business practices.
Ms. Noem — a Republican who is reportedly on former President Donald J. Trump’s shortlist to be his running mate — is also under scrutiny in her home state over the dental procedure. On Wednesday, a state senator in South Dakota called for the State Legislature’s operations and audit committee to examine her trip to Texas, particularly whether she used public funds or a state airplane.
A representative for Ms. Noem did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smile Texas, the practice Ms. Noem mentions at length in the video, advertises itself as a destination for cosmetic procedures, offering guidance on travel and financing on its website. A representative reached at the company’s main line on Thursday said: “I ran to the phone and I’m not going to talk to you. That’s HIPAA policy. You’re smart enough to know that.”
(HIPAA — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — governs the use and disclosure of certain sensitive health information. It’s often used — at times incorrectly — as shorthand for “medical privacy.”)
In Tuesday’s video, Ms. Noem, 52, describes how she flew to Houston so “the team at Smile Texas” could fix her teeth, which she said were knocked out in a biking accident years ago. Her testimonial is interspersed with footage of a dentist in the practice and tight shots of her mouth, and it ends with the logo for Smile Texas. Ms. Noem did not include a “sponsored” tag or otherwise label the content.
Smile Texas posted the video on its Instagram account, along with other images of Ms. Noem.
In the video, Ms. Noem — who has gained prominence in the Republican Party — says she was motivated by wanting to feel confident, and for her smile not to be a distraction. “I want, when people look at me, to hear the words that I say and not be distracted by something I am wearing or how I look or even my appearance,” she said.
Travelers United, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on travel, took issue with the ad, calling it an example of an influencer promoting medical tourism — traveling to another state to have a procedure — without disclosing that it was an advertisement.
Ms. Noem, the suit says, “advertised a product or service without disclosing that she has a financial relationship with that company.” The lawsuit seeks to compel her to make “corrective disclosures” on the social media posts.
When social media influencers team up with brands or businesses in posts, they are typically required by law to make that relationship explicit, by explaining the relationship, for example, or writing “ad” in the caption. The Federal Trade Commission in 2019 released guidance on the practice.
President Biden, on his tour across the Midwest after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is turning his attention toward Michigan — a battleground state where he may be particularly vulnerable in November.
In the state’s Democratic primary last month, over 101,000 voters — more than 13 percent of the total — supported the “uncommitted” ballot option, registering their disapproval with Mr. Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. That protest movement has spread to other state primaries, with significant numbers of voters choosing “uncommitted” in Minnesota and, to a lesser extent, in Washington State.
Mr. Biden has eight months to try to mend a painful rift within the Democratic Party on support for Israel in its campaign against Hamas. After providing full-throated support to Israel in the early days of the war, Mr. Biden has in recent days taken a more careful line, continuing to arm the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result of the war.
During his State of the Union speech last week, Mr. Biden announced an ambitious plan to build a floating pier off Gaza to ferry food and other aid to the Palestinian civilians under siege in the enclave. He has also criticized Israeli military operations as “over the top” while highlighting the suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza. He has called for a cease-fire, after being urged for months by allies and supporters to do so.
Perhaps most tellingly, he dispatched aides to Dearborn, Mich., which is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the country, to offer some of the administration’s clearest expressions of regret.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden will campaign in Saginaw, where just over 1,400 voters in the county chose “uncommitted” in the primary.
Vice President Kamala Harris will also campaign in Minnesota, another state that had a significant “uncommitted” vote. She will meet with the staff and patients at an abortion clinic in the Twin Cities — believed to be the first stop by a president or a vice president to an abortion clinic.
Former President Donald J. Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee, will most likely be focused on his legal troubles today. Judge Aileen Cannon will consider motions from Mr. Trump’s legal team to dismiss the federal charges accusing him of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office. The motions from Mr. Trump’s lawyers were part of a barrage of legal arguments seeking to dismiss the document case.
Follow live updates on Tuesday’s primary elections.
A Democratic group is wading into the Republican Senate primary in Ohio with a new television spot aimed at promoting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.
The spot criticizes Mr. Moreno as ultraconservative and too aligned with Mr. Trump. But by running the ad in the final week of the primary, those critiques are likely to be viewed as badges of honor by Republican primary voters, a tactic Democrats have employed in other races in recent years.
A group called Duty and Country is spending roughly $2.7 million on the ad, which is set to run across the state, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks advertising.
The group is funded largely through the Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to maintain control of the chamber.
Mr. Moreno is running for the Republican nomination against State Senator Matt Dolan and Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose. The winner will face Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent.
“Democrats constantly underestimate the America First movement at their own peril,” said Reagan McCarthy, communications director for Mr. Moreno. “They thought President Trump would be easy to beat in 2016 and then they got their clocks cleaned when he demolished Hillary Clinton. The same thing is going to happen to Sherrod Brown this year.”
Mr. Moreno has struggled to pull away from his primary challengers despite the endorsement from Mr. Trump and others, including Senator J.D. Vance, a Trump-backed Republican who was elected in 2022. Mr. Moreno won their backing by embracing hard-line conservative positions that Democrats view as potentially easier to run against in a general election.
“When Ohio voters head to their polling place, they deserve to know the truth about Bernie Moreno — and the truth is that Moreno is a MAGA extremist who embraced Donald Trump just like he embraced his policies to ban abortion nationwide and repeal” the Affordable Care Act, said Hannah Menchhoff, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC.
Republicans need to flip two seats to win back power if President Biden is re-elected, but just one if the White House returns to Republican hands. Republicans already are expected to gain one seat in West Virginia after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, announced he would not seek re-election.
In the California Senate primary last month, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, ran a spot describing Steve Garvey, a Republican and a former Major League Baseball player, as too conservative. Mr. Schiff and Mr. Garvey will face off in November in their deep-blue state.
In the Pennsylvania governor’s race in 2022, the Democrat, Josh Shapiro, ran an ad in the Republican primary playing up the conservative credentials of Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed candidate in the race. Mr. Mastriano won and Mr. Shapiro easily defeated him to win the governor’s office.
The Service Employees International Union said on Wednesday that it would spend $200 million to reach out and mobilize working-class voters to back President Biden and other Democrats.
The union, which represents about two million health-care, service and government workers, hopes to harness the upswing in union activity, not just among industrial unions like the United Automobile Workers but less traditional work forces such as nurses, Hollywood writers and actors, students and Starbucks workers.
The S.E.I.U. said it hoped to reach six million voters of color in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Workers walked the picket lines for better pay and better jobs, and we will vote for the same reasons,” the union’s secretary-treasurer, April Verrett, said in a statement. “Workers of all races know what’s at stake in this election.”
The $200 million effort would be the largest investment ever for the union, which spent around $150 million in the 2020 presidential cycle. Mr. Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history, as have some of his allies in organized labor, and Rocio Sáenz, the executive vice president of the S.E.I.U., cited the president’s walking the picket line with the U.A.W. and other efforts to help unions as a reason to mobilize.
Working-class voters, especially Black and Latino blue-collar workers, will be a key constituency in the coming presidential campaign. Mr. Biden believes his policies have benefited such voters, especially those in unions. But former President Donald J. Trump has made inroads in the traditional Democratic voting bloc, which has expressed frustration about inflation and could prove open to his anti-immigration message.
A number of groups have pledged financial firepower to Mr. Biden’s re-election efforts. They include VoteVets, which supports veterans running for office, with a $45 million plan to back Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Future Forward, the main Democratic super PAC aiding Mr. Biden’s bid, is planning to spend $250 million on advertising. And MoveOn has announced a $32 million program.