Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping her stop in the Detroit suburbs will electrify her core supporters — and she brought in a major reinforcement.

Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Harris and spoke at the Democratic convention last month, will headline the event with Harris Thursday night in Farmington Hills, Michigan, as the campaign tries to target a broad swath of voters they hope to turn out in November. The event will be livestreamed on multiple social platforms.

The campaign invited dozens of pro-Harris groups to attend the campaign stop, called “Unite for America,” as Harris looks to energize some of her earliest backers. Polls continue to show a neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump, whose campaign has appeared resilient despite a poor debate performance and efforts to hammer race-based attacks on immigration. The event is also an effort to highlight the range of groups that united behind Harris as she effectively shut down any challenge for the nomination, and who will remain vital in the sprint to November as surrogates, door knockers and fundraisers.

Nearly 70 “unity groups” were invited to participate, including Win With Black Women, Win With Black Men, White Dudes for Harris, Black Women for Kamala and Cat Ladies for Kamala — as well as some more niche organizations like Poets for Harris and Adventurers for Harris: Democracy & Dragons. The event will feature a small, in-studio audience of a few hundred supporters. Jotaka Eaddy, who founded Win With Black Women, will also join Harris and Winfrey.

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President Joe Biden may have finally gotten the economy he wanted. But any political spoils will go to his successor.

Biden on Thursday touted the work that his administration has done in steering the nation’s economy over the last three-and-a-half years and promised it would continue to prosper under the candidate he wants to succeed him, Vice President Kamala Harris. Despite an economy that most metrics indicate is succeeding, Biden and his team have struggled to communicate their successes to the American people — and polling suggests that most voters still aren’t happy with his economic leadership.

In a speech at the Economic Club of Washington D.C., Biden listed the ways the economy he inherited has rebounded since the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, both to burnish his own legacy and make the case for Harris as she tries to ward off the economic attacks from Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“You know I believe it’s important that the country recognize this progress,” Biden said, with an eye toward his economic legacy and burnishing Harris’ campaign message. “Because if we don’t, the progress we’ve made would remain locked in fear and a negative mindset that has dominated our economic outlook since the pandemic began.”

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Tim Walz has struggled over the years as a fundraiser, limited in part by his lack of high-dollar donor networks from his days representing a rural congressional district.

But, in just the past few weeks, the Minnesota governor has grown into a more sought after commodity and helped Kamala Harris in her efforts to bring in record-breaking sums since being tapped as her running mate. He’s often pulling in $750,000 to $2 million himself per campaign fundraiser, according to two other people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Now, the Harris campaign is working to rapidly accelerate Walz's fundraising push as the team aims to pour millions more dollars into resource-intensive ground organizing in battleground states with just weeks to go before the election.

Harris’ team is planning a fundraising swing in New York for Walz next Monday, according to two people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Harris, meanwhile, will hold three of her own major fundraising events before the end of the month in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to the two people.

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Lobbyists are scrambling to figure out Kamala Harris.

As they strategize about how to curry favor and build relationships with a potential Harris White House, they’re confronting questions similar to the ones many voters now face: Who is Kamala Harris? What does she care about, and whom does she trust?

Influence peddlers spent decades cultivating ties with President Joe Biden’s inner circle; Harris has spent less than eight years in Washington. During her time as a California senator, Harris’ office was seen as either ambivalent to or dismissive of the requests of corporate interests. During her years as vice president, she was seen as superfluous to the core policymaking process.

But in the twists of an unexpectedly volatile presidential election cycle, K Street is now setting its sights on the new Democratic ticket-leader — and rushing to catch up on years of relationship-building. They’re bundling donations for the Democratic National Committee, conducting outreach to administration staffers they think could stay on, helping the campaign promote legislation and referring clients to give to the campaign. They’re digging into the network of elected officials across the country who are close to Harris.

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ANN ARBOR, Michigan — As vice president, Kamala Harris has been part of an administration that’s poured more than $50 billion into Rust Belt industry and infrastructure. As the Democrats’ nominee for president, she is hardly mentioning the massive spending as she woos voters in the crucial region.

Instead, Harris and her surrogates are focusing their economic pitch on the “care economy” — policies to expand child care, make housing more affordable and help small businesses — the focus of her first economic speech in August, as well as in a new TV ad. It’s a major pivot from her current boss, President Joe Biden, who made rebuilding domestic manufacturing a core part of his message to voters in the so-called Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, before his reelection bid collapsed in July.

Biden “is a car guy, like I’m a car girl,” said Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell (D), who appeared alongside Biden at a Sept. 6 rally in Ann Arbor, where he touted his administration’s massive investment in manufacturing and electric vehicles. Talking about industrial policy “is just natural for us.”

“She’s learning,” Dingell added of Harris. “She’s from California, but she still cares a lot about the industry.”

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UNIONDALE, New York — New York isn’t a battleground state. But Donald Trump’s rally here on Wednesday held a particular resonance because of its fiery hardline messages about crime and immigration.

It’s a message he delivers often on the campaign trail, usually to voters in key swing states. But it’s here on suburban Long Island that Republicans have seen success with that message, flipping several battleground seats in the midterms that President Joe Biden had comfortably carried two years prior. Now, Republicans are leaning on that playbook in hopes of capturing the suburban vote across the rest of the nation.

In an hour-plus long speech to supporters in a packed arena, Trump warned that New York will be a “third-world nation” should Democrats stay in power, and cautioned against “migrants Kamala let in.”

“I say to the people of New York, with crime at record levels, with terrorists and criminals pouring in and with inflation eating your hearts out, vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “What the hell do you have to lose?”

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SACRAMENTO, California — The creator of a video that used artificial intelligence to imitate Kamala Harris is suing the state of California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed laws restricting the use of digitally altered political “deepfakes,” alleging First and 14th Amendment violations.

Christopher Kohls, who goes by the name “Mr Reagan” on X, has been at the center of a debate over the use of AI-generated material in elections since he posted the video in July, calling it a parody of a Harris campaign ad. It features AI-generated clips mimicking Harris’ voice and saying she’s the “ultimate diversity hire.” The video was shared by X owner Elon Musk without calling it parody and attracted the ire of Newsom, who vowed to ban such content.

The governor made good on that promise Tuesday by signing laws targeting fraudulent campaign materials. Now, Kohls is suing, arguing the governor is trying to make computer-generated parody illegal and asserting that political satire is a “fundamental First Amendment Right.”

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court, seeks permanent injunctions against the laws.

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West Coast Teamsters announced their endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, just minutes after national Teamsters leadership declined to issue a presidential endorsement.

The move represents a sharp break within the powerful union’s membership in liberal states like California, where former President Donald Trump remains a widely unpopular political figure. The union’s national headquarters released internal survey results earlier in the day that showed close to 60 percent of its members backed Trump.

Teamsters Joint Councils 7 and 42 — which are made up of 39 local unions representing 300,000 members in California, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam — wrote in a statement that Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have a history of supporting expanded labor protections for workers, like the proposed Protect the Right to Organize Act and a Minnesota law that will ban employers from forcing workers to attend anti-labor meetings.

“Teamster members work and live in cities as well as in rural communities, come from diverse backgrounds, and have different views, but Joint Council 7 and 42 Teamsters refuse to be divided by extremist political forces or greedy corporations that want to see us fail,” said Teamsters Joint Council 7 President Peter Finn. “As Teamsters we will stand together to have a strong voice on the job, provide for our families, and serve the communities where we work.”

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Nine Senate Republicans on Wednesday blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for what they say was a "failed" execution of her role leading the Biden administration's efforts to expand broadband access to underserved areas.

“It appears that your performance as ‘broadband czar’ has mirrored your performance as ‘border czar,’ marked by poor management and a lack of effectiveness despite significant federal broadband investments and your promises to deliver broadband to rural areas,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), Senate Commerce ranking member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and seven others wrote Harris.

Key context: The attack comes as Harris touts her work on expanding connectivity in her campaign against former President Donald Trump.

The GOP complaints center on the administration’s $42.45 billion internet expansion effort known as the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, or the BEAD Program, which was created by the 2021 infrastructure law. The senators invoke recent POLITICO reporting, which points to partisan bickering over the program's requirements on affordability that has slowed its launch. No actual construction projects are expected to begin until at least 2025.

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Former President Donald Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris nearly two-to-one among Teamsters members, according to survey data the union released Wednesday as it considers an endorsement in the presidential race.

Close to 60 percent of members who participated in an electronic poll said they supported Trump, compared to 34 percent who backed Harris. A separate survey conducted via phone similarly had Trump up big: 58 percent to 31 percent.

Earlier this week General President Sean O’Brien said earlier this week the polling of its membership would be a key consideration.

“Our members are the union, and their voices and opinions must be at the forefront of everything the Teamsters do,” O’Brien said in a release. “Our final decision around a possible Presidential endorsement will not be made lightly, but you can be sure it will be driven directly by our diverse membership.”

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Reigniting the “childless cat lady” discourse surrounding Donald Trump’s campaign, a key ally of his went after Kamala Harris on Tuesday for not having biological children.

During a town hall she moderated for Trump in Flint, Michigan, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders talked about her daughter innocently criticizing Sanders’ appearance, saying “my kids keep me humble.”

“Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” Sanders said.

The remark seemed to be a reference to Harris’ lack of biological children. Harris is a stepmother to two children from her husband Doug Emhoff. And his family, including his ex-wife, has spoken glowingly about Harris’ role in helping parent his now-adult children.

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PHILADELPHIA — Kamala Harris largely stuck to her script during an interview Tuesday with a panel of National Association of Black Journalists members, carefully parrying questions about hot-button issues like the war in Gaza, reparations and other critical election topics.

It was the vice president’s second high-profile national media interview since announcing her presidential run, and though she spoke passionately at times about abortion rights and other policies, she did not break much ground or stray far from her talking points during the near hour-long conversation.

Harris’ appearance at the NABJ event follows Donald Trump’s combative sit-down interview with the association over the summer, during which the former president made headlines for his hostile approach. Trump immediately argued with moderators and questioned Harris’ racial identity — comments that left many in the audience at the time startled.

During Harris’ interview in Philadelphia on Tuesday, at the public radio station WHYY’s headquarters, she laced into Trump for spreading a conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, saying that he was “spewing lies that are grounded in tropes that are age-old.”

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Vice President Kamala Harris said Americans “deserve better” than the Springfield, Ohio online conspiracy theory that Haitians are eating pets in an interview on Tuesday hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists.

“The American people deserve — and I believe, do want better than this,” Harris said on Tuesday at the WHYY studio in Philadelphia. “Regardless of someone's background, their race, their gender, their geographic location, I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it's got to stop.”

The conspiracy spread on social media and former President Donald Trump brought it into the mainstream when he mentioned it on the ABC News debate stage last week. There have since been numerous threats of violence in Springfield, including more than two dozen bomb threats.

Harris also said that the former president highlighting an unverified rumor fits a pattern of behavior from Trump.

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Russian government-linked efforts to interfere in the upcoming U.S. presidential election have increasingly shifted to target the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, Microsoft reported in findings published Tuesday.

The new effort, which involves spreading fake videos discrediting Harris and her campaign, is the latest foreign interference linked to Russia in recent weeks, and shows a speedy pivot by foreign adversaries to targeting the Harris campaign after she replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket.

Microsoft found evidence that two “Kremlin-aligned” groups have in recent weeks spread videos including those showing Harris supporters attacking supporters of former President Donald Trump, and another video that used an actor to pose as Harris in a fictitious hit-and-run incident. Each of these videos received millions of views, according to Microsoft, and one of the videos was put out through a fake San Francisco news outlet, in an attempt to give the video more credibility.

The groups also posted videos to social media platforms X and Telegram showing a fake New York City billboard with false Harris policies. Microsoft found that this video received more than 100,000 views on X in the first hours after being posted.

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