September 14, 2024

Saturday September 14, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Harris-Walz ads.

Leadership.

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Your voice. An ad in Spanish, airing in PA

The ad, titled “My Voice,” features Victor Martinez, the owner of La Mega Radio, Pennsylvania’s largest Spanish-language radio network, and the host of a popular weekday morning show, “El Relajo de la Mañana.” It is set to run on television and on the radio in Philadelphia, Allentown and Reading starting Friday, part of a $370-million national ad campaign that Ms. Harris’s camp has reserved until Election Day.

The ad is also scheduled to run digitally in both Spanish and English and during popular Spanish-language programming, alongside the talk show “El Gordo y la Flaca” and major sports events, including La Liga soccer matches.

6% (579,000 eligible Latino voters) of the Pennsylvania electorate is Latino.

(Source. New York Times).

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Joe is always busy.

Joe’s highly effective Violence against Women Act is 30 years old. It also got an update.

– VAWA and AI. Thirty years ago today, the Violence Against Women Act was signed into law. The legislation helped take domestic violence from an issue considered a “private family matter” to a serious crime.

Between 1993 and 2022, domestic violence in the U.S. dropped 67%.

Today, gender-based violence also happens online. As part of a new set of initiatives marking the legislation’s 30th anniversary today, the White House has secured voluntary commitments from major tech companies to prevent online sexual abuse, including nonconsensual AI deepfakes.

Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Microsoft, and OpenAI committed to removing nude images from AI training datasets “when appropriate and depending on the purpose of the model.” Those companies also committed to “stress-testing strategies in their development processes” to guard against AI models releasing image-based sexual abuse. Companies also committed to responsibly sourcing their data sets to avoid image-based sexual abuse.

The commitments aim to address not just the creation of this content but also its distribution, or the “nefarious ways…this gets out into the world,” says Jen Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council. Companies are responsible for sticking to these commitments themselves, but the White House says getting these major tech businesses on board at all is a win for survivors of online abuse. “It names it and acknowledges it’s real harm,” Klein says. “It’s not something that happens online and stays online.”

The commitments from major players in AI build on actions from other tech companies, including Square and CashApp, which previously agreed to limit payments for companies producing or distributing abusive sexual images. Google, Meta, and Snap Inc. have also taken various steps, the White House said, including improving reporting systems and amplifying resources for survivors of abuse.

President Joe Biden was the one who introduced VAWA as a senator 30 years ago. With his time in office coming to a close, this rollout implies he sees reducing violence against women as a signature issue of his career and administration. It’s one that Vice President Kamala Harris would be likely to continue if she wins the White House. “I know that one of the things she would continue to work on is addressing gender-based violence wherever and whenever it occurs,” Klein says.

This week’s announcements also include the funding of a resource center that addresses cybercrimes, including cyberstalking and nonconsensual and unlawful sharing of nude images. Outside of online abuse, there’s additional funding for the Department of Justice for the prevention of gender-based violence. Five federal agencies are committed to working together to meet the housing needs of survivors of domestic abuse, which is a leading cause of homelessness. (Some were initially authorized by the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022.)

Biden hosted survivors of domestic abuse at the White House last night to mark the anniversary. He wrote in a Glamour op-ed: “We cannot stop fighting until every woman and girl on this planet is not only free from violence, fear, and abuse—but empowered to reach her full potential.” (The Broadsheet, Fortune).

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The House will soon have a transgender member.

Expect fireworks and disgusting reactions.

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Laura Loomer- Trump’s new travel mate.

From Crazy to Crazier.

At a Key Moment in Trump’s Campaign, a Social-Media Instigator Is at His Side.

The former president’s decision to elevate Laura Loomer, a far-right activist known for racist and homophobic posts online, has stunned even some Trump allies.

Before Donald J. Trump traveled to Philadelphia for this week’s debate, he invited one of the internet’s most polarizing figures along for the ride.

Laura Loomer was backstage with the Trump entourage while Mr. Trump squared off against Vice President Kamala Harris. She was in the spin room with the former president immediately afterward. And the next day, she flew with him to New York City and Shanksville, Pa., to commemorate the anniversary of Sept. 11.

A far-right activist known for her endless stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic social media posts and public stunts, Ms. Loomer has made a name for herself over the past decade by unabashedly claiming 9/11 was “an inside job,” calling Islam “a cancer,” accusing Ron DeSantis’s wife of exaggerating breast cancer and claiming that President Biden was behind the attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump in July.

Just two days before the debate, Ms. Loomer, 31, posted a racist joke about the vice president, whose mother was Indian American. Ms. Loomer wrote on X that if Ms. Harris won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.” (New York Times).

One more note from the article above.

The history of this person is just really toxic,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally, told a reporter for HuffPost on Thursday. “I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”

His comments were echoed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia and a devoted supporter of Mr. Trump. “I don’t think that she has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important presidential election,” Ms. Greene told reporters Thursday morning.

I agree with Claire McCaskill.

Breaking last night.

Trump refuses to criticize Laura Loomer amid concerns from Republican allies about her influence.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (AP) — Donald Trump refused on Friday to condemn recent racist and conspiratorial comments from right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who traveled with him earlier this week to Tuesday night’s presidential debate and several 9/11 memorial events.

“Laura’s been a supporter of mine,” Trump told reporters at a press conference near Los Angeles, where he was pressed on concerns from Republican allies about his ongoing association with Loomer, who once declared herself a “proud Islamophobe” and has a long history of promoting ugly and extreme conspiracies.

Trump said Loomer has “strong opinions,” but insisted at the news conference he was unaware of her recent comments, including a post on X in which she played on racist stereotypes by writing that “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins in November. Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. (Associated Press)

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Early voting has begun.

Here are some state deadlines and other information to help you and yours vote.👇

Here’s a timeline for September:

Sept. 11 — Alabama became the first state to begin early voting, sending absentee ballots to eligible voters who provided a justification to receive one. North Carolina would have been the first to send out mail ballots, but was delayed by legal wrangling over the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name after he dropped out of the race.

Sept. 16 — Pennsylvania starts in-person early voting and begins sending mail-in ballots to eligible voters who requested them.

Sept. 19 — Wisconsin starts mailing ballots to voters who requested them.

Sept. 20 — Minnesota and South Dakota start mail and in-person early voting; Virginia begins in-person early voting.

Sept. 21 — The federal deadline for all absentee ballots to be mailed to military and overseas voters. Eleven states will send out their mail-in ballots by this day, and North Carolina is expected to as well.

Sept. 23 — Mississippi will send absentee ballots to voters who applied for them.

Sept. 26 — Mail-in voting begins in Michigan (voters have to request mail ballots).

Sept. 30 — Nebraska will send mail ballots to eligible voters who requested them.

The rest of the swing states start in-person early voting in October:

Oct. 7 — Georgia begins sending mail ballots to eligible voters.

Oct. 9 — Arizona starts both in-person and mail-in voting. To receive a ballot by mail, voters must request to be placed on the state’s Active Early Voter List.

Oct. 15 — In-person early voting begins in Georgia.

Oct. 16 — Nevada sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Oct. 17 — North Carolina starts in-person early voting.

Oct. 19 — Nevada starts in-person early voting.

Oct. 21 — The in-person early voting period begins in Texas.

Oct. 22 — Wisconsin starts in-person early voting.

Oct. 26 — Michigan opens in-person early voting, the last battleground state to do so.

Where can I find more information about early voting?

States take different approaches to early voting. To read about the options available to you, go to your state or local election office’s website; you can search for that here.

When do I need to register? Where can I check my voter registration?

Most states allow registration until October, and some offer same-day registration at polling places. Check the status of your voter registration on vote.org. To find out when you need to register by, go to vote.gov and select your state or territory.

How can I update my voter registration?

There’s a portal on vote.gov that will show you how to do that. Enter your state or territory to get started.

Where can I check my state’s voting deadline?

Most states require mail-in ballots to be postmarked or dropped off in person on or before Election Day. Check your state’s policy on vote.org by selecting your state or territory. You can also find this information on the website of your state’s election or secretary of state’s office. (Source. New York Times)

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Your daily reminder

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

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The Vice President weighed in too, at the debate.

This is so rich.

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What are you doing this weekend to elect Kamala and Tim and the down ballot candidates for the House and the Senate that the Harris-Walz Administration needs to succeed?

The Vice President is staying in Pennsylvania on the weekend.

She was in Pennsylvania Friday, where she used stops in two counties Trump won in 2016 and 2020 to frame herself as the candidate for middle-class workers and small-business owners.

In Wilkes-Barre, Harris touted her call for a $50,000 tax deduction to start a small business and said she would work with the private sector to build 3 million new homes to increase housing stock and decrease costs. She said her overall tax plan, , including raising the child tax credit to $6,000 during the first year of a child’s life, would reach 100 million Americans. She pledged to ease requirements for a college degree for certain federal government jobs.

And she compared her upbringing to the billionaire Trump being the son of a wealthy New York developer. “I come from the middle class. I understand where I come from and I’m never going to forget that,” she said.

Touch to watch. 👇

In Johnstown, Harris met with owners and supporters at Classic Elements, a bookstore and cafe, to discuss her plans. “Small businesses are so much part of the fabric of a community,” she told the shop owners. (Associated Press).

One more thing.

Former President Donald J. Trump said on Friday that if elected to a second term, he would begin his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in two cities in Ohio and Colorado that have been the center of his baseless and exaggerated claims about migrants.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on Friday afternoon. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.” (New York Times).

Help Kamala win the 20 electoral votes of the Keystone State.

Signup to volunteer in Pennsylvania.

Volunteer in Pennsylvania! · The Democratic National Committee

Sign up to get more information about volunteering in PA to elect Democrats up and down the ballot!

Join a week day caravan and knock on doors.

https://www.padems.org/mob-events/

Donate.

Kamala Harris for President: Official Campaign Website

If we’re going to win this election and save democracy, we need you on board. Join our campaign today!

52 Days Left. As Michelle Obama said, Do Something.

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Next week. Look forward to this.

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