The Latest: Harris and Trump push to energize key voting blocs their allies worry are slipping away

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both pushed Tuesday to energize key constituencies that their allies worry might be slipping away, with the vice president looking to reach Black men and the former president focusing on women.

Harris will appear at a town hall-style event in Detroit hosted by the morning radio program “The Breakfast Club,” featuring Charlamagne Tha God, who is especially popular with Black males. Trump, meanwhile, will tape a Fox News Channel town hall featuring an all-female audience and moderated by host Harris Faulkner.

The vice president was also scheduled to stop by a Black-owned business in Detroit. A day earlier, she visited LegendErie, a coffee shop and record store in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she met with the husband-and-wife owners, a local pastor and other community leaders.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is unveiling his ticket’s plan to improve the lives of rural Americans. It’s yet another sign that in a razor-tight race, each side is trying to cut into the other’s margins of support with different voting blocs while shoring up traditional areas of strength.

The vice president’s “Breakfast Club” appearance comes one day after she announced a series of new proposals dubbed the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.” The ideas are meant to offer the demographic more economic advantages, including providing forgivable business loans of up to $20,000 for entrepreneurs and creating more apprenticeships. The plan would also support the study of sickle cell and other diseases more common in Black men.

Trump, meanwhile, has seen his support among women, especially in the suburbs of many key swing states, soften since his term in the White House. A September AP-NORC poll found more than half of registered voters who are women have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, while only about one-third have a favorable view of Trump.

To reverse the trend, Trump has sought to cast himself as being able to personally shield women from various threats, as when he suggested at a rally in Pennsylvania last month that women in America, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Trump has an economic speech in Chicago and a rally in Atlanta.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

Trump says speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin would be good for the country

Donald Trump won’t say whether he’s spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he left office.

But he says doing so would be good for the country.

“I don’t comment on that,” he said at an event before the Chicago Economic Club. “But I will tell you that if I did it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”

Journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War,” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic.”

Trump spokesperson Steve Cheung called the reporting false. Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Woodward is “a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles.”

Trump defends his support for high tariffs

Donald Trump is defending his support for high tariffs as an economic cure-all as he speaks before members of the Economic Club of Chicago.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,’” Trump tells Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, who is interviewing him at the event. Micklethwait has repeatedly pressed Trump on warnings from economists that the costs of high tariffs will be passed along to American consumers, raising prices.

But Trump isn’t budging.

“It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong,” he says, to laughs.

The Economic Club of Chicago describes its membership as “a curated composition of business and civic leaders.”

Walz to unveil Harris’ plan for rural voters as campaign looks to cut into Trump’s edge

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday will unveil his ticket’s plans to improve the lives of rural voters, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks to cut into former President Donald Trump’s support.

The Harris-Walz plan includes a focus on improving rural health care, such as plans to recruit 10,000 new health care professionals in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and new grant programs, as well as economic and agricultural policy priorities. The plan was detailed to The Associated Press by a senior campaign official on the condition of anonymity ahead of its official release on Tuesday.

It marks a concerted effort by the Democratic campaign to make a dent in the historically Trump-leaning voting bloc in the closing three weeks before Election Day. Trump carried rural voters by a nearly two-to-one margin in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. In the closely contested race, both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out beyond their historic bases in hopes of winning over a sliver of voters that could ultimately prove decisive.

Walz is set to announce the plan during a stop in rural Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania, one of the marquee battlegrounds of the 2024 contest. He is also starring in a new radio ad for the campaign highlighting his roots in a small town of 400 people and his time coaching football, while attacking Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson sues CNN over report about posts on porn site

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has sued CNN over its recent report that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board. He made the announcement Tuesday and calls the reporting reckless and defamatory.

The lawsuit comes less than four weeks after a report that led many of his fellow GOP elected officials and candidates to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. That includes GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

CNN declined to comment on the lawsuit. Robinson is also suing a man who alleges Robinson frequented a porn shop decades ago.

Georgia judge rules county election officials must certify election results

A Georgia judge has ruled county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law and cannot exclude any group of votes from certification even if they suspect error or fraud.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they have the right to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are multimember boards in most counties, “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election — or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

The ruling comes as early voting began Tuesday in Georgia.

Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board, had asked the judge to declare that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she’s entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”