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Planned Parenthood launches digital ad campaign for Biden

13 July 2020
 Dan Ackermann

Planned Parenthood Votes, the political arm of the national reproductive rights group, is ramping up its general election efforts, launching five-figure digital ad campaigns across nine battleground states.

Why it matters: This is the group's biggest election cycle effort yet, part of a larger $45 million investment ahead of November's election, and provides a glimpse of how Democrats are trying to take down President Trump on women's health issues while boosting Joe Biden as the alternative.

  • The ads will run in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
  • The campaign is also being deployed soon after the Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling siding with the Trump administration over the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.
  • Now, employers with a religious or moral objection to birth control don't have to to cover it in their employees' health care plans.

Details: The PP Votes ads pick up on a theme that the Biden campaign has been pushing: a contrast in leadership between Biden and Trump.

  • The ad shows excerpts from Trump saying things like: "I would veto legislation that weakens pro-life policies."
  • In the next cut, the narrator says: "Imagine a world where access to health care," and a cut from one of Biden's public speeches finishes the sentence, "is a right — not a privilege."
  • The 10- and 15-second ads reflect how some Democrats are trying to keep reproductive issues front and center with just four months until the election.
  • The group endorsed Biden for president last month and is doing targeted voter outreach across 12 swing states.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.