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.

By The Associated Press

The Associated Press
October 4, 2024 at 2:57PM

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.

Follow the AP's Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here's the latest:

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.

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Some 45,000 dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports are returning to work after their union reached a deal to suspend a strike that could have caused shortages and higher prices if it had dragged on.