Newly undecided voters may be important for Harris

Up First: A Black Hole Preview of the 2024 Super Presidential Campaign. I. Ms. Harris at a Free Folk Barricade

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With roughly 100 days until the 2024 election, Harris is aiming to define herself on the campaign trail. She will speak to a group of black people. The trip follows a public appearance by her as a presidential candidate. She walked out to Beyoncé’s “Freedom” as a highly energetic crowd of 3,000 people chanted her name in Milwaukee. The campaign event had to be moved to a larger venue due to the high interest.

Voters aren’t looking for instability. Democrats will probably not be upset with handing over the reins to Ms. Harris as they want to focus on defeating Mr. Trump. Plus, in Ms. Harris, they’ll have a nominee who clears the low bar that many voters feared Mr. Biden couldn’t: “Will be able to serve for four years.”

The wake of Cheatle’s death: legal challenges, a dinosaur discovery, and the fate of the Ukrainian bookstore industry during the May 11 missile attack

The White House said that Cheatle left her job yesterday. The decision came just a day after she testified before the House Oversight Committee, where she faced bipartisan criticism for not fully answering their questions about the assassination attempt on Trump.

After a missile strike by Russia in May, Factor Druk looked like it was going to explode. Seven employees died, and 20 more were wounded. Tens of thousands of charred books and printing machinery lay in smoldering ruins under the caved-in roof. A collection of interviews with writers on the war’s front line was set to be released next month, but it was destroyed in the attack. The owner of the printing plant, Serhii Polituchyi, says he has not been deterred from plans to reopen because the industry is thriving. The Ukrainian Book Institute tells NPR that bookstore chains have opened dozens of new stores in the past year alone.

Source: Harris’ campaign [faces potential legal challenges](https://lostobject.org/2024/07/24/there-could-be-legal-challenges-to-harris-campaign/). And, a new dinosaur discovery

How Do You Get What You Want in Your Sex Life? Advice from Relationship Experts after the Birth of a Baby: After the Assassination, President Biden and Hillary Clinton

I messaged my readers who are new parents. How’s your sex life? It’s not likely to be so great. Between diaper duty and sleep deprivation, you might not have the time to have sex. Maybe you don’t feel ready after being cleared for sex after giving birth. Here are some tips from relationship experts to help keep the romance alive in the postpartum period.

There’s rarely a perfect time to be a pollster, but on Sunday afternoon, as my latest national survey of voters was wrapping up, President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

I was among a group of pollsters that were trying to measure the impact of the events of the past week: the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and the announcement of Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Suddenly, the 2024 race has been turned on its head. And to get a full read on the effect of the change-up at the top of the Democratic ticket, we’ll need two things:

Ms. Harris could give the “double haters” what they wanted. A quarter of voters, who were begging the parties to give them choices other than Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, are called double haters. One question is: is Ms. Harris an alternative to Biden or just a continuation of his candidacy? She got a two-point boost compared to Mr. Biden among these voters.

Ms. Harris will drive abortion messaging more sharply. During the June debate, when asked about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mr. Biden’s answer was meandering. Abortion, though, is one of the few issues where voters consistently say they trust Democrats more than Republicans, and Ms. Harris has already indicated that she’ll make this issue a centerpiece of her message.

Republicans could fall into online traps against Ms. Harris. It’s hard to overstate the extent to which Republicans view Ms. Harris as unappealing. If you only learn about her from conservative media, you’re most likely steeped in “unburdened by what has been” video montages and criticism of her laugh. It’s possible that most voters think of her in a different way than you think.

The Times Observer: A Tale of Two Israelis, One of Two Palestinians, and One Who Is Interested in a Nuclear Telescope

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When Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a joint meeting of Congress, he will likely get a mixed reception. Republicans strongly support Netanyahu and Israel in the war in Gaza. But Democrats are increasingly critical, with President Biden calling for a cease-fire. Approximately 200 people were arrested after demonstrating against the war in Gaza on Capitol Hill. Netanyahu has expressed his belief that Hamas must be completely destroyed in Gaza, which will likely be the central theme of his speech.

The Vice President has a chance to win over voters that say they’re undecided, according to the new NPR poll. The next few weeks will be crucial for Harris as she attempts to get the word out that she is alive and well.

Source: Newly undecided voters could be crucial for Harris. And NASA races to save a telescope

A Simpler View on Popular Music in the Presence of a Second Trump Term and the Effects of the Moratorium on Executions

Joel Clement spent seven years at the Interior Department working on policies meant to help Alaskan communities that are threatened by thawing permafrost and rising sea levels. His work moved forward during former President Barack Obama’s administration. When Trump took over, Clement was reassigned as part of a government-wide effort to stop working on climate change. Clement resigned and became a whistleblower on what he and other scientists saw as the Trump administration’s political interference and censorship of science. Many scientists are concerned that such interference would be even more severe in a second Trump term. Here’s why:

A PhD student made a different discovery as she explained our emotional connection to popular music. Her find: Today’s most popular tunes are much simpler than hits from decades ago. Hamilton analyzed more than 1,000 pop songs to show how the vocals have gotten less sophisticated over time. That doesn’t mean hits aren’t complex.

She established a program in the 2000s that she thought was part of a form of justice called “reparative justice”. She supported giving voting rights to people who are serving felony sentences. She also opposed the death penalty — and stood by that when she did not seek the death penalty against a gang member who killed a police officer in 2004. Harris was the one to appeal the decision to remove the death penalty in California. Then, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019, Harris praised Newsom for the decision, and subsequently called for a federal moratorium on executions.

Harris didn’t distinguish her positions well on key issues, which is something her competitors were able to do. By December of the year, Harris was no longer a candidate due to her lack of enthusiasm and limited funds.

During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris ran to the left of Biden on several criminal justice issues, like ending solitary confinement and implementing a national standard on the use of deadly force.

But her “tough on crime” track record as a prosecutor, district attorney, and attorney general in California during the 1990s and 2000s is a clear reminder of her complicated and sometimes contradictory legacy on the criminal justice system.

That was one of several moments of Harris as she went after officials and politicians in the Trump Administration, including a former Attorney General and a former White House Chief of Staff.

There are laws that give government the ability to make decisions about the male body. She asked the man a question about reproductive rights.

When she was nominated by Biden to be his running mate in 2020, Trump saw how capable she was of attacking Republicans and he wanted to see her go after them.

She entered the White House with a rocky start. She lost her staff, her approval ratings were low early on in her tenure as a vice president, and she misstepped in an interview when she said she had not yet visited the border.

The Troll of Kamala Harris: A Gender-Problem Affair and Disinformation against a Women Political Candidate

While many women in politics are often victims of sexist remarks and verbal abuse, a 2020 study tracking more than 300,000 instances of gendered abuse and disinformation against 13 women political candidates found that Harris was the target of such attacks 78% of the time.

The co-founder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project said that women in public life receive a lot of criticism and abuse.

The online troll of Harris has only intensified since Biden announced his candidacy on Sunday.

“And I just think it’s really important at this historic moment that we label these narratives and lies as what they are: an attempt to undermine Kamala Harris’ public service and her record of public service because of her gender, her background and her skin color,” she said.

Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, has had a career with many firsts: She was inaugurated as the country’s first Indian American senator. She is California’s first female attorney general. In 2021, she became the first woman to become vice president, in addition to being the first Black or Asian American person in the position.

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