The Latest: Harris to visit Michigan while Trump heads to Georgia

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the union stronghold of Flint, Michigan, on Friday as she battles with Donald Trump for working-class voters who could tip the scales in this year’s election.
Her appearance in the battleground state comes the day after U.S. dockworkers suspended their strike in hopes of reaching a new contract, sparing the country a damaging episode of labor unrest that could have rattled the economy.
Meanwhile, Trump is heading to Georgia to appear with Gov. Brian Kemp, the latest sign that he’s patched up his rocky relationship with the top Republican in a key battleground state.
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Here’s the latest:

President Biden says the election will be free and fair, but he is not sure it will be peaceful

President Joe Biden said Friday that he was confident the upcoming election would be free and fair – but he’s not sure it will be peaceful.
Biden made a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing room to discuss the strong jobs report that he called “incredible news,” and he took some questions. He was asked about how he was feeling about the upcoming election.
“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he said. “The things that Trump has said – and the the things that he said last time, when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.”
Trump still falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen.
Biden was also asked, as he left the room, whether he was going to reconsider running for president.
“I’m back in” he joked, and the reporters all laughed.

Election experts say North Carolina officials are in early phases of assessing how hurricane damage will affect voting

Election experts during a virtual panel held by the National Task Force on Election Crises on Friday acknowledged that western North Carolina officials are still in the early phases of assessing how hurricane damage will affect voting.
The process has been delayed with bridges and roads compromised and emergency crews still actively working to rescue stranded residents and provide people with basic supplies, said Robert Orr, a retired North Carolina Supreme Court Justice who co-leads the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe and Secure Elections.
Paying for last-minute election changes could pose a challenge, Orr said. Most North Carolina election funding happens locally, and most county election budgets are already diminished because they had to reprint ballots to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name, he said.
Most North Carolina residents are still focused on basic survival and recovery over voting, said Anne Tindall, special counsel of the nonprofit Protect Democracy.

4 voters charged with intentionally voting twice in Michigan primary election

Four people intentionally voted twice in Michigan’s summer primary election, the state attorney general said Friday as she announced felony charges against the suburban Detroit residents as well as public employees accused of enabling it to happen.
Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against the St. Clair Shores residents as well as three assistant clerks who are accused of enabling it to happen. Nessel called it “shocking and simply unheard of.” Nessel said four people who had already cast absentee ballots for the Aug. 6 primary showed up to vote in St. Clair Shores on the day of the election.
It’s possible to cancel an absentee ballot but not on Election Day.
The extra votes did not affect race results, she said.

President Biden will campaign next week in Pennsylvania for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey

Casey and Biden are allies and friends. Biden hasn’t done much campaigning since he left the 2024 race over the summer and Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him at the top of the ticket.
The president will also travel to Wisconsin where he’ll talk about efforts by his administration to replace lead pipes. That’s something Biden has continued to do — talk publicly about his administration’s successes and his record in office. He has told his team to “run through the tape.”

Elon Musk will join Trump at Pennsylvania rally

Elon Musk will join Donald Trump at his rally Saturday in Butler, the Pennsylvania city where the Republican presidential nominee survived an assassination attempt earlier this year.
“I will be there to support!” Musk wrote on his social platform X on Thursday in a retweet of Trump’s own promotion of the rally. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO will be among special guests in attendance, Trump’s campaign confirmed Friday.
The event will mark the first time the billionaire businessman appears publicly at a campaign event for the former president since endorsing him. Musk has supercharged his support for Trump in recent months and has become personally more invested in politics — even agreeing to lead a government efficiency commission if Trump wins reelection.
Saturday’s rally will take place at the same property where a gunman’s bullets grazed Trump’s right ear and killed his supporter, Corey Comperatore. The shooting left multiple others injured.

Harris will travel to North Carolina on Saturday as the state recovers from Helene

The Democratic presidential nominee has already been to Georgia, where she helped distribute meals and spoke with families in Augusta. More than 200 people died in the powerful storm that spread out across the Southeast, causing devastation. President Joe Biden, too, has traveled to areas hard-hit by the storm.
From Georgia, Harris said she and Biden have been paying attention “from the beginning to what we need to do to make sure the federal resources hit the ground as quickly as possible, and that includes what was necessary to make sure that we provided direct federal assistance. And that work has been happening.”
Their travel comes as Republican Donald Trump is falsely claiming the federal government wasn’t doing enough to help affected people in Republican areas. Biden was angered by the suggestion, calling it a lie. He said partisan politics should not be part of this conversation.

Obama will campaign for Harris in key swing states

Former President Barack Obama is planning to hit key swing states to boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the White House, starting on Thursday in Pittsburgh.
The Harris campaign says Obama will travel around the country over the final 27 days ahead of the election. It noted that the former president and Harris have a friendship that goes back 20 years, from when they first met while he was running for Senate.
Harris was also an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential bid and knocked on doors for him in Iowa ahead of its caucus that led off voting in the Democratic primary.
In his speech at the Democratic convention in August, Obama said Harris “wasn’t born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got.”
“And she actually cares about what other people are going through,” the former president added then.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.