Be­y­on­cé is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear Fri­day in her home­town of Hous­ton at a ral­ly for Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, ac­cord­ing to three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter.

Har­ris’ pres­i­den­tial cam­paign has tak­en on Be­y­once’s 2016 track “Free­dom” as its an­them, and the singer’s planned ap­pear­ance brings a high-lev­el of star pow­er to what has be­come a key theme of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee’s bid: free­dom.

Har­ris will head to the re­li­ably Re­pub­li­can state just 10 days be­fore Elec­tion Day in an ef­fort to re­fo­cus her cam­paign against for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on re­pro­duc­tive care, which De­moc­rats see as a make-or-break is­sue this year.

The three peo­ple were not au­tho­rized to pub­licly dis­cuss the mat­ter and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. The Har­ris cam­paign did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment.

Be­y­on­cé‘s ap­pear­ance was ex­pect­ed to draw even more at­ten­tion to the event — and to Har­ris’ clos­ing mes­sage.

Har­ris’ Hous­ton trip is set to fea­ture women who have been af­fect­ed by Texas’ re­stric­tive abor­tion laws, which took ef­fect af­ter the Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She has cam­paigned in oth­er states with re­stric­tive abor­tion laws, in­clud­ing Geor­gia, among the sev­en most close­ly con­test­ed states.

Har­ris has cen­tered her cam­paign around the idea that Trump is a threat to Amer­i­can free­doms, from re­pro­duc­tive and LGBTQ rights to the free­dom to be safe from gun vi­o­lence.

Be­y­once gave Har­ris per­mis­sion ear­ly in her cam­paign to use “Free­dom,” a soul­ful track from her 2016 land­mark al­bum “Lemon­ade,” in her de­but ad. Har­ris has used its thump­ing cho­rus as a walk-out song at ral­lies ever since.

Be­y­on­cé’s align­ment with Har­ris isn’t the first time that the Gram­my win­ner has aligned with a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian. Barack Oba­ma and his wife, Michelle, danced as Be­y­on­cé per­formed at a pres­i­den­tial in­au­gur­al ball in 2009.

In 2013, she sang the na­tion­al an­them at Oba­ma’s sec­ond in­au­gu­ra­tion. Three years lat­er, she and her hus­band Jay-Z per­formed at a pre-elec­tion con­cert for De­mo­c­rat Hillary Clin­ton in Cleve­land.

“Look how far we’ve come from hav­ing no voice to be­ing on the brink of his­to­ry — again,” Be­y­on­cé said at the time. “But we have to vote.”

A Jan­u­ary poll by Ip­sos for the an­ti-po­lar­iza­tion non­prof­it With Hon­or found that 64% of De­moc­rats had a fa­vor­able view of Be­y­once com­pared with just 32% of Re­pub­li­cans. Over­all, Amer­i­cans were more like­ly to have a fa­vor­able opin­ion than an un­fa­vor­able one, 48% to 33%.

Spec­u­la­tion over whether the su­per­star would ap­pear at this sum­mer’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion in Chica­go reached a fever pitch on the gath­er­ing’s fi­nal night, with on­line ru­mors swirling af­ter celebri­ty news site TMZ post­ed a sto­ry that said: “Be­y­on­cé is in Chica­go, and get­ting ready to pop out for Ka­mala Har­ris on the fi­nal night of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tion.” The site at­trib­uted it to “mul­ti­ple sources in the know,” none of them named.

About an hour af­ter Har­ris end­ed her speech, TMZ up­dat­ed its sto­ry to say, “To quote the great Be­y­on­cé: We got­ta lay our cards down, down, down ... we got this one wrong.” In the end, Har­ris took the stage to star’s song, but that was its on­ly ap­pear­ance.

Last year, Har­ris and her hus­band, Doug Emhoff, at­tend­ed Be­y­on­cé’s Re­nais­sance World Tour in Mary­land af­ter get­ting tick­ets from Be­y­once her­self. “Thanks for a fun date night, @Be­y­once,” Har­ris wrote on In­sta­gram.

Meg Kin­nard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKin­nar­dAP

By  ZEKE MILLER, COLLEEN LONG and MEG KIN­NARD

PHILADEL­PHIA (AP)