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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As his vice presidential audition continues, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is reportedly launching a $14 million election-season initiative targeting minority voters in seven battleground states.
* Now that Donald Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts, the New York Police Department is poised to revoke the former president’s gun license. President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign responded in a statement, “Good. Most Americans would prefer living in a country where an unhinged felon who has also been found liable for sexual abuse cannot own a firearm.”
* Trump is scheduled to speak next week to the Danbury Institute, which is a coalition of groups opposed to abortion in all instances. The Biden campaign was quick to note that the institute’s website says, in reference to abortion, “We will not rest until it is eradicated entirely.”
* In Nevada, which Biden narrowly carried in 2020, the latest Fox News poll found Trump ahead in the state by five points, both in head-to-head match-ups and with third-party candidates in the mix.
* In Pennsylvania, where right-wing Republican Rep. Scott Perry is facing a serious 2024 challenge, the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll found the incumbent leading former television anchor Janelle Stelson by the narrowest of margins, 45% to 44%.
* Trump is all but certain to lose Vermont in the fall, but complicating matters is the fact the state GOP’s own written rules prohibit the Vermont Republican Party from supporting a candidate with a felony conviction.
* And in Virginia, where Trump continues to go after Republican Rep. Bob Good, a variety of local GOP leaders have asked the former president to reconsider his endorsement of Good’s primary opponent. That seems unlikely, and time is running out: Primary Day in the commonwealth is June 18.