Biden aims to cut through voter disenchantment as he courts Latino voters at Las Vegas conference

LAS VEGAS — (AP) — President Joe Biden is trying to shore up support among disenchanted voters key to his reelection chances as he meets Wednesday with members of a Latino civil rights organization in the battleground state of Nevada.

Biden is set to deliver an address to the UnidosUS annual conference in Las Vegas, where he'll announce that beginning Aug. 19 certain U.S. citizens' spouses without legal status can begin applying for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country, according to the White House. The new program, first announced by Biden last month, could affect upwards of half a million immigrants.

Biden is also expected to use the speech to spotlight that the Latino unemployment rate is near a record low, more people in the community have been able to obtain health insurance and the federal government has doubled the number of Small Business Administration loans to Latino business owners since 2020.

The visit with Latino activists comes as Republicans are hosting their national convention in Milwaukee and as Biden struggles to steady a reelection campaign that’s been listing since his dismal June 27 debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump. The campaign has been further complicated by a failed assassination attempt on Trump by a 20-year-old shooter on Saturday in Pennsylvania.

Biden is counting on strong support from Black and Latino voters — two groups that were key parts of his winning 2020 coalition but whose support has shown signs of fraying — to help him win four more years in the White House.

Biden, in an interview with BET News on Tuesday, insisted that he still has plenty of time to energize voters.

“Whether it's young Blacks, young whites, young Hispanics, or young Asian Americans, they've never focused till after Labor Day,” Biden said in the interview. “The idea that they're intently focused on the election right now is not there.”

But the headwinds for Biden had been building even before his flop on the debate stage led to a wave of Democratic lawmakers and donors calling on him to exit the campaign.

Hispanic Americans have a less positive view of Biden now than they did when he took office. Forty-five percent of Hispanic adults have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of Biden, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in June, down from around 6 in 10 in January 2021. In the June poll, half of Hispanic adults had an unfavorable view of Biden.

Biden on Tuesday delivered remarks in Las Vegas to the annual NAACP convention in which he made the case that Trump's four years in the White House were "hell" for Black Americans. He lashed at Trump for mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, skyrocketing unemployment early in the pandemic, and divisive rhetoric that he said needlessly tore at Americans.

He also mocked Trump for saying that migrants who have entered the U.S. under the Democratic administration are stealing “Black jobs.”

“I know what a Black job is. It’s the vice president of the United States,” Biden said of Vice President Kamala Harris. He added that she “could be president.”

Biden also noted his appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on U.S. Supreme Court and his service as vice president under Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president.

The UnidosUS conference gives Biden another opportunity to contrast his approach on immigration with Trump's. The Republican's approach to immigration includes a push for mass deportations and rhetoric casting migrants as dangerous criminals “poisoning the blood” of America.

That new Biden administration plan was announced weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant-rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which the administration officials say has led to fewer border encounters between ports.

Biden is also expected to sign an executive order establishing a White House initiative on advancing opportunities at what are known as Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a group of some 500 two-year and four-year colleges around the country that have prominent Hispanic populations.

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Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.