Angling to tap into strong support for the sweeping health law he helped pass 14 years ago, one of President Joe Bidens latest reelection strategies is to remind voters that former President Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

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Folks, hes coming for your health care, and were not going to let it happen, Biden says of Trump in a television and digital ad out this month, part of a $14 million investment in the handful of states expected to decide the presidency in November.

The new ad draws on the popularity of the ACA among independent voters and alludes to Bidens edge over Trump on health issues, which the current president hopes will help propel him to victory.

Swaying even a tiny percentage of voters could make a difference for Biden, said Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

It will be so close, he said. Any little thing can be a deciding factor.

Political experts say Biden is wise to draw attention to the ACA, which ended long-standing insurance practices denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions or charging them more a change that is popular across the partisan divide and benefits about half of U.S. households, said Ashley Kirzinger, KFFs associate director of public opinion and survey research.

Framing the ACA around those protections is a very smart move, she said. Email Sign-Up

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A new KFF survey found Biden has an edge with independent voters when it comes to health care issues.

Independents trust Biden more than Trump to ensure access to affordable health insurance (47% to 22%) and maintain protections for people with preexisting conditions (47% to 23%).

Biden holds a smaller advantage over Trump in whom independents trust more to address high health care costs (39% to 26%). The survey also found the issue isnt a slam dunk for either candidate: About a third of independent voters said they trust neither Biden nor Trump to address costs.

Democrats are fighting to extend higher government subsidies for most people with ACA coverage, which were increased during the pandemic and are set to expire in 2025. Theyre also banking on outrage over the Supreme Courts 2022 decision striking down Roe v. Wade, and strict abortion bans that have followed in many Republican-led states, to juice Democratic turnout.

The stakes could not be higher for Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act, Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler told reporters on a call this month.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

At least one Democratic-aligned super PAC is also running health-related ads, including on Trumps appointment of Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said focusing on health care plays to Bidens strengths.

Biden has been mired by voter concerns about inflation and immigration, where Republicans are preferred, he said. Health care is more favorable territory where the Trump campaign does not have much of a defense to offer.

Some recent polls have shown Trump leading in most battleground states, with voters expressing pessimism about the economy.

But Trump is vulnerable on health care, Miller said. He unsuccessfully tried to repeal the ACA as president and has alluded to trying again if he returns to the White House. In November, he declared Obamacare Sucks! on social media, and in March he said he wants to improve the law without saying how.

These ads are an effort to shake up the agenda, Miller said. Biden needs more work reminding Democrat-leaning independent voters who probably voted for him in 2020 that he is the better choice.

Bidens ad also claims his health care policies have helped save Americans $800 a year. The Biden administration has said thats how much 13 million people buying coverage on ACA insurance marketplaces saved in 2022.

The ads primary claim, that 100 million people would be harmed if Trump eliminated preexisting condition protections, is misleading, said Robert Speel, director of the Public Policy Initiative at Penn State Behrend. Thats because many would retain the protections under their coverage, particularly those on Medicare and employer-sponsored insurance.

The ad looks too generic to have a significant impact on the outcome of the election, though it may get through to enough of the small universe of swing voters to have at least some potential impact on who wins Pennsylvania, Speel said.

The KFF survey of 1,243 registered voters conducted April 23-May 1 had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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Hundreds of Air Force service members in dress blue uniforms filed into a Georgia megachurch Friday for the funeral of Roger Fortson, 23, a senior airman who was shot and killed by an Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy earlier this month after he answered the door to his apartment holding a gun at his side.

Fortson’s dramatic funeral, which included a video message from Rev. Al Sharpton, was a stark reminder of the deadly incoherence between America’s Second Amendment culture and hypervigilant police training and tactics.

Fortson was fatally shot on May 3 after sheriff’s deputies arrived at his apartment complex in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, responding to a call about an alleged domestic disturbance.

Body camera footage released by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office shows the deputy knocked on Fortson’s door and announced himself several times. Fortson eventually opened the door, holding a handgun at his side. The officer said “step back” and began firing. Fortson only had time to raise his empty hand, palm outward. Three to four seconds elapsed between Fortson opening the door and the deputy firing six rounds at him.

Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney who is representing Fortson’s family, said in a recent press conference that police went to the wrong door. A radio dispatcher told deputies that the call was “fourth-party information from the front desk at the leasing office,” and body camera footage showed an unidentified woman telling deputies she was “not sure” which door the disturbance came from before directing them to Fortson’s apartment. Fortson’s family says he legally owned the gun, had no criminal record, and was home alone at the time of the incident.

“We’ve got to call it as it isRoger died of murder,” Rev. Jamal Bryant said at Fortson’s funeral. “He died of stone-cold murder. And somebody has got to be held accountable. Roger was better to America than America was to Roger.”

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office initially framed the fatal shooting as self-defense.

“Hearing sounds of a disturbance, he reacted in self defense after he encountered a 23-year old man armed with a gun and after the deputy had identified himself as law enforcement,” a May 4 statement from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office read.

The two narratives illustrate a problem Reason has written about time and time again: The government insists that its citizens have a Second Amendment right to own guns and defend their homes with them, but it also insists that it’s reasonable for police to respond with deadly force when they’re startled by the sight of a gun, or what could be a gun but might be a harmless object, or the knowledge that a gun is nearby, as in the case of Philando Castile.

Last year police in Farmington, New Mexico, fatally shot a man while responding to a domestic disturbance call at the wrong house, after the man showed up at the door holding a gun.

In 2022, Florida resident Corey Marioneaux Jr. was charged with attempted murder of a police officer for shooting a gun at SWAT team officers who had just broken through his front door with a battering ram at 5 a.m. The charges against Marioneaux were later dropped, and an internal review found no wrongdoing on the part of the police eithera simple misunderstanding that could have killed someone.

That same year, a Minneapolis Police Department officer shot and killed 22-year-old Amir Locke during the execution of a no-knock raid. Locke, who was not named in the search warrant, appeared to be asleep under a blanket on a couch. As police entered the room, he put his hand on the barrel of a handgun, and an officer shot him three times.

In 2006, former Reason writer Radley Balko detailed the case of Cory Maye , a Mississippi man sentenced to death for fatally shooting a police officer during a no-knock drug raid.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis relentlessly brags about “Free Florida,” a supposed refuge from liberal busybodies, where things like owning a gun and not eating vat-grown meat are sacred. The title of his book was in fact The Courage to Be Free. But DeSantis has no courage when it comes to the police. His only priority is giving law enforcement more privileges and insulation from civilian accountability.

Roger Fortson lived in this very same Florida. Now his name will be added to the long list of people who were killed for doing something they were assured was their right as free citizens of the United States.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of former President Donald Trumps social networking site Truth Social, lost more than $300 million last quarter, according to its first earnings report as a publicly traded company.

For the three-month period that ended March 31, the company posted a loss of $327.6 million, which it said included $311 million in non-cash expenses related to its merger with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was essentially a pile of cash looking for a target to merge with. Its an example of whats called a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which can give young companies quicker and easier routes to getting their shares trading publicly.

A year earlier, Trump Media posted a loss of $210,300.

Trump Media said collected $770,500 in revenue in the first quarter, largely from its nascent advertising initiative. That was down from $1.1 million a year earlier.

At this early stage in the Companys development, TMTG remains focused on long-term product development, rather than quarterly revenue, Trump Media said in its earnings news release.

Earlier this month, the company fired an auditor that federal regulators recently charged with massive fraud. The former presidents media company dismissed BF Borgers as its independent public accounting firm on May 3, delaying the filing of the quarterly earnings report, according to a securities filings.

Trump Media had previously cycled through at least two other auditors one that resigned in July 2023, and another that was terminated its the board in March, just as it was re-hiring BF Borgers.

Shares of Trump Media climbed 36 cents to $48.74 in after-hours trading. The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol DJT, began trading on Nasdaq in March and peaked at nearly $80 in late March.