Kamala Harris talks economy, Black voters in Philly NABJ interview; Donald Trump adds a Bucks County visit

Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday in Philadelphia that she isn’t treating Black male voters as a monolith amid signs that former President Donald Trump has made inroads with the demographic

“I’m working to earn their vote, not assuming I’m going to have it because I’m Black,” Harris said during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.

It was one of her first live interviews since she became the Democratic standard-bearer following President Joe Biden’s unprecedented decision to end his reelection campaign. Harris broke little new ground and offered few specifics on policy proposals when pressed by moderators. But she escaped the 45-minute event largely unscathed despite weeks of criticism about her avoiding unscripted interviews with journalists.

Dajuan Wortham, 20, was shocked to see Vice President Kamala Harris in real life when she came, along with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, to visit a voter registration event at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Wortham was one of the speakers at the event and said he got to shake the vice president's hand and introduce himself.

"She was so happy ... she was interested. That's how it felt. She really was interested," Wortham said.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited a group of student leaders from colleges across Philadelphia during a brief campaign stop in which she recalled her first run for office: Freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council at Howard University.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker burst out in laughter and cheers at the reminiscence.

“Mayor, it was a tough race,” Harris said at the event at Community College of Philadelphia. “I ran against this girl from Jersey and she was tough, but I was from Oakland, so we were alright.”

Noah Laughlin is a Philadelphia native and a senior at Lincoln University, about an hour outside of the city.

He was especially interested in Vice President Kamala Harris’ response to questions about engaging Black men and the economy.

“The way she was describing her answer really opened my eyes to her mindset,” Laughlin said.

Montgomery County voters can now request and return mail ballots at the county’s main government office building — One Montgomery Plaza.

After slow delivery of mail ballots during April’s primary election, Montgomery County is one of the first counties in Pennsylvania to print and mail ballots for November’s key general election. Following a news conference, Tuesday, Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija cast his mail ballot, the first to be cast in the county for the election.

Monday afternoon, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court confirmed Cornel West would not appear on the state’s ballot as a third party candidate, counties across the state were permitted to begin printing and distributing ballots to voters.

When pressed if she supports codifying the restrictions of Roe v. Wade, which allowed states to ban abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy, Vice President Kamala Harris was adamant that “we need to put the protections of Roe v. Wade back into law.”

“And when that bill gets passed by Congress, I will proudly sign it into law,” Harris said, who was a vocal critic of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the landmark abortion rights case in June 2022.

Harris has been a leader on reproductive access both in President Joe Biden's administration and on the campaign trail. Before becoming the vice president, Harris co-sponsored legislation as a U.S. senator that would ban states from restricting abortion rights and voted against a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she spoke with former President Donald Trump today about the apparent assassination attempt that targeted him at of a golf course in Florida.

“I checked on him to see if he was ok and I told him what I said publicly: there's no place for political violence in our country,” said Harris.

Suspect Ryan Wesley Routh did not fire any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and sped away after an agent who spotted him shot in his direction, officials said. He was arrested in a neighboring county.

Asked what other than an assault weapon ban could address the crush of gun violence in America — where 59% of homicides and violent crimes are perpetrated with hand guns — Harris acknowledged there are “very few solutions we haven’t thought of.”

Harris said universal background checks would help, though that would only cover legally purchased guns. She also stressed the need to end gun show loop holes where gun dealers are not always required to register their sales.

“I myself protested at a gun show 10-15 years ago about the gun show loop hole and why we need to close that,” she said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday was pressed on whether she and President Joe Biden were doing enough to pressure Israel into ending its war against Hamas during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia.

After Harris offered her usual response to questions about the conflict in Gaza — that she and Biden were working to reach a ceasefire and hostage deal — moderator Eugene Daniels of Politico asked repeatedly whether she would do anything different than Biden has if she were elected president.

Daniels said that Harris has been praised for emphasizing the humanity of Palestinians in her public statements on the issue. But he questioned whether there are any substantive differences between her and Biden’s approach, which progressive critics of the war have said has failed to hold Israel accountable.

Kamala Harris said the repeatedly debunked and false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are “a crying shame.”

“I mean my heart breaks for this community,” Harris said, specifically citing how schools in Springfield had to be evacuated due to threats.

Last week during the presidential debate in Philadelphia, former President Donald Trump promoted the inflammatory and false claim that Haitian immigrants in the Ohio town were eating pets. Republican Vice Presidential nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance has also spearheaded these claims as have other conservatives.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s working to make sure her policies appeal to Black men voters, just like everyone else.

“I think it’s very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody’s pocket,” said Harris. “Black men are like any other group, you’ve gotta earn their vote.”

She zeroed in on her plans to bolster entrepreneurship and small business financing as policies that would appeal to Black men. Already as vice president, she said, she has worked alongside President Joe Biden to expand funding for community banks to increase access to capital for startups.

Moderator Eugene Daniels from Politico kicked off Vice President Kamala Harris’ in-person conversation with the National Association of Black Journalists at WHYY by asking her about the economy, an issue she has regularly been pressed on by reporters and her Republican opponents.

“A question that has been asked of you and everybody that’s on the Democratic side is whether or not voters are better off now than they were four years ago,” Daniels said.

Harris touted some of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies on the economy including job creation, investments in small businesses, low Black unemployment rate, and capping the cost of insulin and prescription medicine. She also exaggerated the state of the economy when she and President Joe Biden took office, calling it “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression."

Morgan State University senior Zakaiya Williams arrived to Philadelphia by bus to see Vice President Kamala Harris speak at an intimate event at WHYY on Tuesday.

Harris is here, just across the street from the National Constitution Center where sparred with Donald Trump in her first — and likely only — debate with the former president last Tuesday.

“As an HBCU student, I’m really excited to see her,” Williams said.

Former President Donald Trump will visit Bucks County on Sunday, his campaign confirmed.

Trump is expected to visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown Sunday. The campaign did not immediately say what time the visit would be or whether it would be open to the public.

The stop will be Trump's second in the hotly contested Bucks County, a purple county and the only area in the Philadelphia suburbs represented by a Republican in Congress. Earlier this year, Trump hosted a private fundraiser in the county.

» READ MORE: Donald Trump will visit a Polish Catholic shrine in Bucks County, his second trip to the purple Philly collar county

At the U.S. Education Department’s Annual National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, attendees said they were excited to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris in November.

“Her morals and what she stands up for is what we need in our nation right now,” said Antoine Johnson Jr., 19, a student at Alcorn State University in Mississippi. He registered to vote once he turned 18, and is looking forward to voting in his first presidential election.

“I’m more excited because she’s an HBCU graduate. That lightens my heart … It just makes me want to vote for her even more.”

Two days after a second assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump will reportedly continue on with his schedule as planned for Tuesday, which includes a town hall in Flint, Mich.,, moderated by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and an appearance on Fox News anchor Sean Hannity's show.

Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected would-be assassin, waited nearly 12 hours outside Trump's golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla. Secret Service saw a firearm poking through the shrubbery on the golf course, about 400 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing. A Secret Service agent visually sweeping the area saw the what he perceived as a rifle and discharged his firearm. The gunman “did not have a line of sight to the former president," said Ronald Rowe, acting Secret Service director.

It marks the second attempt on Trump's life this summer after the shooting at his Butler, Pa., rally in July, which injured three people, including Trump, and killed Corey Comperatore, a firefighter.

Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to arrive at the Philadelphia International Airport around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

From there, she'll travel to Center City to sit for a live interview with members of the National Association of Black Journalists, scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. at WHYY's studios off Independence Mall.

Philly police have not announced any specific road closures, but you can expect rolling shutdowns on I-95 as Harris travels to Center City from the airport and back again. There will also likely be closures and restrictions surrounding WHYY's offices on North Sixth and Seventh Streets, as well as Race and Arch Streets.

Vice President Kamala Harris will be interviewed live by members of the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday afternoon at WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate. The conversation is scheduled to come roughly seven weeks after former President Donald Trump first publicly questioned and attacked Harris’ racial identity during a combative interview at the group’s conference in July.

The conversation is not a campaign event, but it underscores the important role that Philadelphia continues to play on the national political stage. The conversation will take place a week after Harris and Trump debated at the National Constitution Center — across the street from WHYY.

Harris’ appearance before an organization representing Black journalists also highlights the importance that Black voters will play in determining who wins the presidential race.

President Joe Biden soaked up energy from a crowd of hundreds in Philadelphia who lauded his investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities on Monday as he solidifies his legacy as a supporter of these institutions.

Standing on a stage between two American flags and screens projecting him, Biden addressed a crowd of energetic attendees at the Department of Education’s National HBCU Conference on Monday at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

He was met with a standing ovation when he announced his administration’s total investment in HBCUs — a record $17 billion since he took office. That figure encompasses all grants to HBCUs, Pell Grants to HBCU students, federal contracts to HBCUs, GI bill funds, and student aid funding like federal work study dollars.

It’s (special) Election Day in Northwest Philly and North Philadelphia to fill two state representative vacancies in Harrisburg, after the Democratic incumbents resigned this summer.

It’s uncommon to host a special election so close to an election, with less than two months before voters return to the polls to elect their state representatives to a two-year term. But Democrats, who hold a one-seat majority in the state House, have been at a standstill until the two vacancies are filled.

Keith Sea Harris, the 28th Ward leader and a local landlord, is running unopposed in North Philadelphia to fill the vacancy created by Rep. Donna Bullock’s resignation two months ago. Bullock left the state House to lead the nationally recognized anti-homelessness nonprofit Project HOME.