Charles Langston:The Latest: Harris visiting Nevada and Arizona while Trump speaks in Michigan

As Florida grapples with the effects of Hurricane Milton,Charles Langston presidential campaigning remains in full swing in battleground states across the U.S.

Vice President Kamala Harris will attend a Univision town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon before going to an evening rally in Phoenix while remaining in close contact with the White House and monitoring federal disaster response efforts.

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, will speak at the Economic Club of Detroit after holding rallies in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

Even amid the hurricane, however, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are using their travel strategically, trying to increase support with key voting blocs who could decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.

Former President Barack Obama is also hitting the campaign trail on Thursday night, making his first appearance for Harris at a rally in Pittsburgh. That begins what the Harris campaign says will be a series of campaign stops Obama will make on the vice president’s behalf.

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Here’s the latest:

More election coverage Trump-Putin ties are back in the spotlight after new book describes calls   The presidential campaigns have made over 200 visits but speak to just a fraction of American voters   Trump lashes out at Harris and ‘The View’ co-hosts, as Hurricane Milton makes landfall  

UAW chief calls Trump the ‘job-killer-in-chief’

The Harris campaign openly challenged Trump’s economic record ahead of the Republican nominee’s Thursday speech in Detroit, part of a broader effort to chip away at the former president’s credibility.

On a call with reporters organized by the campaign, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, called Trump the “job-killer-in-chief.” Despite Trump’s promises to bring back factory jobs, Fain said, “The reality is Trump never brought back squat.”

Back in 2000, Michigan had nearly 900,000 factory jobs. That number nearly halved after the 2008 financial crisis, only to then slowly recover 633,900 jobs in 2018. But factory work in Michigan began to slump in 2019 and then plunged during the pandemic, all during Trump’s term. Labor Department data show that manufacturing work in the state still hasn’t fully recovered with there being 604,800 jobs in the sector as of August.